Фредрик Бакман - Anxious People

JACK:Is there anything more specific you could tell me about the bank robber ?

LONDON:Like what?

JACK:Do you remember anything about his appearance?

LONDON:God, that’s such a superficial question! You’ve got a really sick binary view of gender, yeah?

JACK:I’m sorry. Can you tell me anything else about “the person”?

LONDON:You don’t have to use perverted commas for that.

JACK:I’m afraid I’m going to have to say that I do. Can you tell me anything about the bank robber’s appearance? For instance, was the bank robber a short bank robber or a tall bank robber?

LONDON:Look, I don’t describe people by their height. That’s really excluding. I mean, I’m short, and I know that can give a lot of tall people a complex.

JACK:I’m sorry?

LONDON:Tall people have feelings, too, you know.

JACK:Okay. Fine. Then I can only apologize again. Let me rephrase the question: Did the bank robber look like the sort of bank robber who might have a complex?

LONDON:Why are you rubbing your eyebrows like that? It’s really creepy.

JACK:I’m sorry. What was your first impression of the bank robber?

LONDON:Okay. My first “impression” was that the “bank robber” seemed to be a complete moron.

JACK:I’ll interpret that as suggesting that it’s perfectly okay to have a binary attitude to intelligence.

LONDON:What?

JACK:Nothing. On what did you base your assumption that the bank robber was a moron?

LONDON:I was handed a note saying “Give me six thousand five hundred kronor.” Who the hell would rob a BANK for six and a half thousand? You rob banks to get ten million, something like that. If all you want is six thousand five hundred exactly, there must be some very special reason, mustn’t there?

JACK:I have to confess that I hadn’t thought of it like that.

LONDON:You should think more, have you ever thought about that?

JACK:I’ll do my best. Can I ask you to take a look at this sheet of paper and tell me if you recognize it?

LONDON:This? Looks like a kid’s drawing. And what’s it supposed to be anyway?

JACK:I think that’s a monkey, and a frog and a horse.

LONDON:That’s not a horse. That’s an elk!

JACK:Do you think? All my colleagues have guessed either a horse or a giraffe.

LONDON:Hang on. I just got a flash in my bud.

JACK:No, stay focused now, London—so you think this is an elk? Hello? Put your phone down and answer the question!

LONDON: Yes!

JACK:Sorry?

LONDON:At last! At last!

JACK:I don’t understand.

LONDON:They are getting divorced!

17

The truth? The truth is that the bank robber was an adult. There’s nothing more revealing about a bank robber’s personality than that. Because the terrible thing about becoming an adult is being forced to realize that absolutely nobody cares about us, we have to deal with everything ourselves now, find out how the whole world works. Work and pay bills, use dental floss and get to meetings on time, stand in line and fill out forms, come to grips with cables and put furniture together, change tires on the car and charge the phone and switch the coffee machine off and not forget to sign the kids up for swimming lessons. We open our eyes in the morning and life is just waiting to tip a fresh avalanche of “Don’t Forget!”s and “Remember!”s over us. We don’t have time to think or breathe, we just wake up and start digging through the heap, because there will be another one dumped on us tomorrow. We look around occasionally, at our place of work or at parents’ meetings or out in the street, and realize with horror that everyone else seems to know exactly what they’re doing. We’re the only ones who have to pretend. Everyone else can afford stuff and has a handle on other stuff and enough energy to deal with even more stuff. And everyone else’s children can swim.

But we weren’t ready to become adults. Someone should have stopped us.

The truth? The truth is that just as the bank robber ran out into the street, a police officer happened to be walking past. It would later become apparent that no police officers were yet looking for the bank robber, seeing as the alarm hadn’t been raised over the radio, seeing as twenty-year-old London and the staff in the emergency call center took plenty of time to become mutually offended by one another first. (London reported a bank robbery, which led the call operator to ask “Where?” which led London to give them the address of the bank, which led the call operator to ask “Aren’t you a cashless bank? Why would anyone want to rob that?” which led London to say “Exactly,” which led the call operator to ask “Exactly what?” which led London to snap “What do you mean ‘Exactly what’?” which led to the call operator hitting back with “You were the one who started it!” which led London to yell “No, you were the one who…,” after which the conversation quickly deteriorated.) Later it turned out that the police officer the bank robber saw in the street wasn’t actually a police officer but a traffic warden, and if the bank robber hadn’t been so stressed and had been paying attention, that would have been obvious and a different escape strategy might have been possible. Which would have made this a much shorter story.

But instead the bank robber rushed through the first available open door, which led to a stairwell, and then there weren’t exactly many options except to go up the stairs. On the top floor one of the apartment doors was wide open, so that’s where the bank robber went, out of breath and sweating, with the traditional bank robber’s ski mask askew so that only one eye could see anything. Only then did the bank robber notice that the hall was full of shoes, and that the apartment was full of people with no shoes on. One of the women in the apartment caught sight of the pistol and started to cry, “Oh, dear Lord, we’re being robbed!” and at the same time the bank robber heard rapid footsteps out in the stairwell and assumed it was a police officer (it wasn’t, it was the postman), so in the absence of other alternatives the bank robber shut the door and aimed the pistol in various different directions at random, initially shouting, “No… ! No, this isn’t a robbery… I just…,” before quickly thinking better of it and panting, “Well, maybe it is a robbery! But you’re not the victims! It’s maybe more like a hostage situation now! And I’m very sorry about that! I’m having quite a complicated day here!”

The bank robber undeniably had a point. Not that this is in any way a defense of bank robbers, but they can have bad days at work, too. Hand on heart, which of us hasn’t wanted to pull a gun after talking to a twenty-year-old?

A few minutes later, the street in front of the building was crawling with journalists and cameras, and after they came the police arrived. The fact that most of the journalists arrived before the police should in no way be interpreted as evidence of their respective professions’ competence, but in this instance more as proof that the police had more important things to be getting on with, and that the journalists had more time to read social media, and the unpleasant young woman in the bank that wasn’t a bank was evidently able to express herself better on Twitter than over the phone. On social media she announced that she had watched through the large front window of the bank as the robber ran into the building on the other side of the street, whereas the police didn’t receive the call until the postman who had seen the bank robber in the stairwell called his wife, who happened to work in a café opposite the police station. She rushed across the road, and only then was the alarm sounded, to the effect that what appeared to be a man armed with what appeared to be a pistol, wearing what appeared to be a ski mask, had rushed into a viewing in one of the apartments and had locked the real estate agent and prospective buyers inside. This was how a bank robber failed to rob a bank but instead managed to spark a hostage drama. Life doesn’t always turn out the way you expect.