Фредрик Бакман - Anxious People

“Forgive me,” the bank robber suddenly said in the silence that had settled upon them. At first it seemed that no one had heard, but they all did, really. Thanks to the thin walls and that wretched open plan layout, the words even reached all the way into the closet, out into the hall, and through the bathroom door. They may not have had much in common, but they all knew what it was like to make a mistake.

“Sorry,” the bank robber said in a weaker voice, and even if none of them replied, that was how it started: the truth about how the bank robber managed to escape from the apartment. The bank robber needed to say those words, and the people who heard them all needed to be allowed to forgive someone.

“Stockholm” can also be a syndrome, of course.

37

Witness Interview (Continued)

JACK:Okay, okay. Can we focus on my questions now?

ROGER:That bloody rabbit. It’s people like him who are manipulating the market. Bankers and real estate agents and bloody rabbits. Manipulating everything. It’s all just fake.

JACK:This would be Lennart that you’re talking about now? He’s on my list of witnesses, but he wasn’t wearing the rabbit’s head when he came out of the apartment. What do you mean about it all being fake?

ROGER:Everything. The whole world’s fake. They were even faking where I used to work.

JACK:I meant at the apartment viewing.

ROGER:Ha, yes, of course I got ill at work but obviously that doesn’t matter to you. People are all interchangeable in this bloody consumer society, aren’t they?

JACK:No, that’s not what I meant at all.

ROGER:Some idiot doctor decided I was “burnt-out.” I wasn’t burnt-out, I was just a bit tired. But suddenly everyone started making a fuss, my boss wanted to talk to me about my “working environment.” I wanted to work, can you understand that? I’m a man. But for the whole of that last year they just kept making up things for me to do, projects that didn’t exist. They didn’t have any use for me, they just felt sorry for me. They didn’t think I understood, but I understood all right, I’m a man, aren’t I? Do you understand?

JACK:Absolutely.

ROGER:A man wants to be looked in the eye and told the truth when he’s no longer needed. But they faked it. And now Anna-Lena’s doing the same thing. Turns out I was never a good negotiator, that bloody rabbit was doing all the work.

JACK:I understand.

ROGER:I can assure you that you don’t, you little bastard.

JACK:I understand that you feel hurt, I mean.

ROGER:Do you know what happened to that business after I left?

JACK:No.

ROGER:Nothing. Absolutely nothing happened. Everything just carried on as normal.

JACK:I’m sorry.

ROGER:I doubt that.

JACK:Could you possibly tell me more about the gap between the walls now? Show me again on the plans. How large a space are we talking about? Big enough for a grown man to stand up in?

ROGER:There. At least a yard. When they turned the old apartment into two separate ones they probably put an extra wall in rather than make the existing one thicker.

JACK:Why?

ROGER:Because they were idiots.

JACK:So they left a space here between them?

ROGER:Yes.

JACK:So you mean I could be dealing with a perpetrator who might have vanished into the wall, even if he didn’t exactly fit?

ROGER:That’s no laughing matter.

JACK:Wait here.

ROGER:Where are you going now?

JACK:I need to talk to my colleague.

38

Roger spent a long time standing by the front door in the hall, with the fingers of one hand pressed tightly against the bridge of his nose to stop the bleeding, and the other hand on the door handle, ready to leave the apartment. The bank robber came out into the hall and noticed, but didn’t have the heart to stop him, so said instead: “Go if you want to, Roger. I understand.”

Roger hesitated. Tugged a little at the handle as though testing it, but didn’t open it. He kicked the baseboard so hard that it came loose.

“Don’t tell me what to do!”

“Okay,” the bank robber said, incapable at that moment of pointing out that that was the whole point of being a bank robber.

They didn’t find much else to talk about after that, but after a bit of rummaging through various pockets the bank robber managed to pull out a packet of cotton balls, and handed it over with a quiet explanation: “One of my daughters sometimes gets nosebleeds, so I always have…”

Roger accepted the gift dubiously. He inserted a piece of cotton into each nostril. He was still clutching the door, but couldn’t persuade his feet to leave the apartment. They didn’t have any idea where on earth to go without Anna-Lena.

There was a bench in the hall, so the bank robber sat down at one end of it, and shortly afterward Roger sat at the other end. The nosebleed had stopped, at last. He wiped himself with his shirt, both under his nose and under his eyes. For a long time they didn’t say anything at all, until the bank robber finally said: “I’m sorry I got you all involved in this. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I just needed six and a half thousand to pay the rent, that was why I was going to rob the bank, I was going to give the money back as soon as I could. With interest!”

Roger didn’t answer. He raised one hand and knocked on the wall behind him. Carefully, almost tenderly, as if he were worried it might break. Knock, knock, knock. He wasn’t emotionally equipped to say it like it was, that Anna-Lena was his load-bearing wall. So instead he said: “Fixed or variable?”

“What?” the bank robber said.

“You said you were going to pay the money back plus interest. Fixed or variable interest?”

“I hadn’t thought about that.”

“There’s a hell of a difference,” Roger said helpfully.

As if the bank robber didn’t already have enough to worry about.

Meanwhile Julia emerged from the bathroom. She glared instinctively at Ro, who was standing in the living room.

“Where’s Anna-Lena?”

Ro’s face looked as uncomprehending as when she had found out that there was a right and a wrong way to put a plate in the dishwasher.

“I think she went into the closet.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t think to go after her to see how she was? She’s just been yelled at by that emotionally challenged old fart of a husband even though she does everything for his sake, and you didn’t even go after her? She could be facing a divorce now, and you left her alone? How could you be so insensitive?”

Ro curled her tongue behind her teeth.

“Just so I… don’t misunderstand me here. But are we talking about Anna-Lena or are we talking about… you? I mean, have I done something else that’s upset you, and you’re pretending to be upset about this so that I understand that…”

“Sometimes you really don’t understand anything , do you?” Julia muttered, and walked off toward the closet.

“I just mean that sometimes it isn’t what you say you’re upset about that you’re upset about! And I’d just like to know if I’m insensitive because I’m insensitive, or…,” Ro called after her, but Julia responded with the body language she usually reserved for communicating with angry men in German cars. Ro went into the living room, picked a lime from the bowl, and started to eat it out of nervousness, rind and all. But Zara was standing at the window and Ro was a bit scared of her, because all smart people are, so she went out into the hall instead.