— We are here today to mourn my two dearest friends, who’ve up and left us with raging hardons … Lets start with Torsten, he said, kicking the corpse hard in the ear … Torsten Murkström signed off at the unrespectable age of sixty-nine …
Grandpa folded his hands in mock solemnity, he was wearing a pink nightshirt and fuzzyblack poodleslippers.
— His arrival into the world was a nasty surprise to his parents. His family scraped a living by making scenes in public … Torsten was known early on for his slowwit and charmingservility. At a young age, he’d already learned to fart on the sly and smoke ciggibutts …
Grandpa struggled to keep his face serious.
— He spent his whole life trolling the cabins of charcoalburners and logfloaters, trying his best to satisfy them all … He’d suck cock for a spoonful of fishentrails and an oldfashioned spanking … It was his life’s calling to make a bad situation worse. He sowed oats and reaped sourmash … He enjoyed strumming on his kantele and sipping motyl … When he was stripped of his commission in the Cock and Cassock Society, he got old real quick … he had a habit of sitting with his head in the oven … he finally worked up the courage to ask Tellemar: How the hell do you do it? … he looked for the answer in the Siikavaara Bible … in vain … Torsten never married, but remained faithful his whole life to Upper Kågedalen … His chief mourner is a walkingstick … Torsten wants his headstone to read: “Thanks for nothing” …
Torsten was laying on his stomach on the tiles. Grandpa grabbed his head and twisted it so hard his neck broke.
— Look at me when I’m talking about you!
Then he turned to Larri.
— Dowser Larri Isokyrpä was finally allowed to peterout after a long and weary struggle with that terminalillness we call life … Larri was squeezed out of his Grandma’s womb under an uprootedtree in Myskträsk … He was the first in a long line of stillbornsiblings and he learned selfsufficiency early on … A procession of oddjobs and shortgigs passed him by … He was a THX-doctor, a Quaker, a rathawker, a puppywhipper, a snowman’s trunk … He married Ms. Glädis Noppa … and later on the nationally celebrated onanist Hardy Honkala from Gråliden … Frau Hardy kicked it at fifty-three … Life was often like a Rubik’s cube … Nonetheless, this remarkable man somehow found the strength to teach himself dipsomania! His vocabulary swelled to the tripledigits, he discovered words had more than four letters, then came his big, fat chance: a temp job as an outhouse asswiper in Råslyet, a kilometer and a half south of Västbäck … Larri worked hard at his many highly desirable jobs until his body finally failed him … he devoted his last seventeen years to outliving his children … He was a lifetime Jagoda’s Witness … His interests were many, but to name a few: stroke, pogroms, the lambethwalk, kiddie’s diddles, Siberianroulette and Hylands hörna … As a society member, he was unparalleled … his courses in bedwetting and gangrape were especially popular … The burial will take place under chaotic conditions … Donations can be made to the Dirty Geezer Fund …
Grandpa grabbed me by the neck and cackled Grandpalike at his own creativity.
— You know what we’re going to do now, child of mine?
— O no!
— First I’m going to take a long, hot manbath … And you’re going to make me coffee. Then we’re going to go outside and get a little fresh air. Why don’t you take out the Iron Crown of Lombardy and my Ripper suit … Methinks I want to look nice today …
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Ein Heldenleben—“A Hero’s Life,” tone poem by Richard Strauss motyl — expiremental mixture of petrol and alcohol used to power Swedish military vehicles during World War II
Tellemar — Hasse, Swedish radio host of the show Ringså spelar vi (Call us, and we’ll play your tune) from 1969–1988.
Siikavaara Bible — The Siikavaara sect, or Korpela movement, was started by Toivo Korpela in the 1920s
THX-doctor — THX, or thymus extract, was a natural remedy developed by the Swedish veterinarian Elix Sandberg; he claimed that THX could help with immune disorders and could even fight cancer
Hylands hörna—“Hylands Corner,” a popular Swedish TV program that ran from 1962–1983
Iron Crown of Lombardy — crown worn by Lombard rulers
Ripper suit — hunting clothes
IV
—“Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses” … Ho there, boy, Grandpa winked bawdily and dunked a sweetroll in his ginger-beer. Looks like we need to hop down to Egypt to troll for some real cock. Around here there’s hardly enough to live on.
The old Grandpaclock rumblewaggled eight.
— Ezekiel’s lips were uncircumcised. His mamma worked at Goethe’s Pipe and Peg in Jörn. She was a godpardoned, slipperycunt who’d howl so you could hear it over all of Kvarken when she got some deaddrunkcock stuck up in her rosette … Ezekiel and I were the same age, but he only smoked filtered. In my wildest dreams, I never thought he’d end up in the Good Old Shilly-Shally Book.
Grandpa threw his Bible aside, lit an Alte Reiter, and opened the newspaper.
— Sträng and Helén are engaged … Archbishop Värkström and Ulf Ekman broke up … An oldboy in Risböle pissed himself in the chapel … intestinalvilli are wreaking havoc in daycarecenters throughout lower Skelleftecounty … Wilt the Stilt Chamberlain, the basketnigger, has fucked twenty-thousand loose cunts …
He took a nip of insulin, licked his fingers, and blattered on.
— Five hundred and fifty liposuctionsurgeons discharged in Pite … the fourteen-queerold Kicki throatfucked by rimthurs … bald, logomanic demon terrifies Uppsala with blasphemies …
He fell silent, blanched, swore.
— Cottoneyedjoes and festeringnewborns!
I hardbraked in the middle of dunking a fibroidtumor in witch’s milk and waited for more. Grandpa glanced up with an expression that reminded me of a buzzard poised over a mouse.
— They’ve got Jeffrey, he whispered.
Then Grandpa told me all about Jeffrey Dahmer, who had drugged, fucked, and killed blackhomos in some place called Milwokey. Apparently, he’d called and asked for Grandpa’s advice before starting the whole dirty business. Grandpa told me he’d expected a lot from him, because he had grit. A few days went by, and then we heard Nikolaj Dzjumagalijev, the womangobbling funster from Alma Ata, was going away. And when Donald Leroy Evans, who had sixteen-or-so juicy murders to his name, got nabbed, it was like Grandpa had been sent eastward out of paradise. For three whole days and nights all he did was sing the praises of massmurderers everywhere. He seemed to know most of them personally. He was smackdab in the middle of a sentimental harangue down memorylane, something about Kuno Hofmann, the “Vampire of Nuremberg,” when he began coughing blood. I helped him lay down on our pegsofa’s brightred cushions. Then, my arms around my Grandpa, I was out in a flash. Seventy-five hours among A-list murderers really does you in.
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rimthurs— in Nordic mythology, rimthurs, or Hrimthurs (“rime giants” or “frost giants”) live in Niflheim, the land of eternal ice