And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer

by Fredrik Backman

  “That wasn’t me in the tent with you, Dad. It was Noah,” the son whispers.

  The dad lifts his head and stares at him.

  “Who’s Noah?”

  Ted gently strokes his cheek.

  “Noah, Dad. My son. You stayed in the tent with Noah. I don’t like fishing.”

  “You do! I taught you! I taught you . . . didn’t I teach you?”

  “You never had time to teach me, Dad. You were always working. But you taught Noah, you’ve taught him everything. He’s the one who loves math, like you.”

  The father’s fingers grope around the bed; he’s looking for something in his pockets, more and more frantically. When he sees that his boy has tears in his eyes, his own gaze flees toward the corner of the room. He clenches his fists until his knuckles turn white to stop them from shaking, mutters angrily:

  “But what about school, Ted? Tell me how it’s going at school!”

  A boy and his grandpa are sitting on a bench in Grandpa’s brain.

  “It’s such a nice brain, Grandpa,” Noah says encouragingly, because Grandma always said that whenever Grandpa goes quiet, you just have to give him a compliment to get him going again.

  “That’s nice of you.” Grandpa smiles and dries his eyes with the back of his hand.

  “A bit messy though.” The boy grins.

  “It rained for a long time here when your Grandma died. I never quite got it back in order after that.”

  Noah notices that the ground beneath the bench has become muddy, but the keys and shards of glass are still there. Beyond the square is the lake, and small waves roll over it, memories of boats already passed. Noah can almost see the green tent on the island in the distance, remembers the fog which used to tenderly hug the trees like a cool sheet at dawn when they woke. Whenever Noah was scared of sleeping, Grandpa would take out a string and tie one end around his arm and the other around the boy’s and promise that if Noah had nightmares he only had to pull on the string and Grandpa would wake up and bring him straight back to safety. Like a boat on a jetty. Grandpa kept his promise, every single time. Noah’s legs dangle over the edge of the bench; the dragon has fallen asleep in the middle of the square, next to a fountain. There’s a small group of tall buildings on the horizon on the other shore, amid the ruins of others which look like they’ve recently fallen down. The last ones standing are covered in blinking neon lights, strung here and there across their facades like they were taped up by someone who was either in too much of a hurry or absolutely desperate for a poo. They wink patterns through the fog, Noah realizes, forming letters. “Important!” one of the buildings twinkles. “Remember!” says another one. But on the very tallest building, the one closest to the beach, the lights say, “Pictures of Noah.”

  “What are those buildings, Grandpa?”

  “They’re archives. That’s where everything is kept. All the most important things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Everything we’ve done. All the photos and films and all your most unnecessary presents.”

  Grandpa laughs, Noah too. They always give each other unnecessary presents. Grandpa gave Noah a plastic bag full of air for Christmas and Noah gave Grandpa a sandal. For his birthday, Noah gave Grandpa a piece of chocolate he’d already eaten. That was Grandpa’s favorite.

  “That’s a big building.”

  “It was a big piece of chocolate.”

  “Why are you holding my hand so tight, Grandpa?”

  “Sorry, Noahnoah. Sorry.”

  The ground around the fountain in the square is covered in hard stone slabs. Someone has scrawled advanced mathematical calculations all over them in white chalk, but blurry people are rushing this way and that across them and the soles of their shoes rub away the numbers one by one until only random lines remain, carved deeply into the stones. Fossil equations. The dragon sneezes in its sleep; its nostrils send a million scraps of paper covered in handwritten messages flying across the square. A hundred elves from a book of fairy tales Grandma used to read to Noah dance around the fountain trying to catch them.

  “What’s on those pieces of paper?” the boy asks.

  “Those are all my ideas,” Grandpa replies.

  “They’re blowing away.”

  “They’ve been doing that for a long time.”

  The boy nods and wraps his fingers tightly around Grandpa’s.

  “Is your brain ill?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Dad.”

  Grandpa exhales through his nose. Nods.

  “We don’t know, really. We know so little about how the brain works. It’s like a fading star right now—do you remember what I taught you about that?”

  “When a star fades it takes a long time for us to realize, as long as it takes for the last of its light to reach Earth.”

  Grandpa’s chin trembles. He often reminds Noah that the universe is over thirteen billion years old. Grandma always used to mutter, “And you’re still in such a hurry to look at it that you never have time to do the dishes.” “Those who hasten to live are in a hurry to miss,” she sometimes used to whisper to Noah, though he didn’t know what she meant before she was buried. Grandpa clasps his hands to stop them from shaking.

  “When a brain fades it takes a long time for the body to realize. The human body has a tremendous work ethic; it’s a mathematical masterpiece, it’ll keep working until the very last light. Our brains are the most boundless equation, and once humanity solves it it’ll be more powerful than when we went to the moon. There’s no greater mystery in the universe than a human. Do you remember what I told you about failing?”

  “The only time you’ve failed is if you don’t try once more.”

  “Exactly, Noahnoah, exactly. A great thought can never be kept on Earth.”

  Noah closes his eyes, stops the tears in their tracks, and forces them to cower beneath his eyelids. Snow starts to fall in the square, the same way very small children cry, like it had barely started at first but soon like it would never end. Heavy, white flakes cover all of Grandpa’s ideas.

  “Tell me about school, Noahnoah,” the old man says.

  He always wants to know everything about school, but not like other adults, who only want to know if Noah is behaving. Grandpa wants to know if the school is behaving. It hardly ever is.

  “Our teacher made us write a story about what we want to be when we’re big,” Noah tells him.

  “What did you write?”

  “I wrote that I wanted to concentrate on being little first.”

  “That’s a very good answer.”

  “Isn’t it? I would rather be old than a grown-up. All grown-ups are angry, it’s just children and old people who laugh.”

  “Did you write that?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did your teacher say?”

  “She said I hadn’t understood the task.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I said she hadn’t understood my answer.”

  “I love you,” Grandpa manages to say with closed eyes.

  “You’re bleeding again,” Noah says with his hand on Grandpa’s forearm.

  Grandpa wipes his forehead with a faded handkerchief. He’s searching for something in his pockets. Then he looks at the boy’s shoes, the way they swing a few inches above the tarmac with unruly shadows beneath them.

  “When your feet touch the ground, I’ll be in space, my dear Noahnoah.”

  The boy concentrates on breathing in time with Grandpa. That’s another of their games.

  “Are we here to learn how to say good-bye, Grandpa?” he eventually asks.

  The old man scratches his chin, thinks for a long time.

  “Yes, Noahnoah. I’m afraid we are.”

  “I think good-byes are hard,” the boy admits.

  Grandpa nods and strokes his cheek softly, though his fingertips are as rough as dry suede.

  “You get that from your Grandma.”

  Noah remembe
rs. When his dad picked him up from Grandma and Grandpa’s in the evenings he wasn’t even allowed to say those words to her. “Don’t say it, Noah, don’t you dare say it to me! I get old when you leave me. Every wrinkle on my face is a good-bye from you,” she used to complain. And so he sang to her instead, and that made her laugh. She taught him to read and bake saffron buns and pour coffee without the pot dribbling, and when her hands started to shake the boy taught himself to pour half cups so she wouldn’t spill any, because she was always ashamed when she did and he never let her feel ashamed in front of him. “The amount I love you, Noah,” she would tell him with her lips to his ear after she read fairy tales about elves and he was just about to fall asleep, “the sky will never be that big.” She wasn’t perfect, but she was his. The boy sang to her the night before she died. Her body stopped working before her brain did. For Grandpa it’s the opposite.

  “I’m bad at good-byes,” says the boy.

  Grandpa’s lips reveal all his teeth when he smiles.

  “We’ll have plenty of chances to practice. You’ll be good at it. Almost all grown adults walk around full of regret over a good-bye they wish they’d been able to go back and say better. Our good-bye doesn’t have to be like that, you’ll be able to keep redoing it until it’s perfect. And once it’s perfect, that’s when your feet will touch the ground and I’ll be in space, and there won’t be anything to be afraid of.”

  Noah holds the old man’s hand, the man who taught him to fish and to never be afraid of big thoughts and to look at the night’s sky and understand that it’s made of numbers. Mathematics has blessed the boy in that sense, because he’s no longer afraid of the thing almost everyone else is terrified of: infinity. Noah loves space because it never ends. It never dies. It’s the one thing in his life which won’t ever leave him.

  He swings his legs, studies the glittering metals between the flowers.

  “There are numbers on all the keys, Grandpa.”

  Grandpa leans forward over the edge and calmly looks at them.

  “Yes, indeed, there are.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  He suddenly sounds so afraid. His body is heavy, his voice is weak, and his skin is a sail about to be abandoned by the wind.

  “Why are you holding my hand so tight, Grandpa?” the boy whispers again.

  “Because all of this is disappearing, Noahnoah. And I want to keep hold of you longest of all.”

  The boy nods. Holds his grandpa’s hand tighter in return.

  He holds the girl’s hand tighter and tighter and tighter, until she tenderly loosens one finger after another and kisses him on the neck.

  “You’re squeezing me like I was a rope.”

  “I don’t want to lose you again. I couldn’t go on.”

  She walks lightheartedly along the road next to him.

  “I’m here. I’ve always been here. Tell me more about Noah, tell me everything.”

  His face softens bit by bit, until he’s grinning and replies:

  “He’s so tall now, his feet are going to reach all the way to the ground soon.”

  “You’ll have to put more stones under the anchor then,” she says with a laugh.

  His lungs force him to stop and lean against a tree. Their names are carved into the bark, but he doesn’t remember why.

  “My memories are running away from me, my love, like when you try to separate oil and water. I’m constantly reading a book with a missing page, and it’s always the most important one.”

  “I know, I know you’re afraid,” she answers and brushes her lips against his cheek.

  “Where is this road taking us?”

  “Home,” she replies.

  “Where are we?”

  “We’re back where we met. The dance hall where you stepped on my toes is over there, the café where I accidentally trapped your hand in the door. Your little finger is still crooked, you used to say that I probably only married you because I felt bad about that.”

  “I didn’t care why you said yes. Just that you stayed.”

  “There’s the church where you became mine. There’s the house that became ours.”

  He closes his eyes, lets his nose lead the way.

  “Your hyacinths. They’ve never smelled so strong.”

  For more than half a century they belonged to one another. She detested the same characteristics in him that last day as she had the first time she saw him under that tree, and still adored all the others.

  “When you looked straight at me when I was seventy I fell just as hard as I did when I was sixteen.” She smiles.

  His fingertips touch the skin above her collarbone.

  “You never became ordinary to me, my love. You were electric shocks and fire.”

  Her teeth tickle his earlobe when she replies:

  “No one could ask for more.”

  No one had ever fought with him like she had. Their very first fight had been about the universe; he explained how it had been created and she refused to accept it. He raised his voice, she got angry, he couldn’t understand why, and she shouted, “I’m angry because you think everything happened by chance but there are billions of people on this planet and I found you so if you’re saying I could just as well have found someone else then I can’t bear your bloody mathematics!” Her fists had been clenched. He stood there looking at her for several minutes. Then he said that he loved her. It was the first time. They never stopped arguing and they never slept apart; he spent an entire working life calculating probabilities and she was the most improbable person he ever met. She turned him upside-down.

  When they moved into their first house he spent the dark months growing a garden so beautiful that it knocked the air out of her when the light finally came. He did it with a determination only science can mobilize in a grown man, because he wanted to show that mathematics could be beautiful. He measured the angles of the sun, drew diagrams of where the trees cast their shade, kept statistics for the day-to-day temperatures, and optimized the choice of plants. “I wanted you to know,” he said as she stood barefoot in the grass that June and cried. “Know what?” she asked. “That equations are magic, and that all formulas are spells,” he said.

  Now they are old and on a road. Her words against the fabric of his shirt:

  “And then you went about growing coriander in secret every year, just to mess with me.”

  He throws out his arms in a gesture of innocence:

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I forget things, you know, I’m an old man. Are you saying you don’t like coriander?”

  “You’ve always known I hate it!”

  “It must’ve been Noah. There’s no trusting that boy.” He laughs.

  She stands on her tiptoes with both hands clutching his shirt and fixes her eyes on him.

  “You were never easy, darling difficult sulky you, never diplomatic. You might even have been easy to dislike at times. But no one, absolutely no one, would dare tell me you were hard to love.”

  Next to the garden, which smelled of hyacinths and sometimes coriander, there was an old field. And there, right on the other side of the hedge, was a broken old fishing boat dragged up onto land by a neighbor many years earlier. Grandpa always said that he couldn’t get any peace and quiet when he worked in the house, and Grandma always replied that she couldn’t get any peace and quiet in the house when Grandpa was working there, so one morning Grandma went out into the garden and around the hedge and started to decorate the boat’s cabin as an office. Grandpa sat there for years after that, surrounded by numbers and calculations and equations; it was the only place on Earth where everything was logical to him. Mathematicians need a place like that. Maybe everyone else does too.

  There was a huge anchor leaning against one side of the boat. When Ted was very small, the boy would occasionally ask his dad how long it would be before he was taller than it. The dad has tried to remember when it happened. He’s tried so hard th
at the square in his head quaked. He learned his lesson; he was a different man when Noah was born, became someone else as Grandpa than he had been as a father. That’s not unique to mathematicians. When Noah asked the same question Ted once had, Grandpa replied, “You’ll have to hope it never happens, because only people who are shorter than the anchor get to play in my office whenever they want.” And when Noah’s head began to approach the top of the anchor, Grandpa placed stones beneath it so he would never lose the privilege of being disturbed.

  “Noah has gotten so smart, my love.”

  “He always has been, it just took you awhile to catch up,” she snorts.

  His voice catches in his throat.

  “My brain is shrinking now, the square gets smaller every night.”

  She strokes his temples.

  “Do you remember what you said, when we first fell in love, that sleeping was a torment?”

  “Yes. Because we couldn’t share our sleep. Every morning when I blinked awake, the seconds before I knew where I was were unbearable. Until I knew where you were.”

  She kisses him.

  “I know that the way home is getting longer and longer every morning. But I loved you because your brain, your world, was always bigger than everyone else’s. There’s still a lot of it left.”

  “I miss you unbearably.”

  She smiles, her tears on his face.

  “Darling stubborn you. I know you never believed in life after death. But you should know that I’m dearly, dearly, dearly hoping that you’re wrong.”

  The road behind her is blurry, the horizon bearing rain. He holds her as hard as he can. Sighs deeply.

  “Lord how you’ll argue with me then. If we meet in Heaven.”

  A rake has been left propped against a wall. Lying next to it are three plant markers flecked with damp earth. On the ground, there’s a bag with a pair of glasses sticking out of one of its pockets. A microscope has been forgotten on a footstool and there’s a white coat hanging from a hook, a pair of red shoes visible beneath. Grandpa proposed to her here, by the fountain, and Grandma’s things are still everywhere.

  The boy carefully touches the lump on Grandpa’s forehead.