— 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 …
— They just insist on having their Filly Division, Eilert complained. At sixteen hundred and forty … It’s so fucked up, you wanna weep blood.
— Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.
I snickered to myself and oiled the boy up as if my life depended on it. I knew that Grandpa had never backed a winning horse. But he wastes ten thousand a week on it, sometimes much more.
— Messalina might be a possibility, but her form is as questionable as Celan’s.
— Jewdevil, snuffled Petunia.
— I prefer Céline, admitted Grandpa. And Petiot … Unfortunately, I think that Simian Cunt will overtake her on the inside, so Brazar might as well run himself off a cliff. He’s cooked … Pasiphae will do okay coming up the rear and Stig H’son’s Stig H’son, so Color Queen’s got a shot at the finish, despite her handicap. Semiramis has been in rut, so there’s no telling about her. Like as not, Shekhinah will turn out to be a thorn in everyone’s ass …
— You don’t like Steaming Snatch?
— Not a bit. Can’t hold out on the inside.
— Who would you put your money on, then?
— Fat Fuck from Gärdsmygsmark is riding Kolli, but his position’s terrible. It’s a fucking shitrace that ought to be totally covered with Dazed and Confused, Hog’s Dong, Lobotomy Lobell, and Freak Show.
— And Bronze? I’d pegged Katyn Forest myself.
— You’re on the right track! He flew from sixteenth position on the outside to get past Oradour at sixteen to one! The third track behind the starting car goes smooth as a nippercock into a lubed toiletpaperrole. If he flounders, Åke Svinstedt and Zyklon B. might do something. Of course, Sharpeville, Shatila, My Lai, and Kolyma Vacation all might have beginners’ luck.
— Class III against Class I then?
— Gamble on every horse you can afford and then some! Oracular Orifice has class, but he does his best work at the head, which he’ll never get to, so. Olle Boop will trounce the Gobbler, you mark my words. He’s been gone six weeks, though, and the fourth track’s the worst imaginable. Mau-Mau, Nice Rape, Chickens Bladder, Potlatch Poodle, and the Coroner have all got the same chance. You can’t dismiss the rest, either.
— All right, I took your advice, Granpageezer! We’ll see just how psychic you really are.
— Thanks to me, handsome, you’ll hit so hard, you’ll be able to buy all the love on the market.
For shits and grins I checked the results on Sunday:
Sec. I. Filly Div., nr. 2 Bum Pus.
Sec. II. Class II, nr. 6 Gangrene.
Sec. III. Coldblood., nr. 1 Hairybeaver.
Sec. IV. Gold Div., nr. 9 Package
Sec. V. Bronze Div., nr. 5 Jasenovac.
Sec. VI. Class III against Class 1, nr. 1 Aiwass.
Grandpa had done it again. V-6 paid out two hundred thousand, but Eilert never brought it up.
__________
Kvasir — God of poetry and wisdom in Norse mythology, created from the combined saliva of all the gods; his blood was used to make the Mead of Poetry
Vera Renczi — A Romanian socialite, who in the 1920s seduced and murdered thirty-five men, and then stored them in zinc-lined coffins in her cellar
Shabbetai Tzvi and Nathan of Gaza — Shabbetai Tzvi was a manic-depressive self-proclaimed Messiah who in the 1660s started large-scale uprisings among Jews the world over; it was through Nathan of Gaza’s preaching that Shabbetai first became convinced of his mission
Galut — in Kabbalistic terms, the world in exile, deprived of God’s mercy
Kelipot — the realms of darkness
ebene — hallucogenic drug used by the Yanomamo Indians in the Amazon
tzimtzummed — tzimzum: the idea that God contracted and withdrew Himself, in order to “make room” for creation
Bok globule — dark cloud of dust and gas where stars are formed Shub-Niggurath — read old H.P ….
Kokkola — town in Finland
Psilocybe cubensis — a hallucinogenic mushroom, probably identical to the Indo-European Soma, the source of holy ecstasy
Petjot — Marcel Petiot, Parisian doctor, three years younger than Céline; murdered by injection around seventy people who were trying to flee Nazi-occupied France; Petiot told them they would need to be vaccinated in order to emigrate, injected them with cyanide, and then took their belongings
Iasenovac — World War II Croatian concentration camp