He snored like a hornytoad. Softly, I stroked his beautiful head and dried the tears off his dry, cracked chin. Then I crept as near him as I could, pressed my body close and shook with silent sobs. I hadn’t been this horny since my dad’s mom died.
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Greve Hamilton — Swedish pipe tobacco
Abd Ur Rama — a fakir who turned up in Skellefteå in the 1930s and liked to stick long, coarse nails through diverse body parts
pitchhat — a gummy leather cap that sticks fast to a child’s scurfy, lice infested skull; when it’s pulled away, it takes both hair and dandruff with it
weaner — anti-suckling device used on calves
metho — denatured alcohol
epileptric …—literally “prince sausage,” a small Swedish sausage
Bukuttingi — literally “high hill,” one of the largest cities in West Sumatra
Rascher — Sigmund: Nazi doctor who carried out altitude and cold experiements with deadly results in the concentration camps
Gundestrup cauldron — Celtic archeological find
Gosta “Snoddas” Nordgren — Swedish singer and actor
Olga Korbut — Belarusian gymnast
Ida Nudel — Soviet-born Israeli activist
Holmträsk justice — the way of the fist
Medal from PRO(c) — an award instituted by the breakaway faction of the Public Retiree Organization, PRO-cocksuckers; given to the cock-sucking fogy with the fattest and ripest assboil
XXIV
The one thing I remember about living with my dads mom is that she liked to keep an even tone. She had a habit of suppressing laughter … I think Grandma was obese … complex … addicted to smokes … she knew what people were about, gave them all they could stand … she never talked to me, what would be the point of that … not that it made any difference … she took me in so she’d have someone to blame … she was enough and more than enough … she knew a thing or two … folded up toward the finish … she’d have had plenty left to take out on other people, if she hadn’t been so goddamned horny … everyone said so … they were right, though it sounds strange … we had it good, though … I and she … she and I … we just shut each other out … nothing was ever planned in advance … she wrung each day by the neck … sometimes she was sick … nothing to do then but starve … she’d sit with her head under the faucet … running cold water for hours … for days … she never told anyone what was wrong … she had a nose for slaughtersites … good grub to be had there … it was enough … since I received, I kept my mouth shut … she was a midwife once … when people got all upset at her, she just stonewalled them … she didn’t give a fuck … no point in getting your dander up … let them keep on keeping on, if that’s how they wanted to play it … that’s just how she was … I was safe … nothing ever changed … day and night, summer and winter … there was just a kitchen and a Grandma … a silence like outerspace … she did the best she could … it was the way she was made … it was all she’d ever known … she wouldn’t tolerate baloney and hogwash … if things weren’t normal, she made them that way … order and manners never killed anyone … she didn’t want to be a bother … didn’t want to make a fuss … just wanted to keep an even tone …
When she died, I didn’t know what had happened … All I know is that Grandpa came and got me, and it started to tingle down there, and my heart started to pound … That’s where it started, the thing that will soon be ending. I decided to ask Grandpa if he remembered what it was like to be little.
— Not a damned thing! Lucky me!
— Can’t you remember anything?
— My old Grandpa ordered me not to remember … He was stout and proper … Carnap and Frege, they were his poison! He was stylish and popular! down to earth as you could get! strict with all and sundry! it wasn’t worth it!
— But how did you have it?
— My life was sunny! rosy! huddlycuddly! What a childhood … Fondled and coddled by all and sundry! If I didn’t have time to play, my friends would off themselves assemblyline style. Everything was grand, I was so fucking happy I don’t even want to think about it!
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Carnap — Rudolf: German-born philosopher who embraced logical positivism
Frege — Gottlob: German mathmatician and philospher, hes considered to be a founder of modern logic and analytic philosophy
XXV
I woke up to Grandpa emptying his balls on my face. He made me slurp the trickle from his head, and then he lay back down and read a Bamse story, the one where Little Hop meets Gut Twister. Grandpa cackled, struck a match on my eyelid and lit a ciggi. When he finished with the paper, he snubbed out his ciggi, shut his eyes, and stopped breathing for a few minutes. A gradufly crept into Grandpas cocainepitted nose, drawn by the soursweet scent of brainrot. I felt weak and wobbly, all I’d had to eat for the last few days had been a Saintpaulia.
Mumbleslumbering, Grandpa dug up a lecture about Henry the Fowlers winter campaign against the Hungarians in the year 920—according to the criminalchristiancalendar, that is. I let him talk, but I didn’t listen. Then he hummed a Grandpa original, a hymn to Basil II, the famous Bulgar-Slayer: “The Lord gave me thirty-thousand eyes to put out …”
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Bamse — in this case, a reference to “the world’s strongest bear,” a Swedish cartoon character
Henry the Fowler — German king from 919–936
gradufly — an insect drawn to curious or questionable smells
XXVI
We were in Skellefteå on our way to Etage, a nightclub, but the townies there were all worked up.
— Fallrot makes them anxious, Grandpa said reassuringly.
So here’s what happened next … We went down to Bastuliden and stole an old Opel coupe. The owner came rushing out and grabbed hold of the bumper. He managed to stay with us a good long while. Then we drove up to Kågedalen again to see if Eilert and Signar could hang out, but they bailed on us. Fall was going strong, there was a riot of color wherever you looked. Just the right time for having a little fun. As usual, the old Kåge road-torturous curves paved with gravel — was too hard for Grandpa to take. He was all excited to try it anyway, though, so he put the pedal to the metal right where the road begins. At Twelve Meter Basin, we went into a ditch doing a good hundred-and-thirty. The car flew into a copse of trees, rolled once, and burst into flames, but we weren’t hurt. No, I just went through the windshield and bit clean through my lip. It only goes to show that even when were taking a falsestep, we’ve got fallenangels watching over us.
— Now you don’t need lipstick to pull a good pout.
We had to walk the last few kilometers. On the way, Grandpa speared some hedgehogroadkill with a stick and began to munch. Two cars tried to run us down; they honked and gave us the finger. We saw a bullelk with bloody antlers crushing a toddler in its jaws. He disappeared into a copse of young, white birchtrees that — slender and attractive — were being stroked brusquely by the east wind. Out toward Torp Road, we spied a nice ride parked off in the trees. It was a winered Saab Turbo. It was bumping and jumping, so we knew something funny was happening. We crept forward and Grandpa quietly opened the passenger door. The scene that greeted our eyes was enough to make a midwife blush: the shirted back of a man no longer in his prime, and pimpled asses moving like they had minds of their own … heaving and bucking … His tie was slung over his shoulder and he had on wrinkled, damp socks … his feet jerked when the door opened … Beneath him was some kind of animal … red, bloated, and panting … it looked like a caughtrabbit … whimpering and moaning in fearful ecstasy …