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Then Grandpa switched tracks, took another detour …

— Pataphysics, petrochemistry, and pornobiology are the cornerstones of the bestialfaith … the secret teachings of saprophytism … Apropos: what wouldn’t you give to see the Olympian play of expression across the Geheimerat’s face while he jerks off into a paraffinsmeared erminemuff?

— How do you spell Goethe?

— G Ö T E … like it sounds …

— Koroo … Sonyhaiku … Pobbolollysatori …

— I think you’ve gone around the bend, my sweet … tuataras are pinealeyed, but don’t fret … a third eye is just one more thing to miss … during its centurieslong dozerregime, the Sassanidians conducted research in the field of oblivionstudies … They were blinded by moonlight and didn’t give a damn about appearances …

On the news, they were talking about a Bolshevik statue toppling happening in the Baltics …

— I wouldn’t mind having that Dzerzhinsky statue, Grandpa said with a rare tear in the corner of his eye. You’ll never hear me say a word against the Cheka, GPU, or KGB … Felix was a gentleman … And all the others, too … Yezhov, Pavlov, Mikhailov … Nijinsky and Stravinsky … I could best be described as a proud member of the Peoples Party … What else is there after Mundebo and Jan-Erik Wikström … If Bildt hadn’t been such a tedious fish fuck, who knows, I might’ve been a moderate … a neoliberal … newlysaved …

He spit at Anna Lindmarker and hit her between her beady little eyes … the blob ran down between her boobs … from the way her lips were moving, she was talking about something hot … Now Grandpa was telling a story about a sly old fart who’d lived undetected in a dumptruck for decades … And another who’d collected a lifetime’s worth of piss and shit in big barrels … and how his father had done the collecting for him when he was too young to do it himself … And about a bigshot farmer in Kågemarken who’d had special cages built for all his fuckable domesticanimals; only their noses and assholes were exposed; that way they could snuffle around and get fucked in the ass, but couldn’t put up a fight: he had bulls, boars, foxes, bears, gray owls, golden eagles, and everything else imaginable … He gave it up, though, after he installed an aquarium, got drunk, and tried to fuck a fifty-poundpike through the food opening … And Grandpa told us how to dig kiddietraps on the beach … Catch them with boathooks under the docks … And told us how it feels to fuck someone whose upperbody is stuck in a burningoven … He claimed that sourcecriticism is only valid when performed by the disabled … He told us how you can make a typewriter sound like an Einsatzkommando, just by pressing the right keys … He said that Max Stirner s The Ego and Its Own is the only philosemitosophistic work worth dragging yourself through … that the phrase “Ho Chi Minh sucks dead cocks” in Apocalypse Now is the only thing you need to know about the Vietnam War …

— Is there anyone else who thinks Bempa is a little down in the dumps?

— Me …

— You won’t say no to some fish and booze, will you deary? Grandpa asked, tickling him under the chin.

Then he went and got a colander from the kitchen and three tiger barbs from the tank. A last meal … He tried to feed Bempa the fish and to force some Bacardi down his throat.

— And now take a bite for Ohlendorf … and another for Pastor Paisley … and one for Pogonophorans …

But Bempa couldn’t swallow … the barbs came right back up … they flopped around on the labialhued broadloom carpet … Grandpa dumped twenty centiliters of alcohol over Bempa’s head. Then he sat and smoked quietly for a few minutes … half-watching TV …

— Am I the only one who wants to play Bismarck? … Oh well, spoilsport! enough of that! What are we supposed to do now, exchange luberecipes and talk trappingmethods?

— For Robespierre! yelled Bempa. Gmoopoffbaluuu …

— Shut your mouth, brainfry! Manu says, he who garbels language garbels everything … From his viewpoint, you’ve been found guilty … You’re worse than Michael Finnigan’s Wake …

Grandpa was dreaming up some new devilishness … the corners of his mouth were twitching …

— I’ll admit that my stomach is starting to rumble … I’d really like one of your kidneys about now …

He got out a Hubertus deerwhistle. It could make both a deer’s distress and an old goat’s mating calls. Grandpa pipped and squeaked first one, then the other … Bempa got confused and sat up … Garn howled outside of Gnipahall … Grandpa decked Bempa one and pulled off his leather belt …

— Before I take a kidney, I want you to blow me! That way we won’t wear out your shithole! he said considerately.

He put a Blessed Host on Bempa’s dry tongue and pushed in his cock … it wasn’t easy … Bempa didn’t have any spit … But Grandpa didn’t give up … the cock goes in, morality goes out … life’s one giant swing … the fun lies in jumping off right when you know you’re gonna fall … Bempa had come to the end of his long journey … he gaped wide … barfed when Grandpa’s cock rammed the back of his throat … weak yellow bile … Grandpa raged like he had rabies … punched and kicked … lashed out with his belt … blinded one eye with the clasp … He hooted and hollared … bent over and bit the carotid artery … Bempa crawled toward the kitchen … blood splattered across the cheap knick-knacks … a strong stream, dark and lively … Grandpa drank from the source … Bempa had served his purpose … Grandpapulled up Bempas shirt … sliced him with a glass shard … carved out the kidney … gobbled and slurped it down … took a drink … started to relax …

— Now you can eat, he declared, and I obeyed …

Luckily, that only meant that I was supposed to go down on Grandpa … otherwise I would’ve puked … I used an Old Norse sucking technique … Bempas bile tasted like French mustard … murder made Grandpa blasphemously horny … another person’s fear of death is the strongest aphrodisiac around … when Grandpa came, he shrieked curses at the Yankees and the Russians … his sperm tasted like mincemeat … then he gave me a quick jack … that was nice of him … Piglet and Pooh were on TV … my cum shot a few meters out … ran down the TV screen … Grandpa sobbed … he felt bad for Eeyore … Grandpa’s strongest point is his humor … his weakest is emotional instability … He buried his face between the sofacushions and waaaaahhhhh’d … I buttoned my fly, climbed up on the sofa, and put my arms around my Grandpa … he calmed down a little, blew his nose on a cushion, took a swig of Renat …

— Together with the primedminister, I say: “Faith in humanity’s worthlessness is what keeps me going,” he sniffed. Winnie the Pooh was over … I flipped through the TV schedule to see if there was anything else on … drank my Lord Culvert … program after program … Who’s Raping Who(m) … the usual parade of has-beens on Culture … I turned up the sound, but it was still pretty low …

— Have I told you about how we murdered all those Christians in Ostvik? It was me, “Maxin,” “Elisha Burr,” Ragnar Rök, and Hilding Lindgren … We bound their hands and feet, tied them to a pole, smeared them with syrup, and threw them naked on an anthill … mosquitoes, blackflies, houseflies, and gadflies all got some, too … Then we covered them with Bible pages until they looked like mummies and lit a match … We buried them alive sixty-nine style, two on two … Death by orgasm … rats in pipes ate out their pussies … We rammed crucifixes up their asses and into their stomachs … Dunked them in acid baths, which skinned them alive … They were selfserving … we tore the fetuses out of their wombs and sprinkled them with salt and ketchup … We nailed them to hayfences by their kneecaps … Of course, we made them all fuck the priest first … Pier Luigi Farnese would’ve felt right at home …