Grandpa fell quiet, kissed me hard on the mouth, put me down, and stood up.
—Its getting colder, he said, gathering up his heatingpad and trudging on.
The ravens launched themselves heavily, silently, into the air. I followed after, and it was like I was walking through a mist … into that darkness, silence, cold and loneliness …
This is where we come from, that is where were going, so we might as well start breaking ourselves of the habit of living …
__________
НULDRA—an elusive forest nymph in Scandanavian folklore
ZINGAROS—gypsies
URNINGS—homosexuals
BEDLAMITES—madmen
NAVVIES—day laborers
CLAQUEURS—hired clappers
QUISLINGS—traitors to ones’ country
LOTITOS—Michel Lotito, the famous metal-eater
WANKHERS, DIRDIRS, AND PNUMES—see Jack Vance
HARUCHAI, SKEST, AND JHEHERRIN—see Stephen R. Donaldson
COALBITER—idle youth
BUNCO—fraud
BARGHESTS—legendary, giant black dog with huge teeth and claws found in the north of England, particularly around Yorkshire
ABHUMANIST—see Jacques Audiberti
KURUCARRIERS—kuru, also known as “laughing sickness,” is a neurological disease made famous by an epidemic that broke out in Papua New Guinea in the mid-twentieth century; the disorder is believed to have been spread by endocannibalism, or the eating of the dead of one’s own tribe
HELUSIANS, OXIONERS, AND FINLANDERS—Helusians and Oxioners are the tribes that Tacitus found “beyond existence,” where the known world ended; they “have heads and faces of men, but the remainder of the body is a wild animal.” As sharp-featured Cornelius concludes: “quod ego ut incompertum in medio relinquam” inkslinger—tattoo artist cockmaker—maker of bridges or pallets for watches and clocks Teja—Last of the Ostrogoth kings in Itay, led the desparate fight against the Byzantine army in the years 552–553.
GELIMER—last king of the Vandals
III
—As long as you can make others suffer, there’s no reason to throw in the towel, Grandpa exclaimed jovially.
He sat in a rocking chair sewing on a Confederate flag. Ein Heldenleben was playing in the background and Larri Isokyrpä and Torsten Murkström were just saying thanks for the coffee-kind of ironic, since Grandpa had mixed strychnine into it and it was just now starting to work. You have to find something to do, you know, when things get slow. Anyway, Larri lived a while longer, looked me in the eye, tossed his head, kicked a bit, but it didn’t help. That guy was a loudmouthed jerk who’d rearrange the face of any kid he could catch, making their two nostrils into one. And now they lay there, blueberryblue about the lips, and Grandpa put aside his handiwork and came up to them.
—We are here today to mourn my two dearest friends, who’ve up and left us with raging hardons … Lets start with Torsten, he said, kicking the corpse hard in the ear … Torsten Murkström signed off at the unrespectable age of sixty-nine …
Grandpa folded his hands in mock solemnity, he was wearing a pink nightshirt and fuzzyblack poodleslippers.
—His arrival into the world was a nasty surprise to his parents. His family scraped a living by making scenes in public … Torsten was known early on for his slowwit and charmingservility. At a young age, he’d already learned to fart on the sly and smoke ciggibutts …
Grandpa struggled to keep his face serious.
—He spent his whole life trolling the cabins of charcoalburners and logfloaters, trying his best to satisfy them all … He’d suck cock for a spoonful of fishentrails and an oldfashioned spanking … It was his life’s calling to make a bad situation worse. He sowed oats and reaped sourmash … He enjoyed strumming on his kantele and sipping motyl … When he was stripped of his commission in the Cock and Cassock Society, he got old real quick … he had a habit of sitting with his head in the oven … he finally worked up the courage to ask Tellemar: How the hell do you do it? … he looked for the answer in the Siikavaara Bible … in vain … Torsten never married, but remained faithful his whole life to Upper Kågedalen … His chief mourner is a walkingstick … Torsten wants his headstone to read: “Thanks for nothing” …
Torsten was laying on his stomach on the tiles. Grandpa grabbed his head and twisted it so hard his neck broke.
—Look at me when I’m talking about you!
Then he turned to Larri.
—Dowser Larri Isokyrpä was finally allowed to peterout after a long and weary struggle with that terminalillness we call life … Larri was squeezed out of his Grandma’s womb under an uprootedtree in Myskträsk … He was the first in a long line of stillbornsiblings and he learned selfsufficiency early on … A procession of oddjobs and shortgigs passed him by … He was a THX-doctor, a Quaker, a rathawker, a puppywhipper, a snowman’s trunk … He married Ms. Glädis Noppa … and later on the nationally celebrated onanist Hardy Honkala from Gråliden … Frau Hardy kicked it at fifty-three … Life was often like a Rubik’s cube … Nonetheless, this remarkable man somehow found the strength to teach himself dipsomania! His vocabulary swelled to the tripledigits, he discovered words had more than four letters, then came his big, fat chance: a temp job as an outhouse asswiper in Råslyet, a kilometer and a half south of Västbäck … Larri worked hard at his many highly desirable jobs until his body finally failed him … he devoted his last seventeen years to outliving his children … He was a lifetime Jagoda’s Witness … His interests were many, but to name a few: stroke, pogroms, the lambethwalk, kiddie’s diddles, Siberianroulette and Hylands hörna … As a society member, he was unparalleled … his courses in bedwetting and gangrape were especially popular … The burial will take place under chaotic conditions … Donations can be made to the Dirty Geezer Fund …
Grandpa grabbed me by the neck and cackled Grandpalike at his own creativity.
—You know what we’re going to do now, child of mine?
—O no!
—First I’m going to take a long, hot manbath … And you’re going to make me coffee. Then we’re going to go outside and get a little fresh air. Why don’t you take out the Iron Crown of Lombardy and my Ripper suit … Methinks I want to look nice today …
__________
EIN HELDENLEBEN—“A Hero’s Life,” tone poem by Richard Strauss MOTYL—expiremental mixture of petrol and alcohol used to power Swedish military vehicles during World War II
TELLEMAR—Hasse, Swedish radio host of the show Ringså spelar vi (Call us, and we’ll play your tune) from 1969–1988.
SIIKAVAARA BIBLE—The Siikavaara sect, or Korpela movement, was started by Toivo Korpela in the 1920s
THX-DOCTOR—THX, or thymus extract, was a natural remedy developed by the Swedish veterinarian Elix Sandberg; he claimed that THX could help with immune disorders and could even fight cancer
HYLANDS HÖRNA—“Hylands Corner,” a popular Swedish TV program that ran from 1962–1983
IRON CROWN OF LOMBARDY—crown worn by Lombard rulers
RIPPER SUIT—hunting clothes
IV
—“Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses” … Ho there, boy, Grandpa winked bawdily and dunked a sweetroll in his ginger-beer. Looks like we need to hop down to Egypt to troll for some real cock. Around here there’s hardly enough to live on.
The old Grandpaclock rumblewaggled eight.
—Ezekiel’s lips were uncircumcised. His mamma worked at Goethe’s Pipe and Peg in Jörn. She was a godpardoned, slipperycunt who’d howl so you could hear it over all of Kvarken when she got some deaddrunkcock stuck up in her rosette … Ezekiel and I were the same age, but he only smoked filtered. In my wildest dreams, I never thought he’d end up in the Good Old Shilly-Shally Book.
Grandpa threw his Bible asid
e, lit an Alte Reiter, and opened the newspaper.
—Sträng and Helén are engaged … Archbishop Värkström and Ulf Ekman broke up … An oldboy in Risböle pissed himself in the chapel … intestinalvilli are wreaking havoc in daycarecenters throughout lower Skelleftecounty … Wilt the Stilt Chamberlain, the basketnigger, has fucked twenty-thousand loose cunts …
He took a nip of insulin, licked his fingers, and blattered on.
—Five hundred and fifty liposuctionsurgeons discharged in Pite … the fourteen-queerold Kicki throatfucked by rimthurs … bald, logomanic demon terrifies Uppsala with blasphemies …
He fell silent, blanched, swore.
—Cottoneyedjoes and festeringnewborns!
I hardbraked in the middle of dunking a fibroidtumor in witch’s milk and waited for more. Grandpa glanced up with an expression that reminded me of a buzzard poised over a mouse.
—They’ve got Jeffrey, he whispered.
Then Grandpa told me all about Jeffrey Dahmer, who had drugged, fucked, and killed blackhomos in some place called Milwokey. Apparently, he’d called and asked for Grandpa’s advice before starting the whole dirty business. Grandpa told me he’d expected a lot from him, because he had grit. A few days went by, and then we heard Nikolaj Dzjumagalijev, the womangobbling funster from Alma Ata, was going away. And when Donald Leroy Evans, who had sixteen-or-so juicy murders to his name, got nabbed, it was like Grandpa had been sent eastward out of paradise. For three whole days and nights all he did was sing the praises of massmurderers everywhere. He seemed to know most of them personally. He was smackdab in the middle of a sentimental harangue down memorylane, something about Kuno Hofmann, the “Vampire of Nuremberg,” when he began coughing blood. I helped him lay down on our pegsofa’s brightred cushions. Then, my arms around my Grandpa, I was out in a flash. Seventy-five hours among A-list murderers really does you in.
__________
RIMTHURS— in Nordic mythology, rimthurs, or Hrimthurs (“rime giants” or “frost giants”) live in Niflheim, the land of eternal ice
LOGOMANIC—logomania, diarrhea of the mouth
WITCH’S MILK—secreted from the breasts of newborn babies, both male and female
V
—Who the fucks Sara Lidman? Or Torgny Lindgren! I’ve never heard of anything so moronic! Do they even exist?!
Grandpa was fighting with the bookbusguy, a little graybrown Zionist with glasses, egg in his beard, and a slut with a ponytail and a nervouscough. Grandpa had asked for a book by a bonafide Norrländer. Now he was going on and on about how downright vile, even sinful it was to waterdown fine words.
—What kind of titles are these, anyway? Blatherers and busybodies! Users and abusers! Fuck your motherfucking mother!
Their voices carried very well.
—Naboths Stone, Merabs Beauty … Husak’s Harmonica! Horthys Exhaustion! Conans Tears! The Elders’ Protocols!
Sullenly, he lit a Philip Morris and waited on the officiousinstigator. He was gulping down Jim Bean when the latter came bustling up with a new book.
—What about that guy Torbjörg Säve? You read anything by him? He lives out in Lule?
—He a homo?
—Nah, I don’t think so …
—Not him, he likes women! the cheekygirlie quipped. And he wears black boxers, she sighed longingly.
—Oh, for fuck’s sake. Is that all you’ve got! I’ll never be that hardupandhorny for something to read! Never! Throw it on the dungheap! Flush it down the toilet! Obscure wannabes, breadandbutter authors, coffeeshop poets! Marxistoid-apopleptic songs of enforced celibacy! Mediocrity’s apotheoses! Rookycliques! Habilehacks! Clever pauses, tedious passages! Not worth lickaspit!
Sharp gusts of wind echoed Grandpa’s ire. Fall was in overtime, though there was snow at the door. It was a transitiontime, neither fall nor winter, and that’s how it can be around here for months. When Grandpa’s mad, he gets stubborn. Now he was refusing to set foot in the yellowbrown bus, but just stood outside, threatening everyone inside with a flogging.
—Do you have anything by Nikanor Teratologen?
—Who?
—Teratologen of the Ten Thousand Tortures? The Misunderstood Genius! The Desktop Murderer! Locked away for life for one repeated offense: the serialrape of language! His words go down a rawcraw like butter! The Slayer of Euphemisms! Scurrilous Church Father! The Confabculprit! The Blasphemer! The Enemy of Mankind!
—So what does he write?
—The worst smut a dirty penny will buy! Bizarre baroque comedies! Downandout orgies! Repulsive yarns! Reptilian jokes! He’s morbid! obscene! makes you want to hurl! gets you going! I don’t remember any titles! By the devils pimpledass, though, he belongs to world literature!
—Never heard of him … Sorry …
—That’s not the kind of thing we buy here. Were only interested in serious authors. Cleanly written, clearly stated, with an ear for language’s subtleties …
—Adorno and Horkheimer! Pöhl and Greenspan! Torquemada and Savonarola! what a blessing it is to be stark raving mad! When I want to read something that gets downanddirty with mankind, it won’t be those fucks! That’s all I’m saying.
They went back and forth like that for a long time.
Finally, Grandpa borrowed two volumes of FUB-Contact and a colorfully illustrated book about “the life of the field digger wasp” by Gottfrid Adlerz.
__________
SARA LIDMAN, TORGNY LINDGREN—Swedish writers from Västerbotten whose work was heavily influenced by local dialect
NABOTH’S STONE—by Sara Lidman
MERAB’S BEAUTY—by Torgny Lindgren
FUB-CONTACT—journal for children with developmental disorders
VI
Grandpa stood at the pulpit and read Max Ferdinand Sebaldt von Werth’s racemystical Sexualreligion for about ten seconds; then he took up Frodi Ingolfson Wehrmann’s The Germanic Tragedy: Divinely Created Women and the Fall … that lasted for about half a minute; then he tried to read René Fülöp Millers The Holy Devil and Otto Rahns Lucifer’s Court at the same time.
In the last five hours he’d gone through about 300 books, reading a couple of sentences, sometimes a full page. Now he was exhausted … He came over to where I sat with my Armeniangenocide coloring-book, lifted me off the floor, and shook me like a sackofpotatoes.
—Lanz and Wiligut! By the Devil, they could dance! They’re the ones who stood their ground! Why don’t you write that down in your dirty little diary, you Satan’s pegatu!
—What do you mean, Grandpa?
—Fuck me with a spoon, you little asswipe! Halfwitting nincompoop! Not another word out of you, you yapping old granny!
He tossed me like a stevedore into the thrashingposition, and I lay where I fell. If you don’t, you’ve sown your last seed … danced your last dance … He calmed down, though, enough that disappointment colored his words. He wasn’t dangerous anymore, now he was just depressed and scared.
—I’ve suspected for a while now that you’ve been writing on the sly, sugarboy, he announced, and I was just about to say we can’t have that … but you’re one crafty little bugger, and next time I’m sleeping you’ll just hide your trash somewhere else … I bet you’ve been spouting a lot of highstrung nonsense, something like Ludwig Derleths Proclamations … and I’ll tell you something, the thought shames me like a suckwench being questioned by a parishpriest … You’re too weak to indulge in swearing and bloodshed, blasphemy and some goodoldfashioned Kiruna violence … I bet you’ve got a nice little chapbook going there, you aren’t capable of much more … You’ll be the next Brecht … an asswipe who singlehandedly declares creation null and void … And publishers, you know, shriek like babies roasting on an openfire for more gangsters and psychos and allthatjazz … all you’ve got to do is pickyourpoison … But I’ve hit on the right medicine for an estruspumped little junker like yourself … Before I sleep, I’ll see you nailed to the World Tree, so help me I will … that’ll put an end to your wri
ting … once and for all … It’s for your own good! … what do you think Husserl’s and Derrida’s Grandpas thought of their little grandsons?! They should’ve blown their kneecaps off from shame! but instead, what did they do when their weetykes first started jacking around with words? They spared the rod, that’s what! … Me—I couldn’t have lived with the shame! A child’s faith and the Pearly Gates have always been good enough for me! and they’ll do for you, too, oh yes they will! now’s the time to get hard! and cocky! but there’s gotta be some fuckin’ moderation! once you start writing, you’re hooked! once you start thinking, you’re through! Just promise me one thing, boy: don’t come home one day all oozing with feeling! because once that happens, life’s over! Leave the writing to the sexmaniacs! the berserkers! the teeming, writhing masses! The hordes and legions! trying to crush each other with their own filth! the raunchier the cunt, the better the story! that’s how they think! and if I have to poke your eyes out with my own thumbitythumbthumbs, I’ll see to it you never become one of them!
Assisted Living: A Novel Page 3
