He called his sister afterward. She made promise after promise, of course, as usual. She just needed money for the flight. Obviously. Jack sent the money, but she didn’t come to the funeral. Naturally, Jim has never once called her an “addict” or “junkie,” because dads can’t do that. He always says his daughter is “ill,” because that makes it feel better. But Jack always calls his sister what she is: a heroin addict. She’s seven years older than him, and with that age gap you don’t have a big sister when you’re little, you have an idol. When she left home he couldn’t go with her, and when she tried to find herself he couldn’t help, and when she went under he couldn’t save her.
* * *
It’s been just Jack and Jim since then. They send her money every time she calls, every time she pretends she’s going to come home, only she just needs help with the airfare, this one last time. And maybe a bit extra to pay a few little debts. Nothing much, she’s going to sort it all out, if they could just… they know they shouldn’t, of course. You always know. Addicts are addicted to their drugs, and their families are addicted to hope. They cling to it. Every time her dad gets a call from a number he doesn’t recognize, he always hopes it’s her, whereas her younger brother is terrified because he’s always convinced this will be the call when someone tells him she’s dead. The same questions echo through both of them: What sort of police officers can’t even look after their own daughter and sister? What sort of family can’t help one of their own to help herself? What sort of god makes a priest ill, and what sort of daughter doesn’t show up for the funeral?
When both children were still living at home, when everyone was still tolerably happy, Jack asked his mom one evening how she could bear to sit beside people when they were dying, in their final hours, without being able to save them. His mom kissed the top of his head and said: “How do you eat an elephant, sweetheart?” He replied the way a child who’s heard the same joke a thousand times does: “One bit at a time, Mom.” She laughed just as loudly, for the thousandth time, the way parents do. Then she held his hand tightly and said: “We can’t change the world, and a lot of the time we can’t even change people. No more than one bit at a time. So we do what we can to help whenever we get the chance, sweetheart. We save those we can. We do our best. Then we try to find a way to convince ourselves that that will just have to… be enough. So we can live with our failures without drowning.”
* * *
Jack couldn’t help his sister. He couldn’t save the man on the bridge. Those who jump… they jump. The rest of us have to get out of bed the following day, priests walk out of the door to do their job, as do police officers. Now Jack is looking at the stage blood on the floor, the bullet hole in the wall, the little side table where the phone was lying, and the large coffee table with the discarded pizza boxes.
He looks at Jim, and his dad holds his hands up and smiles weakly.
“I give up. You’re the genius here, son. What have you come up with?”
Jack nods at the pizza boxes. Brushes the hair from the lump on his forehead. Counts out the names again.
“Roger, Anna-Lena, Ro, Jules, Estelle, Zara, Lennart, the bank robber, the real estate agent. Nine people.”
“Nine people, yes.”
“But when they dropped that lime on my head, the note only asked for eight pizzas.”
Jim thinks about this so hard that his nostrils quiver.
“Maybe the bank robber doesn’t like pizza?”
“Maybe.”
“But that’s not what you think?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Jack stands up, packs the witness statements away in his bag. He bites his tongue.
“Is the real estate agent still at the station?”
“She should be, yes.”
“Call and make sure no one lets her go anywhere!”
Jim frowns so hard that you could lose a paper clip in the wrinkles.
“But… why, son? What’s—?”
Jack interrupts his dad: “I don’t think there were nine people in this apartment. I think there were eight. There’s one person we’ve just assumed was here the whole time! Bloody hell, Dad, don’t you see? The perpetrator didn’t hide, and didn’t escape, either. She just walked right out into the street in front of us!”
47
The bank robber was sitting alone in the hall. She could hear the voices of the people she’d taken hostage, but they might as well have been in a different time zone. There were eternities between her and everyone else now, between her and the person she had been that morning. She wasn’t alone in the apartment, but no one in the world shared her prospects, and that’s the greatest loneliness in the world: when no one is walking beside you toward your destination. In a short while, when they all walked out of the apartment, the others would be victims the moment their feet reached the sidewalk. She would be the criminal. If the police didn’t shoot her on sight, she’d end up stuck in prison for… she didn’t even know how long… years? She’d grow old in a cell. She’d never see her daughters learn to swim.
The girls. Oh, the girls. The monkey and the frog who would grow up and have to learn to be good liars. She hoped their dad would have the sense to teach them to do that properly. So that they could lie and say their mom was dead rather than tell the truth. She slowly removed the mask. It no longer served any purpose, she realized that, to think otherwise would be nothing but childish delusion. She was never going to be able to escape the police. Her hair fell around her neck, damp and tangled. She weighed the pistol in her hand, clutching it harder and harder, a little at a time so she barely noticed. Only her whitening knuckles betrayed what was happening, until her forefinger suddenly felt for the trigger. Without any great drama, she asked herself: “If this had been real, would I have shot myself?”
She didn’t have time to finish the thought. Someone’s fingers suddenly wrapped around hers. They didn’t tear the pistol from her hand, just lowered it. Zara stood there looking at the bank robber, neither sympathetic nor concerned, but without taking her hand off the pistol.
* * *
Ever since the start of the hostage drama, Zara had tried not to think about anything in particular, in fact she always did her best not to think about anything at all—when you’re in as much pain as she has been for the past ten years, that’s a vital survival skill. But something slipped through her armor when she saw the bank robber sitting there alone with the pistol. A brief memory of those hours in the office with the picture of the woman on the bridge, the psychologist looking at Zara and saying: “Do you know what, Zara? One of the most human things about anxiety is that we try to cure chaos with chaos. Someone who has got themselves into a catastrophic situation rarely retreats from it, we’re far more inclined to carry on even faster. We’ve created lives where we can watch other people crash into the wall but still hope that somehow we’re going to pass straight through it. The closer we get, the more confidently we believe that some unlikely solution is miraculously going to save us, while everyone watching us is just waiting for the crash.”
Zara looked around the office then. There were no fancy certificates hanging on the walls; for some reason it’s always the people with the most impressive diplomas who keep them in their desk drawers.
So Zara asked, without any sarcasm, “Have you learned any theories about why people behave like that, then?”
“Hundreds,” the psychologist smiled.
“Which one do you believe?”
“I believe the one that says that if you do it for long enough, it can become impossible to tell the difference between flying and falling.”
Zara usually fought to keep all thoughts at bay, but that one slipped through. So when she found herself standing in the hall of the apartment, she put her hand around the pistol and said the kindest thing a woman in her position could say to a woman in the bank robber’s position. Four words.
“Don’t do anything silly.”
The ban
k robber looked at her, her eyes blank, her chest empty. But she didn’t do anything silly. She even gave her a weak smile. It was an unexpected moment for both of them. Zara turned and walked away quickly, almost scared, back to the balcony. She pulled a pair of headphones from her bag, put them on, and closed her eyes.
Shortly after that she ate pizza for the first time in her life. That, too, was unexpected. Capricciosa. She thought it was disgusting.
48
Jack jumps out of the police car while it’s still moving. He storms into the police station and runs to the interview room so fast that he hits his already bruised forehead on the door because he can’t get it open quickly enough. Jim comes after him, panting, trying to get his son to calm down, but there’s no chance of that.
“Hello! How’s tricks—?” the real estate agent begins, but Jack cuts her off by roaring:
“I know who you are now!”
“I don’t underst—” the agent gasps.
“Calm down, Jack, please,” Jim pants from the doorway.
“It’s you!” Jack yells, showing no sign at all of calming down.
“Me?”
Jack’s eyes are glinting with triumph when he leans over the table with his fists clenched in the air and hisses: “I should have realized right from the start. There was never a real estate agent in the apartment. You’re the bank robber!”
49
Of course it was idiotic of Jack not to realize everything from the start, who the bank robber was, because it seemed so obvious to him in hindsight. Maybe it was his mom’s fault. She held the two of them together, him and his dad, but perhaps that sometimes distracted him, and for some reason she had managed to get into his thoughts the whole damn time today. Just as much trouble in death as in life, that woman. Maybe somewhere there was another priest who was more difficult than her, but there could hardly be two. She got into arguments with everyone when she was alive, maybe more with her son than anyone, and that didn’t stop after her funeral. Because the people we argue with hardest of all are not the ones who are completely different from us, but the ones who are almost no different at all.
She used to travel abroad sometimes, after disasters when aid organizations needed volunteers, to the constant accompaniment of criticism from all directions both inside and outside the church. She either shouldn’t help at all or ought to be doing it somewhere else. Nothing is easier for people who never do anything themselves than to criticize someone who actually makes an effort. One time she was on the other side of the world and got caught up in a riot and tried to help a bleeding woman get away, and in the chaos she herself got stabbed in the arm. She was taken to the hospital, managed to borrow a phone, and called home. Jim was sitting in front of the news, waiting. He listened patiently, as usual happy and relieved that she was okay. But when Jack realized what had happened, he grabbed the phone and shouted so loudly that the line began to shriek with feedback: “Why did you have to go there? Why do you have to risk your life? Why don’t you ever think about your family?”
His mom realized, of course, that her son was shouting out of fear and concern, so she replied the way she often did: “Boats that stay in the harbor are safe, sweetheart, but that’s not what boats were built for.”
Jack said something he instantly regretted: “Do you think God’s going to protect you against knives just because you’re a priest?”
She may have been sitting in a hospital on the other side of the world, but she could still feel his bottomless terror. So her whispers were half washed away by tears when she replied: “God doesn’t protect people from knives, sweetheart. That’s why God gave us other people, so we can protect each other.”
It was impossible to argue with such a stubborn woman. Jack hated how much he admired her sometimes. Jim, in turn, loved her so much he could hardly breathe. But she didn’t travel so much after that, and never went so far away again. Then she got sick, and they lost her, and the world lost a bit more of its protection.
* * *
So when the hostage drama started, when Jack and Jim were standing out in the street the day before New Year’s Eve, outside the apartment block, and had just been told by their bosses to wait for the Stockholmer, the two of them were thinking a lot about her and what she would have done if she’d been there. And when that lime came flying out and hit Jack on the forehead and they realized that the note wrapped around it was an order for pizza, they both concluded that a better opportunity to get in contact with the bank robber was unlikely to arise. So Jack called the negotiator. And, despite the fact that he was a Stockholmer, he agreed that they were right.
“Yes, well, delivering pizzas could be an opening for communication, it certainly could. What about the bomb in the stairwell, though?” he wondered.
“It’s not a bomb!” Jack said confidently.
“Would you swear on that?”
“Using whatever swearwords you’d care to choose, and I can tell you that my mom taught me quite a lot of those. This perpetrator isn’t dangerous. Just scared.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because if he’d been dangerous, if he’d been aware of what he was doing, then he wouldn’t have ordered pizzas for all the hostages by throwing limes at us. Let me go in and talk to him, I can…” Jack paused. He’d been about to say I can save everyone. But he swallowed hard and said instead: “I can fix this. I can sort this out.”
“Have you spoken to all the neighbors?” the negotiator wondered.
“The rest of the building is empty,” Jack assured him.
The negotiator was still stuck in traffic on the motorway, far too many miles away, not even police cars were able to get through, so in the end he agreed to Jack’s plan. But he also demanded that Jack somehow get a phone into the apartment, so that the negotiator himself could call the bank robber and negotiate the release of the hostages. And take the glory when everything turns out okay, Jack thought sullenly.
“I’ve got a decent phone,” Jack said, because he had the one Jim called the special telephone thingy that got a bloody signal where there wasn’t a bloody signal.
“I’ll call after they’ve had the pizzas, it’s easier to negotiate when people have eaten,” the negotiator said, as if that were what you learned on negotiation courses these days.
“What do we do if he doesn’t open the door when we get there?” Jack wondered.
“Then you leave the pizzas and phone out on the landing.”
“How can we be sure he’ll take the phone inside the apartment?” Jack asked.
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“Do you think he’s made rational, logical decisions so far? He might get stressed and think the phone is some sort of trap.”
That was when Jim suddenly had an idea. Which surprised him as much as anyone.
“We can put it in one of the pizza boxes!” he suggested.
Jack looked at his dad in shock for several seconds. Then he nodded and said into the phone: “We’ll put the phone in one of the pizza boxes.”
“Yes, that’s a good idea,” the negotiator agreed.
“It was my dad’s,” Jack said proudly.
Jim turned away so his son wouldn’t see how embarrassed he was. He looked up local pizzerias on Google, called one of them, and explained the highly unconventional order: eight pizzas and one of the uniforms the delivery guys usually wore. However, Jim made the mistake of saying he was a police officer, and the owner of the pizzeria, who was perfectly capable of reading the local news on social media, was quick-witted enough to say that he gave a discount for bulk orders on pizzas, but charged twice as much for hiring out uniforms. Jim asked angrily if the owner was a character in an English Christmas story from the mid-nineteenth century, and the owner calmly countered by asking if Jim was familiar with the concept of “supply and demand.” When the pizzas and outfit finally arrived, Jack grabbed at them, but Jim refused to let go.
“What are you playing at? I’m the one going in!” Ja
ck said firmly.
Jim shook his head.
“No. I still think that might be a bomb in the stairwell. So I’m the one going in.”
“Why would you go in there if you think it’s a bomb? For God’s sake, I’m going…,” Jack began, but his dad refused to back down.
“You’re certain it isn’t a bomb, aren’t you, son?”
“Yes!”
“Well, then. It doesn’t make any difference if I go in.”
“What are you, eleven years old?”
“Are you?”
Jack tried desperately to think of a counterargument.
“I can’t let you…”
Jim was already changing clothes, in the middle of the street even though the temperature was below freezing. They didn’t look at each other.
“Your mom would never have forgiven me if I let you go in,” Jim said, looking down at the ground.
“Do you think she would have forgiven me if I let you go in, then? You were her husband,” Jack said, looking down the street.
Jim looked up at the sky.
“But she was your mom.”
There was no arguing with him sometimes, the old bastard.
50
The police station. The interview room. All the blood has drained from the real estate agent’s face now. She looks terrified.
“Ba-ba-bank robber? M-m-me? H-h-how c-c-could I…”
Jack is marching around the room, waving his arms as if he were conducting an invisible orchestra, incredibly pleased with himself.
“How did I not see this right at the start? You don’t know anything. Everything you’ve said about the apartment has been complete gibberish. No real real estate agent could be this bad at their job!”
The real estate agent looks like she’s about to start crying.
Anxious People: A Novel Page 19