— Yeah … Why?
— No reason … just checking … Qué será será …
He rang the doorbell and knocked. A cautious shrew opened the door a crack … Grandpa forced his way inside …
— Hellandhighwater, what’ve you done with Bempa?
— What are you implying!? Get out of my house before I call the cops!
Grandpa backhanded her and she fell down.
— And I politely asked where Bempa was, pissbag! I’m Lieutenant Onada and this is Wiener Sångerknaben! he shouted, pointing at me.
— Bempa’s sick … he’s in the living room … he got a brainbleed at Christmas …
— No worse than a headache nowadays … probably the same thing … You aren’t exaggerating are you, cunt?
— Bempa’s done for … he can’t even swallow … sometimes he doesn’t even know me …
— I wouldn’t know you, either, not if we’d been slaving side-by-side on the same galley for fifty years … Who the hell are you, anyway?
— I’m Bempa’s wife, Livia …
— Wife? If Bempa is fucking crazy old whores it’s no wonder he’s gotten sick! But I’ll put a stop to it, if it’s the last thing I do! Grandpa swore, dragging the woman by her hair toward the garage. I helped. And no matter how much she struggled and howled, Bempa didn’t show his face.
The TV was shrieking … it was Batman … an old gray Mercedes stood in the garage …
— Partytime! Here comes the refrain!
He told me to run and get a hose, and then attach it to the showerhead, so we could have warm water. While I did that, Grandpa held Livia down and pried her mouth open with a hammer. I turned on the hot water and he forced it down her throat … liter after liter … up her nose and in her eyes … up her ass, too, but by then she was already dead … Grandpa had hammered too hard..
We were banged up ourselves, but it was worth it. We went back into the house to look for Bempa … have us some guytime … he was in a urinesoaked leathersofa … entranced by the Joker … But Grandpa was the real thing … I turned the sound down … Grandpa walked in, plopped down, adjusted his glasses, and lit a Cinderella in an ivory ciggiholder …
— Hey there, Bempa, he smiled …
Bempa, though, was vacationing in the land where lollipops grow on trees and gingerbreadboys dance the hula … An inhumanly emaciated figure wearing a yellow collegejersey and sweatpants … frightened eyes … around fifty or so … just a baby, really …
— Grandpas here … everything’s going to be okay …
— Hogomooo …
— You’ve been a real champ, you know that … headaches are nothing to sneeze at, of course … you’re just a little skinny … you look an awful lot like that chess guy, Mikhail Tal … but never mind that, he’s my favorite …
— Gaa flaff motamaa …
— I’m doing fine! Fit as a fiddle! Fact is, me and the mite are going to paint the town red tonight. You got anything to drink?
— Schwuuu …
— That’s a no, huh … best go on a boozerun, while the boy keeps you company … he sticks out a like a sorethumb, I can’t be raiding stashes with him along … he doesn’t know how to behave himself …
Grandpa limped out and I was alone with Bempa … We watched Robin and the Penguin to avoid looking at each other.
— You know anything about Count Gyula Andråssy of Csikszentkiraly and Krasznahorka? he suddenly asked.
— Huh?
— Noopuulosch … Ngugi … Humwawa … Mangu …
— I don’t understand …
— Mokélé-mbémbés are found in Likouala …
— Uh huh …
— Sickan Carlsson gave Thor Modéen head … Ludwig II of Bavaria frenched Sacher-Masoch …
— Did she now?
— Kroogoshwiiri … Anticimex … Baubo … Mushoyoku …
— Don’t worry about it … Even Nietzsche ate his own shit and drank his own piss when the going got tough …
— I remember when King Filimer ordered us to march through the Pripjet swamps toward the Pontian Steppes … and that was after we’d destroyed the Harappan civilization … Blubblubbuuuwy! Kaiomortz! Nyarlathotep! Igjugarjuk!
— Take up piano … write to Saida in the Hemmets Journal …
— Hyynokoruta! Waaaaa! Wholottalow!
— Yeah … it sounds like you’re the toast of the town, all right …
— Craaaa … Toush … Boohoo …
— Yeah, it sucks … just be happy there are people in the world who have it worse than you …
It was already a quarter to six. Someone had taken a couple of hours and flushed them right down the toilet … The front door flew open and an arrogant voice sliced right through us:
— I’m back, fotzelovers! With war spoils from fallen Ilion!
Grandpa clomped on in like a porcelainelephant. He sat three bags holding three bottles in front of each of us.
— Let’s see your true colors, Little Boys Blue … The Holy Ghost guided my steps straight to a pair of lugubrious butterballs … We discussed Sigmund Fraud and then I beat them to death with a coffeepot … they had a good stash, too … enough for a real boozefest … They also had a few amphetamines tucked away …
He chugged half a liter of Smirnoff while standing, hurled the empty bottle at the wall, it broke a mirror and a clock, and then fished a scalare up out of the tank and swallowed it whole. He took a seat on the sofa, put his arms around Bempa, lit a joint, and farted contentedly … then Grandpa began to fire off his usual fusillade of fustian ideas and cackling harangues … he was in his element … flying high … Luthers and Hitlers table talk had nothing on Grandpas when he was like this … I only remember parts of it … his heads a real randomgenerator …
— Jesus is the posterchild for animal desires! Peter should’ve cut off his cock instead of his ear! “Suffer the little children to come to me and don’t stop before they’re bleeding from both ends …” —Matthew seventeen and nineteen … A thousand thanks, oh yes! Christianity says it’s okay to cast newborns before swine! That kind of talk makes me blush! Same with Luke fourteen twenty-six! And if that weren’t enough: you shouldn’t make representations of Gods likeness. He’s too ugly! If God exists, he owes me an apology! compensation for pain and suffering!
Grandpa scooted closer to Bempa and let his fingers shuck and jive a dirtylittleditty down his collarbone.
— We should stay light and transparent like “Mazdaznan-Hanisch” says! Erect a new Aryan high culture, where people sing of me and my adventures alone! Me and Tintin were named on the same day, in the same breath! They’ll print my divine mug on T-shirts and posters! like Che Guevara! Humanity’s most intimate little critters, crabs, and tapeworms, haven’t gotten the praise they deserve … Fuck me, but I’m going to devote an epic to those little bastards!
— Or to the brown rats stealing the world from the black rats, I piped up.
— You’ve hit the nail on the head, sprout! I’ll do it after I’ve finished my psychic war against the vibrators of Tinnitus XI! My other big project is rewriting the librettos to Wagner’s musical dramas! Cleansing them of all that unnatural sex! I want happy, girly, loser endings! Let Tristan have Kurwenal! Let the Dutchman be filled with spectral seamen! Let Tannhäuser party with the four nobleboys! Let Lohengrin, King Heinrich, and Friedrich von Telramund wear out other’s middleaged dreampipes with their plucky little karatepricks … let the fucking swan get in on it too! And I’ve thought of a fitting punishment for all those virtuous, cuntstinking temptresses, too … Elsa von Brabant will be fucked to death by the last group of mountaingorillas! Elisabeth will get knocked up by her father, Landgrave Hermann von Thüringen … then the fetus will bite and claw its way out like a bloody little gnome … Senta will get a job at a truckdriver cafe in Uganda … Isolde will take up with Fassbinder … Siegmund and Hunding will hook up and torture Sieglinde to death with rough old kikejokes … Siegfried and Mime will live happily ever after in the smithy … Brunhilde will burn up on the pyre that Wotan wisely enough tampered with … But I won’t change a note of the music! It’s just devilish!