Nikanor Teratologen - Assisted Living - A Novel

The old Grandpaclock rumblewaggled eight.

— Ezekiel’s lips were uncircumcised. His mamma worked at Goethe’s Pipe and Peg in Jörn. She was a godpardoned, slipperycunt who’d howl so you could hear it over all of Kvarken when she got some deaddrunkcock stuck up in her rosette … Ezekiel and I were the same age, but he only smoked filtered. In my wildest dreams, I never thought he’d end up in the Good Old Shilly-Shally Book.

Grandpa threw his Bible aside, lit an Alte Reiter, and opened the newspaper.

— Sträng and Helén are engaged … Archbishop Värkström and Ulf Ekman broke up … An oldboy in Risböle pissed himself in the chapel … intestinalvilli are wreaking havoc in daycarecenters throughout lower Skelleftecounty … Wilt the Stilt Chamberlain, the basketnigger, has fucked twenty-thousand loose cunts …

He took a nip of insulin, licked his fingers, and blattered on.

— Five hundred and fifty liposuctionsurgeons discharged in Pite … the fourteen-queerold Kicki throatfucked by rimthurs … bald, logomanic demon terrifies Uppsala with blasphemies …

He fell silent, blanched, swore.

— Cottoneyedjoes and festeringnewborns!

I hardbraked in the middle of dunking a fibroidtumor in witch’s milk and waited for more. Grandpa glanced up with an expression that reminded me of a buzzard poised over a mouse.

— They’ve got Jeffrey, he whispered.

Then Grandpa told me all about Jeffrey Dahmer, who had drugged, fucked, and killed blackhomos in some place called Milwokey. Apparently, he’d called and asked for Grandpa’s advice before starting the whole dirty business. Grandpa told me he’d expected a lot from him, because he had grit. A few days went by, and then we heard Nikolaj Dzjumagalijev, the womangobbling funster from Alma Ata, was going away. And when Donald Leroy Evans, who had sixteen-or-so juicy murders to his name, got nabbed, it was like Grandpa had been sent eastward out of paradise. For three whole days and nights all he did was sing the praises of massmurderers everywhere. He seemed to know most of them personally. He was smackdab in the middle of a sentimental harangue down memorylane, something about Kuno Hofmann, the “Vampire of Nuremberg,” when he began coughing blood. I helped him lay down on our pegsofa’s brightred cushions. Then, my arms around my Grandpa, I was out in a flash. Seventy-five hours among A-list murderers really does you in.

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rimthurs— in Nordic mythology, rimthurs, or Hrimthurs (“rime giants” or “frost giants”) live in Niflheim, the land of eternal ice

logomanic — logomania, diarrhea of the mouth

witch’s milk — secreted from the breasts of newborn babies, both male and female

— Who the fucks Sara Lidman? Or Torgny Lindgren! I’ve never heard of anything so moronic! Do they even exist?!

Grandpa was fighting with the bookbusguy, a little graybrown Zionist with glasses, egg in his beard, and a slut with a ponytail and a nervouscough. Grandpa had asked for a book by a bonafide Norrländer. Now he was going on and on about how downright vile, even sinful it was to waterdown fine words.

— What kind of titles are these, anyway? Blatherers and busybodies! Users and abusers! Fuck your motherfucking mother!

Their voices carried very well.

— Naboths Stone, Merabs Beauty … Husak’s Harmonica! Horthys Exhaustion! Conans Tears! The Elders’ Protocols !

Sullenly, he lit a Philip Morris and waited on the officiousinstigator. He was gulping down Jim Bean when the latter came bustling up with a new book.

— What about that guy Torbjörg Säve? You read anything by him? He lives out in Lule?

— He a homo?

— Nah, I don’t think so …

— Not him, he likes women! the cheekygirlie quipped. And he wears black boxers, she sighed longingly.

— Oh, for fuck’s sake. Is that all you’ve got! I’ll never be that hardupandhorny for something to read! Never! Throw it on the dungheap! Flush it down the toilet! Obscure wannabes, breadandbutter authors, coffeeshop poets! Marxistoid-apopleptic songs of enforced celibacy! Mediocrity’s apotheoses! Rookycliques! Habilehacks! Clever pauses, tedious passages! Not worth lickaspit!

Sharp gusts of wind echoed Grandpa’s ire. Fall was in overtime, though there was snow at the door. It was a transitiontime, neither fall nor winter, and that’s how it can be around here for months. When Grandpa’s mad, he gets stubborn. Now he was refusing to set foot in the yellowbrown bus, but just stood outside, threatening everyone inside with a flogging.

— Do you have anything by Nikanor Teratologen?

— Who?

— Teratologen of the Ten Thousand Tortures? The Misunderstood Genius! The Desktop Murderer! Locked away for life for one repeated offense: the serialrape of language! His words go down a rawcraw like butter! The Slayer of Euphemisms! Scurrilous Church Father! The Confabculprit! The Blasphemer! The Enemy of Mankind!

— So what does he write?

— The worst smut a dirty penny will buy! Bizarre baroque comedies! Downandout orgies! Repulsive yarns! Reptilian jokes! He’s morbid! obscene! makes you want to hurl! gets you going! I don’t remember any titles! By the devils pimpledass, though, he belongs to world literature!

— Never heard of him … Sorry …

— That’s not the kind of thing we buy here. Were only interested in serious authors. Cleanly written, clearly stated, with an ear for language’s subtleties …

— Adorno and Horkheimer! Pöhl and Greenspan! Torquemada and Savonarola! what a blessing it is to be stark raving mad! When I want to read something that gets downanddirty with mankind, it won’t be those fucks! That’s all I’m saying.

They went back and forth like that for a long time.

Finally, Grandpa borrowed two volumes of FUB-Contact and a colorfully illustrated book about “the life of the field digger wasp” by Gottfrid Adlerz.

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Sara Lidman, Torgny Lindgren — Swedish writers from Västerbotten whose work was heavily influenced by local dialect

Naboth’s Stone —by Sara Lidman

Merab’s Beauty —by Torgny Lindgren

FUB-Contact —journal for children with developmental disorders

Grandpa stood at the pulpit and read Max Ferdinand Sebaldt von Werth’s racemystical Sexualreligion for about ten seconds; then he took up Frodi Ingolfson Wehrmann’s The Germanic Tragedy: Divinely Created Women and the Fall … that lasted for about half a minute; then he tried to read René Fülöp Millers The Holy Devil and Otto Rahns Lucifer’s Court at the same time.

In the last five hours he’d gone through about 300 books, reading a couple of sentences, sometimes a full page. Now he was exhausted … He came over to where I sat with my Armeniangenocide coloring-book, lifted me off the floor, and shook me like a sackofpotatoes.

— Lanz and Wiligut! By the Devil, they could dance! They’re the ones who stood their ground! Why don’t you write that down in your dirty little diary, you Satan’s pegatu!

— What do you mean, Grandpa?

— Fuck me with a spoon, you little asswipe! Halfwitting nincompoop! Not another word out of you, you yapping old granny!

He tossed me like a stevedore into the thrashingposition, and I lay where I fell. If you don’t, you’ve sown your last seed … danced your last dance … He calmed down, though, enough that disappointment colored his words. He wasn’t dangerous anymore, now he was just depressed and scared.

— I’ve suspected for a while now that you’ve been writing on the sly, sugarboy, he announced, and I was just about to say we can’t have that … but you’re one crafty little bugger, and next time I’m sleeping you’ll just hide your trash somewhere else … I bet you’ve been spouting a lot of highstrung nonsense, something like Ludwig Derleths Proclamations … and I’ll tell you something, the thought shames me like a suckwench being questioned by a parishpriest … You’re too weak to indulge in swearing and bloodshed, blasphemy and some goodoldfashioned Kiruna violence … I bet you’ve got a nice little chapbook going there, you aren’t capable of much more … You’ll be the next Brecht … an asswipe who singlehandedly declares creation null and void … And publishers, you know, shriek like babies roasting on an openfire for more gangsters and psychos and allthatjazz … all you’ve got to do is pickyourpoison … But I’ve hit on the right medicine for an estruspumped little junker like yourself … Before I sleep, I’ll see you nailed to the World Tree, so help me I will … that’ll put an end to your writing … once and for all … It’s for your own good! … what do you think Husserl’s and Derrida’s Grandpas thought of their little grandsons?! They should’ve blown their kneecaps off from shame! but instead, what did they do when their weetykes first started jacking around with words? They spared the rod, that’s what! … Me — I couldn’t have lived with the shame! A child’s faith and the Pearly Gates have always been good enough for me! and they’ll do for you, too, oh yes they will! now’s the time to get hard! and cocky! but there’s gotta be some fuckin’ moderation! once you start writing, you’re hooked! once you start thinking, you’re through! Just promise me one thing, boy: don’t come home one day all oozing with feeling! because once that happens, life’s over! Leave the writing to the sexmaniacs! the berserkers! the teeming, writhing masses! The hordes and legions! trying to crush each other with their own filth! the raunchier the cunt, the better the story! that’s how they think! and if I have to poke your eyes out with my own thumbitythumbthumbs, I’ll see to it you never become one of them!