Read Online The Last Days of My Mother by Sölvi Björn Sigurdsson - Free Book Online Page A

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.
    â€œI 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.”
    â€œYou can’t expect the doctor to hit on you during your examination.”
    â€œIs 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.
    â€œâ€˜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.”
    â€œIsn’t she the one that’s always so happy?”
    â€œOh, 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.
    â€œWhen 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
    O n Monday morning the focus returned again to matters of life and death, Ukrain or no Ukrain.
    â€œWhether 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.
    â€œShe had her fun with poor Grigori for a few years, a perverse little youngster with a cock like a horse. When she got bored withhim 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.
    â€œWhy do we have to do this? I find it terribly unfair to have to get all these shots on top of everything.”
    â€œDon’t worry about it. The doctor is so used to giving injections that you won’t feel a thing.”
    â€œOh I’ll feel them! It’s serious business