Sölvi Sigurdsson - The Last Days of My Mother

I was happy when I walked back out into the garden, dying with anticipation to get back to the tap.

“The truth of detox is found in the joy of the retox, Trooper,” Mother said and handed me the tumblers. “I could see it in you, after you started spending all that time in the gym. Old Edda always used to say the same thing. The whole point of a healthy lifestyle is to have the capacity to go overboard. Did you know that Gloria is a matchmaker?” She pointed over to her and the doctor’s son. “That explains how she found such a good man.”

“Actually, Steven and I wouldn’t have met if it weren’t for Trooper,” Gloria said. “I would say, judging from experience, that Icelanders are good matchmakers.”

“Ah, but bad at matching up,” Mother insisted. “Everyone in Iceland is unhappy. That’s a fact.”

“That’s not entirely true, Eva,” I objected. “Life isn’t so simple. We look for love, find it, and then lose it, just like everybody else.”

“You’re quite the poet today, Hermann.”

“I’m not drinking fast enough. This is a hangover.”

“If only you were like this every time you got hung over, Trooper. Then Iceland would have a great poet. But please get a refill, it should last until tomorrow.”

When Helena and I returned, Gloria and Steven had sneaked off for a smoke and the old folks sat debating the Hippocratic Oath. The doctor said it was questionable in modern context.

“I’ve always maintained that in order to be a good doctor one has to take the Hippocratic Oath with a pinch of salt,” he said. “To me, the patient and his wishes are the ultimate factor.”

“I suppose suicide is the only thing in life that you can never regret?”

“You’re funny, Mrs. Briem,” the doctor laughed. “Can I use this on the cynics when I go to my convention in December?”

“Of course. But now I want to propose a toast to Helena because she is as beautiful as I was when I was young. And to Trooper, the reason I got to know all you wonderful people.”

“To Trooper!”

The commotion seemed to invigorate the rugby huddle’s ADHD, one kid after the other pulling its head out of the ice cream and zipping around the garden.

“I wish she’d leave and take her brood with her,” Mother said, her patience wearing thin. “I can’t understand why people don’t leave their kids at home when they go to restaurants. Fidgety little kids don’t mix well with drinks.”

“Little darlings,” the doctor said. “I’ve always liked having children pattering about.”

“That’s because you are a child in retirement,” Duncan said. “I’ve never known a grown man who could become as absorbed in his interests as you.”

“I think someone should go and have a word with her.” Mother continued to criticize the pregnant woman, who she felt must have been mentally challenged from birth, thick as a brick, and this herd of hers was yet more proof of the decline of civilization. Good people were brainwashed in educational institutions that made them depressed so they delayed having offspring until they were well past their prime, while idiots bred like rabbits, making the intelligent people more miserable and inevitably single. “Trooper has a kid in Africa,” she suddenly said. “Kakebe, a nice boy in Kenya.”

“Kakebe is actually Zola’s kid now,” I said, not liking where this was going. Mother hardly ever mentioned Kakebe unless she was planning an invasion into the past. “I think she was going to visit him.”

“You weren’t supportive enough,” she said and complained about my part in human suffering. “You can say what you like about Zola, but you were not there for her when it came to this.”

“What was I supposed to do? Fly to Africa on the weekends with a football to play with him? He was just a little kid in Kenya who didn’t know us at all.”

“Really? Well, maybe you’ll think about what has become of the youth in this world when you get to my age. Especially if she keeps on going, that ever-breeding, conservative ogre. How come it’s only the idiots that have children these days? Do you know, Duncan?”

“It’s a travesty. One hundred thousand people are born in the Netherlands each year and they’re all imbeciles.”

“That’s why I’m always going on about this to Trooper. I tell him it’s fun to have kids.”

“Families are not just based on fun and games,” I said.

“Well they’re hardly built on people keeping to themselves into old age, either,” she shot back. “How old are you now, Trooper? Getting ever closer to my age, I warn you. And Helena is twenty-three. That was considered quite old to be childless in my day. Maybe you’ll have lots of kids when you get to the fashionable age, which seems to be around forty these days, then you can have a hip replacement done at the same time. You’ll be fitted with a pacemaker to make it through the kids’ teens. My opinion is that it’s best to get it done sooner, than later. You don’t have to get married and live happily ever after.”

“Give it a rest, Eva,” I said as Helena headed over to the beer tap with a funny smile on her face.

“You just be yourself and I’m sure she’ll consider it,” Mother continued. “Now that you don’t have that mole in your face. What do you think, Duncan, don’t you think Helena and Trooper would have a nice looking child?”

“I’m sure of it,” Duncan laughed. “But I don’t think we’ll have any say in the matter. My Helena goes her own way and I’m sure that Trooper does too.”

Mother stared downcast into the void, let down by Duncan’s lack of enthusiasm for getting Helena and me into one bed. I felt the need to calm her down and used the opportunity while Helena was away to promise that if we both ended up single and had no other chance of procreating, if Helena’s womb was about to cave in, and my sperm count was seriously dwindling on account of too much microwaved food, I would ask her to do this for the love of humanity. I would make a hospital appointment, even if I had to take ten Viagra and read a dozen porn magazines with young middle-aged women, I would do it — squeeze out the last drops into a cup, my semen brown from age but still vibrant, full of little swimmers screaming to become bigger and to get to rule the world, lick lollipops and eat chocolate cake, rent slasher movies. We would not become extinct: our love of alcohol, fatty foods, and fun would live on, all the charming needs and vices, all the crazy nights and the wonder-genes that got people dancing on tables in their old age, that is how our offspring would wind up, a gray-haired child with rosy cheeks after a series of special drinks.

“Slow down, Hermann,” Mother said and told me that the night was young and there was plenty of time left for spewing out drunken philosophy. “I think little Eva will make her own decisions. A grandchild, how great! Did you hear that, Duncan? A little baby!”

I’d had enough of this pseudo-child and pointed out that the world’s variables were numerous: I could move to Thailand, open up a pizza parlor by a swimming pool; and Helena might become the Secretary General of the Council of Europe. If so, there was hardly much sense in making a baby who would be flung around the world in airplanes for the sole reason of providing us with physical proof of our existence. And what if the plane crashed? Wouldn’t we all die anyway? What was the point of life when all was said and done?

“For the love of God, Trooper.”

“More beer,” Duncan said when Helena returned and filled our glasses. “I suppose the point of life might as well be to drink a bit of Shakespeare ale. At least today. Grüss Gott !”

“ Grüss Gott .” Mother raised her glass. “Now we just need a little schnapps to make it perfect.”