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

is that which you give yourself.”
    I took the condoms and put them in my pocket, claiming they wouldn’t last me the week. The fact of the matter was that this analysis of my love life was sadly right on the money. Aside from the three weeks of whoring in Dublin after the breakdown, my sexual organs had indeed seen very little action. In my teens and well into my twenties I was so terrified by sex that I didn’t dare seize the few offers I got. Globalization was a term I associated mainly with hep C, herpes, and AIDS. If I threw caution to the wind and slept with a woman it was only after double bagging my gear, which not only made it look bigger, but also like it had been given a shot of Tetraquinine. As a result, my sex life was mostly limited to masturbation—until I met Zola. When our relationship ended my mindwas so infused with fantasies about the female body that the risk of Hepatitis didn’t even deter me. A seriously drunk hotel manageress, a housewife with a furry animal, and a woman who at first seemed fairly run-of-the-mill but turned out to have an abundance of chest hair—I tried it all. The hibernation that my genitals had been in the last couple years of our relationship caused me to jump back into the saddle, a starved man with his raised meat sword, ready to poke any old potato. The little luck I’d been graced with in the looks department had run out and I had to rely on a different sort of charm. That meant that I attracted all sorts of freaks, women who were so alternative looking or with such unusual tastes and needs that sex became more of a behavioral experiment than an erotic act, which was probably the reason I gave it up after I moved back into the attic.
    â€œBut maybe I should go and see what’s on offer in the Red Light District. I’ve heard that these gigolos can deliver orgasms on cue.”
    We emptied our cups and went back out to enjoy the lovely weather. I told her what came to mind as we soaked in the surroundings. Like that the house on our right was built by Jacob van Campen, the master of Dutch baroque. That the Royal palace from 1646, which Van Campen designed with Rome in mind, was an exquisite example of the golden age of architecture and paved the way for Wren’s classicism.
    â€œWhen your mind goes off, Trooper, it’s like a tornado in Tangiers. One doesn’t expect anything and then out of nowhere you whip up something like this.”
    â€œI just read that in a brochure.”
    â€œYes, but how you remember all this stuff is remarkable. Someone whose only interest seems to be racecar games shouldn’t know these things. I have no idea where you got this from—well, maybeyour father. He’s the only man I’ve known who got infected by STDs before ever having actual sex.”
    I didn’t dare ask her if she felt that baroque was my Herpes, but she was right: absorbing and storing facts had always been my strong suit. They just seemed to stick like glue to my cortex and would not budge come what may: strong spirits, arsenic, and eating from Teflon pots and pans had absolutely no effect on my brain. I therefore possessed strange and bizarre knowledge about things I had no interest in or use of. I sucked up my surroundings without wanting to, like a vacuum cleaner with asthma. Each hemisphere of my brain was a capsule of non-cohesive and trivial information, a supermarket of information where wide-eyed people strolled the aisles in bewilderment, at a complete loss over what to do with all the merchandise. Knowledge was wasted on me. I was like a rich brat who receives a 1,000 TB computer for Christmas in order to play computer games while the physicist next door has to make do with an unreliable old laptop.
    â€œI’m actually a conservative,” I said, and was about to explain when a stinging sensation stopped me and I was blinded by tears.
    â€œI’m so sorry, Hermann,” Mother said, wiping