The TV was shrieking … it was Batman … an old gray Mercedes stood in the garage …
—Partytime! Here comes the refrain!
He told me to run and get a hose, and then attach it to the showerhead, so we could have warm water. While I did that, Grandpa held Livia down and pried her mouth open with a hammer. I turned on the hot water and he forced it down her throat … liter after liter … up her nose and in her eyes … up her ass, too, but by then she was already dead … Grandpa had hammered too hard..
. We were banged up ourselves, but it was worth it. We went back into the house to look for Bempa … have us some guytime … he was in a urinesoaked leathersofa … entranced by the Joker … But Grandpa was the real thing … I turned the sound down … Grandpa walked in, plopped down, adjusted his glasses, and lit a Cinderella in an ivory ciggiholder …
—Hey there, Bempa, he smiled …
Bempa, though, was vacationing in the land where lollipops grow on trees and gingerbreadboys dance the hula … An inhumanly emaciated figure wearing a yellow collegejersey and sweatpants … frightened eyes … around fifty or so … just a baby, really …
—Grandpas here … everything’s going to be okay …
—Hogomooo …
—You’ve been a real champ, you know that … headaches are nothing to sneeze at, of course … you’re just a little skinny … you look an awful lot like that chess guy, Mikhail Tal … but never mind that, he’s my favorite …
—Gaa flaff motamaa …
—I’m doing fine! Fit as a fiddle! Fact is, me and the mite are going to paint the town red tonight. You got anything to drink?
—Schwuuu …
—That’s a no, huh … best go on a boozerun, while the boy keeps you company … he sticks out a like a sorethumb, I can’t be raiding stashes with him along … he doesn’t know how to behave himself …
Grandpa limped out and I was alone with Bempa … We watched Robin and the Penguin to avoid looking at each other.
—You know anything about Count Gyula Andråssy of Csikszentkiraly and Krasznahorka? he suddenly asked.
-Huh?
—Noopuulosch … Ngugi … Humwawa … Mangu …
—I don’t understand …
—Mokélé-mbémbés are found in Likouala …
—Uh huh …
—Sickan Carlsson gave Thor Modéen head … Ludwig II of Bavaria frenched Sacher-Masoch …
—Did she now?
—Kroogoshwiiri … Anticimex … Baubo … Mushoyoku …
—Don’t worry about it … Even Nietzsche ate his own shit and drank his own piss when the going got tough …
—I remember when King Filimer ordered us to march through the Pripjet swamps toward the Pontian Steppes … and that was after we’d destroyed the Harappan civilization … Blubblubbuuuwy! Kaiomortz! Nyarlathotep! Igjugarjuk!
—Take up piano … write to Saida in the Hemmets Journal …
—Hyynokoruta! Waaaaa! Wholottalow!
—Yeah … it sounds like you’re the toast of the town, all right …
—Craaaa … Toush … Boohoo …
—Yeah, it sucks … just be happy there are people in the world who have it worse than you …
It was already a quarter to six. Someone had taken a couple of hours and flushed them right down the toilet … The front door flew open and an arrogant voice sliced right through us:
—I’m back, fotzelovers! With war spoils from fallen Ilion!
Grandpa clomped on in like a porcelainelephant. He sat three bags holding three bottles in front of each of us.
—Let’s see your true colors, Little Boys Blue … The Holy Ghost guided my steps straight to a pair of lugubrious butterballs … We discussed Sigmund Fraud and then I beat them to death with a coffeepot … they had a good stash, too … enough for a real boozefest … They also had a few amphetamines tucked away …
He chugged half a liter of Smirnoff while standing, hurled the empty bottle at the wall, it broke a mirror and a clock, and then fished a scalare up out of the tank and swallowed it whole. He took a seat on the sofa, put his arms around Bempa, lit a joint, and farted contentedly … then Grandpa began to fire off his usual fusillade of fustian ideas and cackling harangues … he was in his element … flying high … Luthers and Hitlers table talk had nothing on Grandpas when he was like this … I only remember parts of it … his heads a real randomgenerator …
—Jesus is the posterchild for animal desires! Peter should’ve cut off his cock instead of his ear! “Suffer the little children to come to me and don’t stop before they’re bleeding from both ends …” —Matthew seventeen and nineteen … A thousand thanks, oh yes! Christianity says it’s okay to cast newborns before swine! That kind of talk makes me blush! Same with Luke fourteen twenty-six! And if that weren’t enough: you shouldn’t make representations of Gods likeness. He’s too ugly! If God exists, he owes me an apology! compensation for pain and suffering!
Grandpa scooted closer to Bempa and let his fingers shuck and jive a dirtylittleditty down his collarbone.
—We should stay light and transparent like “Mazdaznan-Hanisch” says! Erect a new Aryan high culture, where people sing of me and my adventures alone! Me and Tintin were named on the same day, in the same breath! They’ll print my divine mug on T-shirts and posters! like Che Guevara! Humanity’s most intimate little critters, crabs, and tapeworms, haven’t gotten the praise they deserve … Fuck me, but I’m going to devote an epic to those little bastards!
—Or to the brown rats stealing the world from the black rats, I piped up.
—You’ve hit the nail on the head, sprout! I’ll do it after I’ve finished my psychic war against the vibrators of Tinnitus XI! My other big project is rewriting the librettos to Wagner’s musical dramas! Cleansing them of all that unnatural sex! I want happy, girly, loser endings! Let Tristan have Kurwenal! Let the Dutchman be filled with spectral seamen! Let Tannhäuser party with the four nobleboys! Let Lohengrin, King Heinrich, and Friedrich von Telramund wear out other’s middleaged dreampipes with their plucky little karatepricks … let the fucking swan get in on it too! And I’ve thought of a fitting punishment for all those virtuous, cuntstinking temptresses, too … Elsa von Brabant will be fucked to death by the last group of mountaingorillas! Elisabeth will get knocked up by her father, Landgrave Hermann von Thüringen … then the fetus will bite and claw its way out like a bloody little gnome … Senta will get a job at a truckdriver cafe in Uganda … Isolde will take up with Fassbinder … Siegmund and Hunding will hook up and torture Sieglinde to death with rough old kikejokes … Siegfried and Mime will live happily ever after in the smithy … Brunhilde will burn up on the pyre that Wotan wisely enough tampered with … But I won’t change a note of the music! It’s just devilish!
Then Grandpa switched tracks, took another detour …
—Pataphysics, petrochemistry, and pornobiology are the cornerstones of the bestialfaith … the secret teachings of saprophytism … Apropos: what wouldn’t you give to see the Olympian play of expression across the Geheimerat’s face while he jerks off into a paraffinsmeared erminemuff?
—How do you spell Goethe?
—G Ö T E … like it sounds …
—Koroo … Sonyhaiku … Pobbolollysatori …
—I think you’ve gone around the bend, my sweet … tuataras are pinealeyed, but don’t fret … a third eye is just one more thing to miss … during its centurieslong dozerregime, the Sassanidians conducted research in the field of oblivionstudies … They were blinded by moonlight and didn’t give a damn about appearances …
On the news, they were talking about a Bolshevik statue toppling happening in the Baltics …
—I wouldn’t mind having that Dzerzhinsky statue, Grandpa said with a rare tear in the corner of his eye. You’ll never hear me say a word against the Cheka, GPU, or KGB … Felix was a gentleman … And all the others, too … Yezhov, Pavlov, Mikhailov … Nijinsky and Stravinsky … I could best be described as a proud membe
r of the Peoples Party … What else is there after Mundebo and Jan-Erik Wikström … If Bildt hadn’t been such a tedious fish fuck, who knows, I might’ve been a moderate … a neoliberal … newlysaved …
He spit at Anna Lindmarker and hit her between her beady little eyes … the blob ran down between her boobs … from the way her lips were moving, she was talking about something hot … Now Grandpa was telling a story about a sly old fart who’d lived undetected in a dumptruck for decades … And another who’d collected a lifetime’s worth of piss and shit in big barrels … and how his father had done the collecting for him when he was too young to do it himself … And about a bigshot farmer in Kågemarken who’d had special cages built for all his fuckable domesticanimals; only their noses and assholes were exposed; that way they could snuffle around and get fucked in the ass, but couldn’t put up a fight: he had bulls, boars, foxes, bears, gray owls, golden eagles, and everything else imaginable … He gave it up, though, after he installed an aquarium, got drunk, and tried to fuck a fifty-poundpike through the food opening … And Grandpa told us how to dig kiddietraps on the beach … Catch them with boathooks under the docks … And told us how it feels to fuck someone whose upperbody is stuck in a burningoven … He claimed that sourcecriticism is only valid when performed by the disabled … He told us how you can make a typewriter sound like an Einsatzkommando, just by pressing the right keys … He said that Max Stirner s The Ego and Its Own is the only philosemitosophistic work worth dragging yourself through … that the phrase “Ho Chi Minh sucks dead cocks” in Apocalypse Now is the only thing you need to know about the Vietnam War …
—Is there anyone else who thinks Bempa is a little down in the dumps?
—Me …
—You won’t say no to some fish and booze, will you deary? Grandpa asked, tickling him under the chin.
Then he went and got a colander from the kitchen and three tiger barbs from the tank. A last meal … He tried to feed Bempa the fish and to force some Bacardi down his throat.
—And now take a bite for Ohlendorf … and another for Pastor Paisley … and one for Pogonophorans …
But Bempa couldn’t swallow … the barbs came right back up … they flopped around on the labialhued broadloom carpet … Grandpa dumped twenty centiliters of alcohol over Bempa’s head. Then he sat and smoked quietly for a few minutes … half-watching TV …
—Am I the only one who wants to play Bismarck? … Oh well, spoilsport! enough of that! What are we supposed to do now, exchange luberecipes and talk trappingmethods?
—For Robespierre! yelled Bempa. Gmoopoffbaluuu …
—Shut your mouth, brainfry! Manu says, he who garbels language garbels everything … From his viewpoint, you’ve been found guilty … You’re worse than Michael Finnigan’s Wake …
Grandpa was dreaming up some new devilishness … the corners of his mouth were twitching …
—I’ll admit that my stomach is starting to rumble … I’d really like one of your kidneys about now …
He got out a Hubertus deerwhistle. It could make both a deer’s distress and an old goat’s mating calls. Grandpa pipped and squeaked first one, then the other … Bempa got confused and sat up … Garn howled outside of Gnipahall … Grandpa decked Bempa one and pulled off his leather belt …
—Before I take a kidney, I want you to blow me! That way we won’t wear out your shithole! he said considerately.
He put a Blessed Host on Bempa’s dry tongue and pushed in his cock … it wasn’t easy … Bempa didn’t have any spit … But Grandpa didn’t give up … the cock goes in, morality goes out … life’s one giant swing … the fun lies in jumping off right when you know you’re gonna fall … Bempa had come to the end of his long journey … he gaped wide … barfed when Grandpa’s cock rammed the back of his throat … weak yellow bile … Grandpa raged like he had rabies … punched and kicked … lashed out with his belt … blinded one eye with the clasp … He hooted and hollared … bent over and bit the carotid artery … Bempa crawled toward the kitchen … blood splattered across the cheap knick-knacks … a strong stream, dark and lively … Grandpa drank from the source … Bempa had served his purpose … Grandpapulled up Bempas shirt … sliced him with a glass shard … carved out the kidney … gobbled and slurped it down … took a drink … started to relax …
—Now you can eat, he declared, and I obeyed …
Luckily, that only meant that I was supposed to go down on Grandpa … otherwise I would’ve puked … I used an Old Norse sucking technique … Bempas bile tasted like French mustard … murder made Grandpa blasphemously horny … another person’s fear of death is the strongest aphrodisiac around … when Grandpa came, he shrieked curses at the Yankees and the Russians … his sperm tasted like mincemeat … then he gave me a quick jack … that was nice of him … Piglet and Pooh were on TV … my cum shot a few meters out … ran down the TV screen … Grandpa sobbed … he felt bad for Eeyore … Grandpa’s strongest point is his humor … his weakest is emotional instability … He buried his face between the sofacushions and waaaaahhhhh’d … I buttoned my fly, climbed up on the sofa, and put my arms around my Grandpa … he calmed down a little, blew his nose on a cushion, took a swig of Renat …
—Together with the primedminister, I say: “Faith in humanity’s worthlessness is what keeps me going,” he sniffed. Winnie the Pooh was over … I flipped through the TV schedule to see if there was anything else on … drank my Lord Culvert … program after program … Who’s Raping Who(m) … the usual parade of has-beens on Culture … I turned up the sound, but it was still pretty low …
—Have I told you about how we murdered all those Christians in Ostvik? It was me, “Maxin,” “Elisha Burr,” Ragnar Rök, and Hilding Lindgren … We bound their hands and feet, tied them to a pole, smeared them with syrup, and threw them naked on an anthill … mosquitoes, blackflies, houseflies, and gadflies all got some, too … Then we covered them with Bible pages until they looked like mummies and lit a match … We buried them alive sixty-nine style, two on two … Death by orgasm … rats in pipes ate out their pussies … We rammed crucifixes up their asses and into their stomachs … Dunked them in acid baths, which skinned them alive … They were selfserving … we tore the fetuses out of their wombs and sprinkled them with salt and ketchup … We nailed them to hayfences by their kneecaps … Of course, we made them all fuck the priest first … Pier Luigi Farnese would’ve felt right at home …
He lost his train of thought, but found another …
—Oh yeah, mite … Next year you’ll be able to go on Vi i femman … What do you think of that?
—I don’t know … do I have to?
—What the! Of course you have to! Don’t you want to show those fancy queers what you can do?
—I’m scared of messing up …
—That’s the last thing you have to worry about! You’ve learned loads from me … for example, you know it was “Race Gunther” and not Dürer who engraved “Knight, Death and the Devil” … How many prepubescent sluts do you think know anything about that?! Be thankful you get to participate!! People don’t trust their ears! Drops in the bucket! My whole life I’ve tried to be an embarrassment to myself and a warning to others … eking out a shitty little existence for you and yours … Charis and metron have beenmy guiding lights … ahimsa and caritas … but this is just plain wretched … what have I done to deserve this … the worst karma in the solarsystem … a child so hardhearted it’d give the Devil himself pause … you’re the new Seydlitz … the biggest bluff since Konrad Kujau … the worst thing to happen to Sweden since Ansgar …
Grandpa finally got tired of this querulation, his thoughts never followed a straightpath … Now the train had left without him and he was lost … he drank and waited for inspiration to strike … It looked like östen and Svante were having a good time … even though they were shitfaced sober …
—I know what we can do … let’s make some prankcalls!
He went into the bedroom and flipped
through the phonebook on the nightstand.
—Let’s see … redactors? … nah … refectories … regulators … robots … salt, wholesale … sand, gravel, shingles, macadam … smokehouses … here’s a good one … Tank and Sludge in Skelleftehamn …
He dialed some numbers on the buttercolored telephone …
—Howdy! I’d like to order a sludging! that I’ll forget right away! As soon as possible! My name’s Erling Hardass and I’m stark raving mad! Do you have a penispump! I live in Orrliden! That sounds good! Let’s do that! Bye now!
He threw the phone back onto the receiver.
—All they had was an answeringmachine, the devils! I was thinking about ordering a “total inspection of all unsavoury orifices” for you at the Suck and Swallow beauty salon … Then Grandpa called the priest on duty and told him that he was about to slit hiswrists in a hot bath … The illusionist John Houdi landed himself an engagement for tomorrow evening at the old policecommisioner … Then he threatened to kill a few old ladies … Ordered fifty pizzas from Bel Party service to be delivered to an innocent girl … Time had taken a great leap forward again … it was after ten … Grandpa called emergency …
—Something real bad is about to happen …
He sounded like an auntie who’s afraid she’s got a bunintheoven.
—They’re going on something terrible … they’re going to kill each other … they’re in Dripdrop Street … Yes, my name’s Nagarjuna … and I’m here with Heliogabalus … we’re on our way out … together with Harald and Frank Alexander … but we’ll wait for you … absolutely … see you in a moment …
The next call was to a taxiservice … We stopped to piss in a bucket … Then we went outside and waited … The taxi roared up like a batoutofhell … a couple of cougars appeared from the house next door … They weren’t exactly kittenfresh … dewynew … but they’d done their best to look it … spackled over the flaws … they were sourpussies without a cock to ram them … they needed something hard between their thighs … they were divorced, single … secondhand goods … spavined … petulant … I recognized the woman who’d gotten fucked on the kitchen table, I’d seen her on the back of a milkcarton … she was number thirteen in a series of notorious, neurotic bluelightspecialwhores from Gold Town, which the ill-humored liked to call Skellefteå … she seemed dull and dense. Grandpa went up and introduced us …
Assisted Living: A Novel Page 15
