Also known as: Mrs. Avram. A little sparrow escaped from hell. Erza Scarlet on steroids, on certain days. The official historian of my parents’ marriage
Occupation: Doctor. She was already a resident at Elias Hospital when my mother arrived there as an intern, in 1972. Her real vocation is telling my parents’ love story better than either of them ever could.
First appears: Chapter 007
Status: Still telling the story. It has fewer listeners now.
Usually seen with: Marcel Avram, our family lawyer, whose silences observe a protocol. Hands in constant motion, like a tai chi instructor having a nervous breakdown.
Her philosophy of life, as far as I could reconstruct it
Olga has a philosophy of love, which she uses for everything else as well. First, love is a chemical bomb: norepinephrine, dopamine, phenylethylamine, oxytocin, a state of permanent overdose. Then it is a shared psychotic disorder, folie à deux, the moment reality becomes infested with the imaginary. Then it is an art in its own right, sui generis. She switches me to deep mode, as she calls it, and exaggerates. In the service of truth, she says. A love story ought to be about love, not about the appalling deficiencies through which two people somehow stumble into it.
What I think she thinks of me
That I look like a sock pulled over a combat boot, and have washed my face with propofol. That I would have chosen the voluptuous intellectual at the bar over the athletic girl at the next table. She did not wait for my answer. She lived at number 23 Grigore Mora, my father at number 8, and the whole of my parents’ courtship passed through her kitchen. I am, as far as she is concerned, a footnote to her favorite story. She has never once lowered her voice in my presence.
What I think of her
Restless, extravagant, constitutionally incapable of leaving a silence undisturbed, Olga has an opinion about everything. But my parents are her life’s work. She has studied their marriage for half a century without getting any closer to understanding it, and the failure gives her enormous pleasure. She has spent much of her life making fun of the two people she loved most. My mother always saw the other Olga, beneath the torrent of words: a woman whose love expressed itself through small, practical acts, making certain that nobody left her house hungry. I saw that Olga only once, in her kitchen, on the day I had to tell her. I asked for a coffee. That was all I wanted.
Things she said, at full volume
“Andrei, darling! Did you wash your face with propofol this morning? Why do you look like a sock pulled over a combat boot?”
“I’m exaggerating, aren’t I?”
“Of course I am! But I’m exaggerating in the service of truth. A love story ought to be about love, not about the appalling deficiencies through which two people somehow stumble into it.”
“Psychosis! Love is a shared psychotic disorder. Folie à deux!”
“Lana, sweetheart, the man’s a sarcophagus!”
“Darling, what are we supposed to be? The Lorem Ipsum of romance?”
“I tell you, good manners are a disease. A chronic one!”
“Every founding myth begins in amniotic fluid, comes wrapped in a placenta, and is preceded by noises of pleasure.”
“Oh, don’t look at me like that! As though I’m telling you anything new. Besides, it’s my story. So kindly shut up!”
Andrei’s footnote: At twelve she tried to kiss my father outside his house. He dodged. She has been taking her revenge in instalments ever since.
