Халлгримур Хельгасон - The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

I can feel that wife and husband exchange meaningful looks, two soldiers of kindness faced with the defeated evil. For a while they speak in Icelandic. I do the LPP, clinging to the preacher’s body like a newborn monkey to his mother. I watch two tears mixed with blood fall from face to floor. Each one forms a tiny pond on the white tiles, a crystal-clear pond full of blood-red streaks that are constantly moving about in it like some micro-whips.

Without informing me about any further decisions, they wrap me with bandages, turning me into a mummy, and then take me upstairs to my old bed. Sickreader places a cold cloth on my nose. She tells me to relax, and they then leave the room.

Mom and Dad.

I try to get some rest. I try to get my soul some rest. The physical pain is there, but coming from so many sources it has now meddled into one big general pain, a loud buzz in my system, that I can actually ignore from time to time, like the one who’s living next to a construction site finally stops hearing all the drilling.

I jumped too late. I was too fucking late. I miscalculated the time needed for my big fat body to fall down fifteen feet. I had aimed for a big, white delivery van that was supposed to give me the fatal blow with its solid black bumper. Instead, the van was already half way under the bridge when I finally made contact. I landed on its roof, immediately bouncing off its back into the concrete wall underneath the bridge hitting it with the left half of my face, before falling onto the hard shoulder with my aching one. I lay there KO’d for some minutes, but no one seemed to have noticed me bounce, like a bag of dirty laundry from an unknown army hospital. And nobody seemed to have noticed the dead boar lying in the roadside under the bridge. Still, there was some slowing of cars as a I came to my senses and crawled to my feet. But everybody must have figured out that I was the monster who lives under the bridge.

I continued my walk. Half-conscious I continued away from the crossing, heading in the same direction as I was going before my unsuccessful date with death. I walked the broad green island of traffic between the double-laned roads. I walked with a twisted ankle and a bloody face. People stared at me from behind their wheels of good fortune but no one stopped. Fucking makeup ladies and plastic surgeons all of them. Then it started raining, and from then on I was invisible to them.

So I continued walking. Like the wounded polar bear who automatically heads for the North Pole to die, I kept walking the island of traffic. It seemed endless, but I just kept on walking, without having the faintest idea where I was going. The overhead signs told me I was heading for the airport. Keflavik they said, with a picture of a plane seen from above. Of course I could always try to escape this country as Igor and start my third new life as an undertaker in Smolensk, Russia.

I passed under seven bridges, past a Pizza Hut and some funky spaceship of a mall that I remembered having seen before. The traffic island disappeared and made me take my aching shoulder to the hard one. Then suddenly, to my right, in between some new office buildings, I spotted the big blue cross painted on the big white gable of Torture’s church, the one I had visited with Goodmoondoor the week before. It gave me an idea. It gave me hope. I knew that Silence Grove was not far ahead. I knew that Gun’s parents were my only hope. The good people. And here I am, lying in my good old bed like a lost son.

Goodmoondoor opens the door. His expression is fatherly and stern. Red face, white hair. He probably owes the facial color to his demon days. He grabs a chair and sits by the bed. His shirt is light blue now. Tie is pink.

“Look. We have been talking about it… about you. And there is two possibilities. Number one is that we tell the police about you. Number two is that we take care of you. But this is very difficult.”

He takes a pause, sighs, and strokes his long face with his right hand.

“It is dangerous for us.”

“Uh-huh…” I mumble from under the wet cloth.

“I also called my friend Þórður.”

“Uh-huh?”

“And he says he can maybe help you also.”

A beat.

“Do you want our help? Do you want us to help you?”

“Uh-huh,” I nod with pain.

“But we can only do this if you do one thing.”

“Uh-huh, uh-huh?”

“You have to confess your faith in Jesus Christ and join our church of the living God.”

Tod nods.

If sleep is a broadcast from heaven, there is too much static on my radio. I can’t sleep. Too many things in my thawing, aching head. The unsuccessful suicide mourns the death he did not get. I have delivery trucks coming at me by the minute. One moment I’m making love to Munita in the middle of the road, the next her lips are frozen and a bumper hits me in the back of my head. One moment I’m going through hit #23 and the next I’m decorating my funeral home in Smolensk. I better rent a nice street-front space and cover the windows with big letters, American style: “YOUR FAVORITE UNDERTAKER — Death’s Best Friend.” And maybe add some recommendations from satisfied customers. “Excellent coffin and solid manicure. Thanks to Igor, I will rest in peace. —Vladimir Fedorov (1932–2006).”

I do the mummy, lying on my back, totally still, like Fedorov in his grave. Every small movement brings pain. When Goodmoondoor drops by, I ask him for some aspirin.

“A spring?”

“No, aspirin. Medicine. Painkillers.”

“Oh, I understand. No, I’m sorry. We don’t have it. The Lord is our painkiller.”

And then once again that stupid smile of his. I’m in Amishland.

They didn’t dare touch my jeans, so I wear them to bed. My cell phone is still in the right pocket and from time to time I can hear Gun calling. The phone’s vibrations have a strong appeal to its neighbor, at the other side of the pocket wall, but I’m too weak to be able to bring it out and even if I could, I wouldn’t want to answer. I don’t want her to see me now.

It’s probably afternoon when Torture arrives. He enters the white room like a doctor, with a small briefcase. The combed back hair and the thick Lennon glasses are in place. He looks me straight in the eye and speaks to me in the most commanding voice of God himself.

“You are the sinner of sinners. You must know that. You have killed the messenger of God’s holy scripture, the holy bringer of the living Word. You have committed the worst of crimes. Are we in agreement on this? Do you admit to your crime and sin?”

The mummy nods.

“Could you please put your holy confession on your satanic tongue?”

“Yes. Yes, I confess. I am sinner,” the Elephant Man weakly issues through his thick rubber lips.

“And a killer.”

“Yes. Killer.”

“You are the true murderer of Father Friendly, our beloved brother and savior of millions, so help me God?”

“Yes. I killed Father Friendly. It was… not good.”

“It was NOT GOOD? No, you were not even worthy of being in the same room as he. My dear friends here, Guðmundur and Sigríður, are risking a lot for saving your lost soul. And me as well. We are all taking a great risk. You should know that. They risk their jobs and they risk their reputation, their TV station, their house, their car, their everything.”

The good couple is standing behind him, with big eyes and proud lips.

“But saving one soul into the Kingdom of heaven… Saving one soul, even though it’s the most sinful one, as yours truly is… Saving one soul is worth every jeep, every house, every job. Like true believers in the faith of the living God, they do believe in love and forgiveness of the highest kind. Following the good example of Jesus Christ, they’re willing to offer their love and forgiveness, even in the face of their most vicious enemy. So you should know that you owe your life to them for the rest of your days and for the rest of all time. For heaven knows that kindness offered in the face of evil, at the risk of one’s life, is a gift that lasts forever, for all time. A gift that cannot be returned, so help me God. Let us pray.”