Assisted Living: A Novel

by Nikanor Teratologen

  —Evil’s dark spirits, hosts, and principalities infecting the sky! Coming to take away the Philistines and Pharisees …

  Grandpa moistened his thumb, gathered up a few golden breadcrumbs, and licked lips that would never be clean. Then he took some dirty swigs from a flask of Polish robberrum.

  —Kids should be raised by animals … Jackels and baboons … otherwise, you just end up with crybabies … Sade’s the only writer who knew anything about love … Read, laugh, and enjoy … Laban and Åby are traitors … Piss is good … Hegel’s easy …

  Grandpa’s hopscotching thoughts had stopped confusing me a long time ago. Logic is the first thing you’ve got to let go, if you want to be a Grandpa. “Logic is for whores, lawyers, diplomats, bankers, technologues, and professors … the earth’s damned!” he once said. “What’s more logical than an emancipated pussy?!” he liked to joke. “You should only use the genius God cursed youwith for tirades and diatribes … persiflage and pejoratives … interjections and imperatives … impulses and intuitions … idiosyncrasies stewed in internalsecretions … Just blasphemy and abuse …”

  —I hate everything … Everything I know and everything that exists, everything I’ve dreamed and everything that could’ve been and wasn’t … I despise all the rest … Sweden’s cultural heritage would all fit in your average cunt … and that’s where it belongs, too … we’re gakis … wimps … archaebacteria in our festering sulphurate are our ancestors … World history reached its high-point with the Indian Thuggees … the Children’s Crusades of 1212, the Black Death and the Taiping Rebellion were good times, too … “Memoirs of the Kalda Railroad” was Kafka’s best work … On the Jewish Question was the best the eldest Marx brother had to offer … And so the apodictic linedance continues … The day should just surrender … it usually does, if you just wait a bit … windblasted and feckless, no thought for Papa Death … The days are getting harder to get through, though … they cling like burdocks and ticks … it’s worse than Surt … I surveyed the remains … the world is out there somewhere … so they say … This can’t be the real world … I’m sure of it … This is the evening county … Octoberland … night’s domain … the heart of darkness … The world is full of beasts in cages …jigaboos and gringos … No doubt they’re quick and bold … tightfisted and hardpressed … busy as bees and hard at work … Nothing but ninetofive, thedailygrind, productivity and stress … They love doing business … breeding and traveling abroad … sure, there’s a lot of hustleandbustle going on, but part of it must be goodnatured … They’re also progressive and prominent, emancipated and renowned … Quite a few knowquite a lot … they’ve got real purpose … good looks … They’re different than me and Grandpa … Sorcerers and organgrinders … crooners and streetcornerperformers … Everything in the big wide world just goes its own way … a lot of strife … A hullabaloo jamboree … Once you’ve got the devil in your boat, all you can do is row to shore … And there’s a cunt in every harbor … That’s a given … But if you come from the wild country, you better think twice about venturing out … into the world … the city … I mean, it’d be pretty ridiculous … just look at Samsara Lidman and Poas Enqvist … This here is more than enough for us … The fact is, it’s almost too much to bear … I cleaned up and then went to the john to see if I could shit … Grandpa came to the door and watched me work … he didn’t say a word … what the fuck’s there to say … he just shook his head and went to lay down …

  __________

  LEUCHTER—Fred: author of the Leucther Report, which denies the mass murder by gas of the Jews during the Holocaust

  SWAGGART—Jimmy: TV evangelist

  GUDRUN SCHYMAN—Swedish politician and feminist

  NORSTEDT—Swedish publishing house

  TIBERIUS AND THE LITTLE FISH—according to Suetonius, emperor Tiberius played this lascivious “game” in his self-chosen “exile” on Capri

  SISNADEVAS—phallus-worshipppers, possibly temple concubines (among numerous other conflicting interpretions of the word)

  LABAN AND ÅBY—Former coaches for the Swedish national soccer team Surt—a figure in Norse mythology who will play a major role in the events of Ragnarök

  BIBLIOMYSTIKON—Lanz von Liebenfels’s Bible commentary

  MICHAEL AQUINO—Colonel in the United States Army who helped to found the Temple of Set

  TEMPLE OF SET—Satan worshipping Nazi cult

  BATTLE OF THE BIRCH—an old Westphalian legend tells about a sheep-herder’s vision of the BOB, in which an enormous Eastern army will be stopped and slaughtered by a devoted mass of Europeans. On Wiligut s advice, Himmler decided that the town of Wewelsburg, not too far from the Teutoburg Forest, where Arminius’s tribesmen defeated the legions of Publius Quinctilius Varus, was a probable stage for this world-historical event. Therefore, it became SS headquarters. Under the influence of Wiligut/Weisthor, the commander, Manfred von Knobelsdorff, attempted to revive the religion of Irminism. Irmin (Chrestos) was crucified by schismatic Wotanists in Goslar around 9,500 years before Thomas the Doubter walked the earth

  PETER ARNETT—legendary English-language foreign correspondent

  SALUBRIN—a disinfectant

  GAKIS—hungry ghosts in Japanese Buddhism

  WIMPS—Weakly Interacting Massive Particles

  SAMSARA LIDMAN—Sara Lidman, a Swedish author whose work was heavily influenced by dialect; Samsara is the cycle of rebirth, death and decay that Buddhists believe will be ended by enlightenment.

  POAS ENQUIST—P.O. Enquist, a canonical Swedish author who grew up in Västerbotten.

  XXI

  —I’m Buddhist to the bone, Grandpa joked. I want you all to die for your desires, stop hating me, and let St. Lucifer dispel your errors.

  —Oh Grandpa, you’re too much, Myrtle said carelessly and set out a round tray with seven different kinds of desserts: night—marefudge, Jewishbread, Dr. Ottaw’s Swedish Spritz, rectorynuts, Strassburgers, pretzelsticks, and chimneysweepcookies.

  We were sitting in Signar and Myrtles kitchen, planning the next worldwar. It’s always transition time there: not winter, not spring, not this, not that. It was like life had stopped. Signar and Myrtle are peabrained, but popular. Meanwhile, Grandpa continued his wild ride on this latest cockhorse.

  —The only thing that’s kept my engine running all these years is the dream of a neverending love! From Ascension Day to All Saint’s Day, my eyes have been locked on one prize, on our Savior’s pristine, white, ununspeakably sweet Godcock! Great will be his anger at those who don’t lube their assholes against the day of his return! Mighty are his hips! And his voice—sexy as shit! Like old Blue Eyes himself …

  Grandpa came up short, he was running on empty. He fell back in his seat, suddenly dull and lifeless.

  —Who knows if He’ll ever come back, at least not while the Social Democrats are in office, Signar continued.

  His skinny, naked body was trembling in a cold watertub. He’s short as a seven-year-old and is on probationary discharge from the madhouse. His only hope, though, is a mongolstorm.

  —Wherever you get people, you get trash, Myrtle threw out haphazardly.

  She was busy as a whirligig in the kitchen, a ridiculously tiny person with limbs like toothpicks.

  —Stop growing up if you want to find truelove. The others, the ones still growing, have no time or energy for their fallowman. It happens again and again. How many times have you seen someone throw out a judgment here, a complaint there, only to end up drawing the shortstraw? No one’s too little to love.

  She hopped to the stove and jumped on a stool so she could reach the coffeepot. She had on a dirtygreen jacket with Elvis’s or maybe Kaltenbrunner’s face embroidered in purple on the back. Her clothes were made from crowskin and she had on a crepe-paper hat decorated with deadflies and kittenpaws. Finally, she clomped up to the table on mismatched clogs, climbed onto the rented sofa so she could serve us coffee, and then scowled over the dented brass mugs. Signar
dried himself with a scouringpad and pulled on a pair of darkblue Landmann overalls. Instead of diapers, he used a copy of a newspaper called Land. Then he joined us at the table. Myrtle had set out flatbread and buns; with feigned irritation, she urged us to dig in. I had at it and came away sticky,but Grandpa just sat there and stirred sugary lump after sugary lump into his coffee.

  —Were vegetarians now, Signar said. We only eat fallenfruit and animals who died from natural causes …

  —How do we know a mans soul goes up to heaven, but an animal’s goes down to the earth? Myrtle asked cryptically.

  —That from the Salter?

  —Nah, the Preacher … We love all living things here … especially the AIDS virus …

  The kitchen was warm and cozy, you had to give them that. It was papered with obituaries from North Västerbotten. They had an ironrange and an electrichotplate, just in case. On the win-dowledge were the twelve apostles, a clay Gorgon with a candle, and half a dozen Mochica statuettess showing different acts of bestiality, most of them involving vicunas. There were handmade-bags and cornsacks everywhere. To the right of the refrigerator were a couple of pictures: Dog in Agony and a Flemish sketch of hobos on the gogo. To the left was a slightly retouched photograph of almost all the king’s family. There was a prayer on a nail above the sofa. Embroidered gold on red, it featured the familiar words from the Sermon on the Mount: “Suffer the little children to come unto me, so I can fuck the shit out of them.” Over the sink, where a grouse sat still in a bottle, Signar had taped a naked picture of Upper Kågedalens soccer team. They were pink, hairy, and fleshy. On the wall behind Myrtle were her parents’ mummified hands and a few nailriddled dolls; they looked like neighbors and friends who had suddenly become ill or died. Outside the window, a rough-hewn old man in a peaked cap struggled forward on a tricycle.

  Something was wrong with him, he was missing both neck and eyes. Plenty of people are like that in Kusmark: obese and blind.

  Grandpa didn’t say anything, so I edged on in. I tried to be pleasant, but I had too little confidence to be convincing.

  —Soooo … uhhhh … how’s the harvest coming? I asked in an unnecessarily serious voice. Not because I really cared, but just for something to say …

  —What’s that?

  —How did the crops do?

  —What the fuck are you babbling about?

  —Farming!

  —Do you know what pimpleface is saying?!

  —How did your seeds do?

  —Owwdjrseedsdo! mocked Signar. Thanks for asking, but our shoots and sprouts got all froze and drowned!

  —We shouldn’t be like that, Myrtle said decisively. I’m not one of those … So how’s school going? she asked, just so I’d be at a loss for words.

  —I don’t really go … I’m out sick at the moment …

  —You’ll sure have to repeat a lot … Probably too much …

  —So what’s your problem?! yelped Signar.

  —Pretty much everything, I guess … my stomach … my head …

  —You’re telling me! you look like you’re at death’s door!

  —And me, I’m just your ordinary whiny rheumatic … so it’s not going great for me either, Myrtle sighed and dug a maggot out of her rotten nose. It’d been bitten off by a badger last fall and resewn.

  Grandpa ignored us and kept on stirring in sugar.

  —Grandpas gone beddybye …

  —Headed for the hills …

  Signar heaped a couple of tablespoons of snuff on a piece of bread and scratched a scar that ran from ear to ear. That was a souvenir from the time he and Grandpa had come to blows, long before I was even a gleam in the worlds eye. Grandpa had said that of the four stooges in the 120 Days of Sodom, he was most like the Due de Blangis, at least in character. Signar had insisted he was more like the Bishop or Curval.

  —Curval s an old drunk, a filthy bag of bones with two inches of shitcrust around his immense assholecrater … Tat tvam asi! Signar had shouted.

  When Grandpa gets mad, he turns red, white, or blue, just like Torgeir Håvarsson: “For his heart wasn’t anything like a bird’s crop. It didn’t hold blood, it would never tremble in terror, since it had been hardened by the best smith on earth.” So Grandpa had hatched a plan. He’d plied Signar with porn and snuff. When the miscreant was finally out, Grandpa had jumped him in bed, slit his throat, and headed for Finland. But Signar wasn’t done for … He woke up in the morgue when someone fingered his anallobes. Since Signar was so short and he didn’t actually die, Grandpa only had to pay a sixteenth of a weregild: a half kilo of coffee and a packet of sugar …

  —It was just a goddamn accident, he’d complained, and Signar had bided his time.

  A couple of years later, Signar had jumped out of a draina-geditch and tried to shoot Grandpa. Good plan, except that the gun exploded and Signar lost a thumb and an eye. At that point, Grandpa declared them even. Signar wasn’t handsome, but he was a greedy little bugger and Grandpa wanted to keep him around. After all, you can fuck everything that shits …

  —Have more, Myrtle urged, and I made it a point to praise the pretzelsticks and strong coffee.

  —Is it just me or is this a little surreal? Signar asked.

  —Nahhh … just a little strange, I said.

  —Goddammit, you’ve gotta stop cioranizing! Think pussyteev! demanded Myrtle. Life’s a goddamned fine thing! Live modestly, talk honestly, you’ll be alright! Think of what a blessing it is to wake up every morning with a sob in your throat!

  —I dreamed the strangest thing last night, Signar began. I sat beside the river of Babel and cried … I was thinking about Zion.

  —Did you hang your harp on a willow tree?

  —Yeah … how the fuck did you know that?

  —I saw a man with clear eyes and another wearing a muzzle … They were shrewd as snakes and harmless as doves …

  —Matthew ten sixteen …

  —The cleareyed chap said his name was Aappo Kiimainen and the other one was Jyrki Muostalainen … Then he read from a big book called Finnish Bad Behavior from Mommilakalabaliken to Mainilaintermezzot … It was printed on babyskin … After that, he fucked me every which way … And while we were loving it up, he made me tell him my favorite sex fantasy …

  —Which is … ? I snooped.

  —It’s not that one about being raped by miners, is it? cackled Myrtel, lighting a lazaretcigarette with Gandhi’s platinum lighter.

  —Nah, I never had the guts to talk about this one before …

  —Tell us now, because our warcouncil is over if Grandpa doesn’t come around soon!

  Grandpa, however, showed no signs of returning to earth. He’d already emptied the sugar bowl. Now he sat with downcast eyes, stirring so thoughtfully that it echoed.

  —So here’s my hottest, girliest fuckfantasy …

  Signar blushed at his own daring.

  —Lanz von Liebenfels’s Theosofy and the Assyrian Beastmen talks about a twobodied, fourarmed, fourlegged Hindu named Lalao … I’d like to fuck a freak like that … mercilessly … He’ll croon folk love ballads in a shrill, cracked voice while I’m pounding him … At the same time, he’ll fuck Bhagwan in the mouth, while the guru is being devoured by a Komodo dragon … When Bhagwan is all eaten up, Reagan will take his place … then Thatcher … Schwarzenegger, of course, will be pounding me from behind … it’ll be an honest-to-god Apachefuck! And I’ll look, and before my eyes I’ll see a thousand newborns carried away by condors, eaten up by wildpigs, drowned by barricudaswarms … Legions of godlygirls and pregnantwhores will be caught in lavaflows, quicksand sinks, and ratinfested bunkers … they’ll have to stroke themselves and talk dirty till their dying breath …

  Myrtle was smoking and obviously enjoying herself, and I was listening like a wideeyed peeping tom. Grandpa was as lost to us as before.

  —A cheeky old Soldier of Christ will lash my back and ass with a cat o’ nine tails … When I’m one bloody weepingwound, he’ll be decapitat
ed and I’ll open my mouth and receive his last repentant shout while I kiss him deep, deep down in the gaping wound where the blood’s already starting to congeal … Cities will burn, hydrogen bombs will explode, cultures will go kaplooey … Tom Jones and Julio Iglesias will gnaw off each other’s cocks … “Plura” and Thåström will sliceanddice each other with chain saws … Me and Arnold will come … And an that very moment, the universe will explode …

  Signar’s fantasy had brought him to a boil. Now he wanted a straightup, nofrills fuck. Myrtle obediently went down on all fours and shut her little peppercorn eyes, the better to fantasize with. Signar called his pinkyfingersized cock up from the underworld and chose door number two. He spewed after a dozen repulsive little rabbitjerks. Myrtle grunted in disappointment. Signar wiped his bloody cum on his sister’s wrinkled chin. She lapped at it greedily while she came. The fire died down and they resumed their places. Signar started in about an overlyserious Betaniaboy in Byske who already spewed blood instead of sperm. Myrtle told about the triumphant moment when she’d finally emptied a boiling pan of toffee over some swankpot’s head at her sewingclub.

  —She was an old gossip, she said, explaining the why of the enterprise, which had been short and sweet. Do you remember how pious and pure you were before we got together? she asked flippantly, reversing course midway.

  —We lived like catandrat when I was a drooling and panting twenty-one year old …

  Signar’s eyes were distant and uncertain.

  —I’m still researching the Kusipoho Ritual of the Bikomoloise Tribe … They’re native to the corrugatedcardboard regions north of the Ngorongoro Crater … and they worship Harri Tularemi … When their oldest innocent gets his first morningwood, they get the lowest geezers together at a seedy pub … and then they draw lots to see who gets to give the boy what he wants … They begin with a Chimbu handshake …

  —We’ve heard it all before!

  —Yeahyeah … so, anyway, you’re wanting me to remember how unsexy I was … God help me! I was more of a prude than Aloy-sius Gonzaga and Johannes Bermanns put together! Selivanov’s chastity was my polarstar!