Фредрик Бакман - Anxious People

42

Jack and Jim turn the entire closet upside down without finding any trace of the bank robber. The chest at the back is empty, apart from a collection of mostly empty wine bottles—and what sort of drunk hides wine bottles in a closet? They pull out all the clothes, men’s suits and some dresses that seem to have been made before the invention of color television. But otherwise they find nothing. Jim gets so sweaty while he’s searching that he doesn’t notice the cold draft in there. It’s Jack who stops and sniffs keenly at the air like a bloodhound at a music festival.

“It smells of cigarette smoke in here,” he says, tentatively feeling the bump on his forehead.

“Maybe one of the prospective buyers had a sneaky smoke, that would be understandable in the circumstances,” Jim speculates.

“Okay, but then it ought to smell MORE of smoke. There’s no smell of it anywhere else in the apartment, so it’s almost as if someone has… I don’t know, aired the closet somehow?”

“How would that be possible?”

Jack doesn’t answer, just moves through the space hunting for the draft he initially thought he had imagined. Suddenly he picks up a stepladder that’s lying on the floor, shoves a pile of clothes out of the way, climbs up the steps, and starts hitting the ceiling with the flat of his hand until something gives way.

“There’s some sort of old air vent up here!”

Jim doesn’t have time to respond before Jack sticks his head through the hole. Jim takes the opportunity to shake the wine bottles he found in the chest, and takes a swig out of one that isn’t quite empty. Because wine doesn’t go bad, either.

Jack calls from up the ladder: “There’s a narrow passageway up here, above the false ceiling, I think the draft’s coming from the attic.”

“A passageway? Big enough to crawl through and get out somewhere else?” Jim wonders.

“God knows, it’s very narrow, but someone slim could probably… hold on…”

“Can you see anything?”

“I’m trying to shine the torch to see where it leads, but there’s something in the way… something… fluffy.”

“Fluffy?” Jim repeats anxiously, thinking about all the animals Jack probably wouldn’t want to discover dead in a ventilation duct. Jack doesn’t like most animals even when they’re alive.

Jack curses, pulls the thing out, and tosses it down to Jim. It’s a rabbit’s head.

43

Roger glanced over the balcony railing at the police, then took a deep breath and shouted: “We need supplies!”

“Medical? Are you hurt?” one of the police officers called back. His name was Jim, his hearing wasn’t great, and he hadn’t experienced many hostage situations before. Or any at all, if we’re being strictly correct.

“No! We’re hungry!” Roger shouted.

“Angry?” the policeman yelled.

There was another police officer, a younger one, standing next to him. He was trying to shut the older one up so he could hear what Roger was saying, but of course the older one wasn’t listening.

“NO! PIZZA!” Roger yelled, but because he had cotton stuffed in both nostrils unfortunately it sounded more like “pisser.”

“MELISSA? SOMEONE CALLED MELISSA IS INJURED?” the older police officer shouted.

“YOU’RE NOT LISTENING!”

“WHAT?”

“BE QUIET, DAD, SO I CAN HEAR WHAT HE’S SAYING!” the younger officer shouted at the older police officer down in the street, but by then Roger had already left the balcony in frustration. He hadn’t actually sworn that much since a group of damn activists had changed the name of his favorite chocolate bars because the old name was regarded as insulting to someone or other. He stomped back inside the apartment and waved his notepad and IKEA pencil in the air.

“We’ll make a list and throw it down,” he declared. “What sort of pizza does everyone want? You first!” he demanded, pointing at the bank robber.

“Me? Oh, I don’t really mind. Anything will do,” the bank robber piped up feebly.

“Are you hard of thinking or something? Just make a decision for once! No one’s going to respect you otherwise!” Zara exclaimed from the sofa (where she had only sat down after first fetching a towel from the bathroom to put between her and the cushion, because heaven only knew what sort of individuals had sat there before her. They probably had tattoos and goodness only knew what else).

“I can’t decide,” the bank robber said, which were probably the truest words the bank robber had uttered all day. When you’re a child you long to be an adult and decide everything for yourself, but when you’re an adult you realize that’s the worst part of it. That you have to have opinions all the time, you have to decide which party to vote for and what wallpaper you like and what your sexual preferences are and which flavor yogurt best reflects your personality. You have to make choices and be chosen by others, every second, the whole time. That was the worst thing about getting divorced, in the bank robber’s opinion, the fact that you thought you were done with all that, but now you had to start making decisions about everything again. We already had wallpaper and crockery, the balcony furniture was almost new, and the children were about to start swimming lessons. We had a life together, wasn’t that enough? The bank robber had reached a point in life where everything felt… complete, at last. Which means that you’re in no fit state to be thrown out into the wilderness to find out who you are all over again. The bank robber tried to make sense of all these thoughts, but didn’t have time before Zara interrupted again.

“You need to make demands!”

Roger agreed. “She’s actually right. If you don’t, the police will get nervous, and that’s when they start shooting. I’ve seen a documentary about it. If you take hostages, you have to tell them what you want so they can start to negotiate.”

The bank robber replied unhappily and honestly: “I want to go home to my children.”

Roger took this under consideration for a while. Then he said: “I’ll put down a capricciosa for you, everyone likes capricciosa. Next! What sort would you like?”

He was looking at Zara now. She seemed to be in a state of total shock.

“Me? I don’t eat pizza.”

When Zara went to a restaurant she always ordered shellfish, and made it very clear that she wanted them served with the shells intact, because then she could be sure that no one in the kitchen had touched the insides. If the restaurant didn’t have any shellfish, Zara ordered boiled eggs. She hated berries, but liked bananas and coconuts. Her idea of hell was a never-ending buffet with her stuck in the queue behind someone who had a cold.

“Everyone’s having pizza! Besides, it’s free!” Roger clarified, with a badly timed sniffle.

Zara wrinkled her nose and the rest of her face followed suit.

“People eat pizza with their hands. The same hands they use to renovate apartments.”

But of course Roger didn’t back down, just looked in turn at Zara’s handbag, shoes, and wristwatch, then scribbled something on his pad.

“I’ll say you want whatever the most expensive one is, will that do? Maybe they’ve got something with truffle, gold leaf, and some sort of endangered baby turtle on it, like some ridiculous stuck-up marinara. Next!”

Estelle looked worried about having to decide so quickly, so she exclaimed: “I’ll have the same as Zara.”

Roger peered at her, then wrote “capricciosa” on his pad.

Then it was Ro’s turn, and her face took on an expression that only a mother or a manufacturer of defibrillators could love.

“A kebab pizza with garlic sauce! Extra sauce. And extra kebab. Preferably a bit charred. Hang on, I’ll go and see what Jules would like!”