The Last Days of My Mother by Sölvi Björn Sigurdsson Page A

quite small; chance meetings like this weren’t really that unusual.
    â€œI actually met some Icelanders this morning,” Mother said. “Wonderful, generous men. But if you don’t mind me asking, Mrs. Helgamom—is that your friend in the car?”
    I’d noticed her wandering around the car randomly and realized that she’d been spying on the mystery man sleeping in the backseat.
    â€œDuncan, our friend, yes. Have you met him?”
    â€œNo, I was just curious, he looks like a man I know. Well, I think it’s best that Trooper and I let you go for now. We’re going for a drink. Can you recommend a place?”
    It turned out that the little party had just come from lunch at Shakespeare Fried Chicken, a branch of the restaurant at Lowland. They gave us directions to the place and we said good-bye.
    â€œDid you see that man?” Mother asked when the car had disappeared around the corner. “The resemblance was striking.”
    â€œTo whom?”
    â€œWell, Milan Kundera, of course! Nicht mehr und nicht weniger . I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone who looks as similar to him as this Doonka does.”
    â€œDuncan.”
    â€œWe’ll see. But first we should get something to eat.”
    We stopped in front of a hand-painted sign and went into the restaurant. Shakespeare Fried Chicken was decorated in Medieval style: spears, shields, and coats of armor hung on the walls, next to which stood dark, hardwood tables with glossy, built-in benches. Aside from a few tourists, the clientele mainly consisted of two groups of men drinking beer, eating, and generally being loud.
    â€œSince we didn’t get our specials, Trooper, I think it’s time we had a double schnapps and a single on the side,” Mother said and laughed like she always did when talking about this passionatequantity in the vast wonderworld of drinks: a double schnapps and a single on the side. I walked over to the buffet table and started shoveling food onto plates: shavings from a whole roasted pig stuffed with partridges, pheasants, and fresh herbs, a monster of a thing slathered in thick grease on a rack under flickering flames, surrounded by strips of bacon, vegetables, and potatoes.
    â€œYou’re not going to leave that, are you?” Mother asked, pointing to my plate when were done eating. She had an irrational neuroses about leaving food. “We need a doggy bag.”
    â€œAre you planning to take this to rot up in your hotel room like you did in Slovakia?”
    â€œNot at all, I’m going to eat it. That’s going to last me three days, even more. You might laugh now but you won’t be laughing tonight when I’ll be trying to drag you back to the hotel, dead drunk and begging for food.”
    She said that her generation was used to having to think about more than just computer games and drugs, but despite her frugality in restaurants Mother did not have the qualms older people tend to have toward new things. Among the things she bought on her travels were chili seeds, Veneto mushrooms, and Mirin. In her opinion, the smartest use of an airline ticket was to buy something light that gained more weight the farther north you went. I told her to kidnap an Icelandic flight attendant and sell her in Yemen, but she ignored me.
    â€œIt makes no sense leaving it. Now go and ask the girl for a box, be a good boy.”
    I did as I was told. We paid the bill and left.
    â€œThere they are, there they are!” she shouted and ran to a ticket booth on the corner. “It’s amazing that Icelanders are in charge of this. And I know them!”
    In the booth window was a poster advertising the opening of IceSave in the Netherlands, an Icelandic bank that promised their customers higher interest rates than any other financial company in the country.
    â€œDo you see what I see, Hermann? A bank launch. We’re going.”
    â€œYou hate self-jetters and bitch