Assisted Living: A Novel

by Nikanor Teratologen

  I’m sick and crazy …

  Death take me …

  Grandpa, I’m not worthy …

  Eloi … Eloi … lama sabachtani? … .

  __________

  DO I ALONE, ETC …—from Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde.

  ELOI … ELOI … ETC.—My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

  Appendix: Memories of Grandpa

  ANDRÉ SUNDLUND, 91 YEARS OLD, CHILDHOOD FRIEND

  —You bet I knew poor Holger. We went to school together and during the last few crappy years we’d shoot the shit about God, Satan, nearlife experiences, and the foundations of agrarpriapism.

  Holger was always a handful, everyone says so. Even before his eyes opened and he’d stopped babbling babynonsense, he was off on a crookedpath. He was raised by a man who lived only for death. Holger’s own Grandpa was named Holger Holmlund and he’d been the devil’s bitch for as long as any forcepsdelivered old-fuck could remember. Old Grandpa was said to be cruel as they come, a savage to everyone he met, he worshipped the devil and scorned men who lay with women and weren’t brave enough to sow the darkground. Anyway, he eventually called forth and then fanned the flames of forces he couldn’t master, and they took him just as little Holger learned the noble art of selfgratification.

  But let me tell you what I remember about Holger from our elementaryschooldays. It was a crime to be alive back then, that’s a lesson we all learned early on. Up at three every morning to pack a lunch of stalebreadcrusts and moldyleftovers, then haul ass forty kilometers to school for a quickie on Mistress’s chair. Sex didn’t matter, most kids were usersandabusers, getting drugs was easy, all you had to do was lift your skirts and bat your eyes at the sextons and old eccentrics. Holger was the worst of us all, but he knew how to play his cards right. The teachers were devils in the flesh, anorexic beanstalks. They held out as long as they could, and then it was off to the loonybin with them. Either that, or they’d hang themselves with the guts of unwantedchildren. I especially remember one, a retarded hunchback we used to call the Spider. He was wordblind and proud of it, and he wouldn’t tolerate us kids using words that weren’t his. We probably had him about a year, and every class he’d drone on about how Joyce from Dublin died for our cysts’ sake and how no matter how much we moaned and groaned, we could never make it goodygoodygood. One time he wanted Holger, the quickest of us peatbog children, to read a sentence out loud. The problem was, Holger was so drunk he couldn’t see straight, so he just said: “Man was created in God’s image.”

  At that the Spider cooed:

  Brown guu, if only there were more like you!

  Words should fly, but they just sneak on by!

  You ugly hog, you’ll be top dog!

  Life’s divine, but death’s devilishly fine!

  Then he stuck a pointer up his nose and into his brain.

  At recess, we pegged kiddos with pebbles or blew frogs and toads up with straws and then poked them full of holes. Halfwits had to pay with their balls. If someone fell, the herd was on him lightningquick, set to kick him while he was down. Suddenly, tattoos were all the rage. Most kids chose scenes from the Acts of the Apostles, but I remember that Holger got three sixes tattooed on his crown. Still, he was sweet, and how sweet he was to the bosses and other bigwigs! He was never stingy with compliments, even if they only got halfway inside! Back then, though, times could be tough. When you got home, it was just wipe your ass and off to bed, pronto! You knew you were alive, and what a damn shame that was. Not just for your mom and dad, but for your family and friends, race and kind, material and energy! Superstrings and subquarks!

  “I was just wondering,” … my dad said when he finally noticed me, “if we should let the calf live.”

  Mom had been stuck in the kitchen for the past few years. She looked up and you could tell she’d been pretty before she’d eaten it all away.

  “Nah, you know, Papa, he’s had his time in the sun … he’s had his chance, but he didn’t take it …”

  Grandma saved me, though, because she wanted to do me. But Holger kept mostly to himself. After three years, we were fully trained, we knew all about making our rumps blush in the bath and why everything under the sun gets up and off. One time Holger and I hung out after school, we were going to go hunting with slingshots. There was this oldcunt who wrote shit-books and lived in a carwreck out near Dire Straights. She was the one we were gunning for. Holger had always been real out-doorsy and so he found us a willowbed beside the path that gave us an open fieldoffire. It had rained and so it was pretty slickwhen she finally came huffing along. There was nothing special about her … she was just annoying … that was enough … we were fed up … She put on airs, pretended to be a fortuneteller, made herself out to be a psychic. And you know what, she looked right at where we were hiding and shouted at us, even though there was no way she could’ve seen us. It wasn’t what you’d call the perfect shot, but Holger wasn’t going to lose any time. He aimed and sent that ball flying. It took her eye out! And before she could get a real fire going in her pipes, he’d put her other eye out! Then we rushed out and talked some sense into her! Guess if we were proud!

  HENNING MIKAELSSON, 87 YEARS OLD, FARM OWNER, FORMER COMRADE OF HOLGER HOLMLUND

  —I hung out with out with him in the fifties, back when Irma was still alive and kicking. She was a piece of work all right: sleeping higgledypiggledy with the livestock and creeping beneath the bin-gotable to suck on any blowhard she could find.

  Holger was pretty stylish back then, even though his hair was going thin and his ass was getting bony. He wasn’t nearly as interested in sex as he was later in life, though. If you want someone to blame for the fact it was all downhill for Holger Holmlund, it’s Irma. She’d go to town on any old pieceofmeat, but she wouldn’t touch Holger’s with a pair of sugartongs. I don’t know how Holger took it. We didn’t talk cunt. We massacred bugs with modeltrains, and every now and again I’d play the accordion and Holger would sing spirituals. Sometimes the devil would take him and he’d lockhimself in his room and work like a hellion on his Biblecommentary, which was so horrible that just thinking about it made you want to scrape your foreskin right off.

  Sometimes he’d recite whole passages from memory, and I’d weep and pray for him. He read up a storm, and he knew every language under the sun.

  He borrowed thousands of books a year, a lot of them musty and gray and from far away places. And man, how he wrote! Up one side and down the other, roll after roll of cheap toiletpaper, while the devil sat on his left shoulder and dictated.

  “If only the apemen don’t off me before I’m done,” he’d say. He hated Judeobolshevism, but he was totally crushed when Stalin died in ’53.

  “He really gave them hell,” he sobbed.

  And he’d say, “Everyone’s a devil,” every now and again.

  He stayed out of the sun, so his skin wouldn’t get dark. He thought shampoo made your hair black and curly, so he washed his with sagopearls. He was afraid snuff would make his nose crooked and his lips thick, so he smoked twice as much.

  “What are you going to do if you get rikscancer, Holger?” I asked him once.

  “Kill them all,” he answered, catching a blowfly in his mouth and swallowing it.

  MARGOT SANDMARK, 81 YEARS OLD, GRANDMA IRMA’S FRIEND

  —Holger Holmlund was the nastiest wretch to ever dirty up a cunt!

  The fact that there were ever people like him in the world is unbelievable. I’ve seen some things in my day, but he took the cake … He murdered Irma, I’d swear it on my husbands grave! And Doris, too! He was so ugly, it was a disgrace … And what’s more: if a specialevent was happening, a party or a wedding, say, he’d make sure to humiliate Irma in front of everyone … He lied to her when they got married … Said he was polite, charming, virile, and rich … Promised her Happily Ever After … He was a shitbag! Emergency-rations were all he had to offer! He pretended to work in the church congregation … consoling survivors … crying
over newborns … He brought people nothing but grief! Longwinded as he was, you’d go into metestrus just listening to him … He said God was invisible! that there’s more than one sun! that it’s bad to torture livestock to death! that movies aren’t real! You’ve heard it all yourself! Toys in the attic! gadfly! galorum! gawd! grainworm! An abomination! He was sick! What a wastrel! A donothing! I felt so sorry for Irma, I nearly drank myself to death … I don’t know how many times I stuck my hands between her thighs, looked her in the eye, and said: “You’ve got to put an end to him … he’ll make you crazy … he may seem like he’s been good and tamed, but I know the type … he’s out of his mind, Irma! … listenhere! beagood-girl! there’snootherway! it’syouorhim! he’sgotmurderinhiseyes! dowhatl’masking! hellsbellslrmadon’tyouseewhathe’sdoingtoyou! nobody’llbreatheasyuntilhe’sgone!”

  But Irma wanted him … on a shortleash, of course … She needed the money, poor thing … Holger threw a fit every weekend, Irma had to whip him back into shape … Damn, he was difficult! Irma loved to dance, you know, but boy you should’veseen him fuss when we were getting ready to go out! Just begging and hollering and making a scene! “Irmadon’tyoudaredoit, you’llbethedeathofme!” and “Iloveyoumorethanfinalvictorypetyouknowthat” and “Youcandowhatyouwantwithmejustsolongasyoudon’tleavemeineedyoudamnit!” and “Forgivemeforlovingyousomuchl’mgoingtoburst!” He’d grab her around the knees, but Irma knew enough not to give in … She just made herself up even bolder than before, she didn’t bother to wear underwear under her dress and she made fun of him when our girlfriends came by … If she found some tasty morsels at the bar, she’d bring them home, work them up, tie Holger down, and force him to watch … Irma was the finest woman you can imagine … homely, surly, portly … It was never the same without her … She loved a good romp in the sack … What stamina! From dawn to dusk! Up and down, front and back! She knew everything about everyone! and she could talk your ear off, that’s something anyone’ll you! With a smile on her lips the whole time! She had Doris in fifty-six … The girl got along fine … she was unbelievably like Irma, both in her attitude and around the mouth … Holger wasn’t allowed anywhere near her … He read like a maniac … Irma burned his books, but he always got new ones …

  I told her: “Put his eyes out, that’ll stop him from reading those wicked books …” All for nothing! She was too sweet and kind to make it when the prince of this world kicks up a rumba with Conway Twitty … What I’d been telling her was going to happen finally happened … thank God, Doris was at her Grandma’s, Permesiva, who lived out in Gråberg … Irma had got the cockshivers … They found her in a ditch … he’d used a vacuumcleanerpipe to force meltedlead into her cunt … They never arrested him for it! the buggerfucks! Three old friends swore he’d been with them all weekend making pineconeanimals … So they left him free to wreak havoc … A wolf in the flesh, that’s what he was … a leftist … He held nothing sacred, he left nothing in peace … They took Doris from him, but he murdered her, too! And then he took her boy, Helge! How that boy’s going to make it now that Holger has so obligingly up and kicked it, is something I don’t even want to think about … All you can do is hope he doesn’t understand too much about what’s going on … he always was feebleminded …

  LILLEMOR LUNDBERG, 38 YEARS OLD, SOCIAL WORKER

  —Holger Holmlund needed a lot of support, but he was extremely difficult to help. He never came to us, we always had to go to him. You never felt welcome, though.

  “Jabbercunt!” he’d spit right between your eyes. “Scurfbag! Cloacalwhore! Cancernode!” he’d keep on going. He’d been on disabilitypension since childhood, on account of rectalcancer. And in the last thirty to thirty-five years, he received economicsupport in the form of incestbenefits and a BSDM-subsidy. And he also got a widowager’s pension after his wife died. He made a bit by volefarming in the bakery, and every now and again he earned a couple of kronor by writing letters for the town’s old never-wed analphabetic geezers. He had a severe drinking problem, but all he did was laugh scornfully when someone tried to set him straight. I remember this one time Mari and I visited him. His answeringmachine was just one long, awful string of abuse, so wedrove out to Hebbershålet unannounced. It was spring, the sap was rising in every cunt, but Holgers yard loomed dark amidst the suninseminated forestglade. The shutters were closed tight, and from inside the stereo was thundering forth a weird Mass. Hard, heavy primevalsounds were drowned out by bestialhowls, children’s tears, and women’s wails. Metallic cadences and insane choralstanzas, unnatural sybariticgroans, and piercing cries of pain. Mari pushed the doorbell, which by the way was shaped like a penis. I could tell by her nipples that she was scared. All at once the soulshriveling music stopped. We waited a couple of minutes, and then I pushed the dickhead myself. A piercing sound like the matingcall of the pale sprucebarkbeetle echoed through the tired house, which had already witnessed so much misery. Grumbling, Holger wrenched open the door, and I asked him how he was and if we could come in.

  “New deal, God,” he babbled. “You won’t get me, you Satan you!” He was barechested and had on a pair of brightyellow long underpants. He was bleeding from deep gashes on his stomach and breast. As usual, he stank of alcohol. His knotty hands held an Arabian deck of pornocards. His goateyes stared shrewdly out at nothing. Mari tried a little kindness, but he kneed her in the mons pubis and she fell back off the porch.

  “Sorry, what did you say?” Holger asked, cupping his ear with his hand. “If it’s about the offer to teach Sundayschool for the kiddies, I’m still interested. But I want free booze and lubricant.”

  “I was just asking how you were and if we can do anything for you—”

  “Aren’t you old Suctionpump Desiré?”

  “No, Holger, its Lillemor from socialservices. Now you listen here, you have to stop drinking—”

  “I’ve had more than enough of you, you slimeball. Get out of here before I sic the boy on you!”

  “Actually, we’d like to talk to you about how it’s going with Helge—”

  “Go to hell, harpy!” the boy shrieked, peering out between Holgers legs with a blackandblue, bonetired face.

  “If you don’t cooperate, Holger, we’ll have to call the cops.”

  “I’m so fucking fed up,” he sighed and slammed the door again.

  I stuck Mari in the trunk and drove away. When we got to town, my boss called the police. When they stormed Holger’s place, though, he was so wellgroomed it was almost sickening, he was just as friendly and hospitable as any GB-Gubbe. Besides that, we didn’t really have any real proof that Helge had suffered at Holger’s hands. In the fall of’88, we got a report alleging that Holger had repeatedly abused his grandson, Helge, whose parents were found raped and beaten to bloodypulps in the Skellefteå museum’s movietheater. I think it was a documentary called Skellefteårs: The Missing Link that was showing while the two of them were getting their justdesserts. They died of their wounds before regaining consciousness. Helge was delivered by chancelloreansection at seven months and spent his first extrauterine year in a clinic for relapsed pederasts. After that, he spent two years with his grandmother in Kåge, until she succumbed to gardenhosemasturbation. He spent a few weeks in a garbageroom, because nobody gave a shit. Then one fine day Holger Holmlund swept into the office, ready to do business.

  “I want to abort the boy,” he said.

  “You mean adopt.”

  “Yeah, I want him. What do you want for him?” he asked, fingering a wad of Monopolymoney.

  “Excuse me?” Lisbeth, who ran the whole shebang, asked. “How much do I have to shell out, already!?”

  She blushed furiously and clung firmly to the letter of the law, because he was a stately man, and you could tell that there was something slightly “off” about him. He had no barriers left, so to speak.

  “To adopt a child, you have to fill out this form first. Then a committee of rejects will be appointed to decide if you’re a fit guardian. After t
hat, the matter is in the hands of the local omnipotents.” “Superb, cuntskunk,” he said, “I’ve got my thumbs in the local powersthatbe, and I don’t just mean in the eyes.”

  He stood and filled out the paperwork, while he sang Hans Sachs’s last piece in the The Mastersingers of Nuremburg, the one that begins with “Verachtet mir die Meister nicht, und ehrt mir ihre Kunst!” The laying on of hands went recordquick, and the next Monday that came around, Holger thundered in, banging open the entryway door so hard it splintered.

  “I have an appointment with a three-year-old!”

  I lifted up the boy in a blanket. Small, woolly, yellow lambs were leaping in a meadow, and one corner had been sucked to scraps. He was an alert little rascal, his eyes followed everything that moved. Skittish and mute. But I’ll never forget the expression on Holgers face when he took that bundle into his arms. The child looked up at the old man—and, suddenly, everything was good, just like it was meant to be. The boy laughed for the first time,and it sounded horrible. He stuck his small fist between Holger’s cracked lips. The old man pretended to bite, and the child just about died. The sounds he made seemed to stand for all the miracles of joy, love, and safety. He was beside himself, he whimpered and yowled, as if everything before now had been a nightmare, but today there was healing, hope, and forgetfulness at last. Holger was like a vortex of pure light. I saw that he was the Madonna with child. Neither before nor since have I seen a face so twisted by purelove. The rest of us didn’t exist any longer, the whole fucking world had burst like a troll in the sun. He flew off, glided out, people melted in his presence, melted in the face of his heartcoremelt-down, and God existed, and goodness, and mercy. Death and the Devil stood by in shame, Holger was Creation’s champion. It was a good while before everything went back to normal again, and we could smoke and chat and think about other things. And as for the accusations of incest, well, nothing was ever proven, none of the powersthatbe bothered to launch an investigation. Sometimes it seems like I dreamed the whole thing …