Assisted Living: A Novel (4 page)

—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

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 writing … 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!

__________

Sexualreligion
—describes the sexual religion of the Aryans; von Werth argues this was a form of eugenics meant to maintain Aryan racial purity

Wiligut
—“Himmler’s Rasputin,” in September of 1933 was appointed under the pseudonym of Karl Maria Weisthor to head up the Department for Pre- and Early History, located within the Race and Settlement Division’s Main Office. Wiligut claimed to be the last descendent of the prehistoric Uiligotis of the Asa-Uana-Sippe’s seers and priests. Around 78,000 B. J. (before Judas), his forefathers ushered in true history by founding the second Boso culture and erecting the city of Arual-Jöruvalis. And so forth … Himmler was quite interested in the aged “clairvoyant,” who left the SS in 1939 at seventy-three years of age. Among other things, Wiligut helped design the Death’s Head Ring of the SS Pegatu—a beast-man in Lanz von Liebenfel’s conceptual universe (and Strindbergs?)

Kiruna
—Northernmost city in Sweden

Fall was trying to ambush old summer, but August was putting up a fight. We were on swivel chairs in the hunting tower we’d climbed into the evening before. Grandpa kept watch through the flygutsplattered windows towards north and east, and I took south and west. There was a forestroad running right below us. Grandpa had wanted me to shit myself and I’d just done it—and man it felt good. Baal knows it had been a cold, dark night … Grandpa had slept curled up, but his chthonic body wouldn’t leave well enough alone. He’d kept babbling in his sleep, something about Schuler and bloodlust and honeysweet Nero. He knows a whole mess of things by heart.

—“Das Herz der Erde als Hölle der Christen … Morde den Vater, eh’ dass er dein Kind, deine Seele frisst, und entfessle die Urknäuel, das hundertspeichige Feuerrad! Die Hölle, das Herz der Gaia, wird dich helfen …”

Grandpas German’s so bad it makes you weak in the knees …

Later he lit some stormlanterns and comfortmunched all our provisions: schoolgirlfricassé and two balls of yarn. Then helaughed that ghoulish laugh of his, and whipped up some coffee and schnapps.

After that, he toyed with my fudgepacker and rambled on about anything that came to mind.

—Mossad, he said, going hard all at once, Mossad can pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. For all I know, you could be sent by Mossad … or Wiesenthal …

His decrepit risiblemuscles twisted impishly, but there was no emotion left in his eyes … empty as a promise …

—But it’ll be a cold day in hell before those asses get their claws into me, that’s all I’m saying! If they get cocky, they’ll just have to cry it out, if nothing else works! he declared darkly and fingered his favorite rifle, an eleven point six millimeter .460 Weatherby Magnum built to take out buffalos and elephants.

—When I die, I’m taking all of you with me! The whole goddamned planet! Everyone’ll probably be glad it’s over! You’ll be roasted in Sakar! in Hutama! Omphalus, the World’s Navel! The hub of evil! If you get your way, the whole goddamn universe will explode when I’m gone! And you’ll give out shouts of rejoicing! You can’t even imagine how topsyturvy things will get when I’m upupandaway. Darkness is coming, and how! Pah! Don’t you understand? When I finally lay myself down to sleep, and thank God for it, it all stops! I’ll hush the animals to sleep with a lullaby and the sun will put on mourningcrape and shroud! Yes, boy, when your collective will has been done and I lay there with a shit-blessed grin on my face, delighted to be with my Father Who Art in Heaven, it’ll be too late for tears! It’ll be over and done! Over and out! Hasta la vista, baby, and good night!

Grandpa was so worked up I had to blow him then and there, and then we slept until about eleven o’clock. Now we’d been sitting still for about three hours and keeping watch out over the clearcutting. Every now and then Grandpa broke the silence with some phrase he’d just then pulled out of his ass.

—The only Semites worth mentioning are the ones that founded the cult of Moloch. Or:—
Swine and Sex Objects in the Semitic Tradition
by Reichsbauernleiter Diarré is absolutely the worst piece of drivel I’ve ever set eyes on! Or:—Is there anything more appealing than a sick and hopeless old man pounding on a locked door in vain? Or:—The greatest thing you can give your fellowdemon is an intercession … and then a sudden, painfree death … Or:—A Dutch explorer, Adriaan Kukkurloom, was the first of the grayraces to describe a thoughtful girl, a creature as rare as God’s mercy! Or:—Sigvard Thurneman was a fine lad, just a little persnickety … Or:—Soon I’ll have devoted ninety years to Nothing, feeling Nothing, thinking about Nothing … Or:—The only animals worth hunting anymore are wolverines … in a pinch, a polecat … every now and then a squirrel will do! But from the depths of my tooty-fruity innards, you’ll never catch me taking a lynx in the morel! Or:—The cargocult is the religion closest to my heart … In a previous life I was an ascarid in Timur Lenk’s gut … a pleuralsackparasite in Benedict of Nursias windpipe … he got me by boning a pheasant … The USA is the great Jahveh … evil’s domicile … vulgarity’s nexus … a festeringboil … We’ll give them a neutronbombshower … just as soon as we’ve founded the Fourth Reich … A final solution to the American nightmare … Four of the seven mouths of hell are there … on Wall Street, in the Pentagon, in Las Vegas, and in Hollywood … There’s one in Rotorua and one in Bangcock … The seventh I’ll reveal in the decay of time …

Grandpa had on a Barbour oilskin coat and a mossgreen Patagonia jersey. He had girlskinpants and a pair of creamcolored, highheeled, otterskin boots. I had on rough lightblue trainingoveralls, sailors boots, and a steelcollar: a rosary with shortbarbs for hard obedience training. I’m Sargon the Great and you’re Lugalzaggesi, Grandpa had said as he fastened on the chain.

—Hell is other people! Grandpa suddenly exclaimed. That’s the only thing he’ll quote from Sartre. Otherwise, he hates the guy like sperm hate it when you’ve got to piss. Then Grandpa switched tracks and launched into a story about a chessmatch between Moses Uritzky and N. A. Fraenkel that had ended in a draw and, finally, in heavypetting. After that he angrily questioned the wisdom of contracting the Kegel muscles for the sake of drier orgasms.

—Depends if you get a shot off, I commented, for lack of anything better to say.

—Shut your yap and keep watch, devilcolt, Grandpa said and jerked my leash so hard the tower shook.

—“What of it then if I warble, babble out a string of verses, if I sing in every valley, wail about in every firwood?” Grandpa väinämöined. You can accuse me of being a local patriot, but I still contend that ethics is the art of cheating, Grandpa snarled in confused conclusion.

The clearcutting was as shittybrown as a partyrally in Myrberg. Rotten brown logs, fallen deciduous trees … Large, graywhite stones lay exposed in the darkbrown of the road that ran behindthe machinepark. The bog was burntred and frozenblack. Immobile stumps, lichen and moss, a couple of driedout spruces, some raspberrybushes and a mass of halfdead birchtrees. What’s the point of sowing anything, plants just die … they put up a struggle and end up choked in plastic … The forest edge was a long ways away, lots of empty ridges between us and it … The wind let up and I thought I heard someone coming down the path. On the horizon a little Jap clunker suddenly appeared. It was yellow and seemed to be struggling. The road here’s uneven and rocky, so the going gets tough. Grandpa narrowed his eyes. He began to hum “Headhunters and Headgivers” by the Corpsefucking Crybabies. Then, peering through his Aimpoint 3000 red-dot sight, he started to cackle soundlessly.

—A bull, a cow, and two calves … damn berrythieves … novembercrooks …

The car stopped about a hundred meters away. Our quarry tumbled out and got ready to follow the path leading through the clearcutting towards the meager blueberrybushes five hundred meters north. I used the sight on the other rifle. It was a large Tasco, and the rifle was a .416 Remington Magnum loaded with Swift Bonded Core bullets. They were coming toward us. The bull walked with a manlyman’s swagger. Next came the female, her calves swarming around her ankles like sicklebacks around a rotten bullhead. The bull was big and mean, he had the face of a tadpole. The female looked like a dumb bluelightspecialwhore. The calves were nothing but skinandgristle wrapped in bright clothes.

—I’m going to wait a moment before I shoot, Grandpa whispered, carefully opening the window.

—Which are you going to take first?

—The bull, for fuck’s sake …

They only had eyes for each other, those two: mutual irritation is the only enduring passion. They were as quarrelsome as only your runofthemillskinflints can be. They didn’t even look up at the tower. When they were about twenty-five meters away, we had a stroke of good luck. The smallest calf had to take a shit and everyone was forced to participate. The bull tore at his hair and huffed to a stump. The cow ground her teeth and yanked the boy’s pants down. But the boy decided he didn’t wanna anymore. He howled, struggled, dug in, put up a fight. Grandpa laughed derisively. The bull laughed bitterly. The cow called him a drycock, said she wished she’d gone ahead and fucked every single person at the office party. The bull said she could shove whateverthefuck she wanted up that loose, stinking pussy of hers. He was just itching to do them all in. Start with Magnus then, she shrieked, shoving the now shitsoiled calf away from her, you fuckingidiot, you dumbcow.

Grandpa fired. The crack was deafening. He had an ingenious gadget that minimized kickback. Hilding Marlene holds the patent, but he stole the idea from the Japs. The first shot grazed a hand holding an empty yellow berrybucket. Grandpa reloaded and empty casings turned smoking somersaults in the air. The second shot missed completely and so did the third. The bull jumped up, waving his arms and cussing like a missionary in a cannibal’s cookpot. He had an aha moment then and realized Grandpa wasn’t finished with him yet, not by a longshot, and sprinted for the car. He was wearing a blue parka with winered corduroy pants. The fourth bullet got him in the leg, the fifth shot like a prayer straight up to heaven. I handed Grandpa the other rifle. It was obviously going to take a while to shut these fuckers up. The woman was tottering on the brink. Hyperventilating, she grabbed her Kanken backpack and took off down the tractor path, herding her calves before her. But one of them still had his pants down around his ankles, so her brilliant plan went up in smoke.

—You failed to read the fineprint, beastcunt, Grandpa hissed and sent two shots into the rosemarybushes around her boots. I can read lips, you know; I learned back when I had an ear infection.

Grandpa began to swear so it curdled the air and startled the birds. The cow collapsed, legs splaying. Her hair was a mess; she’d scratched the Satansbait. The third shot entered her pecadocastigo, the fourth burst her womb, the fifth took her in the mouth. By now the calves had caved in. Grandpa took the reloaded Weatherby and let fly. Big Brother ran around in circles, bedeviled and befuddled, tugging at the cow’s leg and making a hell of a ruckus. Grandpa, for his part, emptied the whole magazine. Unfortunately, he missed. After that, he shouldered the Remington, while I reloaded at top speed. One of the five bullets took the calf in the knee, he rolled around and stayed down.

—Hurryhurryhurry! Climb down, well show them what we’re about!

Through the door and out onto the platform. I slipped on the top step, fell, and got a branch stuck deep in my armpit. I couldn’t help myself; I moaned. Grandpa laughed and shot me in passing with a boltpistol that took off my left earlobe. Trying to staunch the blood, I limped after him. The bull was pulling himself through the mud toward the car. He cast terrified eyes overhis shoulder, clearly reckoning up all his amortizations. He’d lost a boot and blood was pumping from his beautifully injured leg. Grandpa stopped, legs apart, and gripped his Baby Nambu On-skimodel automaticpistol like an afroamrocop. It took him two tries before he bullseyed the bull’s eyes. The larger calf had already passed out. Grandpa swept him up in his arms, kissed him passionately, and slung him belly first into a mudpuddle beside a fallen tree. That just left littlebrother, and he fell to me, since Grandpa thought I needed the practice. He didn’t even get up, the little twit, just screeched and shit some wicked sausages onto the grass. He was a stubby kid who’d probably thought he’d grow big and strong and learn to smoke Borkum Riff. I bashed his face in with a thick pinebranch. He didn’t have any more tricks up his ass, he just lay there and took it. So I straddled his back, forced his head up and slit his throat with my Ka-Bar Grizzly knife. After that, I puked up the bunch of nothing that was in my stomach. Grandpa immediately set to with the hacking and the carving—“Beware the melancholy, for they will destroy the earth,” he said. He cut fillets from the calves and took a trophy from the bull. Then we headed home.

—Ah hell, we’re going to miss
Emmerdale
Farm, we’ve got too far to go! Grandpa exclaimed. I just know Mr. Wilks is going to rape and murder Amos Brearly some episode or other …

Grandpa carried the Weatherby, and I slung the Remington over my shoulder and the shitsmeared meat onto my back. After a few minutes, I started to get my hearing back. We crossed a mild browngold marsh with vomithued hillocks, watching for the darker spots where you don’t want to step. Time was, these marshes were bottomless and treacherous, they reached far and wide … Later people drained them just because they enjoyed the challenge, and to give the wetland fowl a hard time. Now the marshes were trying to get their own back, right in step with depopulation … we squelchedsucked as we walked … Grandpa sang: “So weit die braune Heide geht gehört das alle wir!” The trees were sparse, hunched over like rheumatics trying to avoid a beating … they were poor, hiding nothing … not even worth a mercykilling … There weren’t any cloudberries to make jam with … that’s the one thing I remember about my dad’s mom, her making jam while she lifted her skirts to let the snake in … “jamming and juicing, Satan’s shitwork” … We didn’t even see a forest bird … not a soul was stirring … We walked through the trees for hours … when it started getting dark, we rested. Evening was coming on fast.

—There isn’t nearly enough evil in the forest nowadays, Grandpa complained and shoved a stubborn squirrel back down onto the grillstick.

We sat next to a lazy flame. I tried to brush the cobwebs off my face, souvenirs of a walk through the late summerwoods. Dark-green sprucetrees were closing in, pines swayed stiff as corpses in the wind. The wind and the dark cast doubt on everything you think you understand.

—Once upon a time, mankind was a demonic sort of phenomenon … back in the goodolddays, no one knew what mercy was … We’d toss furry critters onto the fire, just to watch the greedy flames devour them alive.

—Back in the goodolddays, women and Christians didn’t dare leave the highroads … If they did, they’d be raped and slaughtered by forestdemons … We called them Leshy or sippers, further inland they were known as the overprivileged lips …