Assisted Living: A Novel (18 page)
Harald and Frank Alexander
—father and sixteen year-old son, murdered three family members in ritual fashion (the mother and two teenage daughters) with knives on Tenerife in 1970: the women’s breasts and vaginal lips were cut off and their hearts cut out; the Alexanders claimed their motive was to “save humanity”
Michael Myers and Jason
—from Halloween and the Friday the 13th films, respectively
Charis and metron
—ancient Greek terms: Charis refers to grace, light, a joy in simple stillness; metron entails a resolve to lead a balanced life; see also the works of Vilhelm Ekelund
ahimsa
—total non-violence (within Jainism)
Seydlitz
—Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbac: general, leader of the captured officers who worked with the Bolsheviks following the Battle of Stalingrad
Konrad Kujau
—claimed at the beginning of the 1980s that he’d found Hitlers diaries
Ansgar
—St. Ansgar, the “Apostle of the North”
cura … usura
—Heidegger-Pound
Los Novios de la Muerte
—a death squadron organized by Klaus Barbie and Stefano delle Chiaie, among others
Aouita
—Saïd: Moroccan athlete
boar snout
—a Viking charge
Fanfarlo … Horla
—Baudelaire-Maupassant
Mafarka … Uomo finito
—Marinetti-Papini
Zebulon
—“Zeb” Macahan; see
How the West was Won
.
Bombi Bitt
—television character played by Stellan Skarsgård, Swedish actor
deshimaric
—Taisen Deshimaru, Zen Buddhist teacher and monk
Leibstandarte
—Hitler’s bodyguards
“lord of silence, supreme god of desolation”
—from Damien Thorns monologue in
Omen III
airyanem vaejo
—the Aryan Persians’ legendary Northern home swet-dvipa—the region situated in the farthest Northern reaches, where Narayuna (which is light) lives together with uttarakua (the ancient Northern race): according to Aryan-Indian traditions
Grandpa was lying down and watching
Father’s Little Dividend
with Spencer Tracy. He’d drunk fifty beers, Kaltenberg and Kaiserdom Edel, since this afternoon. I’d just dumped ten cans of maggots into a bowl and was coming back from the kitchen. I also had a flask of Portello and a saucer of unripe gooseberries. The movie had reached the scene where Spencer is in the swing talking to his whoredaughter. She’s knockedup and worried about how it’ll be between her and the guy who fucked her when the baby falls out.
“How did you feel when you had your first baby?” she asks. “Did it make any difference between you and Mom?”
“… I remember lying awake that night, thinking to myself: Now what have we got into, here we were, two perfectly happy people, free as the air—now we’re trapped, trapped by twenty inches of screaming humanity.”
—Whoresongod and Jewjesus! That’s exactly how it is! Grandpa exclaimed. If I didn’t have you holding me down, I could run like Ratatoskr! up and down Chaos’s cock! I’d get back everything I’veever given up! I could’ve been a diva! a primadonna! Courted by the worlds richest, most perverted queers! I would’ve been worse than Zarah Leander! Farah Diba! Divine! Liberace! ten thousand times worse!
Grandpa sat up and took a fistful of flylarvae and sawdust. It probably didn’t taste very good, though … Suddenly, he snorted and spit the maggots out all over the table.
—Fuck Satan all the way back to hell! they were hardly moving! I bet my blackguards knee and tenniselbow you didn’t keep them in the fridge! They rot at room temperature!
He cuffed my ear and took the switch with the colorful feathers out of the urn where we kept it.
—You’re about to get what’s coming to you … shitcunt …
Grandpa seemed to be getting the sunsetblues … Must be in the genes, because I usually feel pretty sour in the evening, too … He threw me across the table, yanked down my pants, shouted a few curses, and started beating me with the springy switch.
—How I hate you! Pampers and Semper!
Kamratposten
and
Barnjournalenl
And you actually dared to like them! You actually had the stomach for it! Evilevildevilllll! There you go! And there! There! Everyman! Tusenbröder! Tschandala!
He’d worked up a good sweat by then. But Grandpa wasn’t interested in just scratching the surface … Not by a long shot …
—Lie still! Meir Kahane take me if I can’t make you love me like I deserve!
While Grandpa went to the john to get the mulewhip, I thought of the words Jesus spoke in Sirach: “Bend his neck in youth, bruise his ribs while he is a child …” It looks good on paper, but death ispretty gruesome when it finally comes to call … Grandpa threw himself back on top of me, shrieking in his shrillest shrewvoice:
—You’ll never see Uno Myggan’s monstermember! because I’m going to beat the life out of you!
I cried and begged for mercy, but Grandpa just whipped out his oneeyedsnake, held me down on the table, and started up again … He walloped his heart out, bopped until he burst … I bawled until I was blue, promised to turn over a newleaf … but he was tired of being tired … he lit a Gauloise in the heat of it …
—Hushababy! chin up! simmer down! tickletickle! Not enough? … Here you go! You want some more?! Hooboy! Ubu-roi! Sanssouci! You make me sicker than Nathan Ratschild!
The leather left deep, bloody welts in my flesh … Grandpa beat me where a man keeps his pride, on the ass … the back … the back of my head, too … Wherever he could reach … it was all the same now … thin bloody ribbons of flesh …
—Littleshit! Pissrat! Frogboy! Nilsen! Berkowitz! Begin!
I hollered so it echoed from Mångberge to Storberge! … Grandpa grabbed some coarse brown tape and wrapped it a few times around my neck and mouth … then he continued …
—Dingbat! Hamhand! Klutz! Notail! Goedzak! Mercader!
He waxed into paroxysms and waned into deliriums … Went crazier than Ernst-Hugo … He couldn’t stop … he wasn’t just whistling Dixie … he changed hands because he’s ambidextrous …
—Hornboy! Marbuel! Makbenak! Agnus Dei! I’ll beat the evil out of you! Troglodyte! Trilobite! Starlet! Sweetthingwithacher-ryontop! I got the nigger by the toe! You’ll cry undeunde before I’m done!
Blood sprayed with every lash … shreds of skin dripped, too … it hurt so much I tried to stop breathing … Grandpa threw the whip aside … he’d gone semirigid … come to his senses … tried to rekindle the flame … get himself together … but it had burned down … bled out … he’d lost it … he told himself the same thing had happened to Stendhal … he was indecisive now … frazzlehaired … worndown … upsidedown and insideout … he lay back down on the sofa bed … sang in castrato:
—
Nur wer der Minne Macht versagt, nur wer die Liebe Lust verjagt
…
Snuffling and tearyeyed, I crept to the john to wash my backside as best I could … I worked the tape loose … bathed in punsch … put soaked vealbrawn and soggy bread on the wounds and wrapped gauze around my lower body … then I undressed and put on my wet nightshirt … I went back into the living room … Grandpa lay there reading
The Temptation of Saint Anthony
by Flaubert … the TV was still on … Bobby was giving JR a blowjob …
—Listen here, squirt: “The child is little like a dwarf, short, thickset in body with a miserable aspect, some white hair covered his prodigiously great head, and he shivered under a paltry tunic, guarding in his hand a roll of papyrus …” That’s your spitting image, boy! he chuckled. Instead of papyrus, though, you’re guarding a role of toiletpaper!
I knew it was true … I was the most pathetic thing on earth … anyone can have me, but no one wants me … I was ashamed to exist … I received life as a wound and I have forbidden suicide to heal the scar … just like Maldoror … as long as you don’t end up in North Västerbotten when you die … I sat down on the small woven rug … looked at the floor … I ached … that was probably the point … A nature program came on … bloodred, slavetaking brigandants were lapping up a Lomechusa beetles shitdope … the anthill goes down the toilet soon as they get addicted … Grandpa was jacking off … it was the idea that turned him on … insects fondling each other always makes him hot … especially when it involves interspecies action … He joylessly spewed a few wet drops … not long after that he went to sleep … walking through the valley of the shadow of death … I didn’t budge the whole night … I wandered lost … Empty within … cold without … longing for someone to put me out of my misery … Alone in the Milky Way galaxy … I’m so scared … I’m going to crash and burn …
__________
Portello
—fruit-flavored soft drink
Ratatoskr
—squirrel who scurries up and down Yggdrasil, the World Tree
Zarah Leander
—Swedish actress and singer known for her controversial decision to move to Germany and work for the state-owned film studio UFA during the Nazi period
Farah Diba
—married name Farah Pahlavi, former empress of Iran
Kamratposten
—Swedish magazine for eight to fourteen year olds
Barnjournalen
—weekly Swedish television news program for children
Semper
—Swedish company that makes baby food
Tusendbröder
—Swedish television series
Tschandala
—untouchables in the Indian caste system. Also the title of a novella by August Stringberg
Uno “Myggen” Ericson
—Swedish journalist, historian, and author
Nathan Ratschild
—Nathan Rothschild, a London financier
Nilsen! Berkowitz! Begin!
—two mass murderers, one prime minister
Notail
—Pelle Svanslös, or “Peter No Tail,” the protagonist of Gösta Knutsson’s series of childrens books
Goedzak
—Lamme; Thyl Ulenspiegel’s sidekick
Mercader
—Ramón; hacked Trotsky to death
Ernst-Hugo
—Ernst-Hugo Järegård, famously temperamental Swedish actor
Marbuel
—child-devil in Werner Egk’s ballet
Abraxas
Makbenak
—“the flesh falls from the bones”; Freemason codeword
Nur wer der Minne Macht …
—“Only the one who renounces the power of love, only the one who forswears passion,” from Wagner’s
Das Rheingold
Punsch
—traditional Swedish liqueur
Grandpa had kept his face to the wall for a whole week. He’d just lain there … he hadn’t eaten, drunk, spoken, or slept … He’d just smoked … When I tried to comfort him, he chased me away with a filletknife. It’s how he gets when he goes without drugs. I don’t understand why he torments himself like that. It’s also how he gets when the springsun slits open the curtains and knifes you in the eye. I went outside … slush was melting into drunken rivulets … pockmarked snowdrifts were wasting away in piles of ooze … bare flecks of muddyground were showing through … I flooded a few hectares … I was conducting an experiment … finding out which animals could swim … The sun was a shrill presence, more white than yellow … it didn’t quite have the bite it wanted, though … winter was bowing out, the air was filled with the heady sound of horny birdsong … clumps of snow tumbled from the evergreens, everything was melting except my heart … there the permafrost is perennial … sorrow has frozen the vital-nerve … The sky contained weak strips of blue … they were busy changing the decor …
I went into the kitchen and opened a jar of loveravaged hearts soaked in sweet brine … I put two on a plate and went into the living room … Grandpa was in the same position on the sofa bed … his yichudim were done for … I took my life in my hands and asked him if he wanted a couple of passionbroiled suicidepacthearts … But he didn’t give a shit about what I had to offer … Just lay there, like that Buddha statue in Polonnaruwa … unapproachable … unfathomable … dead to the world … closer to God …
__________
yichudim
—“unifications”; secret knowledge, divine gifts gained through meditation in the Chasidic, kabbalistic tradition
—Damn smokers cough, gasped Grandpa when I brought him his coffee and brandy in bed. Do me a favor and piss in my mouth, mite.
I opened my fly and lightened my bladder. Grandpa squatted to receive it then gargled with his eyes shut.
—You certainly can piss, little Ficedula hypoleuca, but it takes a fucking sumppump to suck the sperm out of you! he griped and spanked me. Me now, I had sperm coming out my ears when I was your age! hooboy! I could both give and take a squirt! I was their fucking Helen, I swear to God! They were on me like blowflies on syrup spilled over a festeringwound! Of course, I only fooled around with them if they treated me nice, otherwise the narcoho-mos could go blow themselves! Yes, I frolicked and fell away from the Word of God with a pocket of cocksocks spurted full to the brim, so you can see why some of those buggerfiends got jealous, the devilqueers! I enjoyed myself so fucking much the memory still makes be blush!
—You don’t say?
—One day, I got word that the Old King was in Skaeliptom hunting waxwings with gutstring. He was scalding hot, ready to come down on me like a hurricane. But the Little King gave me a sign and warned me. So I prettied myself up as much as I could, shaved my balls and powdered my ass. I remember it was Milky-John who curled my hair, because Frusse was in doing some rehab shit. By the by, did I ever tell you about how I bit Milky-John’s cock off on Walpurgis Night all those hebbers-years ago?
Without waiting for my answer he went on:
—That night we were horny as pigs. We’d gone skijoring on a truck bound for Spännarberget, because we were slated to play a game of bumhook with the Gideonites. I was wearing a rough sheepskincoat, rubber snowboots, and moleskinpants, a shagcap and some fancy leathergloves. As luck would have it, though, me and Milky-John were both headoverheels for a sardonic little permobilwarf named Leif. He was one of the chosen few, he could crack a Rosita with his ass. Anyway, we were both assoverend, but you should know that that dollarstorewhore made the rounds kissing and karasarting with the dwarf and frankly it made me a little sick. Plus, he’d always been a burr-in-the-ass knowitall, and you know I can get pretty jumpy when I’m horny. That’s something I’ll freely admit. So anyway, we started brawling and John took a hunk of out of my back. But we finally agreed on a triangle and I began it by licking Milky-John’s chapped flange. But you know what that dumbfuck did next?! He started shouting about bottlefed lambs, hinting I sucked cock like a goitresick deacon. Then he sung in a snotty voice, “who can suck without slurping,who can flay without nails?” so I swallowed his pole whole and gulped his eggs. Then I bit them all off like a rabid badger and ate them up like a bootlegger.
I made my eyes wide and Grandpa lit two black Blends.
—I’ll never forget the look on his face when he figured out I’d just severed his salvation, Grandpa giggled. His face was as gray as Auntie Eskil’s roughest pube. Of course, I was choking with laughter, but John was so thickskinned he barely whimpered. Since then, though, he’s become the worst sort of homebody, a real brownnoser. But you know, it was like Leif and I were meant for each other. It was too bad he had diarrhea most of the time. I sold him to Sixteen Lammby, the trashpeddler, who was into dwarftossing. Poor Leif, it didn’t take much to make him puke, but he could tear up a cock like nobody’s business. Kissing him was like taking a mudbath, Grandpa reminisced dreamily. His tongue was slimy as a wombat’s ballsack and his saliva tasted like catpiss. I’m not ashamed to admit it gets me right here, right in the pants, just thinking about it.
—But Grandpa, what about the Old King?
—Come and sit on my knee, girlyboy, Grandpa said coaxingly, and I didn’t have much choice in the matter. It looked like the Old King was just gaga for the Uberrace. “I just want one night of your homespun ass,” the Old King, Mr. G, croaked as he rammed me with a tennis racket. He drywanked like that for about an hour until his Little Prince wept blood. Then he started to sob. “I wonder … might the king blow?” I asked. “You taste like fermented herring,” the King said, going all sham elegant and smacking his lips. He gave head like a girl, though, and I didn’t know whetherto laugh or cry. He was so fucking sweet I just didn’t have the heart to cum. So I smeared my cock with ricotta and planted it in His Majesty’s fungoidal lovetunnel. “This is one girl who can’t take it anymore,” Mr. G wept. You know, of course, that he was an archeologist. While I fucked him like a vole, he spouted some papist bullshit about balanitis’s conquest of Jericho. Next day, he was so sore he couldn’t walk. But did the Old King have the grace to say thank you, my boy, job well done? No sir! He refused to acknowledge me. It seems he was ashamed and regretted our lovely time together. “Don’t make a dirty mess of yourself with a woman, whatever you do!” he shouted as he left. The Old King may have been a tatty old sow, but he made me a man. I knew he liked Negro spirituals, so I sang “Give Me that Old Gay Religion” every time he got what he was begging for. But the brokendown old bugger was as ungracious as Satan himself.
As the story ended, Grandpa shook off his sorrow and anger. He let his gnarled pettingfinger glide from my navel to my cock, which stood upright to meet him.
—Now imitate the Little King, mite, he demanded and licked my left earlobe.
__________
Ficedula hypoleuca
—the pied flycatcher
Old King
—Gustav V
Little King
—Prince Carl Philip
who can suck without slurping
—allusion to a Swedish sentimental song “Vem kan segla föruten vind” (“Who can sail without wind”) Skaeliptom—earliest known name for Skellefteå
Spännarberget
—in Kåge
bumhook
—a game like Indian leg wrestling
karasara
—Swedish, a woman who likes to hop from one man to the next
balanitis
—inflammation of the foreskin and head of the penis
