That last one makes for a strange story. Holmlund and some southern queerbeard nailed together a house of worship in Gran, where they subsequently lured old and decrepit shrews by promising them spiritual guidance and Extreme Unction. In and of itself, that wasn’t illegal, but when a roving shiteater by the name of Assar Lalla happened by and saw Holger and the foreigner performing a shitfaced bloodeagle on a crookbacked oldcunt, he sprang over to the policestation and we drove off in a riotcontroltruck. It was a lovely September day, when nature’s at deaths door. Sirens blaring, we screeched to the turnaround. Holger and the other geezer came out on the bridge to see what was up.
“So, Holmlund,” said a respectable old inspector, who used raw porkshanks instead of diapers, “where’ve you stashed all the poor wretches you’ve offed?”
“But Hugglund!” Holger twittered and bravely struggled to wipe away his Polish grin, “surely you know me well enough to see how gaga I am about my fellow man? The women who came to my and Poglavnik’s chapel were saved, ask them yourself.”
“We’ll get to that, but now why don’t you be good boys and take your clothes off.”
They did that and the inspector paid their orifices a little visit. The queerbeard looked ancient, but he rasped out some perverse rubbish when the inspector started poking around in his outstretched asshole. He got a baton to the nose, which sent him to the ground.
“You aren’t thinking about beating up an oldgeezer who doesn’t even know if God exists or not?!” Holmlund objected.
A pimply subordinate kneed him in the crotch.
“Holger and Ante, I wanted to let you know that you’re suspected of torture and murder. So why don’t you hang around for a coffee and a chat,” the inspector rumbled.
“Whatthefuck,” the queerbeard jabbered.
“Alrighty,” Grampa said and put out his cigarette with his tongue.
We held them for three days and three nights, and we put clamps on their urethras so they couldn’t piss. They weren’t allowed to sleep and were forced to listen to Barry Manilow while they were in their cells. But the old cows in the rootcellars around the synagogue unanimously insis ed that Holger and Ante were virile and sweet, and that they could preach the shorthairs right off you. None of them had witnessed any violence. At the same time, Assar Lalla, the only witness, disappeared for good in the unexplored mangroveforests in the innermost part of the Bay of Bothnia. Since we hadn’t found any graves or bodyparts in Gran, the two reprobates got off. Not too many days passed before the satanicsynagogue burned down and a dozen invalids perished …
“Do you know anything about this, Holmlund?” the inspector asked over the telephone.
“Even less than I know about the femaleorgasm and the origin of the ovenuniverse!” he answered.
So the matter was dropped.
There were hundreds of accusations against him, but none of them ever got to court. If I pick up the list again at the start of the seventies, we have: molestation of elkhunters … premature ejaculation … excessive wit … implausibility … mimicry … shyness … vampirism … teratology … reevaluation of all values …
__________
rikscancer — play on the title Reichskanzler
metestrus — period of sexual inactivity that follows estrus
gawd — nutso galorum — totally wrong
prince of this world — the devil
GB-Gubbe — mascot in ads for the Swedish ice-cream company GB Glace: a pudgy clown with a sickeningly sweet smile tipping his hat to the world
kicksled — a sled consisting of a chair mounted on flexible metal runners; the sled is driven by kicking the ground as you go
lefse — thin, unleavened bread of Norwegian origin. Called klådda in Sweden
Steffan and Bengt — characters on a Swedish television series
Fritz Haarmann—“The Vampire of Hanover”; serial killer of adolescent boys in Germany during the years immediately following World War I
Vyshinsky — Andrey: Prosecutor General of the USSR and considered to be the legal mastermind behind Stalin’s Great Purge. He was also a prosecutor during the Nuremberg trials
Freisler — Roland: acted as judge, jury and executioner in Hitlers People’s Court (Volksgerichtshof). During his tenure, there was a dramatic rise in the number of death sentences handed out
falukorv — traditional Swedish sausage
Bullerby — refers to the Six Bullerby Children series by Astrid Lingren, which take place in the small Swedish village of Bullerby (Bullerbyn in Swedish)
Aryosophic — member of an Aryosophic order created by Guido von List at the beginning of the nineteenth century
Norilsk — infamous contaminated industrial town in Russia
Boliden and Rönnskär — mining and smelting operations located near Skellefteå
satrap and hierodule — satrap: general name given to a governor of a province in ancient Persia; hierodule: temple slave in ancient Greece, often associated with prostitution in service to a deity
ninjirkilkin—“the shy one”; apprentice shaman among the Chukchi
Mister Malibog — or else, Mister Horny
Forsyte Saga—British television series based on The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy
A Family at War—British television series
pecarirodea — a rodeo conducted with a Pecari tajacu, a “collared peccary”: a type of swine native to Central and South America
paddywacker — police baton
Auntie Anita and Televinken — Anita Lindman, who starred in the Swedish childrens television show Anita och Televinken; Televinken is a marionette
dascenter — Swedish play on words, lit. dass (toilet) + dase (dick) + center, instead of dagscenter (day center)
nightrajah — hip-long jacket
pyttepanna — (also pyttipanna), traditional Scandinavian dish; usually consists of potatoes, onions and meat, which are diced-up and then pan-fried
Lasse Berghagen — Swedish singer-songwriter
Poglavnik — Ante Pavelic’s title when he ruled over Nazi-controlled Croatia during World War II
Afterword
Assisted Living has a rare quality: even when approached by relatively experienced readers, and people with strong stomachs in general, evidence shows that the novel has the power to give us at least a glimpse of that incredulity and confusion and delightful shock that a few of our first unsettling (and unsettling mainly because they were our first) reading experiences gave us. To be disturbed by a book is something that belongs to the childhood of our reading. Only as an exception, only very rarely are we blessed with being exposed to something similar later on in life. As we gradually put the years behind us, as we gradually see more, hear more, experience more, and read more, our chances of suffering a literary ambush are also reduced. We become situated, establish an overview, develop tastes, follow our preferences, know more or less what to expect if we go here or there; know pretty much what to expect as we embark upon page five or page seven. I, for my part, have to return to my youthful encounters with Burroughs/Miller/Genet to trump the almost puerile kick I got when I read Teratologen for the first time. “Chuckling at his impudence, weeping at histender sentiment, trembling with sorrow, paralyzed by hate”: he’s already summed it up pretty well himself, I think.