Читать книгу Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All - Jonas Jonasson - Страница 8

It’s good to find happiness in little things. Such as the fact that months went by and Hitman Anders murdered neither the receptionist nor anyone else in the immediate vicinity of the hotel. And the fact that the boss allowed Per Persson to close the reception desk and take a few hours off every Sunday. As long as the weather – unlike most other things – was on his side, he took the chance to leave the premises. Not to kick up his heels: he never had enough money for that. Sitting still and thinking on a park bench, though, was always free.

That was where he was sitting, with the four ham sandwiches and bottle of raspberry cordial he’d brought with him, when he was unexpectedly addressed: ‘How are you, my son?’

Before him stood a woman not many years older than Per himself. She looked dirty and worn out, and a white clerical collar gleamed around her neck, though there was a grimy stain on it.

Per Persson had never put much effort into being religious, but a priest was a priest, and he thought she deserved just as much respect as the murderers, drug addicts and plain old trash he saw at work. Or maybe even more. ‘Thanks for asking,’ he said. ‘I suppose I’ve been better. Or maybe not, come to think of it. I suppose you could say my life is relatively not great.’

My goodness, he’d been too honest, he thought. Better put things right. ‘Though I don’t mean to burden the priest with my health and well-being. Just as long as I get something in my stomach I’ll be fine,’ he said, signalling the end of the conversation by opening the lid of his lunchbox.

The priest, however, did not register the signal. Instead she said she would certainly not be burdened by being of service – a lot or a little – if it would make his existence more tolerable. A personal prayer was the least she could do.

A prayer? Per Persson wondered what good the grimy priest thought a prayer might do. Did she think the heavens would rain money? Or bread and potatoes? Although … why not? He was loath to reject a person who only meant well. ‘Thank you, priest. If you think that a prayer directed toward Heaven might make it easier for me to live my life, I won’t put up any fuss.’

The priest smiled and made room for herself on the park bench next to the receptionist, who was enjoying his Sunday off. And then she began her work.

‘God, see your child … What’s your name, by the way?’

‘My name is Per,’ said Per Persson, wondering what God would do with that information.

‘God, see your child Per, see how he suffers …’

‘Well, I don’t know that I’m suffering, exactly.’

The priest lost her stride and said she might as well start again from the beginning, as the prayer would do most good if she wasn’t interrupted too much.

Per Persson apologized and promised to let her finish in peace and quiet.

‘Thanks,’ said the priest. ‘God, see your child, see how he feels that his life could be better, even if he’s not exactly suffering. Lord, give him security, teach him to love the world and the world shall love him. O Jesus, bear your cross by his side, thy kingdom come, and so on.’

And so on? Per Persson thought, but he dared not say a word.

‘God bless you, my son, with strength and vigour and … strength. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.’

Per Persson didn’t know how a personal prayer should sound, but what he’d just heard sounded like a rush job. He was about to speak up when the priest beat him to it: ‘Twenty kronor, please.’

Twenty kronor? For that?

‘I’m supposed to pay for the prayer?’ said Per Persson.

The priest nodded. Prayers were not something you just reeled off. They demanded concentration and devotion, they took strength – and even a priest, after all, had to live on this Earth as long as it was here, rather than in the Heaven she would eventually hang around in.

What Per Persson had just heard sounded neither devoted nor concentrated, and he was far from certain that Heaven awaited the priest when the time came.

‘Ten kronor, then?’ the priest tried.

Had she just lowered the price from not much to practically nothing? Per Persson looked at her more closely and saw something … else. Something pitiful? He made up his mind that she was a tragic case rather than a swindler. ‘Would you like a sandwich?’ he asked.

She lit up. ‘Oh, thank you. That would be lovely. God bless you!’

Per Persson said that, from a historical perspective, pretty much everything indicated that the Lord was too busy to bless him in particular. And that the prayer He had just received as nourishment was unlikely to change that.

The priest appeared to be about to respond, but the receptionist was quick to hand over his lunchbox. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Best fed, least said.’

‘God leads the humble in what is right and teaches the humble his way. Psalm Twenty-five,’ said the priest, her mouth full of sandwich.

‘What did I just say?’ said Per Persson.

She really was a priest. As she gobbled up the receptionist’s four ham sandwiches, she told him that she’d had her own congregation until the past Sunday, when she was interrupted in the middle of the sermon and asked by the president of the congregation council to step down from the pulpit, pack her belongings and leave.

Per Persson thought that was terrible. Was there no such thing as job security in the realm of the heavenly?

Certainly there was, but the president was of the opinion that he had grounds for his action. And it so happened that the entire congregation agreed with him. Incidentally, that included the priest herself. What was more, at least two of its members had thrown copies of the hymnal after her as she departed.

‘As one might guess, there is a longer version. Would you like to hear it? I must say, my life has not exactly been a bed of roses.’

Per Persson considered this. Did he want to hear what the priest had spent her life sleeping in, if not a bed of roses, or did he have enough misery of his own to lug around without her help? ‘I’m not sure that my existence will be made any brighter by hearing about others who live in darkness,’ he said. ‘But I suppose I could listen to the gist of it as long the story doesn’t get too long-winded.’

The gist of it? The gist was that she had been wandering around for seven days now, from Sunday to Sunday. Sleeping in basement storage areas and God knows where else, eating anything she happened upon …

‘Like four out of four ham sandwiches,’ said Per Persson. ‘Perhaps the last of my raspberry cordial would be good for washing down my only food.’

The priest wouldn’t say no to that. And once she’d quenched her thirst, she said: ‘The long and the short of it is that I don’t believe in God. Much less in Jesus. Dad was the one who forced me to follow in his footsteps – Dad’s footsteps, that is, not Jesus’s – when, as luck would have it, he never had a son, only a daughter. Though Dad, in turn, had been forced into the priesthood by my grandfather. Or maybe they were sent by the devil, both of them – it’s tough to say. In any case, priesting runs in the family.’

When it came to the part about being a victim in the shadow of Dad or Grandfather, Per Persson felt an immediate kinship. If only children could be free of all the crap previous generations had gathered up for them, he said, perhaps it would bring some clarity to their lives.

The priest refrained from pointing out the necessity of previous generations for their own existence. Instead she asked what had led him all the way to … this park bench.

Oh, this park bench. And the depressing hotel lobby where he lived and worked. And gave beers to Hitman Anders.

‘Hitman Anders?’ said the priest.

‘Yes,’ said the receptionist. ‘He lives in number seven.’

Per Persson thought he might as well waste a few minutes on the priest, since she’d asked. So he told her about his grandfather, who had frittered away his millions. And Dad, who’d just thrown in the towel. About his mom, who’d hooked up with an Icelandic banker and left the country. How he himself had ended up in a whorehouse at the age of sixteen. And how he currently worked as a receptionist at the hotel the whorehouse had turned into.

‘And now that I happen to have twenty minutes off and can sit down on a bench at a safe distance from all the thieves and bandits I have to deal with at work, I run into a priest who doesn’t believe in God, who first tries to trick me out of my last few coins and then eats all my food. That’s my life in a nutshell, assuming I don’t go back to find that the old whorehouse has transformed into the Grand Hôtel, thanks to that prayer.’

The dirty priest, with breadcrumbs on her lips, looked ashamed. She said it was unlikely that her prayer would have such immediate results, especially since it had been a rush job and its addressee didn’t exist. She now regretted asking to be paid for shoddy work, not least since the receptionist had been so generous with his sandwiches. ‘Please tell me more about the hotel,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose there’s an extra room available at … the friends-and-family discount?’

‘Friends-and-family?’ said Per Persson. ‘Exactly when did we become friends, the two of us?’

‘Well,’ said the priest. ‘It’s not too late.’