— Grandpa looks like a god, I said to myself, then his remaining eye popped out of its socket. He trembled and quaked and turned red as a lobster. His colostomybag burst, his dinner came up. I saw in and through him. His heart broke, his brain burned, his soul shriveled down to nothing.
Olga rolled off Grandpa with sperm dripping from her sick cunt. Then I was pulled away and woke up with evil still muttering in my flesh. I lay on a big offalheap about a gallstones throw from Silvergrans yard. I was burned, scraped, and stung, but I was impossible to subdue. My ass ached and my crown smarted, but Grandpa had fared far worse. He was on his stomach next to me. I turned over and saw he was dead. They’d cut off his balls and nipples and sliced off his cock. He had it in his mouth.
I stole Hugo’s wheelbarrow and wrestled Grandpa into it. Then I plowed my way through bogs and pinemoors, shrouded by night, frozen by wind, whipped by rain. When dawn finally poked a hole in night’s hoary pupil, the freezing rain turned to sleet. I huddled naked under a logdump in Ersmarksbodarna, took a catnap, and ate a rat. When evening came, I shoved off again. The capercailliewoods were like a thousand bombedout cathedrals. The night entered my bones and whispered lewd propositions. Firs brooded over an ancient evil, they’d wandered down from Siberia to spread darkness over the Aryan heartland. They had to be sure they settled close enough to suffocate each other, though. The tufts of grass were springy, but groves of berrybushes made a stand, and stones and roots lashed out. Fallen trunks barred the way, mud turned slick as ice. The darkness had no heart, the paths had forgotten why they existed. But I trudged on and made good time; well after nightfall I was there. I stole into the Lansförsamlingen churchyard and found a good resting place next to an old conifer, maybe a black-or turpentinepine. I grabbed a spade and dug a hole and tipped my Grandpa in. Then I went to the mortuarychapel and dragged out a reinforcedconcreteslab. Iscratched the word “Grandpa” into it with a nail. Then I read a Mass. Since I had a cold and was frozen to the bone, though, I tried to fill in the hole as quick as I could.
I leaned the gravestone against an ashtray and then sat down on a treeroot. Kama-Mara came by and babbled about violence and sex, and I promised to do my best, since I owed Grandpa that much. He bellowed, full of hatred and lust … the Kali Yuga will ramble on … And then I was alone … As it was ordained from the beginning. As it has always been. When the light finally forced its way through nights hymen, slow but stubborn, I stood up.
— I loved you, I mumbled and pissed a few salty drops on Grandpas grave.
I wanted home.
I’m Grandpa now.
__________
lues — an old name for syphilis
Svensk Damtidning—Swedish equivalent of the Ladies’ Home Journal
Master Hämmerlein—the Devil
MBD-geezer — MBD stands for Minimal Brain Dysfunction, now known as ADHD
Ernst Röhm — Nazi leader, well-known homosexual
kekkonencigar — Urho Kekkonen, a former Finnish president
Per Albin — former leader of the Swedish Social Democrats and fourtime prime minister
Fru Öberg — an old, weird, quarrelsome pipesmoking woman
Henry Rinnan — Gestapo agent
piepel — young ass in a concentration camp
Tommy Alexandersson — killed five people in 1989, nicknamed “The Butcher”
Tonton Macoute — Haitian paramilitary force
Sven Wollter — Swedish actor
Sighsten — Herrgård: Swedish fashion designer, well known for his unisex clothing designs; he is credited with “giving AIDS a face” in Sweden
Ebbe — Nils “Ebbe” Knut Carlsson; Swedish journalist and publisher who revealed his homosexuality, and the fact that he had contracted HIV, on television in 1991
Siljabloo — Gunnar “Siljabloo” Nilsson, popular Swedish jazz musician and renowned scat singer
Gadarene Swine — the herd of pigs Jesus cast demons into
Gunde — Gunde Svan, Swedish cross country skier and oddball cloaca — old term for sewer
Kama-Mara — Siddhartha Gautama’s adversaries, the demons of desire and death
Kali Yuga — worst of the cosmological cycles
XXXV
It’s been a week since they killed Grandpa … Eons … I can’t stay here alone … I’m going to Skellefteå …
Skellefteå … I live in a garbageroom again … nothing but sourdough and mustardseeds to eat … I wander around like the dead … I remember all we did together … Drink my cares away and stare into the black empty heavens, the soul’s darknight … That’s all there is left … nothing else to tell … just fragments … “Do I alone hear this melody, which so wonderfully and softly …”
If anyone ever reads what I’ve written, they’ll wonder who I was …
Just a nameless boy who was forced to be a Grandpa, but couldn’t do it …
Just another animal in the chaos …
Christmas … I visited the grave last night and talked to Grandpa … Begged to go to him … Said I couldn’t do it anymore … He said it’ll all be over soon … Abaddon’s angels will take me away … He knows I’ve written about him, but he’s forgiven me …
I’m sick and crazy …
Death take me …
Grandpa, I’m not worthy …
Eloi … Eloi … lama sabachtani? ….
__________
Do I alone, etc …—from Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde.
Eloi … Eloi … etc. — My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Appendix: Memories of Grandpa
André Sundlund, 91 years old, childhood friend
— You bet I knew poor Holger. We went to school together and during the last few crappy years we’d shoot the shit about God, Satan, nearlife experiences, and the foundations of agrarpriapism.
Holger was always a handful, everyone says so. Even before his eyes opened and he’d stopped babbling babynonsense, he was off on a crookedpath. He was raised by a man who lived only for death. Holger’s own Grandpa was named Holger Holmlund and he’d been the devil’s bitch for as long as any forcepsdelivered old-fuck could remember. Old Grandpa was said to be cruel as they come, a savage to everyone he met, he worshipped the devil and scorned men who lay with women and weren’t brave enough to sow the darkground. Anyway, he eventually called forth and then fanned the flames of forces he couldn’t master, and they took him just as little Holger learned the noble art of selfgratification.
But let me tell you what I remember about Holger from our elementaryschooldays. It was a crime to be alive back then, that’s a lesson we all learned early on. Up at three every morning to pack a lunch of stalebreadcrusts and moldyleftovers, then haul ass forty kilometers to school for a quickie on Mistress’s chair. Sex didn’t matter, most kids were usersandabusers, getting drugs was easy, all you had to do was lift your skirts and bat your eyes at the sextons and old eccentrics. Holger was the worst of us all, but he knew how to play his cards right. The teachers were devils in the flesh, anorexic beanstalks. They held out as long as they could, and then it was off to the loonybin with them. Either that, or they’d hang themselves with the guts of unwantedchildren. I especially remember one, a retarded hunchback we used to call the Spider. He was wordblind and proud of it, and he wouldn’t tolerate us kids using words that weren’t his. We probably had him about a year, and every class he’d drone on about how Joyce from Dublin died for our cysts’ sake and how no matter how much we moaned and groaned, we could never make it goodygoodygood. One time he wanted Holger, the quickest of us peatbog children, to read a sentence out loud. The problem was, Holger was so drunk he couldn’t see straight, so he just said: “Man was created in God’s image.”