Was this the answer?
Dr. Nowicky had developed the drug from greater celandine extract. The formula was created in Ukrainian research labs during the Cold War, and then developed further in Austria, the alchemist’s current country of residence. He had struggled for decades to get the drug registered but fate was against him. The authorities spat on him. Hounded by both an Israeli terrorist organization and the CIA, Nowicky stood alone, out on the margins with his flower. Inevitably he associated himself with the left-wing, which would no doubt work in my favor when trying to convince Mother to take Ukrain. She hated Conservatives more than death.
As I sat in front of the computer knocking back sherry, a blanket of calm settled over my soul. I was slightly intimidated by the idea of taking Mother to some former Soviet country, but they seemed to be the only ones with a formal license to use Ukrain as a treatment for cancer. I pictured vodka parties in the Carpathian Mountains, fat mustachioed men in caviar baths after a long night of drinking, and Mother nostalgically exchanging dollars on the street for local currency. She had travelled to Eastern Europe in the ’80s to feed her spirit, as she called it, for the soul still had value in the Old Soviet. “Unlike the States,” she went on, “with all its consumerism and shareholders. No, Trooper, I’d rather drink water with Comrade Boris.” She was referring to a severe hangover in Moscow when they had all run out of alcohol and had to make do with water.
Even though Mother’s pseudo-communism had diluted with age, I wasn’t sure I could handle a replay of her “Eastern Adventures” and felt relieved when I read that some institutes in the West had started offering Ukrain treatment: The Holiterapias Institute in Lisbon, Dove House in Hampshire, Pro-Leben Clinic in Vienna. There was not much information, aside from a link for a treatment clinic in the Netherlands called Libertas. I clicked on this and waited while a photograph of an old mansion appeared on the screen. In front of the building, a few people stood in a semi-circle with the chief physician, Dr. Frederik, in the middle. Above his head was a speech bubble saying: “Welcome to Lowland, where we have been treating individuals since 1963.”
Libertas seemed to be both a treatment center and a hospice. People came to die at Lowland, but also to hope for a last chance at recovery: “Our decades of experience in treating patients with advanced cancer and the sensitive work of palliative treatment makes Libertas a viable choice in difficult circumstances.” The more I read the more I felt this was the right choice for Mother. Dr. Nowicky’s magic drug seemed likely to increase her odds considerably, and most importantly—nobody was denied available drugs for easing pain and suffering. “People who are alive are not dead,” the site claimed. “And life is the basis of our foundation.”
Morphine, Ukrain, Ecstasy . . . in my mind’s eye I saw Mother not only fit and strong, but cruising the racetracks of happiness. “I’ve got it!” I exclaimed, bursting into her room. “We’ll go to the Netherlands!”
“What are you talking about?”
“We’ll go to Libertas and meet with Dr. Frederik.”
The light in the room deepened and faded away with each word Mother didn’t say, and my belief in the perfect solution choked on her silence. Nearly all her life she had lived with an unpleasant fascination with death, but now, when a thorough examination of her bone marrow confirmed that it was finally time, it was as if she’d never heard that people could actually die. She was in shock.
“It’s not as if I haven’t been dying all along,” she finally said and whimpered a little because all of this started as the tiniest tickle in her belly in Berlin, the night I first made myself known and Willy Nellyson ran off to Italy. “And there I was all alone, Trooper, and then I had you.”
“So the story goes.”
“It’s no story, Hermann, these are stone cold facts. Why did he just up and leave like that? Didn’t even leave a note.”
“I don’t know, but about this clinic—”
“And me, there, all alone in Germany. Look how beautiful he was, tall like a prince and sharp as a sword.”
She handed me the photograph of Willy Nellyson and I remembered why I’d always doubted that this man was my father. Such a paternity claim was as absurd as two weeks of abstinence on Spítala Street. If my looks were a work of fiction, the outcome would be War and Peace or some other endless novel, bulky and thick yet strangely lacking in mass. A paperback. Willy Nellyson, however, was a tall, willowy man with a few stray hairs growing out of his chin, reminiscent of some sort of academic catfish, so peculiarly hunched that he seemed to have had his bones removed, perhaps during the war, so that he could be conveniently folded into a carry-on bag. He had betrayed Mother by running off after I was conceived and, according to her—this was something she said over and again—something within her died after his getaway, something she never got back, scarring her for life. Her epic death flowed like a branching river through my childhood, in different versions that all confirmed the same thing: men were a dubious species poisoning the lives of striking women. Only one thing distinguished Willy Nellyson: he had the perfect cock. This I deduced from a carved ebony dildo Mother kept on the top shelf of the living room cupboard, and which she’d taken down on my thirteenth birthday, handed it over with gusto and said: “This, Trooper, is your father’s penis.” I fondled the wood as if it held promises of a great future and waited, for years and without reward, for my father’s heritage to manifest itself between my legs.
“How strange a lifetime is. Over sixty years and then . . .”
She looked defeated. I retreated out of the room and started to ramble dead drunk around the apartment, my mind wandering aimlessly, to Dublin, Moscow, and the distant features of Zola. The next morning I woke up hung over; Ukrain and Libertas only scattered images in a saturated mind. Mother? Dying? Amsterdam? The silence of the room grew in proportion with the stench of my bed sheets and for three, four—perhaps five—days, depression inhabited Spítala Street.
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