The first night in Hotel Europa I dreamt that Mother and I were Siamese twins. I moved to the left and she moved to the left. I tried to shake loose but my body sat still on her hips, which were also my hips. Instead of four legs, we each had one leg and between them was a phenomenon that bore a striking resemblance to Albert Grimaldi, Crown Prince of Monaco. We fell and sprayed forth a million tons of blood that flowed over the earth until it went dark. I dissolved into Mother’s body—I was her and the entire galaxy at the same time. Gargantuan factories breathed black contagions over the world, and I knew they were her tumors; that was where the cancer lived. All I could do was run away. The factories turned into a white space without walls, where wine fountains in booths spewed bubbles at me. I could taste them and heard knocking . . . was I awake?
“Bankers!” Mother shouted, standing all dressed up by my bedside with a bottle of champagne in her hand. “Hah hah! I met bankers!” A wild lust for life glowed from her face and placed me squarely in the waking world.
“How did you get in?”
“In the end I had to have someone let me in,” she answered. “Mein Sohn, I said, Notfall. It’s incredible how you can sleep, Hermann. I’ve been knocking on your door since early this morning.”
“You had someone let you in? What’s wrong with you?”
“Trooper, I was trying to explain this to you. I went down for breakfast—like normal people do, and by that I mean people who don’t sleep until noon—and what do you think I hear from inside the Gold Room? Icelandic, Trooper, Icelandic! There they were, five bankers drinking champagne. So I asked if I could join them. Well, it turned out they were having a meeting, but they gave me a bottle of this. Veuve Clicquot. Don’t you like it?”
I could still taste the champagne and I realized that the final scene in my dream had not been a dream after all.
“Did you pour that into my mouth while I was asleep?”
“Something had to be done. You can’t waste time sleeping in every day. Have you seen the weather outside? Just wonderful. And the view . . . You’re a genius to have found us this hotel.”
I got up and walked out onto the small balcony, which was just big enough for two chairs and a tiny table. It was a warm day. The sun seeped through the threadbare mist that spread over the city, immersing it in soft spring air. In my soul I was at homecoming, twenty years old, drooling alcohol at nine in the morning, convinced that within half an hour my body would be saturated with liquor and love for all the dimensions of the universe. We had decided earlier that the weekend would be an adventure, sickness banished from existence, and the only meaning of life would be to have fun until we dropped dead from happiness. Mother stared with fascination at the water. Even in her wildest soap opera fantasies, she had never imagined such luxury as we now enjoyed at Hotel Europa: two-room suites with balconies and a view over the canal, bright lounges and sleeping quarters with mahogany beds, bathrooms with gold-plated faucets, and slippers.
“You mustn’t envy me for getting the more elegant suite. The staff probably decided to put me in there, seeing as I’m older. I’ll just light one up while you get dressed. As the bankers in the lobby said: Amsterdam, here we come!”
*
The first thing Mother mentioned when we walked out into the sunshine was the deep-rooted culture in the street landscape. From here, the brave adventurers sailed off for the Indies, and here the master painters had filled in the canvas of history.
“Not to mention all the crimes of passion and the orgies,” she added. “Can you imagine all the sensations that have bubbled in these houses? Countless whoremongers and whores trying all sorts of sex. You almost want to jump through one of these windows and see if some ghost won’t take you on. This is quite a change from Reykjavik with all those ceaseless Subway and McDonalds ads. Not to mention that horrible Idol thing. Why do people insist on being so devoid of culture in Iceland?”
We walked to where the hotel met the street and the Amstel River branched out, dividing into smaller canals. Three black kids stood rapping on the bridge, much to Mother’s delight.
“Hold this, Hermann, I’m going to take a photo,” she said, hung her handbag on me and skulked behind me with the camera. “I’ve often wondered how much more fun it would have been if I’d had you with a black man, Trooper.”
“What?”
“Yes. It would have been such a nice contribution to the diversity of the population to have you a bit tinted.”
“Ah. But would I have been me then?”
“As if you would have noticed? You wouldn’t have given it any thought, just like you don’t currently think about what it would have been like to be colored. That’s the problem with having just the one life. I’ll never really know what it’s like to be Catherine Deneuve.”
“The only thing you know is that you’re Icelandic,” I said and explained to her my theory that the nation’s color chart, excluding the handful of immigrants in the restaurant business, could be divided into three categories. I belonged to the Porridge People—people who work indoors and therefore have the complexion of oat porridge in the first stages of souring. Then there were the Pig People—people who simply were the color of pigs, and finally the Prosperous People—orange people who had chemical skin treatments and worked in finance or media. The whole flock was descended from the same pale ape that discovered Iceland.
“Then you’ll understand, my dear Trooper, what soul food it is for people like me who got their education in Fraülein Europa to finally have some diversity.” She pointed to a tall, attractive older man on a bicycle. “You just don’t see silver foxes like that in Reykjavik, not unless they’re married or throwing up in some bar.”
I promised to call the Guinness Book of Records to let them know. Almost everything we came across defied haters of beauty. The program was in full swing. It was highly unlikely that any mother and son in the history of mankind had ever had as much fun before noon.
To celebrate, she fished out her lifesaver and offered me a capful, which I gulped down as fast as I could. It tasted like every type of alcohol known to man with a touch of brandy in the foreground, which was probably what she poured into the flask the last time she filled it.
“Here, have some more,” she said and got out a miniature she’d pocketed from the hotel minibar. “You could do with a pick-me-up.”
“No more for now, thanks. I’d prefer a beer and some coffee first. How about finding a seat and having a look at the map?”
“Great idea, Trooper. If there’s anything I’ve learned on my travels it’s that you can never sit down enough . . . but I can’t say I’ve ever had much use for maps. My map is in my heart.”
I resisted mentioning her disastrous trip with the Friends of Romania group that ended with me flying to Slovakia to take her home.
“Here,” she walked into a weird café where two men took turns frying pancakes and cutting people’s hair. We got a table by a window looking out over the canal and ordered coffee and pancakes. “They’ve even got Internet here. Would you check my email for me and see if I’ve got any new messages?”
I agreed and asked for her password.
“Milan Kundera, one word.”
“The poet?”
“He’s a writer, Hermann. And not just the best writer in the world but also the most beautiful man I’ve ever set eyes on.”
“Wow.”
“I know. And so it’s a great password. Not a chance I’ll ever forget it.”
I went through her mailbox, conscientiously reading aloud to her every single email, including a distraught message from Obed Kanutsi, a wealthy Nigerian fellow who had been terribly wronged by an unjust government and modestly asked for 1,000 dollars