The Deal of a Lifetime

by Fredrik Backman

This is a short story about what you would be prepared to sacrifice in order to save a life.

If it was all of it, all of you, who would you give yourself up for?

Maybe all people have that feeling deep down, that your hometown is something you can never really escape, but can never really go home to, either. Because it’s not home anymore. We’re not trying to make peace with it. Not with the streets and bricks of it. Just with the person we were back then. And maybe forgive ourselves for everything we thought we would become and didn’t.

It’s the only place I know where the wind comes at an angle from below, like it’s frisking you.

I was born here but I’ve never gotten used to it;

could hear the snowflakes bouncing against the windows like good-night kisses,

the vast majority of successful people don’t become bastards, we were bastards long before. That’s why we’ve been successful.

I, who had wanted to live a life high above everyone else, ended up with a son who would rather live deep beneath the surface.

We were a family then, albeit fleetingly.

“Don’t be brave. If you’re scared, be scared. All survivors are.”

I failed with you. I tried to make you tough. You ended up kind.

“I’m not death. I just do the picking up and dropping off.”

“It’s not down to us who goes and who stays. That’s why it’s against the rules for us to hurt.”

Happiness is for children and animals, it doesn’t have any biological function. Happy people don’t create anything, their world is one without art and music and skyscrapers, without discoveries and innovations. All leaders, all of your heroes, they’ve been obsessed. Happy people don’t get obsessed, they don’t devote their lives to curing illnesses or making planes take off. The happy leave nothing behind. They live for the sake of living, they’re only on earth as consumers.

I saw two dogs running into the sea, playing in the waves. And I wondered: Have you ever been like that, as happy as they are? Could you be that happy? Would it be worth it?

It’s bloody awful to admit to yourself that you’re not the kind of person you’ve always thought you were.

“It’s not enough for you to die. To make room for the girl’s entire life, another life has to cease to exist. I have to delete its contents. So if you give your life, it’ll disappear. You won’t die, you’ll never have existed. No one will remember you. You were never here.” A life for a life. That’s what it means.

You humans always think you’re ready to give your lives, but only until you understand what that really involves. You’re obsessed with your legacy, aren’t you? You can’t bear to die and be forgotten.”

I thought about whether you would have done it, given your life for someone else. You probably would. Because you’re your mother’s son, and she’s already given a life. The one she could have lived if she hadn’t lived for you and for me.

I should have told you that. Not for your sake, because you won’t remember any of this, but for mine. I should have told you I was proud.

“You’re not scared. You’re just grieving. No one tells you humans that your sorrow feels like fear.”