The Deal of a Lifetime

by Fredrik Backman

Maybe everyone feels that way about their hometown: the place we’re from never apologizes, never admits that it was wrong about us. It just sits there, at the end of the motorway, whispering: “You might be all rich and powerful now. And maybe you do come home with expensive watches and fancy clothes. But you can’t fool me, because I know who you really are. You’re just a scared little boy.”

When five-year-old girls die, no one writes about that, there aren’t any memorials in the evening papers, their feet are still too small, they haven’t had time to make anyone care about their footsteps yet.

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

Every parent will take five minutes in the car outside the house from time to time, just sitting there. Just breathing and gathering the strength to head back inside to all of their responsibilities. The suffocating expectation of being good, coping.

The only thing of value on Earth is time. One second will always be a second, there’s no negotiating with that.”

I abandoned you, but at least I abandoned you at the top of the hierarchy of needs.

I’m not evil, even I understand that cancer should have an age limit.

Your mother once screamed that I’m the kind of person who doesn’t have any equals, I only have people above me that I want something from and people beneath me who I trample on. She was right, so I kept going until there was no one left above me.

Literally my father.

You were always someone who could be happy. You don’t know how much of a blessing that is.

You never played poker again. I failed with you. I tried to make you tough. You ended up kind.

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. Not me.

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.”

“Every night, I wondered whether it was possible to change a person.” “What did you conclude?” “That we are who we are.”

I thought about the love in your hands. You’ve always touched the things you like as though they had a pulse.

I felt your heart beat, right in the ends of your fingertips.

A second is always a second; that’s the one definitive value we have on earth. Everyone is always negotiating, all of the time.

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