Her room was bigger, more deluxe than mine, overlooking the street with all the action. My room looked out over the inner courtyard with the flower garden. There was possibly a bit too much décor, if you ask me, needless use of natural resources. Wood panelling around the rooms, all very heavy and executive. Corporate, would that be the right word? And the bathrooms were something else, very spacious, marble tiling, beautiful towels that looked to me like they had never been used before, that was the feeling you got at least. Everything was very new and old-looking at the same time, new old. The place had been completely reconstructed since the wall came down, with no trace of the old place left, only the name and the reputation.
Sometimes I wonder what people get up to in hotel bedrooms, what mad things went on before me. It doesnt bear thinking about, she said. Leave it alone, you dont want to imagine. Because she worked as a chambermaid in London years ago and shed seen everything that was worth imagining. It was her job to erase the evidence. A hotel bedroom is meant to have no trace of the previous occupants. Maybe all they ever get up to is look into each others eyes and say each others names, out loud.
So were all ready to go and she takes out the list from her bag. Im pushing the wheelchair along the corridor towards the elevator. I call the elevator and she hands me the list to give to the driver when we see him.
Were not going to call him the driver, she says. Are we?
We can call him Manfred.
Does he mind being called Manfred?
Thats his name, I tell her. Please call me Manfred, thats what he said to me.
She wants to know, does he have much English?
Yes.
Dont tell him, she says, will you?
She would prefer Manfred not to know about her condition. Its not like her to withhold information from people, but keeping Manfred free from knowing that she is dying is not such a big lie, everybody does that.
She would rather not have to explain. She probably doesnt want to go over those medical details again. What the doctors said, how they waved the X-ray around and then left her alone in the corridor. How they came back and told her that in spite of the bad news, she was as healthy as a trout. Her heart was in excellent condition, and her blood pressure was perfect. They were talking about her like spare body parts, she told me, as though they could reassemble the best available parts from a number of women into one decent woman they could stand over. The nurse even remarked about her elbows, how did she keep them so young, she had the elbows of a ten-year-old.
Ive let him know youre a writer, I tell her.
He doesnt need to know any more than that, she says.
He thinks youre my mother.
She laughs at that. Me, your mother?
Everybody loves mothers, I say, and she laughs again, with all her lungs.
I wouldnt know how to be a mother, she says.
Ah thats not true.
Shes not my mother, only Manfred has picked up that impression somehow because shes a good bit older than me, in a wheelchair.
Just to be clear about this, she was definitely not my mother and there was no romance between us either, nothing like that in the past, no previous history. We were not attached to each other or living together like lovers, or married, or related in any compulsory way, like her family. We were good friends, thats all. We met when things were a bit upside-down, for both of us. She was older in years, in books, in everything. She didnt mind me knowing less than she did. She didnt mind not knowing the first thing about cooking, I wouldnt let her near a kitchen. We clicked, I suppose, just telling each other things, having a laugh. We took each other seriously, but not all the time. I used to call around to play with her dog, Buddy, throwing her shoe across the room to make him go after it, while she was reading. She had the ability to read as if there was nobody else in the world outside the book. Even with me running around her chair and Buddy after me, she would continue reading, even when I was hiding the shoe behind her back so that Buddy would have to jump right across her and the book would go flying out of her hands, only then she would look up and say, Liam, Im going to kill you.
Manfred is waiting at the reception by the time we get down. As we come out of the elevator he is walking towards us and I get the impression that he has been walking towards us for some time, maybe hours, maybe days, maybe always was walking towards us. How did he know when to start walking, Im asking myself. Hes got a shaved head and you wouldnt say hes overweight, just very big all round, in a physical sense, he does weights, its obvious. Hes wearing a suit and tie and his chest is expanding to an enormous size as he puts out his hand, smiling. The piano is playing somewhere, up at the balcony level, I think it was.
I give Manfred the itinerary and tell him that we can always change the order as we go along, and were open to anything else of interest thats not already included on the list, if theres enough time left. He looks at the list for a moment as though we might have the wrong city. She has everything listed all over the place, the way it happened in history. He points with his finger, blowing out air through his lips, lining the places up in some kind of order that would make sense to him geographically, as a driver.
And while Im talking to Manfred, shes looking back at the elevator we have just come from, staring at the old-fashioned dial above the doors, maybe wondering if thats how Manfred guessed we were on our way down. Its one of the features of the old Adlon which they have reinstated in the new Adlon. Like in the Hitchcock films. A dial pointing to the different levels like a clock, letting you know where the elevator is, in case you want to know.
Here, let me take your mother, Manfred says.
He grabs the handles of the wheelchair out of my hands and away she goes, wearing her cap and her red canvas shoes, holding the clear, see-through bag with all her belongings, nothing hidden. Down the marble wheelchair ramp at the side, through the automatic doors, out under the red canopy towards the tour buses waiting in the street. Manfred pushes her over to the car and opens the sliding door. And after shes got into the car I discover that the sliding door closes electronically. Please leave it alone, Manfred says to me when I try to close it myself, manually.
In the square in front of the Brandenburg Gate there is some kind of demonstration going on. A small gathering of people with placards, more policemen than demonstrators. Its all very calm, a lot of chanting, I think its for Tibet.
And Manfred is right, absolutely, she was like a mother. She gave advice like a mother, she asked questions like a mother, she bossed people around like a mother. You cant have cake for your main meal, with beer. Eat something decent, Liam, look at you, the vultures would pass over you. That kind of thing she would say. As if she was responsible for me. But she would let you have anything you want after all, you could always get around her, and she insisted on paying for everything. She had a mothers way of stepping into your life and giving a running commentary on everything that was going on, telling you what you were doing right or wrong while you were doing it. She cross-examined you like a mother, holding your arm and looking inside your head and saying out loud all the things you were keeping to yourself. She could guess what you were thinking. No wonder everyone thought she was my mother. She was like a mother to everyone. Indiscriminately. Even Manfred, the driver, she held his arm while he was helping her into the car, asking him questions until he told her that he was half-Turkish on his mothers side and married with three children under ten. She said she was a hundred percent Irish and she would love to be half something else.
Maybe thats what happens when you have no children of your own, you turn everyone else into children. She even spoke like a mother about Tibet.
God love them, she said, they only want to be themselves.
3
So were sitting side by side in the back of a large grey-coloured car and shes telling me about the opera, Don Carlo. Shes saying its basically a big family story, not unlike her own. The conversation we have is quite random initially. Shes wondering about her dog. Will Buddy be all right, Liam, do you think? Yes, hes perfectly happy, I assure her. She tells me to remind her about the sheets. The sheets, Liam, dont let me forget the sheets. Because she has everything planned out in advance and its her intention to buy a new pair of sheets in Berlin to bring home with her to Dublin.
Manfred is taking us through the big park, past the golden angel, its been seen in lots of movies, and music videos. The day is sunny and there are people out walking with take-away coffees. Running with bottles of water. And dogs. Running with dogs. Cycling with dogs. Look at that, she says, pointing to a man cycling with a child inside a trailer cart attached to the back of his bicycle. Or is it two children? Thats not something you see very much of in Dublin, she says. She talks about the amount of women on bicycles without helmets. Right out in the middle of the traffic. She says you wouldnt find her cycling without a helmet in any city now. We come out of the park and pass by a large yellow brick building in a modern design that looks like a pirates hat, she says. Its the Berlin Philharmonic. Another place she would love to include on the list.
Then she tells me why she loves Don Carlo.
The plot is a bit complicated, from what I remember. Its about a father killing his own son. The King is forced to hand over his son in order to keep his reign, thats the outline in a simple sentence. Its set in Spain during the Spanish Inquisition. The King is trying to bring order to the world by force and his son Don Carlos is against all that brutality, he wants to stop the killing and everyone to go home and live in peace with the person they love. Power is all that matters to the King. Hes addicted to power and hes got to do everything to keep it, including killing his own son. Its a terrible decision he has to make and hes full of guilt and remorse, going against all his instincts as a father. There is an added problem. The son, Don Carlos, is in love with a French woman, but his father has already married her by force and made her the Queen. She still loves Don Carlos and Don Carlos is heartbroken. That gives his father a further reason for mistrusting his son and getting him out of the way. I know it sounds a bit simplistic, but thats it, more or less, a big family drama.