I told her: “Put his eyes out, that’ll stop him from reading those wicked books …” All for nothing! She was too sweet and kind to make it when the prince of this world kicks up a rumba with Conway Twitty … What I’d been telling her was going to happen finally happened … thank God, Doris was at her Grandma’s, Permesiva, who lived out in Gråberg … Irma had got the cockshivers … They found her in a ditch … he’d used a vacuumcleanerpipe to force meltedlead into her cunt … They never arrested him for it! the buggerfucks! Three old friends swore he’d been with them all weekend making pineconeanimals … So they left him free to wreak havoc … A wolf in the flesh, that’s what he was … a leftist … He held nothing sacred, he left nothing in peace … They took Doris from him, but he murdered her, too! And then he took her boy, Helge! How that boy’s going to make it now that Holger has so obligingly up and kicked it, is something I don’t even want to think about … All you can do is hope he doesn’t understand too much about what’s going on … he always was feebleminded …
Lillemor Lundberg, 38 years old, social worker
— Holger Holmlund needed a lot of support, but he was extremely difficult to help. He never came to us, we always had to go to him. You never felt welcome, though.
“Jabbercunt!” he’d spit right between your eyes. “Scurfbag! Cloacalwhore! Cancernode!” he’d keep on going. He’d been on disabilitypension since childhood, on account of rectalcancer. And in the last thirty to thirty-five years, he received economicsupport in the form of incestbenefits and a BSDM-subsidy. And he also got a widowager’s pension after his wife died. He made a bit by volefarming in the bakery, and every now and again he earned a couple of kronor by writing letters for the town’s old never-wed analphabetic geezers. He had a severe drinking problem, but all he did was laugh scornfully when someone tried to set him straight. I remember this one time Mari and I visited him. His answeringmachine was just one long, awful string of abuse, so wedrove out to Hebbershålet unannounced. It was spring, the sap was rising in every cunt, but Holgers yard loomed dark amidst the suninseminated forestglade. The shutters were closed tight, and from inside the stereo was thundering forth a weird Mass. Hard, heavy primevalsounds were drowned out by bestialhowls, children’s tears, and women’s wails. Metallic cadences and insane choralstanzas, unnatural sybariticgroans, and piercing cries of pain. Mari pushed the doorbell, which by the way was shaped like a penis. I could tell by her nipples that she was scared. All at once the soulshriveling music stopped. We waited a couple of minutes, and then I pushed the dickhead myself. A piercing sound like the matingcall of the pale sprucebarkbeetle echoed through the tired house, which had already witnessed so much misery. Grumbling, Holger wrenched open the door, and I asked him how he was and if we could come in.
“New deal, God,” he babbled. “You won’t get me, you Satan you!” He was barechested and had on a pair of brightyellow long underpants. He was bleeding from deep gashes on his stomach and breast. As usual, he stank of alcohol. His knotty hands held an Arabian deck of pornocards. His goateyes stared shrewdly out at nothing. Mari tried a little kindness, but he kneed her in the mons pubis and she fell back off the porch.
“Sorry, what did you say?” Holger asked, cupping his ear with his hand. “If it’s about the offer to teach Sundayschool for the kiddies, I’m still interested. But I want free booze and lubricant.”
“I was just asking how you were and if we can do anything for you—”
“Aren’t you old Suctionpump Desiré?”
“No, Holger, its Lillemor from socialservices. Now you listen here, you have to stop drinking—”
“I’ve had more than enough of you, you slimeball. Get out of here before I sic the boy on you!”
“Actually, we’d like to talk to you about how it’s going with Helge—”
“Go to hell, harpy!” the boy shrieked, peering out between Holgers legs with a blackandblue, bonetired face.
“If you don’t cooperate, Holger, we’ll have to call the cops.”
“I’m so fucking fed up,” he sighed and slammed the door again.
I stuck Mari in the trunk and drove away. When we got to town, my boss called the police. When they stormed Holger’s place, though, he was so wellgroomed it was almost sickening, he was just as friendly and hospitable as any GB-Gubbe. Besides that, we didn’t really have any real proof that Helge had suffered at Holger’s hands. In the fall of’88, we got a report alleging that Holger had repeatedly abused his grandson, Helge, whose parents were found raped and beaten to bloodypulps in the Skellefteå museum’s movietheater. I think it was a documentary called Skellefteårs: The Missing Link that was showing while the two of them were getting their justdesserts. They died of their wounds before regaining consciousness. Helge was delivered by chancelloreansection at seven months and spent his first extrauterine year in a clinic for relapsed pederasts. After that, he spent two years with his grandmother in Kåge, until she succumbed to gardenhosemasturbation. He spent a few weeks in a garbageroom, because nobody gave a shit. Then one fine day Holger Holmlund swept into the office, ready to do business.
“I want to abort the boy,” he said.
“You mean adopt.”
“Yeah, I want him. What do you want for him?” he asked, fingering a wad of Monopolymoney.
“Excuse me?” Lisbeth, who ran the whole shebang, asked. “How much do I have to shell out, already!?”
She blushed furiously and clung firmly to the letter of the law, because he was a stately man, and you could tell that there was something slightly “off” about him. He had no barriers left, so to speak.
“To adopt a child, you have to fill out this form first. Then a committee of rejects will be appointed to decide if you’re a fit guardian. After that, the matter is in the hands of the local omnipotents.” “Superb, cuntskunk,” he said, “I’ve got my thumbs in the local powersthatbe, and I don’t just mean in the eyes.”
He stood and filled out the paperwork, while he sang Hans Sachs’s last piece in the The Mastersingers of Nuremburg, the one that begins with “Verachtet mir die Meister nicht, und ehrt mir ihre Kunst!” The laying on of hands went recordquick, and the next Monday that came around, Holger thundered in, banging open the entryway door so hard it splintered.
“I have an appointment with a three-year-old!”
I lifted up the boy in a blanket. Small, woolly, yellow lambs were leaping in a meadow, and one corner had been sucked to scraps. He was an alert little rascal, his eyes followed everything that moved. Skittish and mute. But I’ll never forget the expression on Holgers face when he took that bundle into his arms. The child looked up at the old man — and, suddenly, everything was good, just like it was meant to be. The boy laughed for the first time,and it sounded horrible. He stuck his small fist between Holger’s cracked lips. The old man pretended to bite, and the child just about died. The sounds he made seemed to stand for all the miracles of joy, love, and safety. He was beside himself, he whimpered and yowled, as if everything before now had been a nightmare, but today there was healing, hope, and forgetfulness at last. Holger was like a vortex of pure light. I saw that he was the Madonna with child. Neither before nor since have I seen a face so twisted by purelove. The rest of us didn’t exist any longer, the whole fucking world had burst like a troll in the sun. He flew off, glided out, people melted in his presence, melted in the face of his heartcoremelt-down, and God existed, and goodness, and mercy. Death and the Devil stood by in shame, Holger was Creation’s champion. It was a good while before everything went back to normal again, and we could smoke and chat and think about other things. And as for the accusations of incest, well, nothing was ever proven, none of the powersthatbe bothered to launch an investigation. Sometimes it seems like I dreamed the whole thing …