Assisted Living: A Novel (17 page)

—A Fanfarlo and a Horla, please! Those are absinthes!

They didn’t have any …

—A Mafarka and an Uomo finito then!

They didn’t have those either …

—Two beers on the house! Just joking!

A skinny, stuckup redhaired primadonna poured the beer …

—Ninety-six kroner.

—Couldn’t you give Zebulon and Bombi Bitt a break …

—No …

Grandpa sipped the foam and then took a couple of gulps … bared his goldteeth …

—Tonight will make the Battle of Catalaunian Fields look like Sunday school!

He had to shout to be heard over the music …

—I haven’t felt this pumped since they shot Kennedy and MLK!

Grandpa bent toward a shy, sweet boy with a deshimaric expression, the kid looked like he was trying to become a part of the mineral kingdom … Grandpa recited Mallarmes “The Afternoon of a Faun,” toasted him, and turned back to me …

—I’m going make the rounds … Wait here …

He forced his way up the stairs to another bar … doling out punches and benedictions … mockeries and hypocrisies … parodies and repartees … people eyed him askance … I leaned on the rail overlooking the dance floor … It was jampacked … flooded with bodies … they jerked and twitched spasmodically … they looked like they were doing jumping jacks … it thumped and throbbed … some poor bastard was singing: “she has sperm in her hair that only I can see” … While I was standing there, a tall, balding man in wirerimmed glasses and a jetblack outfit came up and touched my breasts … he didn’t have a prayer … He smelled like Absolut Citron, insisted he was Ignatius of Loyola, a member of the Leibstandarte, and a necrology student in Uppsala …

—Can I give you an enema …

-No, thank you …

—Abdominal abominations! he shouted. Back off, bitch! Can I at least take your temperature?

—I said no …

He folded his hands in a parody of prayer … Then he slurred out “lord of silence, supreme god of desolation,” wrote “Make love, don’t fuck! The soul of a woman was created below Jesus Christ I beg your pardon you indescribable tramp …” on a napkin and stumbled on, looking for a woman to love him to death …

Grandpa came back from his adventure, elbowed aside some little windbag …

—What a drag! I had to lace some glasses with cyanide up there, this place is just crawling with heteros!

Despondently, he examined the rocking and writhing clumps of flesh lit by the flashing lights way up on the ceiling … the song ended … the next number was a slow one … Steers hit cows up for a dance … it was disgusting … it’s only Gere and Swayze who respected gender boundaries … they danced hip-to-hip, mouth-to-mouth … If I could only find words, to tell you I’m sorry … A big, bushybearded, greeneyed man of indeterminate age shoved his way to the railing … He smiled a shy, miserly, unpleasant smile at Grandpa … he had on a black shirt with a big silver Thor’s Hammer around his neck … Levi’s 503 . . fucking jew-jeans … still, he had a nice ass … hard to say if he was sad or mad … Grandpa went up to him … laughed condescendingly … kissed him tyrannically … they got to talking … two of Satan’s own … they seemed mighty friendly … their conversation lasteda while … I gave a couple of guys high up on the permillascale the brush off … tossed my hair and smoked like a girl …

They parted with a handshake … Then Grandpa yelled in my ear …

—Nikanor’s one of a kind! There’s no one who can taunt cunt as disgustingly as he! When he was young and soursweet, he sullied his magnificent vandalcock in more than a few rancid hellholes, let me tell you! He likes to think of himself as an intransigent refractor! That is, until the next bout of cuddlesickness hits him! Then he shifts into overdrive!

—God creates work and Old Nick stress …

—Exactly! But he’s a good guy, just a little weak and indecisive … If anyone can describe the way the world works, it’s him … Odin speaks through him … right now he’s working on “Lovesong to the Maneating Animal,” plus a distortion on “The Biological Abnormality of a Woman’s Need to Breed” … He’s the last true Nietzschean … a courteous, lecherous voyeur …

The music begin again, “My Home Town” by the Wankadies.

—Time to stir the pot, mite!

Grandpa asked everyone in sight to dance, but they said no … then he guzzled their beer … a storm was brewing … There was a crowd at his heels … a bunch of beefyoafs … giantbabes … young-pups … They didn’t attack, because he looked so frail … but they told him to pay for the beer … Grandpa gestured and joked … the trashier tramps laughed … the swankier skanks drew back … the mob closed its ranks … drowned out Grandpa with scurrilous words … suddenly he was holding a silenced Glock … he started with the loudmouths … three of them fell with holes betweentheir eyes … Grandpa headed for the exit and I followed … it was hard to make progress … I slit my skirt up so I could go faster … Grandpa shot a bouncer in the belly … stabbed a pair of leviathans … We sprang across the square … Grandpa reloaded in flight … turned and shot down the two who were chasing us … more were coming … We sprinted past a kiosk … a dark car was making a turn … Grandpa wrenched open the back door … waved his Glock … three passengers threw themselves out … we hopped in … Grandpa told the guy to drive like Holy Mary was giving birth in the backseat … tires squealed … past the policestation … onto the E4 … going the wrong direction … north … I mumbled the end of the 137th Psalm, the same thing Signar dreamt about: “O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us—he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks” … The driver got into the right lane at the Kanalgate intersection … no one was following us … we were headed home … away from the city of woe, eternal pain, the population of loss …

—Well, that’s an evening that will go down in history … it was so fucking boring … Everyone and everything was just nasty and ugly … it takes your breath away … it bowls you over … shocks you to the core … They’re like the Viet Cong and Hezbollah all rolled into one … I’m not used to that kind of reception … And you, you asspicker, you’d defend them, wouldn’t you, he said to the driver, shoving the gun into his neck.

—Please, I don’t know what you’re talking about … but I’ll take you wherever you want to go, just don’t hurt me …

—We want to go to Hebbershålet … You know where that is?

—Somewhere around Hebbersliden …

—It’s the Land of the Hyperboreans … can’t be reached by land or sea … It’s airyanem vaejo … swetadvipa …

—Just tell me where to go …

—To the journey’s end …

Me and Grandpa sat quietly and watched the darkness race by. The coniferoustrees embraced their lost sons … In Hebbersfors, Grandpa hold the guy to stop … shot him in coldblood … with coldblooded courage … a lot is excusable, when you don’t get worked up … We nicked a couple of bikes and rode to Västbäcks Bridge … cross at your own risk … Then we went home, just as cold, tired, and loveless as before … We crawled into bed, both agreeing it would be a long, long time before we went clubbing or pubbing again.

__________

Publicatae enim pudicitiae nulla venia
—“The loss of chastity meets with no indulgence”

Furthermore, since they did not think, etc.
—Romans 1:28

Bikila
—Abebe, champion marathon runner from Ethiopia

Sydow
—Max von, Swedish actor

Mishima
—pen name of Japanese author Kimitake Hiraoka

Issei Sagawa
—murdered a Dutch classmate while attending school at the Sorbonne in 1981, eating part of her corpse; having returned to his homeland, he is now free and enjoys a cult following of sorts (books and films have been made about him, rockbands sing his praise)

Malleus Maleficarum
—1486 treatise on witches, by Heinrich Kramer, Inquisitor

Something bustled in the hedgerow
—see “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin

Jacques de Molay
—Grand Master of the Knights Templar, burned alive on the order of Philip the Fair

Hermann von Salza
—Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights from 1210–1239

Siegrunen
—Waffen-SS history journal

Teiresias
—seer punished with blindness by coweyed Hera when he claimed that women enjoy the “love act” incomparably more than men

AIF
—corruption of AIK, the town of Skellefteås beloved hockey team

Jocko Nyström
—Joakim Nyström: tennis player from Skellefteå

Erika Norberg
—Swedish journalist

Mats Wilander
—Swedish tennis player

Malmsteen
—Swedish heavy metal rocker

Ivar LOB Johansson
—Ivar Lo-Johansson: Swedish author, wrote
Only a Mother

Mora Martinsson
—Helge Maria Swarts, also known as Moa Martinson: Swedish author of
Mor gifter sig
(Mother Gets Married)

Vilgot Moberg
—Vilhelm Moberg: Swedish author, wrote
A Time on Earth
.

Jesus Gardell
—Jonas Gardell: Swedish author

Klas Östergren
—Claus östergren: Swedish author, wrote
Attila

Maran Kandre
—Mare Kandre: Swedish author, wrote
Bübins unge
(Bübins Child)

Povel Ramel
—Swedish entertainer

Tage Danielsson
—Swedish author and entertainer

Evert Taube
—Swedish author and entertainer

Tage and Aina
—Aina Erlander was married to the Swedish prime minster, Tage Erlander, for fifty-five years

Cornelis Vreeswijk
—Dutch singer-songwriter, put out a tribute album to Evert Taube entitled “Cornelis sjunger Taube” (Cornelis Sings Taube)

Kjell-Olof Fält
—Kjell-Olof Feldt: Swedish social-democratic politician, wrote a memoir entitled
Alla dessa
dagar
(All These Days)

Lazar Kaganovich
—Soviet politican, known as the “Iron Lazar” for the zeal with which he carried out Stalin’s orders

Traci Lords
—American porn star

Eliot Cannetti
—Elias Canetti: Bulgarian-born author who wrote in German, author of
Auto-da-Fé
); he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981; his loathing of T.S. Eliot is legendary

Bruno Skult
—Bruno Schulz: Polish writer and translator

Sven Hassel
—Danish author, wrote
Kommando Reichsführer Himmler

Daddy Cool
—Australian rock band

Lieutenant Onada
—Hinoo, a Japanese intelligence officer; for a number of years after World War II had ended, he sat isolated on some godforsaken island, firmly believing that the war was still going on

Count Gyula Andrássy, etc.
—the Habsburg Minister of Foreign Affairs; together with Bismark, he negotiated the alliance with Germany in 1879

Ngugi
—John, Kenyan, one of the world’s best cross-country runners

Humwawa
—demon, master of perversion, face made from viscera

Mangu
—Möngke Khan, descended from Ghengis, he ruled in the 1250s over the largest state that ever existed

Mokelé-mbémbés
—dinosaurs still believed to be living in tropical Africa

Sickan Carlsson
and Thor Modéen
—Swedish actors

Anticimex
—Swedish hardcore punk band

Baubo
—old woman in Greek mythology; tried to cheer the goddess Demeter up while the latter was mourning the loss of her daughter

Kaiomortz
—both beast and man, the oldest of all creatures

Nyarlathotep
—read Lovecraft already

Igjugarjuk
—Inuit mystic who claimed that the way to wisdom was found through solitude and suffering, far away from men

Saida in the
Hemmets Journal
—“Home Journal”; Saida Andersson was an advice columnist

fotzelovers
—
fotze
is slang for “cunt”

Mazdaznan-Hanisch
—Otto Hanish founded the Mazdaznan movement, a synchretistic religion focused on health

the secret teachings of Saprophytism
—being the teachings of something (or somethings?) living off dead and rotting substances

Mundebo and Jan-Erik Wikström
—Swedish politicians, members of the People’s Party

Bildt
—Carl: Swedish former prime minister and nowadays foreign minister

Anna Lindmarker
—Swedish journalist

Einsatzkommando
—a Nazi killing squad active in World War II

Pastor Paisley
—pastor in Northern Ireland and leader of the Democratic Unionist Party

Garn howled outside of Gnipahall
—in Norse mythology, Gnipahalla was the entrance to Niflheimr (the “Abode of Mist”) and the wolf Garmr was set to guard the entrance

Renat
—Swedish vodka

AMS
—Swedish National Labor Market Board

Svante Thuresson
—Swedish jazz musician

John Houdi
—Swedish illusionist and magician

Svarte Filip
—Filip Johansson or “Black-Filip”: Swedish soccer forward

Arschberg
—Robert Aschberg, a vulgar TV-show personality

Pier Luigi Farnese
—black magic made him rape the Bishop of Fano (according to Jacob Burckhardt)

Vi i femman
—“We in the Fifth Grade”: a Swedish radio question and answer show for children

Race Gunther
—Hans Friedrich Karl Gunther, influential Nazi Nordicist

Glaube und Schönheit
—“the Faith and Beauty Society” was a Hitler youth organization open to young girls ages seventeen to twenty-one

Christmas Tree Plundering
—a Swedish festival that takes place on January 13th (Saint Knut’s Day), which marks the end of the Christmas season; Before the Christmas tree is thrown out, it is “plundered”