Фредрик Бакман - Anxious People

“I’m truly very sorry indeed to hear that,” the psychologist eventually said, her voice trembling, and with carefully practiced dignity.

“I’m sorry, too. Depressed, actually,” Zara said, and wiped her eyes.

“What… what sort of cancer?” the psychologist asked.

“Does it matter?” Zara whispered.

“No. No, of course not. I’m sorry. That was insensitive of me.”

Zara looked out of the window, not really seeing anything, for so long that the light outside seemed to have time to change. From morning to midday. Then she raised her chin slightly and said: “You don’t have to apologize. It’s made-up cancer.”

“S… sorry?”

“I haven’t got cancer. I was lying. But that’s what I was saying: democracy doesn’t work!”

And that was when the psychologist realized what a very unwell person Zara was.

“That’s a… an astonishingly insensitive thing to joke about,” she managed to say.

Zara raised her eyebrows.

“So it would have been better if I had cancer?”

“No! What? Absolutely not, but—”

“Surely it’s better to joke about it than to actually have cancer? Or would you rather I had cancer?”

The psychologist’s neck flushed red with indignation.

“But… no! Of course I don’t wish you had cancer!”

Zara clasped her hands together in her lap and said in a grave tone, “But that’s how I’m feeling .”

The psychologist had trouble sleeping that night. Zara sometimes has that effect on people. The next time Zara visited her office the psychologist had removed the photograph of her mother from her desk, and during that session Zara actually considered telling the truth about the cause of her sleeping problems. She had a letter in her bag that explained everything, and if she had only shown it then, everything that happened after that might have been different. But instead she just sat for a long time staring at the picture on the wall. It was of a woman looking out across an endless sea, toward the horizon. The psychologist moistened her lips and asked gently: “What are you thinking when you look at that picture?”

“I’m thinking that if I had to choose just one picture to have on a wall, it wouldn’t be that one.”

The psychologist smiled tightly.

“I usually ask my patients what they think about the woman in the picture. Who is she? Is she happy? What do you think?”

Zara’s shoulders bounced nonchalantly.

“I don’t know what happiness is for her.”

The psychologist said nothing for a while before admitting: “I’ve never heard that answer before.”

Zara snorted.

“That’s because you ask the question as if there’s only one type of happiness. But happiness is like money.”

The psychologist smiled with the superiority that only someone who thinks of themselves as being a very deep person can.

“That sounds superficial.”

Zara groaned like a teenager trying to explain anything to anyone who isn’t a teenager.

“I didn’t say that money was happiness. I said happiness is like money. A made-up value that represents something we can’t weigh or measure.”

The psychologist’s voice wavered, just for a moment.

“Well… yes, maybe. But we can measure and evaluate the cost of depression. And we know that it’s very common for people suffering from depression to be afraid of feeling happy. Because even depression can be a sort of secure bubble, it can make you start to think, If I’m not unhappy, if I’m not angry—who am I then? ”

Zara wrinkled her nose.

“Do you believe that?”

“Yes.”

“That’s because people like you always look at people who are wealthier than you are and say: ‘Yes, they may be richer, but are they happy ?’ As if that was the meaning of life for anyone but a complete idiot, just going around being happy all the time.”

The psychologist noted something down, then asked, still looking down at her notepad: “What is the meaning, then? In your opinion?”

Zara’s reply was the response of a person who’s spent many years thinking about this. Someone who has decided it was more important for her to do an important job than live a happy life.

“Having a purpose. A goal. A direction. And do you want to know the truth? The truth is that far more people would rather be rich than happy.”

The psychologist smiled again.

“Says the bank director to the psychologist.”

Zara snorted again.

“Remind me again how much you get paid per hour? Can I come here for free if it makes me happy?”

The psychologist let out a laugh, an involuntary laugh, on the brink of unprofessional. It surprised her so much that she blushed. She made a feeble attempt to pull herself together, and said: “No. But perhaps I’d let you come here for free if it made me happy.”

Then Zara suddenly let out a laugh, not consciously, but as if the sound just slipped out of her. It had been a while since that last happened.

They sat in silence for a long while after that, somewhat awkwardly, until Zara finally nodded toward the woman on the wall.

“What do you think she’s doing?”

The psychologist looked at the picture and blinked slowly.

“The same as everyone else. Searching.”

“What for?”

The psychologist’s shoulders moved up one inch, then down two.

“For something to cling on to. Something to fight for. Something to look forward to.”

Zara took her eyes from the picture and looked past the psychologist, out of the window.

“What if she’s thinking of committing suicide, then?”

The psychologist didn’t look away from the picture, just smiled and gave away none of the feelings that were raging inside her. It takes years of training and two parents you love and never want to worry to master that facial expression.

“Why do you think that’s what she’s thinking?”

“Don’t all intelligent people think about that, some time or other?”

At first the psychologist was going to reply with some practiced phrase she had learned during her training, but she was well aware that wouldn’t help. So she replied honestly instead: “Yes. Maybe. What do you think stops us?”

Zara leaned forward and moved two pens on the desk so they were lying parallel. Then she said: “Fear of heights.”

There isn’t a person on this planet who could have said there and then with any certainty if she was joking or not. The psychologist considered her next question for a long time.

“Can I ask, Zara—do you have any hobbies?”

“Hobbies?” Zara repeated, but not in an entirely condescending way.

The psychologist elaborated: “Yes. Are you involved in any charities, for instance?”

Zara shook her head silently. The psychologist thought at first that it was a compliment that she didn’t just fire back with an insult, but the look in Zara’s eyes made her hesitate, as if the question had toppled and broken something inside her.

“Are you okay? Did I say something wrong?” the psychologist asked anxiously, but Zara had already looked at the time, stood up, and was now walking to the door. The psychologist, who hadn’t been a psychologist long enough not to be struck by panic at the thought of losing a patient, found herself saying something quite remarkably unprofessional: “Don’t do anything silly, now!”

Zara stopped at the door, surprised.

“Such as what?”

The psychologist didn’t know what to say, so she smiled awkwardly and said: “Well, don’t do anything silly… before you’ve paid my bill.”

Zara let out a sudden laugh. The psychologist joined in. It was harder to identify the extent to which that was also unprofessional.