Assisted Living: A Novel (14 page)

We walked watchfully down the street. The buildings pressed together and were several stories tall … Shops and more shops … They sold clothes, jewelry, and household goods … stuff designed to keep up appearances … There were beautysalons, healthfood-stores, and sportsgoodsstores … so many chimerical promises … though a Fridaydoo and a Sundaymanicure will end up rotting in the grave just like everything else … There were whores everywhere you looked … lots were pushing strollers … lips dripping with honey, mouths more slippery than oil … I didn’t give a fuck about the women in this trashtown, I knew I’d survive … I knew that someday the Lord God Almighty would cover their scalps with sores, and expose their nasties for all the world to see … baldskin instead of permedhair, sackcloth instead of fineclothes, brandingirons instead of beauty … Grandpa put a protective hand on my neck.

—Never let them know what your thinking and you’ll be all right! That’s the only way to protect yourself!

It surprised me to see so many of those creatures, all thinking they were human … I’d never have believed it … But they were worlds away … continents away from each other … galaxies receding at the speed of light … These days people don’t have anything to say to each other … if they’d just sit down and think about it, though … that’s what they should write about … They think they know where they’re going … know where home is … placidly go to school and travel abroad …

They have names, jobs, pets, and securityblankets … friends and dependents … you can do without all that … just look at me and Grandpa … Traffic honked and screeched when we approached the crosswalk, but we made it across unscathed … The buildings got bigger … I fingered the upsidedown silver cross around my throat … comfort and security are the things they value above all … but that’s the last thing the world will give you … Up until now, all the world ever gave me was something to think about … a rawfuck every now and then … chronic heartburn … The people who bothered to notice us smirked and grimaced … people only have two reactions when they meet a Grandpas boy … indifference and contempt … Grandpa took off his Bogarthat and dried the coldsweat from his Sydowforehead … then put it back on … they tittled and tattled … Shriveledaunties, puffedu-puncles, snottycocks, insatiablecunts … Persians, Arabs, poodles, clones … Dummies, labrats, internalcombustianengines, sex-bots … Consumers, mutants, patients, lemurs … “The Count,” aka “Martin Bormann,” greeted Grandpa heartily and paraded next to us, lifting his legs a little too high … A retired, germaphobic driving instructor whose name Grandpa couldn’t remem-ber passed us clutching a tissue and looking desperate behind his poindexter glasses … “The King” and “Sweaty” had apparently taken a break from bingo and the lottery … they looked you in the eye and found you wanting … “Gypsy Rickard” and “Gypsy Allan” were heavilypetting two fat constables … Leif and “Mod-dan” were squabbling like so many times before … Leif had just puked on the toystores front steps … Maud looked off balance … Sten and Georg met like nothing was up … they smiled, victims of the same dullwitted maliciousness … “Kurt the Can,” who’d moved up in rank after “Little Herman,” the graybearded dwarf, died, was rooting around in the trash for something to pawn …

—“Little Herman” was the better man …

—Yeah, he had a certain something … Called everyone idiot, thought animals were smarter than people … fought assholes with his cane and made himself a cardboard hat … His cynical little brain didn’t even weigh a halfkilo … he was like a windup toydoll …

Tempo and Domus, the department stores, were right in front of us … but we weren’t welcome there … Grandpa had pinched a lawnmower and a freezer, once … The building was so tall that I got dizzy and reached for Grandpa’s hand … but he didn’t tolerate that kind of touching …

—Let’s go down to the citypark and look around … if nothing else, there’s probably someone sleeping it off on a bench … a stolen fuck with a comatose drunk can’t go wrong …

Video Lime had moved … it probably hadn’t gotten any better, so we spared ourselves the headache … they never had what we wanted … The best they ever had was
Salö, Caligula, The Omen, The Evil Dead, The Silence of the Lambs,
stuff like that … a little on the light side, but not half bad … You’d never find
Suspiria, Trauma,
or
Tenebrae
by Argento … no
Cannibal Holocaust
or
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
 … Grandpa had gone in and begged them to buy some quality familyfilms like
The Children from Frostmos Mountain, Shiteating Teenies, Ass in a Virgin’s Ass, Carcass Rapist, Grampus Fucker, Marmot Mayhem
 … But no such luck … A photo shop had set out a truly merciless display of color pictures showing ugly mugs and corpses in varying stages of decomposition … Sluts in whitegowns and graduationcaps preened coquettishly … It was a goddamned menagerie … Absurd bridal pairs … the last couple out … the bride’s I-got-the-ring smile, the groom’s studied selfcontrol … Toddlers with moist, pouting mouths … Rundown, dressedup fortysomethings … Four generations, each worst than the last … All trying to smile and act like everything’s normal … One photo was cool, but unbelievably gross … a little mayqueen with terrified eyes sucking a goldbrown cock so hard she had grooves in her cheeks … it looked like Mishima’s … or maybe Issei Sagawa’s …

The Bay Leaf Bookstore was advertising the newest titles for fall … a stationary display … New releases from our folkhun-griest graphomanes … Ivar LOB Johansson’s monumental
Only a Whore …
Mora-Martinsson’s gripping
Grandma Gets Married
 … Vilgot Mobergs fit-for-the-fire masterpiece
Your Piece of Ground
 … And then some stale leftovers they’d oh-so-lovingly left out … Jesus Gardell s
Mel Mermelsteins Hen Party
 … Claus Östergrens
Bleda …
Maran Kandre’s
Baby’s Baby
 … They had
Povel’s and Tages Love Letters … Taubes and Cornelis’s Love Letters
 … And
Tages and Ainas Hate Letters
 … They were tryingto push Kjell-Olof Fälts memoirs,
All These Fucking Shitdays …
and Lazar Kaganovich’s childhoodmemories … And Traci Lords’s
Inside My Cunt
 … The window on the other side of the door had books that were more to my taste: Boforprizewinner Eliot Cannetti’s lively novel
The Confusing
 … Bruno Skult s crisp
Cinammon Shops …
And Robert Walser’s cocky
Jakob von Gunten …
Sven Hassel’s
Kommando Reichsführer Holmlund …
Tolkien’s
Lord of the Cockring
 … Lovecraft’s
Cthulhu
(a true story) … and the Tintin comics, the best thing the worst terror on earth has brought us …

—Hergé Bashevis Marquéz puts out some good stuff … compared to the folkstuff … Humanism’s a monstrosity … One frightened look in the mirror should be enough to convince you that mankind is an abomination …

Grandpa didn’t bother to kamikaze his way into the bookstore … were banned from both there and the library … they think we lick our fingers too much when we browse … make all the pages stick together … The library’s got us blacklisted … we use friedeggs for bookmarks and tear out what we consider to be extraneous pages … As we made our way to the city park, we heard some preppy neoliberal grandstanding out on market street:

—Mandatory abortions! Three cheers for female circumcision!

So far so good …

—Blinking yellow traffic lights 24/7, let the people decide … More girlyman matches … Easier to grab a quick one whenever you want! … Social Democrats must stop their cuntgrubbing! … Tax exemption for highincome fags! … Castrate the unemployed! and everyone else who gets a freeride! … Sterilize women! Slaughter all underperforming and overage athletes! like we do with racehorses! Ban relapsingornothologists! Grade adults on everyday life! Put it on your todo list: fapp-fapp! … All statesofmind to be ratified by the EU! … Nip ontological questions in the bud! before they blow up in your face …

You caught fragments from passersby … a conversation of sorts …

—But seriously … I think I drive better drunk …

—You sure fuck better … you feel less, you can hold out longer …

Isolated soapbubbles drifting on the breeze …

—I think he’s just shittysweet …

—Too bad his dicks so tiny and
Hard on Hard in Helsingfors
is the only book hes ever read …

—Did you really sleep with him …

—I think so … I don’t really remember … but I think he was with us up in Piteå … dragracing …

—You have to trust in the
Malleus Maleficarum
 …

—When did he say you should come back …

—When I feel like that again …

—Like what …

—Like I did last night …

—Do you think so … are you ready …

—Hey … that wasn’t yesterday …

—Thanks …

—Are you out running errands …

—Nah, we’re just cruising around … talking shit …

—We’ve got our plates full just trying to look honest …

—Were looking for a jacket …

—Fuck Trisse …

—Did you just get out? …

—So I joined the “Semitic Society for Painful Animal Experimentation” …

—Have you tried it on the Old Man …

—That guy at the mens clothes shop is never going to die … why, he almost looks alive …

—So listen here, whatshisface said he wasn’t going to do it at first …

—Or “Bella,” you know, the guy who centrifuges cats out in Getberget …

—And “The Skunk” … shame about him …

—I heard you were going to close up the kitchen …

—Yeah, were going to knock out the bathroom wall instead …

—Prison or mental hospital, that’s the choice …

—You don’t say …

—You don’t get out too much …

—You have to stay sharp …

—Talk about a fucked-up guy … I’m so fucking cursed …

—What did he do …

—He’s bonkers … what a moron …

—It was then, after we’d had coffee … that’s when he rolled up a thousandkronornote and stuffed it up my pussy …

—Hey there …

—Hello …

—You going out this evening …

—No idea … you …

—Nah …

—Stop on by …

—Nah …

—Byebye, baby!

—Byebye!

—I always forget how ugly you are …

—Right back at you!

—You’re going to put your mother in an earlygrave! She wont survive it!

—A blindbitch is the only thing that’ll fuck you! One without fingers! And a nose!

—You’ve got a face only a mother could love!

—You’re a miscarriage no mother would want!

—Your mother was a jackal!

—Your mom looks like a dugong!

—We’re looking at new wallpaper …

—And lightfixtures …

—We bought a house …

—A fairyhouse …

—Were looking for a catheter …

—Were looking for someone to talk shit about …

Two troglodytes came up beside us … one was babbling like an incubatorbaby on laughinggas …

—I’ve thought up a damn good movie idea! Want to hear it!

—No …

—So here’s the deal! Jacques de Molay (de Niro) and Hermann von Salza (Brandauer) are celebrating their honeymoon on a luxurycruise somewhere in the Caribbean … Just picture it … alpine landscapes … ciggibutts … retarded dolphins … boys, kulis, and pickolos … quick-as-a-whip flashbacks … bodybuilders in hotpursuit … loversquarrels … Pinocchiojokes … heartbreaking motoric disturbances … Can’t you just see it all?

—No …

—Anyway! They’ve got it fucking good! They catch albatrosses and dress them in bikinis … one evening they get so shitfaced they start rewriting literary history … they bask lazily in the sun making fun of straight, farming Swedes … Then, boom! Schleyer (Rutger Hauer) and Moro (Nicholson) turn up with a cocaine delivery and a pair of fat, ignorant fucksluts! They force them to drop anchor! And when Hermann and Jacques try to save the day, they hijack the ship! But a hurricane is coming! They’ve sabotaged the radio! Don Johnson is hidden in a sack of cocaine, he’ll probably sleep forever: a closeup of his shitsmeared undies! They drag him out and throw him to the hammerheads! like a sack of garbage! Cut to the cabin! It’s evening and Robert and Klaus-Maria have begun to suspect they’ve got a couple of scumbags on their hands. I’ve thought out some nice pieces of dialogue and memorized them! Just listen to this … Nicholson’s been working a cheerleader’s ass with a rhubarbstalk. Now he’s having some warm chocolatemilk and liverpaste on toast and he’s got that sneer … he looks scarier than he did at the Overlook Hotel … And so he says … think of his Lokigrin and that impudent eyebrowcurl … So he says, low and hoarse … “I want to torment, humiliate and cut up all girls who refuse to drink the washingwater of lepers and eat lice and shit from poor peoples clothes … What the fuck … It’s not too much to ask for that! Like Angela of Foligno … and Catherine of Genoa … the saintcunts … I want to promote Heydrich-worship … And the Saint-Justcult … Make this fucking world a decent place to live in .. ” Hell yeah, that’s cold! ice cold! and just like him, too!

—No, it’s awkward … Just pathetic …

—He’s dangerous when hes drunk …

—Don’t look now, but there’s the guy that trashtalks Skellefteå …

—I see him … the punk … the motherfucker …

—A coward, that’s what he is …

—He’s got to be totally fucked in the head …

—Get a load of that, full SS-gear …

—He should be stoned …

—Axl Rose … now he’s a tasty bugger …

—There aren’t any prettyboys in this town …

—They fuck like invalids …

—They don’t know what a girl wants …

—They don’t know what a girl needs …

—Love and affection …

—Precisely …

Grandpa led the way with his Merovingian stride. An ostentatious municipal building is next to the citypark … the social welfareoffice, not to mention the employment office … Stasi and Securitate … Local politics in Skellefteå is the battlefield of retired officemachinery … The park is small … the river is nearby, too few people have drowned themselves there … larches and south-ernhardwoods … no drunks, though … Something bustled in the hedgerow … someone was up to no good … we got scared … started to sober up … we turned around and beat a retreat …