But as Mother said every so often: One week is Yang and the other Yin. Sometimes you just need time to put things in perspective. I had almost given up on the idea of the Netherlands when I saw a TV report on how lively Amsterdam was. Bit by bit things started to look up again. I contacted Libertas and received brochures with information and rates, spent my savings on a five-star hotel in Amsterdam, and finally sat down with Mother to discuss things. It took a few days to explain to her what this trip really entailed; leaving Iceland once and for all—the final journey. Her heartbreak was unbridled for a couple days, but then she composed herself. On Saturday evening she appeared in the attic, a bottle of sherry in hand, and told me that she’d browsed through the brochures. The lightness that had engulfed me that first night made a cautious comeback with a touch of grounded strategy. Great expectations swarmed beneath the surface.
“I got out my cards and let them decide. I don’t expect to recover, Trooper. I’ve come to terms with the inevitable. The end is near, but not here yet. I’ve never seen cards like this before. Do you think that your dreams can come true, even moments before you die?”
I squeezed her hand and the next morning I confirmed our booking with Libertas. The following days were spent preparing for departure. Now we stood groggy in the airport terminal rubbing the last remnants of sleep from our eyes. For a second I tried to imagine what lay in store for us on the other side of the ocean, but the thought flew away before I could catch it.
Chapter 2
“Ahhh,” Mother sighed, walking into the Duty Free area, as if she’d just repeated the Feat of the Long Walk to the Irish pub on her fiftieth birthday. I was becoming increasingly depressed by how much everything had changed since I was last here. The Duty Free store had been moved to another part of the building, I wasn’t going away to Ireland with Zola. My face drooped involuntarily, stunned by the ruthlessness of the separation.
I was still at the mercy of such fits of melancholy. The slightest reminder of Zola had similar effects as cannabis poisoning: I’d grow pale and become inconsolable without the omnipresence of high-calorie snacks. Remembering Zola’s obsession with ballet and folk music did nothing to ease the pain. For seven blissful years she’d filled my life with a buoyancy that transported me from one place to another, without the anguish and defeat that usually defined my existence. She was relentlessly horny, like a fly that only has a single day to procreate, and she made me try all sorts of things I had little to no knowledge of beforehand.
My fascination with her body didn’t fade, even though she suddenly had enough one day, diverting her impulses and appetites instead toward confectionaries, dismissing me as a graduate from the university of love. The fun and games were over. We’d have sex on a monthly basis, going through the motions out of duty or to avoid a bulletproof reason for going our separate ways. I’d see the female form everywhere, in the most mundane things, like a toothbrush, but Zola was lost to me. It never crossed my mind that these were symptoms of a dying love, that I would stumble naked around hotel rooms where some of the most meaningless sex acts in the world were performed with my involvement. What followed were attacks of self-pity, overeating, and intensive staring into refilled sherry bottles during the months I moved back into Mother’s attic.
“Hermann!” Mother shook me as I stood shuddering in the camera department. “Are you lost in space?”
“Yes. Well. No.”
“I’m going to have a drink at the bar. Knowing you, you’ll be here for a while spending money on junk.”
We parted ways and I wandered around the camera section where a tanned couple straight out of a magazine glided between the shelves. The boy looked like a professional athlete and the girl like Miss California, lean and blonde with endless legs. Their appeal was so conventional that they could have been off-the-rack, like her short denim dress. I almost bumped into them when she suddenly charged and snaked her body around the boy’s, who reacted like a defense basketball player to swiftly secure a position for them between the Samsungs and the Sonys to swap spit. I was relieved when the whiff of animal fat seduced me into the Food Market, where I bought gum and a newspaper, then filled out a questionnaire on Icelandic lamb. I did this in part to make up for Mother’s loathing of any and all surveys, which she regarded as an evil of capitalism and mass surveillance. When I found her at the bar she was staring into the mirror, sporting huge sunglasses.
“Strange how I was never a dean’s wife,” she said, blowing cosmopolitan smoke rings at her reflection. “Why has my love life always been so . . . ? Take Jonas for example. It’s not my fault that the man was so sickly all the time.”
“I ran into him in the bakery the other day and he seems to be doing better, he’s walking again—”
“It was hopeless,” she injected and stubbed out her cigarette. “A man who’s in rehab when he’s not actually in the hospital? No. What I’ve never had, Trooper, is a man who could support me. Look at those two over there. It’s obvious what they’ve been up to.”
“What do you mean?”
“Obviously homosexuals.”
“Ah, but of course! I was wondering what’s up with their asses,” I said, ignoring the disapproving looks from the people on the next table. Truth was, Mother had a real soft spot for gay men.
“Why on earth do all the best men go into this? No wonder women my age have trouble finding a man.”
“Oh, for crying out loud, Eva.”
“No, I mean it. Either they’re married to some sad cow or feeling each other up. Can you name one normal, single man my age?”
I reached for my Food Market bag and pretended to read the celebrity pages of my newspaper. The main story was about Croatian supermodels Milla and Iva.
“Although . . . you know . . . I always thought you’d turn out gay, Trooper,” she continued. “I’ve never known any child as dramatic as you were. You’d dress up in my clothes, put on makeup, walk around in over-sized heels . . .”
“You raised me in the theater, what did you expect?”
“Sure, but just think, a beautiful woman like me—surrounded by homosexuals her whole life. Then along come these old farts like Emma Gulla . . . apparently she bagged herself a doctor.”
“Who’s Emma Gulla?”
“Don’t you remember her? Such an incredibly ugly woman. And boring, too.”
A nearby screen announced that our flight was boarding. I picked up our things and prepared to go.
“Wait. Let’s have one for the road, Trooper.”
“We’ll miss our flight.”
“I doubt they’ll take off without us.”
“Eva,” I sighed.
“Alright, alright. I’ve got a little something with me anyways.”
We walked along the seemingly endless corridor toward the gate. Mother was astonished at the lack of moving sidewalks and gave the flight attendant a long speech about the technological superiority of German airports. The Samsung-girl in the short denim dress sat in the seat across the aisle from me.
“Isn’t that the same dress I gave Zola?” Mother whispered, but I was
