Assisted Living: A Novel (7 page)

Grandpa was in bed with his cock wrapped in a wet, warm towel, reading aloud from
Geronto-Eroticon
by Ernst Carson, the Skråmträsk devil.

—“…let men protect their sweet flesh from sexual intercourse with sundrenched whores—hair like frostbitten chaff, asses like rusty, sooty, greasy burntout ovens” … bring me my munchies, you little rat!

I sat in my dogcrate gnawing on the corn growing on my largest foot.

—Bring me my special brownies and buttermilk!

I went to get his snacks. Down in the kitchen, a feral cat was raping a cacklingtease of a laughinggull. I walloped them both with a firepoker and went back upstairs with Grandpa’s evening snack. When I got there, his hoarse wheezing voice washed over me like the scent of pigs roasting near Smammarn.

—“…Augustine already wrote about how nasty, dirty, sleazy, and queasy a womans embrace can be … Kill the firstborn of her loins! Let a cry be heard from every sty! For every killingblow, a man goes free! As long as a single motherwomb exists, we’ll never find our way back to Our Father! We’ll be nothing but wideeyed little boys when Doomsday’s Bloody Sunday strikes! On that day, magisters will roll up the starry skies! The earth will swaddle us like a rotten mummy’s bandages or a stinking, unchanged diaper, hail big as horseballs will beat the recreant earth blackandblue … Copperbright bikers with awful hygiene will wander cold waiting rooms with shaking voices: ‘How odd that mommy’s late

Grandpa put the thick leatherbound book away when I crept close to the bed.

—Ernst was a fellow with the right attitude, he said. He could tear the throats out of a hundred and fifty chickens a minute and never show a trace of remorse … the guy was icecold … But his writing is as bad as a cop’s.

Grandpa opened the box and crammed his mouth full of special brownie. I poured his buttermilk into a mug.

—I could tell you things about Ernst and his life that would make Unicef and those Save the Children queers look for a nice quiet corner to curl up in and die … But I think I’ll give you an oraltest instead!

His sharp, level gaze turned Latinate.

—What are the sevendeadlysins?

—Humility, generosity, chastity, modesty …

—More!

—Uhhhohhh … bulimia! meekness and productivity!

—Bravo, boy, you’re the slowest of them all … And my totem is …?

—The brown rat.

__________

Smammarn
—small lake in Lappland

Skråmträsk
—village in the Skellefteå

—I owe all I know to the Herrey Brothers, Grandpa said, looking embarrassed and taking a drag from his Kent ciggibutt.

—All too often the all too many assume it was Nietzsche himself who transformed me into natures stroke of luck, which is what you could say I am. But no! it was the Herreys!

—What about Basedow and Bekhterev?

—I met them when life had already used and abused me until I felt like Sigge Fürst trying to blow Satchmo. Of course, Hegel’s Phenomenology and Schreber’s Memoirs served their purpose, when I decided to dynamite my brain so it became as small as a strandloper’s. Think and feel as little as possible, always be happy and kind! he commanded and speared a titmouse with a dart.

__________

Herreys
—a Swedish pop group made up of three Mormon brothers

Basedow
—Karl Adolf von, a German physician who studied Graves’ disease (also known as Basedow’s disease)

Bekhterev
—Vladimir, Russian neurologist who studied what came to be called Bekhterevs Disease

Schreber
—Daniel Paul Schreber, author of
Memoires of My Nervous Illness
.

Sigge Fürst
—Swedish film actor, known for appearing in the films of Ingmar Bergman, among others.

strandloper
—Afrikaans, “beach walker,” name for a native bushman

—You may think you’re a boy, but you’re just a fuck, my own dear Grandpa said, laying it all out for me. Anyway, the one measly adventure I remember was taking the bus to Auntie Eskil’s out in Tåme. He was gentle as can be and always offered you a mix-edracejuice and priestscurfpowdered kannibiscroissants stuffed with livelampreys. Weather willing, we’d look out onto his grisly little courtyard. He’d also turn on the radio, which must’ve gotten screwed up somehow, because it was always playing the same program.

—Andthenwhat?

—Uncle Sven would force his commando rod deep into some creep named Nils, who lived out in Rykhyttan. Auntie Eskil was small and plump and sugarysweet, but he was a terrible talker. He never said anything you expected, his voice stuttering and limping along. He was so deranged and dejected it was a wonder he was allowed to roam free. He kept up an erotic correspondence with Eugén Andersson, the busty cherubchef from Burträsk. He had an original copy of
Death and the Maiden
by Hans Baldung

Grien up on the mantel. He’d written a forty-thousand line epic in alexandrine verse about the Emperor Caracalla. But Auntie Eskil couldn t stand other people’s eyes and voices for long, so after coffee heel get hotheaded and give us the coldshoulder. If we were lucky, he’d teach us to drown cats and geld mice. Fuck me, how we’d bug him to show us his cock! Then whoever wanted to could touch it …

I tried to creep up into Grandpa’s lap, but he wasn’t having it. Then he saw how sad I was, so he relented.

—Come on up here, then.

The canechair creaksqueaked and outside the windows, which were all nailed shut, twilight creatures squawked out their foolish desires. The TV is homemade, it’s round and square, and usually all it gets is shit. Above the TV—to one side of the Mandela poster and the postmortem photographs of Rosa Luxemburg, Béla Kun, and Benno Ohnesorg—there’s a rabbit strung up by its back legs. Stuff is starting to grow on it, but Grandpa doesn’t think it’s time to throw it away yet. On the other side he hung up a velvet portrait depicting the popular motif of “chainsmoking infants.” The wallpaper in the sittingroom is a patchwork thing and curls at the edges. That’s where I’m writing now. That day the north wind was huffing and puffing away, it was a normal evening, where everything that exists seems like it’s over and done, and the autumn night was busy destroying every tie that, oddly enough, still bound. I was in the mood to get cozy, but Grandpa put a stop to it. No wiggleroom for me tonight.

—Sit like a real person, parasite!

If I’d pushed my luck, I would’ve seen a rampant bull … I would’ve found out why Zarathustra burst … he would’ve made a Spanferkel of me … I had one knee hooked over the arm of the chair and my whole upper body was unsupported, but I had to stay stockstill and couldn’t twitch a muscle. Grandpa fussed restlessly with the controls. All at once, Gyllenhammar was sobbing and begging forgiveness for his “pitiful vermin existence” … On Channel 2, Lena Liljeborg was red, bloated, and bursting with laughter as she talked about the teeming animal life in Jane Bjorck’s blondebush … He fluttered between one flickering channel and the next. Afrosport was showing the tongueswallowing championship in Djibouti, Screamsport reported on a qualifying match in propheticdreaming, MTV was featuring the Headbanger’s Ball, and RTL Minus a long cavalcade of deathjumps, mostly from rooftops and bridges. The Children’s Channel was playing Transsexual Videos, Hyper Channel was running an installment of that autopsy series called
Bibersmut,
the Loser Channel had a special report on stuffedanimals demanding tribute from their owners. Here in Hebbershålet we also get the channels you cant find in other places. One runs shows by Swedish TV personalities like Jan Lindblad, Nisse Linnman, and Bisse, but without sound; one specializes in fiascofucks caught on hiddencamera; one exclusively shows garroting and grannieporn. Grandpas windpipe rattled, the channel needed changing. He didn’t have the energy to throw a fit, though. I pretended I was asleep.

He turned off the TV and carried me into the bedroom, crawling over the bookstacks as he went. Then he gently lowered meonto the urine-filled waterbed, kissed my forehead nightynight, lay down, and sent up a thanks for all we had received. Outside, everything continued as it was. It’s worse than you can ever imagine. No matter how deep you sleep, no matter how good you’ve got it, tomorrow always comes.

__________

Spanferkel
—suckling pig

Gyllenhammar
—Pehr G. Gyllenhammar, well-known Swedish businessman, CEO of Volvo for many years

Lena Liljebord
,
Jane Björck
—Swedish TV hosts

Jan Lindblad
—Swedish naturalist and writer. He was also quite a virtuoso when it came to the art of whistling

—You know you’re a man when you can tell the difference between having to take a piss and wanting to fuck, Grandpa declared and took a big honking swig of Jack Daniels.

—Geiserich’s fimbuleyes and fistulousdick! he swore, after he’d downed half the bottle. They must’ve let a nigger jerk off in that.

That meant that Kvasir’s Blood was especially potent today. We were sitting in a nettlebower with Eilert and Petunia. Summer had cum a few hours ago, but was good to go again. The sky looked like a rotten cloudberrycompote, the wind brought with it the ripe aroma of the gypsymassgraves up north. The only mixer we had was rosehipsoup; all we had to munch on was a thick slab of St. Lucia cake and a few soggy, lukewarm loinglands.

But:—They’ll be the main course, won’t they, Momma? Eilert had said when they turned up on the road leading to the caste villages and the Yehuda Triangle.

—Hellandhighwater, Grandpa, don’t you think a boy becomes a man when he kills his first Jew? Petunia asked, sucking on a Rio Brasil.

—Hosianna, but you sure can talk shit, woman! Grandpa exclaimed.

—Killing Jews is about as difficult as gaying up Foucault!

—But Globocnik said …

—I shit on Odilo! fumed Grandpa. And on his compassion! And on his scythe! And on his spatula!

—Shit, were so comfy here, Eilert broke in, can’t you two stop fighting?

—You better think about just who you’re dealing with, Grandpa warned him.

—Oh, we are, Eilert said, planting a kiss on Grandpa’s veiny, shriveled hand. Grandpas eyes narrowed dangerously as he glared at Petunia from beneath his forelock, but then he cast himself back into the Neapolitanyellow and Berlinblue hammock. Beneath the driedout layer of sperm and vomit, you could still see the bestiality motif from Suleiman the Magnificent’s rape of Europe in 1530. Vera Renczi had embroidered it with newbornbabies’ intestinalvilli.

—Hey there, boy, Eilert said, faking a laugh and trailing a finger over my neckshotdimple, don’t you have anything clever to say? I think you’re too silent and sullen for your own good.

—I don’t know about that, I said, dropping my eyes to my cock.

Not that there was much to see. They’d made that clear enough.

—Tell them about your noobproofs! demanded Grandpa.

—Okay, I’ve thought up three lazy and logical proofs for God’s existence. They come from how things are.

—Let’s hear them, you snotty windbag! Petunia quipped. Auntie’s a beast, she’d just as soon smoke a ciggi with her cunt as hermouth. She’s ugly as a walrus and she’s fat, foul, and knocked up to boot

—The three proofs of Gods existence are: I. Pain and shit (even though that’s how we like it). II. Everything’s so cunningly made (though there’s no point to it). III. Everyone’s nice to me (even Petunia, who’s usually nasty as an octoberotter).

First there was silence. The grasshoppers were chirping hard. That, combined with the garbagesparrows’ frosty cheapcheap, were the only sounds in the world. Everyone was elsewhere. Petunia shook her head and speared me with her eyes.

—You little demon, have you been sneakreading Jewdevil mysticism?

—They’re mine! I thought them up!

—But that sounds an awful lot like the concept of
tikkun
from the Lurianic Kabbalah, Eilert observed, a frail grin touching his vapid face.

—I don’t know anything about whatever you just said! It’s all mine! I haven’t snuckread anything!

—The only things he gets to read on his own are the Pnakotic Manuscripts and O’Donnells
The Worlds Worst Women,
Grandpa reassured them. Besides, there’s only Shabbetai Tzvi, and Nathan of Gaza is his prophet!

—Galut and Kelipot! swore Petunia, eyeing me skeptically, that boy deserves a worse fate than your average chainsmoker could think of!

—What are you going do about it, eggbrooder!

—Let it go, Eilert said, stroking Petunias plowhorse flanks soothingly. She’d sprung up from her Bergen-Belsen lawn chair with murder in her eyes.

—Let’s see what he’s got, he doesn’t have an easy life, you know.

She plopped back down on the deck chair, though, which collapsed beneath her. Grandpa started laughing like Czardas’s Princess, but at least he tried to smother it. With EiJert’s help, Petunia settled into an overstuffed chair. By now she was positively crackling with rage.

—Fucking Satanspawn, she growled. You can only take so much before your womb falls out! She plucked a thumbscrew from the trashpile and lobbed it at me, but it missed.

—I’ll spraypaint you with eggliquor! I swore in a thin voice.

—Not now, boy, soothed Grandpa. Don’t force us to go bashing heads. Besides, every once in a while Petunia fucking snaps and runs around like a berserker until there’s no one left breathing. Like that time in the bookbus. She was like Cu Chulainn … Or like a Yano-mami warrior who inhaled ebene and sang about flesheating hornets … You’ll have to excuse me, Petunia, but it isn’t the mite’s fault. That Bergen-Belsen isn’t meant for someone as fullskirted as you.

—It’s nothing, Eilert answered for Petunia, who was hooting like a capercaillie in a freezer.

—Anyway, let’s quit harping on the Jewish God, Eilert begged. It’s making my stomach sick and my dick limp.

—Here here, Grandpa proclaimed. Mr. J.V. Sabaoth isn’t even worth a consolation prize. And you know what, by George, I just remembered that that boy I bit to death last Sunday is still in the cellar. Why don’t we slap him on the grill? A bite to eat might stop us from squabbling like littleoldladies!

—Shouldn’t we have a nice game of croquette first? Eilert fretted.

—Nah, too
Alice in Wonderland …

Eilert agreed and Petunia nodded, but she had a look that said, it might be nice if … so I was sent away with a lash for my pains. I felt as outofplace as an outlander inland. I’m always getting in theway, but I can never get
with
anyone. Love seems like something chemical and technical: hard to come by and then painful when you come by it. I’m too ugly, though, for anyone to really want me.

I tried to stroke my dick, but it hurt. I took a shortcut across the Stubblefield toward the cellar, which is on the far side of the yard. The earth was black, the grass gray. The clouds squirmed. The woods pressed close. It was gloomy and stuffy and shot through with gusts of cold wind. I jumped over the sausagerack and tzimzummed between the Germanmaple and the dragonbloodtree, the snakebranchspruce and the bokglobules. The hillside was covered in mushrooms: death caps and bleedingconifercrust, trem-blingmerulius, devils bolete, sickeners and many more. They were varying shades of ochre, rust, lampblack, and terracotta. When I got there, the cellar door was already open. Something gurgled and chuckled, it sounded too gruesome to be human.

—Who the fuck’s there? I asked aloud.

—
Iäääh! Shub-Niggurath!
the terrifying thing howled.

—You’d better haulass back to Kokkola before I call Grandpa!

There was a shriek and then the sound of something writhing and pulsing down a tunnel. Then all was still.

—That’s right—you don’t get to play in our backyard, I sighed in relief.

Then, feeling so-so, I sank down onto the brown grass. Being Grandpas child is like playing Russianroulette. Fear was doing a number on me, but there was no point in asking for help. I’m more afraid of Grandpa than anything else; that’s because I crave his love. I drained the two mammothbeers I’d nabbed from some strangers. That put a little hair on my chest. After a moment, I was able to enter the cellar and turn on the gas. A flame leapedup, sending flickers pitterpattering down the passageway. It was sticky and rank. Most of what was down here had been hanging so long it was inedible. Whatever they’d once been, they’d definitely returned to their origins. A gooey string of grease snaked its way towards a hole in the floor. The meatlocker held a lot of crimcram: boysroomsmokers, greeneyedlouts, kwashiorkors—in other words, a lot of nipplesuckers were hanging from the dripping ceiling. After a moment, I found the kid Grandpa had jumped while the dolt was out trapping woodpeckers on Flakaberget. He was dangling from a meathook and wasn’t especially pretty. He was about my age, only bigger. I had a hell of a time trying to pry him loose because the hook was caught in his ribs. Finally, though, I worked him free. It happened so quick that I fell backward and he landed on top of me. I couldn’t drag him by the head, because Grandpa had taken such big hunks out of his neck that his skull would pop off. So I grabbed him by the ankles. When we finally made it out of the cellar, I turned off the gas and locked the door. Then I dragged him across the yard the same way I had come. I went as fast as I could, because I knew the others would get tired of waiting soon. I nearly got stuck in the hedge, but I pulled myself free. Exhausted, I finally tumbled into the bower. They all fell silent and stared at me. Grandpa twisted my nose without a word. He was cold and hard and I knew he’d been hitting the hooch. I tried to explain, but he pressed his death’s head ring into my cheek until it drew blood.

—That’s what a thirst for adventure and a hunger for knowledge will get you, he quipped.

—This meat looks ready to cook, Petunia said, drowning herself in ethanol. As long as he wasn’t shitting himself when he died. Fear makes the meat tough and bitter. Better to roast them alive, before they know what’s happening.

—I’m sure he’ll be fine, Eilert said.

—Just let me light the grill, Petunia said, wanting to show how capable she was. She emptied two fifty-kilo bags of walruspubes onto the two-meter-long grill. Next came a bottle-and-a-half of mouthwash. She downed the rest, since it was still “firewater.” Good plan, except she lit the grill without taking her cigarillo out of her mouth. That’s when the show got good. The fire leaped off the grill and landed in Petunia’s tangled mane. She stumbled around, arms waving wild, while brightred blisters blossomed all over her face. The fire cackled merrily and the oldhag howled to highheaven. It probably hurt, but it was fucking hilarious to watch. Petunias fiery blouse was itself a joy to behold; also the way her piggy flesh cracked and spit like fryingbacon. Grandpa looked on indifferently, but Eilert sprang up and pushed Petunia across the bricks and into our morayeelpond. He held her under the water until the fire was out. Good move, except that when Eilert pulled her up, she had a schweinfurtgreen, thighthick Beriamoray dangling from her chin. That didn’t last long, though. With a little cooing and coddling, Grandpa got it to open its jaws and sink back into the fermenting pond. Then Eilert smeared ramlotion on Petunias face and shoulders, and soon she was unconscious.

—Ah hell, complained Grandpa, making her down a few tins of a hundred-and-twenty-proof fermented Balticherringbroth.

—You look like hell, of course, but not really any worse than before. At least that’s something.

—Goddamn you, Grandpa, whined Petunia. What happened to me? Why is my face so hot?

She was completely out of it. All we could do was play along.

—It was heatstroke, Momma, Eilert lied suavely. But I greased your burns with butterandhoney, and everything’ll be fine again soon.

—I have to lie down, Petunia gasped and took a few tottering steps toward an inflatable Babar with three lubricated openings. At that, Grandpa played the good host and helped her down onto the squeaking plastic.

—I hope Frau Tjut gets her stiff a ad stately boxerman before her turn comes, she babbled and shut her singed eyes.

—No way, no how! Eilert exclaimed anxiously and flipped through a racingform.

—She’ll be fine, Grandpa assured him. Petunia is about as perverse as a Khmer Rouge in a gospelchoir. She’s cheated life, now she’ll cheat death. But I have to get on with my boycarving.

—Do you need help? asked Eilert.

—Nah. The mite’ll pitch in.

Buzzing like a drunken fly, Grandpa tossed the boy in the air, gripped him around the middle, and danced a Finnish gypsytango. We clapped time. Then he heaved the corpse onto the cuttingboard and broke the pelvis and shoulders so it would lay right. I helped him lash the body to the grill with steelwire. Then Grandpa gutted him. The bellystroke was nobly done. Small intestines welled out like lava or like a writhing mass of snakes. His large intestine was pale bluegreen, his stomachsack was shriveled. With dash and daring, Grandpa flipped out the liver and kidneys; he dug out the heart with true flare. Or maybe it was the pancreas and spleen, I can’t remember. He rinsed the cavity with reindeerpee. Then he filled the little cretin up with Psilocybe cubensis, grannycream, and manastuffed diaperrolls.

Eilert and I helped sew the kid up and light the grill. The fire beat at our eyes, hot as a Papuan sauna.

—Spice to taste with gunpowder and wormwood, Grandpa instructed. Whip together some cayenne pepper and absinthe and splash it on. Turn him as much as you like, use the grillbrush to apply all the oil you want. By the way, the oils made from a secret recipe I got from Emperor Bokassa. For the sake of longsuffering Jesus, though, don’t burn the food or I’m not responsible for what’ll happen next.

I volunteered for the job, even though I knew I was clumsy and weak. Grandpa took a piss, whistling something from
Madama Butterfly.
Then he settled himself into the seat of honor, lit a Morgoth and splashed half a liter of vitriol and tequila into a flowervase made from Saxon porcelain. Eilert stuck to sodawater with verdigris and morphine. He only smoked when he forgot himself.

—That jerkoff in the other division, what do you think about him?

—Who do you mean?

—Jim Klick, behind Speedy Blowjob.

—A laughingstock, Grandpa declared, utterly selfassured.

—What do you think about Sune P. Limpas saying that in the coldbloodedheat he’ll finish between Breker and Poor Dobbin?

—Onguard with Perrudja for sure. Last I heard, he cannon-balled twenty-nine-and-a-half down the track and did it hoofless and with a drunk jockey.

—North Swede horses are fucking thickdicked, Petunia said suddenly, not bothering to open her eyes. Negritos in nigredo …