Фредрик Бакман - Anxious People

Anna-Lena wiped her tears and stuck her head out from beneath the suits: “That was the first thing your mom said?”

“I was a difficult child, so her sense of humor is rather unusual,” Julia smiled.

Anna-Lena joined in with a weak smile. She nodded warmly toward Julia’s stomach.

“Are you doing okay? I mean, you and… the little one?”

“Oh, yes, thanks. I’m peeing thirty-five times a day, I hate socks, and I’m starting to think that terrorists who make bomb threats against public transport are all pregnant women who hate the way people smell on buses. Because people really do smell disgusting. Would you believe that an old guy sitting next to me the other day was eating salami? Salami! On the bus! But thanks, the little one and I are doing fine.”

“It’s terrible being held hostage when you’re pregnant, I mean,” Anna-Lena said gently.

“Oh, it’s probably just as bad for you. I’ve just got more to carry.”

“Are you very scared of the bank robber?”

Julia shook her head slowly.

“No, I’m not, actually. I don’t even think that pistol’s real, if I’m being honest.”

“Nor me,” Anna-Lena nodded, even though she didn’t really have any idea.

“The police will probably be here any minute, if we just stay calm,” Julia promised.

“I hope so,” Anna-Lena nodded.

“The bank robber actually seems more scared than us.”

“Yes, you’re probably right about that.”

“How are you doing?”

“I… I don’t really know. I’ve hurt Roger badly.”

“Oh, something tells me you’ve put up with far worse from him over the years, so I doubt you’re even yet.”

“You don’t know Roger. He’s more sensitive than people think. He’s just a bit wedded to his principles.”

“Sensitive and principled, you hear that a lot,” Julia nodded, thinking that it was a good description of all the old men who’ve started wars throughout human history.

“Once a young man with a black beard asked if he could have Roger’s parking space in a car park, and Roger waited twenty minutes before he moved the car. Out of principle!”

“Charming,” Julia said.

“You don’t know him,” Anna-Lena repeated with a blank look on her face.

“With all due respect, Anna-Lena—if Roger was as sensitive as you say, he’d be the one crying in the closet now.”

“He is sensitive… inside. I just can’t understand how… when he saw Lennart, he immediately assumed we were… having an affair . How could he think something like that of me?”

Julia was trying to find a comfortable way to sit on the stepladder, and caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the metal. It wasn’t flattering.

“If Roger thought you were being unfaithful, then he’s the one with the problem, not you.”

Anna-Lena was pressing her hands hard against her thighs to stop her fingers shaking. She stopped blinking.

“You don’t know Roger.”

“I knew enough men like him.”

Anna-Lena’s chin moved slowly from side to side.

“He waited twenty minutes before he moved the car out of principle. Because on the news that morning there was a man, a politician, who said we ought to stop helping immigrants. That they just come here thinking they can get everything for free, and that a society can’t work like that. He swore a lot, and said they’re all the same, people like that. And Roger had voted for the party that man belonged to, you see. Roger has very firm ideas about the economy and fuel taxes and things like that, he doesn’t like it when Stockholmers turn up and decide how everyone outside Stockholm should live. And he can be very sensitive. Sometimes he expresses himself a bit harshly, I’ll admit that, but he has his principles. No one can say he hasn’t got principles. And that particular day, after he’d heard that politician say that, we were in a shopping mall, it was just before Christmas so the car park was completely full when we got back to the car. Long, long queues. And that young man with the black beard, he saw us walking back to our car and wound his window down and asked if we were leaving, and if he could have our space if we were.”

By now Julia was ready to get up and turn the walk-in closet into a walk-out closet.

“Do you know what, Anna-Lena? I don’t think I want to hear the rest of that story…”

Anna-Lena nodded understandingly, this certainly wasn’t the first time someone had said that about her stories. But she was so used to thinking out loud now that she finished it anyway.

“There were so many cars there that it took the young man twenty minutes to get to the part of the garage where we were parked. Roger refused to move the car until he got there. He had two little children in the back of the car, I hadn’t noticed, but Roger had. When we drove away I told Roger I was proud of him, and he replied that it didn’t mean he’d changed his mind about the economy or fuel taxes or Stockholmers. But then he said that he realized that in that young man’s eyes, Roger must look just like that politician on television, they were the same age, had the same color hair, the same dialect, and everything. And Roger didn’t want the man with the beard to think that meant they were all exactly the same.”

Anna-Lena wiped her nose with the sleeve of one of the suit jackets, and wished it had been Roger’s.

It’s worth pointing out that Julia was trying to stand up while this anecdote was being related, a maneuver that took a fair amount of time, so it took just as long for her to slump back into a seated position again. Only then did she open her mouth, and at first the only sound that emerged was a breathless cough, before she burst out laughing.

“That’s simultaneously the sweetest and most ridiculous thing I’ve heard in a very long time, Anna-Lena.”

The tip of the other woman’s nose moved up and down in embarrassment.

“We argue a lot about politics, Roger and I, we have very different opinions, but you can always… I think you can understand someone without necessarily agreeing with them, if you see what I mean? And I know people sometimes think Roger’s a bit of an idiot, but he isn’t always an idiot in the way people assume.”

Julia admitted: “Ro and I also vote for different parties.”

She thought of adding that Ro was a deluded hippie when it came to politics, and that you don’t always discover that sort of thing until a couple of months into a relationship, but decided against it. Because it was actually perfectly possible to love each other despite that.

Anna-Lena wiped her whole face on the jacket sleeve.

“I should never have gone behind Roger’s back! He was very good at his job, he should have been one of the bosses, but he never got the chance. And now he gets so upset when he doesn’t… win. I want him to feel like a winner. So I called that ‘No Boundaries Lennart,’ and to start with I told myself it would only be the one time… but it gets easier every time you do it. You tell yourself that… well, of course, you’re young, so it’s hard to believe, but… the lie gets easier each time. I told myself I was doing it for Roger’s sake, but of course it was for my own sake. I’ve decorated so many apartments to make them look just like a home is supposed to look, so that someone can come to the viewing and think ‘Oh, this is where I want to live!’ I just wish that I could be that person one day. Settling somewhere again. Roger and I haven’t lived anywhere properly for such a long time. We’ve just been… passing through.”

“How long have you been together?”

“Since I was nineteen.”

Julia thought about the question for a long time before finally asking: “How do you do it?”