“Ahh, Maiden’s Blood? I don’t think I’ve had Maiden’s Blood since Matti had that tomato farm. Mmm, this is really good, much better than Matti’s. Strong.”
“I asked him to be generous with the vodka.”
“Good for you, Trooper. Like old Edda used to say: When you make a special order, it better be special. No need to be shy about asking for that little extra shot.”
We toasted each other in the glow of candlelight while the place gradually filled with people in intimate conversation with the night. Fueled by the vodka I became sentimental, let my mind wander through the past, not unlike the TV shrink Dr. Phil, according to Mother. I needed to help her find a man.
“I suppose the only solution is to find a gigolo. The men here in Holland seem as uninteresting as the ones in Reykjavik. Like that doctor. Seems completely asexual.”
“You can’t expect the doctor to hit on you during your examination.”
“Is there something wrong with hoping that the few men who stray into my life make the tiniest of efforts?”
I had to admit that this lack of sexual harassment truly was a travesty, but she threw her hands up in frustration and asked me to give her a break.
“‘Sexual harassment.’ Ach. Another term invented by your sanctimonious generation. No wonder we’re having a hard time picking up men, except for cold fish like Emma Gulla. She just orders them from catalogs.”
“Isn’t she the one that’s always so happy?”
“Oh, Trooper, what do I know? I’ve just never been able to figure out love. Maybe it’s just for boring people. Do you think that’s it? That love is just for boring and ugly people like Emma? Look at the two of us.”
We stared into the flickering night and called out to the melancholy, to the nostalgia that lived in the newly fallen darkness and the lights, in the crowds and the stars, in all these endless possibilities that didn’t find their way to us, but planted us here, mother and son, each with a pint of special.
“When you think about it, Trooper, at the end of the day — we’ve at least always had fun. Now tell the bartender to turn off this noise and play some real dancing music. Soon I’ll be dead and have less time for dancing, but tonight we dance. On the tables and up into the ceiling, like this, until the lights go out. We’ll dance, my dearest Trooper. Just dance!”
Chapter 6
On Monday morning the focus returned again to matters of life and death, Ukrain or no Ukrain.
“Whether to take up arms against the fall of Spring? And the world of Summer — or to suffer the frost?” Mother recited poetry between bites of bacon, along with quotations from The Iron Lady, the controversial play about Nazi nurse Herta Oberhauser; anything to divert her attention from the upcoming doctor’s visit. In her opinion she was going to suffer nothing less than a sadistic blitzkrieg by a professional torturer. Whenever I tried to discuss her treatment she would turn on me and ask me to leave her be; she needed peace and quiet to recall Herta’s defense monologue. She would then go into detail about her erratic sleeping patterns, noises in the hallway that had woken her and how she had retreated onto the balcony with a glass of red wine around three in the morning. That had led her to open her book—Catherine the Great, a Biography—which turned out to contain some quite racy revelations of the Empress’s extensive debauchery.
“She had her fun with poor Grigori for a few years, a perverse little youngster with a cock like a horse. When she got bored with him she made him bring her new lovers. By the truckload — imagine the luxury. There was something inherently wrong with her. The woman was insatiable.”
I didn’t have much to say on the matter, but pointed out that we really needed to get up to our rooms; the doctor would arrive any minute.
“Why do we have to do this? I find it terribly unfair to have to get all these shots on top of everything.”
“Don’t worry about it. The doctor is so used to giving injections that you won’t feel a thing.”
“Oh I’ll feel them! It’s serious business having someone stab you with a needle.”
Since she seemed determined to view the doctor’s visit as pain and suffering, I decided to let him cut off Black Beauty to ease the strain. My plan was to laugh off the jab to show Mother how easy it was. In the end I had to suppress my panic because the doctor was afraid he’d jab me in the eye if I didn’t sit still.
“There!” The doctor said when he finally managed to stick the needle in the right spot. “Now we let the anesthetic take and meanwhile turn to the big matter.”
He walked across the room in his green tailcoat, a flat tweed cap on his head and knee-high leather boots on his feet, and fetched a small case he’d left at the door. The locks on the case clicked open and he took out a tray with numerous small medical bottles that were marked: UKRAIN 5mg — 1 AMPOULE AM TAG. He produced needles, cotton wool, and gauze from a small leather pouch. He placed everything onto Mother’s bed, took off his coat, and sat beside her. He then tied a rubber tube around her upper arm and used his fingers to find a suitable vein.
“Now, Mrs. Briem, I know that you don’t like injections but I can assure you that my needles are the least painful injections available for Ukrain shots. You saw how easy it was for your son.”
“Trooper is completely ignorant when it comes to injections. Is there really no other way? Can’t I just drink it?”
“No, I’m sorry, the drug really has to be given intravenously if it is to work. You will need a daily shot for five weeks to begin with. After that we’ll have to see, depending on how your body reacts to the treatment. There, we’re done!”
Mother stared in astonishment at the doctor, like a person who’d just woken to find they’d slept through a war. “What? You’re done?”
“Yes, all done.”
“Did you see that, Trooper? How he did that? I must admit I didn’t feel it a thing. You’re obviously no Nazi, doctor.”
“Pleased to hear that.”
“You see, I played Herta Oberhauser once, she was a nurse who used needles to torture people. She was as obsessed with needles as Catherine the Great was with lovers. It truly is a miracle, doctor, that you’re already done. I could visit the Museum of Torture now. Show them how to take it.”
She stood up and poured herself a schnapps, her face like an atom bomb indicating the travesties awaiting the city’s museums. The left side of my own face was steadily becoming more paralyzed. I felt like I’d fallen asleep after drinking glue.
“Look at you!” she said and pointed at me. “Quivering like a leaf over a petty mole! I’ve been telling my son for years now that not all women are into men with moles.”
I made vague grunting noises in protest and used strong gestures to strengthen my case.
“It’s true, Trooper. That mole has overshadowed everything that is charming about you.”
“Oh?” I managed to snort despite the numbness. “Then I must declare that many women are into fungus.”
“I must invite them into my museum one day,” the doctor said and slid the knife up to my right temple. “This little guy will have pride of place in my collection. Even such a tiny organism can grow up to two or three inches if cultivated properly.”
I didn’t know what kind of psychedelic drug the good doctor had mixed into the local anesthetic, but I suddenly went cold at the sight of the knife, no longer so sure that Mother’s claims of the inherent sadism of the medical profession were unfounded. Wasn’t there something perverse about a man who collected abnormalities from people’s faces?