The Answer Is No

by Fredrik Backman

Lucas is happy. This is a very provoking thing to the world. Because people aren’t supposed to be happy, they’re only supposed to want to be happy, because how otherwise are you supposed to be able to sell things to them? More than anything people are supposed to pretend to be happy on the internet so that other people are reminded of how unhappy they themselves are by comparison.

All he did was to remove the one thing that makes almost all people unhappy: other people. Whatever they want, the answer is no.

Just to be clear: It’s not that Lucas hates other people. He just really enjoys being where other people aren’t. He works well in groups as long as it’s groups of fewer than two people.

Best to be like dill, Lucas has concluded. Not like basil, the most anxious and ingratiating herb, but also not like cilantro, that conflict-seeking lunatic. Be dill. Nobody cares about dill. Or nobody cared about dill.

Because Lucas is making the mistake of thinking that the board wants to solve the problem. But people actually almost never want to do that.

Because a funny thing about rule-loving people is that to them it seems more important to impose punishment than it is to actually solve problems, and a funny thing about rule-breaking people is that they seem to find breaking rules a lot easier to do if someone else has broken them first. Very few people are really the “throw a frying pan on the sidewalk like it’s nothing” kind of people. But if there is a frying pan there already, and you happen to have a frying pan of your own that you would like to get rid of? Is that even really a crime, then? It really doesn’t feel that way, does it? Someone’s going to have to haul the first frying pan away anyway, aren’t they, so what difference does another frying pan make? Like almost none, right? And then a person with a rug comes along, thinking, Well, if somebody has to take those two frying pans to the landfill anyway, surely it won’t make much difference if this teeny-weeny rug is there too? And that’s how the pile becomes a pile. And then other people walk by, thinking to themselves, How horrible! A pile of garbage right here on our nice sidewalk! What kind of criminal would do something so disgusting? Fine, upstanding, selfless citizens like ourselves would certainly never initiate a pile of junk like that! But . . . you know . . . what if the pile’s like . . . already there? Then maybe our small piece of garbage won’t make such a big difference after all?

“So . . . it’s better to have a big pile of junk on the street than to sacrifice our principles?” Lucas wonders. “Of course! And that’s why we put the barrier tape around the pile! Like with crime scenes in movies!”

During the following night the pile grows even more. Nobody knows how it happens, because of course nobody who’s asked about it is the kind of person who would throw their garbage on a pile, that’s the kind of thing only other people do. On Facebook all the building tenants express their outrage, but no one makes any suggestions about how the pile might be removed, because everyone is too busy arguing about whose fault it is in the first place. By coincidence, those people who complain the second most seem to be the ones who’ve just recently bought new frying pans. But, of course, the people who complain the most are people who don’t even live in the area, but would still love to guess what kind of people are throwing away frying pans, which somehow always seem to be people who don’t look like the people who are doing the guessing.

“What does that mean?” asks Lucas sleepily. The small man throws out his arms, as if this should be completely obvious. “We have received complaints from neighbors in the area about a small pile of junk. But after my inspection it is clear that this is, in fact, a large pile of junk. In fact, it is so big that it is actually not plausible that it even is a pile of junk.” “I’m not following,” Lucas admits. “It cannot be a pile of junk,” the small man states. “But . . . you do see the pile?” Lucas tries. “Yes. But it is not plausible,” the man informs him. “But it’s . . . there,” says Lucas. “Plausibly: no,” the man corrects. “But you can see it!” Lucas insists. An impressively large sigh comes from such a small man when he answers: “That is not how the city’s classification system works. We only take into consideration what is plausible. If there were to be a pile of junk as big as this one is, there would be no laws deciding what the city should do. Because there are no laws covering things that aren’t plausible.”

“You know what is immature? Telling city officials how to do our jobs! I am sure it is very convenient for you citizens that you get to assess what is reality according to what you can see with your own eyes! But we city officials actually have a responsibility to stick to what is p-l-a-u-s-i-b-l-e.”

“Believing in God is optional in our Facebook group.” The first man nods, slightly annoyed. “But you believe in angels? Don’t those things go together?” Lucas asks, confused. “Don’t be so prejudiced, Lucas, they don’t like that on the internet!” the woman in the purple dress warns.

because the truth about problems is that the problem itself is never actually the problem. It’s always the people involved who are the problem.

“Who are those people?” he asks. The woman lights up. “Oh! Those are the protesters! Four different groups of them!” “Four?” “Yes! That one group there is protesting against the pile. They’re anti-pile! But that second group is protesting for the pile, because they’re of the opinion that piles have rights too. And that third group is protesting against protesters, because they think this whole protesting thing has gone too far.” “And the fourth group?” Lucas asks. “Oh! They’re protesting against you!” “I . . . beg your pardon?” “They are members of the Facebook group Angels Are Fake. They’ve heard about you, and now they want to prove that you’re not an angel.”

The lunatics are just trying to find a little thing to give their lives meaning, Lucas. Just like the rest of us. They’re just trying to be happy.”

Down on the street the protesters are shouting at each other, and at Lucas, but most of all they’re probably shouting just to shout. Just to be heard. Lucas stands quietly for a very, very long time, thinking about how awful it must feel: to be a person who so desperately wants something to happen. Lucas never wants anything to go on at all.

“I’m . . . no expert. But I think most people who want to be happy try to add things to their lives. But really what maybe they should be doing is taking something away.” The woman in the purple dress seems to ponder this for quite a while before deciding that Lucas is completely wrong. “You’re fortunate, Lucas. You view loneliness as taking people away. But for most of us, loneliness is just adding more loneliness.”

“You know, I tried the pad thai with peanuts, as you suggested. I always thought I didn’t like peanuts, just because my husband and our kids don’t like peanuts, but now I’m actually starting to think that maybe I’ve just forgotten what I actually like and don’t like for myself.” “So you liked pad thai with peanuts? I told you so!” Lucas nods with enormous satisfaction, like a raccoon who’s fallen into a trash can filled with cotton candy. The woman makes a disgusted face. “Ugh, no! Peanuts in food? It was horrible!” But then her face softens and she adds, her voice full of gratitude: “But it was very nice to find that out for myself. What I don’t like.”

“Well, we’ve had an evaluation meeting and decided that maybe we should have let you go down and pick up that very first frying pan. The way you suggested. Then it might not have become a pile. Admittedly, we would then never have found the guilty frying pan thrower-outer, but now it seems we haven’t done that anyway, and now there are so many guilty thrower-outers that we don’t even know who’s the guiltiest anymore: whoever started the pile, or everyone else who left junk on the pile afterwards.”

Don’t look on the internet for someone who is exactly like you. Look for someone who isn’t. Love is not to never fight. Love is always making up.

He turns out to be right, of course. Love isn’t powerful enough. But spite? Spite can change the world. Soon the whole street is full of people who for hours and hours voluntarily carry away junk, just to prove that angels don’t exist.

Lucas is happy. It’s not as hard as one might think to become, the hard part is just to keep being it. It’s hard because it’s so easy to get in your head that if you are to be happy, you have to be happy exactly all of the time. And who in the world has the energy for that? Happiness can be exhausting. Honestly, it’s most often enough to just not be the opposite.

If you want to see normal people turn into power-hungry dictators in five minutes, all you have to do is say the magic words: “We’d love to hear your suggestions!” If you ask people what they think, they start thinking, and that’s how wars start.

Because the doctors and nurses understand very well that all the modern pills and treatments are surely great, but sometimes what people really need most of all is a prescription for a break.