They parted with a handshake … Then Grandpa yelled in my ear …
— Nikanor’s one of a kind! There’s no one who can taunt cunt as disgustingly as he! When he was young and soursweet, he sullied his magnificent vandalcock in more than a few rancid hellholes, let me tell you! He likes to think of himself as an intransigent refractor! That is, until the next bout of cuddlesickness hits him! Then he shifts into overdrive!
— God creates work and Old Nick stress …
— Exactly! But he’s a good guy, just a little weak and indecisive … If anyone can describe the way the world works, it’s him … Odin speaks through him … right now he’s working on “Lovesong to the Maneating Animal,” plus a distortion on “The Biological Abnormality of a Woman’s Need to Breed” … He’s the last true Nietzschean … a courteous, lecherous voyeur …
The music begin again, “My Home Town” by the Wankadies.
— Time to stir the pot, mite!
Grandpa asked everyone in sight to dance, but they said no … then he guzzled their beer … a storm was brewing … There was a crowd at his heels … a bunch of beefyoafs … giantbabes … young-pups … They didn’t attack, because he looked so frail … but they told him to pay for the beer … Grandpa gestured and joked … the trashier tramps laughed … the swankier skanks drew back … the mob closed its ranks … drowned out Grandpa with scurrilous words … suddenly he was holding a silenced Glock … he started with the loudmouths … three of them fell with holes betweentheir eyes … Grandpa headed for the exit and I followed … it was hard to make progress … I slit my skirt up so I could go faster … Grandpa shot a bouncer in the belly … stabbed a pair of leviathans … We sprang across the square … Grandpa reloaded in flight … turned and shot down the two who were chasing us … more were coming … We sprinted past a kiosk … a dark car was making a turn … Grandpa wrenched open the back door … waved his Glock … three passengers threw themselves out … we hopped in … Grandpa told the guy to drive like Holy Mary was giving birth in the backseat … tires squealed … past the policestation … onto the E4 … going the wrong direction … north … I mumbled the end of the 137th Psalm, the same thing Signar dreamt about: “O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us — he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks” … The driver got into the right lane at the Kanalgate intersection … no one was following us … we were headed home … away from the city of woe, eternal pain, the population of loss …
— Well, that’s an evening that will go down in history … it was so fucking boring … Everyone and everything was just nasty and ugly … it takes your breath away … it bowls you over … shocks you to the core … They’re like the Viet Cong and Hezbollah all rolled into one … I’m not used to that kind of reception … And you, you asspicker, you’d defend them, wouldn’t you, he said to the driver, shoving the gun into his neck.
— Please, I don’t know what you’re talking about … but I’ll take you wherever you want to go, just don’t hurt me …
— We want to go to Hebbershålet … You know where that is?
— Somewhere around Hebbersliden …
— It’s the Land of the Hyperboreans … can’t be reached by land or sea … It’s airyanem vaejo … swetadvipa …
— Just tell me where to go …
— To the journey’s end …
Me and Grandpa sat quietly and watched the darkness race by. The coniferoustrees embraced their lost sons … In Hebbersfors, Grandpa hold the guy to stop … shot him in coldblood … with coldblooded courage … a lot is excusable, when you don’t get worked up … We nicked a couple of bikes and rode to Västbäcks Bridge … cross at your own risk … Then we went home, just as cold, tired, and loveless as before … We crawled into bed, both agreeing it would be a long, long time before we went clubbing or pubbing again.
__________
Publicatae enim pudicitiae nulla venia—“The loss of chastity meets with no indulgence”
Furthermore, since they did not think, etc. — Romans 1:28
Bikila — Abebe, champion marathon runner from Ethiopia
Sydow — Max von, Swedish actor
Mishima — pen name of Japanese author Kimitake Hiraoka
Issei Sagawa — murdered a Dutch classmate while attending school at the Sorbonne in 1981, eating part of her corpse; having returned to his homeland, he is now free and enjoys a cult following of sorts (books and films have been made about him, rockbands sing his praise)
Malleus Maleficarum—1486 treatise on witches, by Heinrich Kramer, Inquisitor
Something bustled in the hedgerow — see “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin
Jacques de Molay — Grand Master of the Knights Templar, burned alive on the order of Philip the Fair
Hermann von Salza — Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights from 1210–1239
Siegrunen—Waffen-SS history journal
Teiresias — seer punished with blindness by coweyed Hera when he claimed that women enjoy the “love act” incomparably more than men
AIF — corruption of AIK, the town of Skellefteås beloved hockey team
Jocko Nyström — Joakim Nyström: tennis player from Skellefteå
Erika Norberg — Swedish journalist
Mats Wilander — Swedish tennis player
Malmsteen — Swedish heavy metal rocker
Ivar LOB Johansson — Ivar Lo-Johansson: Swedish author, wrote Only a Mother
Mora Martinsson — Helge Maria Swarts, also known as Moa Martinson: Swedish author of Mor gifter sig (Mother Gets Married)
Vilgot Moberg — Vilhelm Moberg: Swedish author, wrote A Time on Earth.
Jesus Gardell — Jonas Gardelclass="underline" Swedish author
Klas Östergren — Claus östergren: Swedish author, wrote Attila
Maran Kandre — Mare Kandre: Swedish author, wrote Bübins unge (Bübins Child)
Povel Ramel — Swedish entertainer
Tage Danielsson — Swedish author and entertainer
Evert Taube — Swedish author and entertainer
Tage and Aina — Aina Erlander was married to the Swedish prime minster, Tage Erlander, for fifty-five years
Cornelis Vreeswijk — Dutch singer-songwriter, put out a tribute album to Evert Taube entitled “Cornelis sjunger Taube” (Cornelis Sings Taube)
Kjell-Olof Fält — Kjell-Olof Feldt: Swedish social-democratic politician, wrote a memoir entitled Alla dessa dagar (All These Days)
Lazar Kaganovich — Soviet politican, known as the “Iron Lazar” for the zeal with which he carried out Stalin’s orders
Traci Lords — American porn star
Eliot Cannetti — Elias Canetti: Bulgarian-born author who wrote in German, author of Auto-da-Fé); he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981; his loathing of T.S. Eliot is legendary