Nikanor Teratologen - Assisted Living - A Novel

Grandpa’s hopscotching thoughts had stopped confusing me a long time ago. Logic is the first thing you’ve got to let go, if you want to be a Grandpa. “Logic is for whores, lawyers, diplomats, bankers, technologues, and professors … the earth’s damned!” he once said. “What’s more logical than an emancipated pussy?!” he liked to joke. “You should only use the genius God cursed youwith for tirades and diatribes … persiflage and pejoratives … interjections and imperatives … impulses and intuitions … idiosyncrasies stewed in internalsecretions … Just blasphemy and abuse …”

— I hate everything … Everything I know and everything that exists, everything I’ve dreamed and everything that could’ve been and wasn’t … I despise all the rest … Sweden’s cultural heritage would all fit in your average cunt … and that’s where it belongs, too … we’re gakis … wimps … archaebacteria in our festering sulphurate are our ancestors … World history reached its high-point with the Indian Thuggees … the Children’s Crusades of 1212, the Black Death and the Taiping Rebellion were good times, too … “Memoirs of the Kalda Railroad” was Kafka’s best work … On the Jewish Question was the best the eldest Marx brother had to offer … And so the apodictic linedance continues … The day should just surrender … it usually does, if you just wait a bit … windblasted and feckless, no thought for Papa Death … The days are getting harder to get through, though … they cling like burdocks and ticks … it’s worse than Surt … I surveyed the remains … the world is out there somewhere … so they say … This can’t be the real world … I’m sure of it … This is the evening county … Octoberland … night’s domain … the heart of darkness … The world is full of beasts in cages …jigaboos and gringos … No doubt they’re quick and bold … tightfisted and hardpressed … busy as bees and hard at work … Nothing but ninetofive, thedailygrind, productivity and stress … They love doing business … breeding and traveling abroad … sure, there’s a lot of hustleandbustle going on, but part of it must be goodnatured … They’re also progressive and prominent, emancipated and renowned … Quite a few knowquite a lot … they’ve got real purpose … good looks … They’re different than me and Grandpa … Sorcerers and organgrinders … crooners and streetcornerperformers … Everything in the big wide world just goes its own way … a lot of strife … A hullabaloo jamboree … Once you’ve got the devil in your boat, all you can do is row to shore … And there’s a cunt in every harbor … That’s a given … But if you come from the wild country, you better think twice about venturing out … into the world … the city … I mean, it’d be pretty ridiculous … just look at Samsara Lidman and Poas Enqvist … This here is more than enough for us … The fact is, it’s almost too much to bear … I cleaned up and then went to the john to see if I could shit … Grandpa came to the door and watched me work … he didn’t say a word … what the fuck’s there to say … he just shook his head and went to lay down …

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Leuchter — Fred: author of the Leucther Report, which denies the mass murder by gas of the Jews during the Holocaust

Swaggart — Jimmy: TV evangelist

Gudrun Schyman — Swedish politician and feminist

Norstedt — Swedish publishing house

Tiberius and the little fish — according to Suetonius, emperor Tiberius played this lascivious “game” in his self-chosen “exile” on Capri

Sisnadevas — phallus-worshipppers, possibly temple concubines (among numerous other conflicting interpretions of the word)

Laban and Åby — Former coaches for the Swedish national soccer team Surt — a figure in Norse mythology who will play a major role in the events of Ragnarök

Bibliomystikon — Lanz von Liebenfels’s Bible commentary

Michael Aquino — Colonel in the United States Army who helped to found the Temple of Set

Temple of Set — Satan worshipping Nazi cult

Battle of the birch — an old Westphalian legend tells about a sheep-herder’s vision of the BOB, in which an enormous Eastern army will be stopped and slaughtered by a devoted mass of Europeans. On Wiligut s advice, Himmler decided that the town of Wewelsburg, not too far from the Teutoburg Forest, where Arminius’s tribesmen defeated the legions of Publius Quinctilius Varus, was a probable stage for this world-historical event. Therefore, it became SS headquarters. Under the influence of Wiligut/Weisthor, the commander, Manfred von Knobelsdorff, attempted to revive the religion of Irminism. Irmin (Chrestos) was crucified by schismatic Wotanists in Goslar around 9,500 years before Thomas the Doubter walked the earth

Peter Arnett — legendary English-language foreign correspondent

Salubrin — a disinfectant

gakis — hungry ghosts in Japanese Buddhism

wimps — Weakly Interacting Massive Particles

Samsara Lidman — Sara Lidman, a Swedish author whose work was heavily influenced by dialect; Samsara is the cycle of rebirth, death and decay that Buddhists believe will be ended by enlightenment.

Poas Enquist — P.O. Enquist, a canonical Swedish author who grew up in Västerbotten.

— I’m Buddhist to the bone, Grandpa joked. I want you all to die for your desires, stop hating me, and let St. Lucifer dispel your errors.

— Oh Grandpa, you’re too much, Myrtle said carelessly and set out a round tray with seven different kinds of desserts: night — marefudge, Jewishbread, Dr. Ottaw’s Swedish Spritz, rectorynuts, Strassburgers, pretzelsticks, and chimneysweepcookies.

We were sitting in Signar and Myrtles kitchen, planning the next worldwar. It’s always transition time there: not winter, not spring, not this, not that. It was like life had stopped. Signar and Myrtle are peabrained, but popular. Meanwhile, Grandpa continued his wild ride on this latest cockhorse.

— The only thing that’s kept my engine running all these years is the dream of a neverending love! From Ascension Day to All Saint’s Day, my eyes have been locked on one prize, on our Savior’s pristine, white, ununspeakably sweet Godcock! Great will be his anger at those who don’t lube their assholes against the day of his return! Mighty are his hips! And his voice — sexy as shit! Like old Blue Eyes himself …

Grandpa came up short, he was running on empty. He fell back in his seat, suddenly dull and lifeless.

— Who knows if He’ll ever come back, at least not while the Social Democrats are in office, Signar continued.

His skinny, naked body was trembling in a cold watertub. He’s short as a seven-year-old and is on probationary discharge from the madhouse. His only hope, though, is a mongolstorm.

— Wherever you get people, you get trash, Myrtle threw out haphazardly.

She was busy as a whirligig in the kitchen, a ridiculously tiny person with limbs like toothpicks.

— Stop growing up if you want to find truelove. The others, the ones still growing, have no time or energy for their fallowman. It happens again and again. How many times have you seen someone throw out a judgment here, a complaint there, only to end up drawing the shortstraw? No one’s too little to love.

She hopped to the stove and jumped on a stool so she could reach the coffeepot. She had on a dirtygreen jacket with Elvis’s or maybe Kaltenbrunner’s face embroidered in purple on the back. Her clothes were made from crowskin and she had on a crepe-paper hat decorated with deadflies and kittenpaws. Finally, she clomped up to the table on mismatched clogs, climbed onto the rented sofa so she could serve us coffee, and then scowled over the dented brass mugs. Signar dried himself with a scouringpad and pulled on a pair of darkblue Landmann overalls. Instead of diapers, he used a copy of a newspaper called Land. Then he joined us at the table. Myrtle had set out flatbread and buns; with feigned irritation, she urged us to dig in. I had at it and came away sticky,but Grandpa just sat there and stirred sugary lump after sugary lump into his coffee.