Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All Read Free Page A

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 . . .
    â€œLike 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 hadgathered 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.
    â€œHitman Anders?” said the priest.
    â€œYes,” 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.
    â€œAnd 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 this hotel,” she said. “I don’t suppose there’s an extra room available at . . . the friends-and-family discount?”
    â€œFriends-and-family?” said Per Persson. “Exactly when did we become friends, the two of us?”
    â€œWell,” said the priest. “It’s not too late.”

CHAPTER 3
    T he priest was assigned room eight, which shared a wall with Hitman Anders’s room. But unlike the murderer, whom Per Persson never dared to ask for payment, the new