Sölvi Sigurdsson - The Last Days of My Mother

I was quite excited when I finally ventured out into the summer heat the first day of June with my course set for the post office. Over forty responses tumbled out of the post box, and I found nineteen of them interesting enough to make up a little pile for me to examine at length. Of those nineteen applicants, twelve got bonus points for wit, extraordinary good looks, or a lovely turn of phrase. I sorted the letters by quality and called the eligible ones. Most of them thought it strange that Mother didn’t call them herself and refused to speak to me. I asked the others to give me a chance. I explained that Mother was an intelligent and interesting woman who’d had to go abroad on short notice. She would very much appreciate it if the prospective gentleman would meet with me, her son, for a quick chat at Café Cutty Sark on Spuistraat before she got back to the country.

The elite six were all retired and agreed to meet me, one after the other, on a rain-splashed Tuesday in the beginning of July. I found a quiet table in the corner half an hour before the first meeting, completely unaware of the torture awaiting me. I had never seen such pathetic specimens of the human race as the miserable lot who found their way into Café Cutty Sark that dreary afternoon. I thought I’d found my man in John Devanugh, a handsome type with great bone structure and an interest in dramaturgy until I realized that his “recently deceased” wife had actually been dead for twenty years. We didn’t have time for this shit. I knew that Mother would have no patience or tolerance for some long-dead female who was apparently superior to any living human. I said good-bye to John Devanugh and hello to Stefan Sauerbritzl, a German and compulsive eater who was either freakishly photogenic or a master at Photoshop. The meetings deteriorated from then on. Ben Henderson, real estate agent, a malodorous bearded ape with skin problems. Valmer Flint was a pervert. Then there was the incorrigible alcoholic from Rotterdam, and a lethargic Finn with transgender fantasies. In short, these meetings all proved the point that Mother had been making for years about single men over fifty.

“No luck?” the waitress smiled as she wiped my table clean. I wanted to take off with her to Casablanca and disappear into the intoxicating infinity of her youth. “No one fit the part? I mean, aren’t you making a movie?”

“Yes. No. I’m just looking for a man who’s ready for a romantic relationship. It’s hard to find the right kind at this age.”

“Don’t you have to try for guys a bit younger?” the girl asked, slightly surprised.

“Younger men are all busy with other things. And Mother. . no, it wouldn’t work.”

“Is she really difficult?”

“No, she’s fine. I wouldn’t go through all this trouble otherwise.”

“Then you’re lucky. My friend doesn’t dare come out because his mom is such a bitch.”

“I have the exact opposite problem, she’s always trying to drag me out. And then it always ends with the tarot cards.”

“She sounds really supportive. And what do the cards say? A loverman in the cards at all?”

“I was hoping to seal the deal today,” I sighed. “You saw how it went. It’s true what they say — love is more complicated after fifty.”

“You should check out the service just up the street,” she suggested and poured me another coffee. “It’s called Hemingway something. . Dating Service.”

“Hemingway Dating Service? Is it for Hemingways or with Hemingways?”

“With Hemingways. I’m sure you’ll find Mr. Right before you know it.”

I thanked her, left the café and walked farther up the street. The Hemingway Dating Service was at number 224, in a very narrow building that opened up once you got inside, like the first floor had spread into the neighboring houses. There were ladies in heavy coats whose potent smell conjured up the fear of dead animals. I was reminded of my youth. Surrounded by a fantastic horniness that simmered underneath the polished surface, I walked over to the front desk and fished out a form from a plastic box.

“You’re seeking a man in his sixties?” the receptionist asked when I handed her the paper.

“With an interest in literature, theater and such. Handsome.”

She picked up the phone and then pointed me to the bar next door, where I was about to rock Mother’s gay-scale. There, I had a passionate conversation with an intelligent man named Radberth Comstock, an engineer at the Academy of Science, classy in a shirt and blue jeans with tartan-laced pockets. Here was the Highland knight himself in a gilded sunset, and I had become my mother.

“There’s been a misunderstanding,” I said as it finally dawned on me.

The rain soaked parking lot steamed under my feet as I stormed back into Hemingway Dating Service, ready to prove to the world that Hermann Willyson was a ladies’ man. Would the receptionist like a drink? I was great company, a true he-male who’d simply come to fill out a form for his mother.

“I suppose I owe you one. I’ll go over the listings with you if you can wait a couple.”

We ran down Spuistraat in the rain and found shelter under a blue canvas. Me and Gloria Birkenstock, matchmaker and the focus of my sex drive. Fortunately, the beer had the intended numbing effect on my nervous system and I told her stories and bad jokes about racecar games and salmon fishing, digging up all the pitiful machismo I could muster to breathe in the estrogen in Gloria. I drank like my life depended on it.

“I suppose I should’ve known,” she laughed.

“All that matters is that I’m here with you, Gloria. This is the life, Gloria. This is the life .”

“Cheers to that!”

“And cheers to Radberth Comstock. He’ll make some lucky guy very happy.”

We sat at the pub for a couple of hours without so much as a glance at the listings. I told her about Mother’s illness and our trip to Lowland. We found that we had the same birthday, nine years apart. She possessed a joyful sex appeal that conjured up youthful tension. As I lay naked next to her shortly after leaving the café, I was haunted by an onslaught of thoughts: why am I not sleeping with a woman I love instead of lying here with a stranger? Why am I hiding my paunch belly and genitals with a stuffed animal? Why do I choose to have sex with a woman who has the same last name as my sandals? I hadn’t had sex with a woman since the beast with the bearded tits had her way with me in Dublin. After that I developed a sexual inferiority complex, which grew in proportion to my bloated self. In the heat of the moment the feeling had disappeared, but now it returned with a vengeance. Gloria Birkenstock was a beautiful woman, long-legged and slight, with full, round breasts that reminded me of two halves of an Olympic size handball. She was a woman any man would be proud to share his bed with. Nevertheless, I found it impossible to relax beside her and soon stood up to call Ramji.

“Do you mind if I ride along?” she asked when I told the driver to take me back to the hotel. “I feel like going for a stroll and the walk back would be perfect.”

I told her I needed to stop by Pijlsteeg and that the driver had strict orders to take me to get some cannabis. Gloria was unconcerned and told me she didn’t care where we were headed. When we got to the museum I felt obliged to invite her in with me to where the doctor’s son sat smoking in his underwear. Only a couple hours had passed since my premature ejaculation had ended its journey in Gloria’s latex-filled cervix, but what happened next was beyond past events. Steven looked at Gloria and Gloria looked at Steven. She was twelve years his senior; he wanted a lover who would give him a motherly sense of security. Most normal people would perhaps have taken offence to this turn of events, but I had trouble containing my joy. After telling them a few jokes about Gaddafi, president of Libya, I bid a warm farewell to the couple with numerous handshakes and expressions of hope to meet again soon.