The Deal of a Lifetime

by Fredrik Backman

and I’ve killed a person. That’s not how fairy tales usually begin, I know. But I took a life. Does it make a difference if you know whose it was?

Most of us so desperately want to believe that every heart which stops beating is missed equally.

If we’re asked, “Are all lives worth the same?” the majority of us will reply with a resounding “Yes!” But only until someone points to a person we love and asks: “What about that life?” Does it make a difference if I killed a go...

She was five. I met her a week ago. There was a small red chair in the hospital TV room, it was hers. It wasn’t red when she arrived, but she could see that it wanted to be. It took twenty-two boxes of crayons but that didn’t matter, she could afford it, everyone here gave her crayons all the time. As though she could draw away her illness, color away the needles and the drugs. She knew that wasn’t possible, of course, she was a smart kid, but she pretended for their sakes. So she spent her days drawing on paper, because it made all the adults happy. And at night, she colored in the chair. Because it really wanted to be red.

Helsingborg.

Maybe everyone feels that way about their hometown: the place we’re from never apologizes, never admits that it was wrong about us.

the hospital was so quiet that you could hear the snowflakes bouncing against the windows like good-night kisses,

“What are you going to be when you grow up?” The girl knew the game was for her mother’s sake, but she pretended it was for hers.

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.

It’s so easy to kill someone, all a person like me needs is a car and a few seconds. Because people like you trust me, you drive thousands of kilos of metal at hundreds of kilometers an hour, hurtling through the darkness with the people you love most sleeping in the backseat, and when someone like me approaches from the opposite direction, you trust that I don’t have bad brakes. That I’m not looking for my phone between the seats, not driving too fast, not drifting between lanes because I’m blinking the tears from my eyes. That I’m not sitting on the slip road to the 111 with my headlights out, just waiting for a lorry. You trust me. That I’m not drunk. That I’m not going to kill you.

You cried so loudly, and it was the first time it had happened to me: the first time I’d felt pain for someone else. I couldn’t stay with someone who had that kind of power over me.

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.

Every parent will take ten seconds in the stairwell occasionally, key in hand, not putting it in the lock. I was honest, I...

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

You despise me now, because I’ve devoted all my seconds to my work.

I know you wished you had an ordinary father. One who didn’t travel, wasn’t famous, one who would have been happy with just two eyes on him: yours.

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

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

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

And the girl played along, reeled off the names of everyone she loved. It’s a long list when you’re five. That morning, I was on it.

I had a brother. I’ve never told you that. He was dead when we were born. Maybe there was only room for one of us on this earth, and I wanted it more. I clambered over my brother in the womb. I was a winner, even then.

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

smørrebrød

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

Weak people always look at people like me and say, “He’s rich, but is he happy?” As though that was a relevant measure of anything.

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.

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

But it made no difference. She couldn’t take a death for a death. Only a life for a life.

“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.”

You’ve always touched the things you like as though they had a pulse.

This has always been your town in a way it never was for me; you never tried to find a life, you were in the right place from the start.

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 doing the deal of your life, every day. This was mine.

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