Anxious People: A Novel

by Fredrik Backman

  ZARA: You heard.

  JIM: What rabbit?

  ZARA: Do you want me to tell you what happened or not?

  JIM: Sorry.

  ZARA: Do you seriously think one of the hostages helped the bank robber to escape?

  JIM: You don’t think so?

  ZARA: No.

  JIM: Why not?

  ZARA: They were all idiots.

  JIM: And the bank robber?

  ZARA: What about the bank robber?

  JIM: Do you think he shot himself intentionally or by accident?

  ZARA: What are you talking about?

  JIM: We heard a pistol shot from the apartment, after you were released. When we got inside the apartment the floor was covered in blood.

  ZARA: Blood? Where?

  JIM: On the carpet and floor in the living room.

  ZARA: Oh. Nowhere else?

  JIM: No.

  ZARA: Okay.

  JIM: Sorry?

  ZARA: Excuse me?

  JIM: When you said “okay,” it sounded as if you were about to say something more.

  ZARA: Definitely not.

  JIM: Sorry. Well, my colleague is convinced it was there in the living room that he shot himself. That was what I was going to say.

  ZARA: And you still don’t know who the bank robber is?

  JIM: No.

  ZARA: Listen—if you don’t explain soon how on earth you suspect I might be involved in this, you’ll end up wishing I had called my lawyer.

  JIM: No one suspects you of anything! My colleague would just like to know why you were there in the apartment, if you weren’t there to buy it?

  ZARA: My psychologist told me I needed a hobby.

  JIM: Viewing apartments is your hobby?

  ZARA: People like you are more interesting than you might imagine.

  JIM: People like me?

  ZARA: People in your socio-economic bracket. It’s interesting seeing how you live. How you manage to bear it. I went to a few viewings, then a few more, it’s like heroin. Have you tried heroin? You feel disgusted with yourself, but it’s hard to stop.

  JIM: You’re telling me you’ve become addicted to viewing apartments owned by people who earn far less than you?

  ZARA: Yes. Like when kids catch baby birds in glass jars. The same slightly forbidden attraction.

  JIM: You mean insects? People do that with insects.

  ZARA: Sure. If that makes you feel better.

  JIM: So you were at this apartment viewing because it’s your hobby?

  ZARA: Is that a real tattoo on your arm?

  JIM: Yes.

  ZARA: Is it supposed to be an anchor?

  JIM: Yes.

  ZARA: Did you lose a bet or something?

  JIM: What do you mean by that?

  ZARA: Was someone threatening your family? Or did you do it voluntarily?

  JIM: Voluntarily.

  ZARA: Why do people like you hate money so much?

  JIM: I’m not even going to comment on that. I’d just like you to tell me, so that we’ve got it on tape, why the other witnesses say you didn’t seem at all afraid when you saw the bank robber’s pistol. Did you think it wasn’t real?

  ZARA: I understood perfectly well that it was real. That’s why I wasn’t frightened. I was surprised.

  JIM: That’s an unusual reaction to a pistol.

  ZARA: For you, maybe. But I’d been contemplating killing myself for quite a long time, so when I saw the pistol I was surprised.

  JIM: I don’t know what to say to that. Sorry. You’d been contemplating killing yourself?

  ZARA: Yes. So I was surprised when I realized that I didn’t want to die. It came as a bit of a shock.

  JIM: Did you start seeing your psychologist because of those suicidal thoughts?

  ZARA: No. I needed the psychologist because I was having trouble sleeping. Because I used to lie awake thinking that I could have killed myself if only I had enough sleeping pills.

  JIM: And it was your psychologist who suggested that you needed a hobby?

  ZARA: Yes. That was after I told her about my cancer.

  JIM: Oh. I’m very sorry to hear that. How sad.

  ZARA: Okay, look…

  26

  The next time the psychologist and Zara met, Zara said that she had actually found a hobby. She had started to go to “viewings of middle-class apartments.” She said it was exciting because a lot of the apartments looked like the people who lived there did the cleaning themselves. The psychologist tried to explain that this wasn’t quite what she’d had in mind by “getting involved in a charity,” but Zara retorted that at one of the viewings there had been “a man who was thinking of renovating it himself, with his own hands, the same hands he eats with, so don’t try to tell me I’m not doing all I can to fraternize with the most unfortunate members of society!” The psychologist had no idea how to even begin to answer that, but Zara noted her arched eyebrows and hanging jaw and snorted: “Have I upset you now? Christ, it’s impossible not to upset people like you the moment you start to say anything at all.”

  The psychologist nodded patiently and immediately regretted the question she asked next: “Can you give me an example of when people like me have been upset by you without your meaning it?”

  Zara shrugged, then told the story of how she had been called “prejudiced” when she interviewed a young man for a job at the bank, just because she had looked at him when he entered the room and exclaimed: “Oh! I would have expected you to apply for a job in the IT department instead, your sort tend to be good with computers!”

  Zara spent a long time explaining to the psychologist that it was actually a compliment. Does giving someone a compliment mean you’re prejudiced these days, too?

  The psychologist tried to find a way to talk about it without actually talking about it, so she said: “You seem to get caught up in a lot of disagreements, Zara. One technique I’d recommend is to ask yourself three questions before you flare up. One: Are the actions of the person in question intended to harm you personally? Two: Do you possess all the information about the situation? Three: Do you have anything to gain from a conflict?”

  Zara tilted her head so far that her neck creaked. She understood all the words, but the way they were put together made as much sense as if they’d been pulled at random from a hat.

  “Why would I need help to stop getting into conflicts? Conflicts are good. Only weak people believe in harmony, and as a reward they get to float through life with a feeling of moral superiority while the rest of us get on with other things.”

  “Like what?” the psychologist wondered.

  “Winning.”

  “And that’s important?”

  “You can’t achieve anything if you don’t win, sweetie. No one ends up at the head of a boardroom table by accident.”

  The psychologist tried to find her way back to her original question, whatever it had been.

  “And… winners earn a lot of money, which is also important, I assume? What do you do with yours?”

  “I buy distance from other people.”

  The psychologist had never heard that response before.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Expensive restaurants have bigger gaps between the tables. First class on airplanes has no middle seats. Exclusive hotels have separate entrances for guests staying in suites. The most expensive thing you can buy in the most densely populated places on the planet is distance.”

  The psychologist leaned back in her chair. It wasn’t hard to find textbook examples of Zara’s personality: she avoided eye contact, didn’t want to shake hands, was—to put it mildly—empathetically challenged, and had perhaps as a result chosen to work with numbers. And she couldn’t help compulsively straightening the photograph on the bookcase every time the psychologist moved it out of position on purpose before each session. It was hard to ask someone like Zara about that sort of thing directly, so the psychologist asked instead: “Why do you like your job?”

/>   “Because I’m an analyst. Most people who do the same job as me are economists,” Zara replied immediately.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Economists only approach problems head-on. That’s why economists never predict stock market crashes.”

  “And you’re saying that analysts do?”

  “Analysts expect crashes. Economists only earn money when things go well for the bank’s customers, whereas analysts earn money all the time.”

  “Does that make you feel guilty?” the psychologist asked, mostly to see if Zara thought that word was a feeling or something to do with gold plating.

  “Is it the croupier’s fault if you lose your money at the casino?” Zara asked.

  “I’m not sure that’s a fair comparison.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you use words like ‘stock market crash,’ but it’s never the stock market or the banks that crash. Only people do that.”

  “There’s a very logical explanation for why you think that.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s because you think the world owes you something. It doesn’t.”

  “You still haven’t answered my question. I asked why you like your job. All you’ve done is tell me why you’re good at it.”

  “Only weak people like their jobs.”

  “I don’t think that’s true.”

  “That’s because you like your job.”

  “You say that as if there’s something wrong with that.”

  “Are you upset now? People like you really do seem to get upset an awful lot, and do you know why?”

  “No.”

  “Because you’re wrong. If you stopped being wrong the whole time you wouldn’t be so upset.”

  The psychologist looked at the clock on her desk. She still believed that Zara’s biggest problem was her loneliness, but perhaps there’s a difference between loneliness and friendlessness. But instead of saying that, the psychologist murmured in a tone of resignation: “Do you know what… I think this might be a good place for us to stop.”

  Unconcerned, Zara nodded and stood up. She tucked the chair back under the table very precisely. She was half facing away when she said, “Do you think there are bad people?” It sounded as if she hadn’t really meant to let the words out.

  The psychologist did her best not to look surprised. She managed to reply: “Are you asking me as a psychologist, or from a purely philosophical perspective?”

  Zara looked like she was talking to a toaster again.

  “Did you have a dictionary shoved up your backside as a child, or did you end up like this of your own volition? Just answer the question: Do you think there are bad people?”

  The psychologist shuffled on her seat so much that she very nearly turned her pants inside out.

  “I’d probably have to say… yes. I think there are bad people.”

  “Do you think they know it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Zara’s gaze fell upon the picture of the woman on the bridge.

  “In my experience there are plenty of people who are real pigs. Emotionally cold, thoughtless people. But even we don’t want to believe that we’re bad.”

  The psychologist considered her response for a long time before she replied: “Yes. If I’m being honest, I think that almost all of us have a need to tell ourselves that we’re helping to make the world better. Or at least that we’re not making it worse. That we’re on the right side. That even if… I don’t know… that maybe even our very worst actions serve some sort of higher purpose. Because practically everyone distinguishes between good and bad, so if we breach our own moral code, we have to come up with an excuse for ourselves. I think that’s known as neutralizing techniques in criminology. It could be religious or political conviction, or the belief that we had no choice, but we need something to justify our bad deeds. Because I honestly believe that there are very few people who could live with knowing that they are… bad.”

  Zara said nothing, just clutched her far too large handbag a little too tightly and, for just a fraction of a second, looked like she was about to admit something. Her hand was halfway to the letter. She even allowed herself, very fleetingly, to entertain the possibility of confessing that she had lied about her hobby. She hadn’t only just started going to apartment viewings, she’d been going to them for ten years. It wasn’t a hobby, it was an obsession.

  But none of the words slipped out. She closed her bag, the door slid shut behind her, and the room fell silent. The psychologist remained seated at her desk, bemused at how bemused she felt. She tried to make some notes for their next encounter, but found herself instead opening her laptop and looking at the details of apartments for sale. She tried to figure out which of them Zara was thinking of looking at next. Which was obviously impossible, but it could have been simple if only Zara had explained that all the apartments she looked at had to have balconies, and that all the balconies had to have a view that stretched all the way to the bridge.

  * * *

  In the meantime Zara was standing in the elevator. Halfway down she pressed the emergency stop button so she could cry in peace. The letter in her handbag was still unopened, Zara had never dared read it, because she knew the psychologist was right. Zara was one of the people who deep down wouldn’t be able to live with knowing that about herself.

  27

  This is a story about a bank robbery, an apartment viewing, and a hostage drama. But even more it’s a story about idiots. But perhaps not only that.

  * * *

  Ten years ago a man wrote a letter. He mailed it to a woman at a bank. Then he dropped his kids off at school, whispered in their ears that he loved them, drove off on his own, and parked his car by the water. He climbed onto the railing of a bridge and jumped. The following week, a teenage girl was standing on the same bridge railing.

  Obviously it doesn’t really make any difference to you who the girl was. She was just one person out of several billion, and most people never become individuals to us. They’re just people. We’re just strangers passing each other, your anxieties briefly brushing against mine as the fibers of our coats touch momentarily on a crowded sidewalk somewhere. We never really know what we do to each other, with each other, for each other. But the teenage girl on the bridge was called Nadia. It was the week after the man had jumped to his death from the railing where she was standing. She knew next to nothing about who he was, but she went to the same school as his children, and everyone was talking about it. That was how she got the idea. No one can really explain, either before or after, what makes a teenager stop wanting to be alive. It just hurts so much at times, being human. Not understanding yourself, not liking the body you’re stuck in. Seeing your eyes in the mirror and wondering whose they are, always with the same question: “What’s wrong with me? Why do I feel like this?”

  * * *

  She isn’t traumatized, she isn’t weighed down by any obvious grief. She’s just sad, all the time. An evil little creature that wouldn’t have shown up on any X-rays was living in her chest, rushing through her blood and filling her head with whispers, saying she wasn’t good enough, that she was weak and ugly and would never be anything but broken. You can get it into your head to do some unbelievably stupid things when you run out of tears, when you can’t silence the voices no one else can hear, when you’ve never been in a room where you felt normal. In the end you get exhausted from always tensing the skin around your ribs, never letting your shoulders sink, brushing along walls all your life with white knuckles, always afraid that someone will notice you, because no one’s supposed to do that.

  All Nadia knew was that she had never felt like someone who had anything in common with anyone else. She had always been entirely alone in every emotion. She sat in a classroom full of her contemporaries, looking like everything was the same as usual, but inside she was standing in a forest screaming until her heart burst. The trees grew until one day the sunlight could no longe
r break through the foliage, and the darkness in there became impenetrable.

  So she stood on a bridge looking over the railing to the water far below, and knew it would be like hitting concrete when she landed, she wouldn’t drown, just die on impact. That thought consoled her, because ever since she was very little she’d been scared of drowning. Not death itself, but the moments before it. The panic and powerlessness. A thoughtless adult had told her that a person who’s drowning doesn’t look like they’re drowning. “When you’re drowning you can’t call for help, you can’t wave your arms, you just sink. Your family can be standing on the beach waving cheerfully to you, completely unaware that you’re dying.”

  Nadia had felt like that all her life. She had lived among them. Had sat at the dinner table with her parents, thinking: Can’t you see? But they didn’t see, and she didn’t say anything. One day she simply didn’t go to school. She tidied her room and made her bed and left home without a coat because she wouldn’t be needing one. She spent all day in town, freezing, wandering around as if she wanted the town to see her one last time, and understand what it had done by failing to hear her silent screams. She didn’t have any real plan, just a consequence. When sunset came she found herself standing on the railing of the bridge. It was so easy. All she had to do was move one foot, then the other.

  * * *

  It was that teenage boy called Jack who saw her. He couldn’t explain why he’d gone back to the bridge, evening after evening, for a week. His parents had forbidden it, of course, but he never listened. He snuck out and ran there as if he were hoping to see the man standing there again, so he could turn back the clock and make everything right this time. When he saw the teenage girl on the railing instead, he didn’t know what to shout at her. So he didn’t shout anything. He just rushed over and pulled her down with such force that she hit the back of her head on the tarmac and was knocked unconscious.

  * * *

  She woke up in the hospital. Everything had happened so quickly that she had only caught a glimpse of the boy rushing toward her out of the corner of her eye. When the nurses asked what had happened she wasn’t even sure of that herself, but the back of her head was bleeding, so she said she’d climbed up onto the railing to take a photograph of the sunset, then fell backward and hit her head. She was so used to saying what she knew other people wanted to hear, so they wouldn’t worry, that she did it without thinking. The nurses still looked worried, suspicious, but she was a good liar. She’d spent her whole life practicing. So in the end they said: “Climbing up on that railing, what a silly thing to do! It’s sheer luck you didn’t slip off the other side instead!” She nodded, dry-lipped, and said yes. Luck.