She lit up. ‘Oh, thank you. That would be lovely. God bless you!’
Per Persson said that, from a historical perspective, pretty much everything indicated that the Lord was too busy to bless him in particular. And that the prayer He had just received as nourishment was unlikely to change that.
The priest appeared to be about to respond, but the receptionist was quick to hand over his lunchbox. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Best fed, least said.’
‘God leads the humble in what is right and teaches the humble his way. Psalm Twenty-five,’ said the priest, her mouth full of sandwich.
‘What did I just say?’ said Per Persson.
She really was a priest. As she gobbled up the receptionist’s four ham sandwiches, she told him that she’d had her own congregation until the past Sunday, when she was interrupted in the middle of the sermon and asked by the president of the congregation council to step down from the pulpit, pack her belongings and leave.
Per Persson thought that was terrible. Was there no such thing as job security in the realm of the heavenly?
Certainly there was, but the president was of the opinion that he had grounds for his action. And it so happened that the entire congregation agreed with him. Incidentally, that included the priest herself. What was more, at least two of its members had thrown copies of the hymnal after her as she departed.
‘As one might guess, there is a longer version. Would you like to hear it? I must say, my life has not exactly been a bed of roses.’
Per Persson considered this. Did he want to hear what the priest had spent her life sleeping in, if not a bed of roses, or did he have enough misery of his own to lug around without her help? ‘I’m not sure that my existence will be made any brighter by hearing about others who live in darkness,’ he said. ‘But I suppose I could listen to the gist of it as long the story doesn’t get too long-winded.’
The gist of it? The gist was that she had been wandering around for seven days now, from Sunday to Sunday. Sleeping in basement storage areas and God knows where else, eating anything she happened upon …
‘Like four out of four ham sandwiches,’ said Per Persson. ‘Perhaps the last of my raspberry cordial would be good for washing down my only food.’
The priest wouldn’t say no to that. And once she’d quenched her thirst, she said: ‘The long and the short of it is that I don’t believe in God. Much less in Jesus. Dad was the one who forced me to follow in his footsteps – Dad’s footsteps, that is, not Jesus’s – when, as luck would have it, he never had a son, only a daughter. Though Dad, in turn, had been forced into the priesthood by my grandfather. Or maybe they were sent by the devil, both of them – it’s tough to say. In any case, priesting runs in the family.’
When it came to the part about being a victim in the shadow of Dad or Grandfather, Per Persson felt an immediate kinship. If only children could be free of all the crap previous generations had gathered up for them, he said, perhaps it would bring some clarity to their lives.
The priest refrained from pointing out the necessity of previous generations for their own existence. Instead she asked what had led him all the way to … this park bench.
Oh, this park bench. And the depressing hotel lobby where he lived and worked. And gave beers to Hitman Anders.
‘Hitman Anders?’ said the priest.
‘Yes,’ said the receptionist. ‘He lives in number seven.’
Per Persson thought he might as well waste a few minutes on the priest, since she’d asked. So he told her about his grandfather, who had frittered away his millions. And Dad, who’d just thrown in the towel. About his mom, who’d hooked up with an Icelandic banker and left the country. How he himself had ended up in a whorehouse at the age of sixteen. And how he currently worked as a receptionist at the hotel the whorehouse had turned into.
‘And now that I happen to have twenty minutes off and can sit down on a bench at a safe distance from all the thieves and bandits I have to deal with at work, I run into a priest who doesn’t believe in God, who first tries to trick me out of my last few coins and then eats all my food. That’s my life in a nutshell, assuming I don’t go back to find that the old whorehouse has transformed into the Grand Hôtel, thanks to that prayer.’
The dirty priest, with breadcrumbs on her lips, looked ashamed. She said it was unlikely that her prayer would have such immediate results, especially since it had been a rush job and its addressee didn’t exist. She now regretted asking to be paid for shoddy work, not least since the receptionist had been so generous with his sandwiches. ‘Please tell me more about the hotel,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose there’s an extra room available at … the friends-and-family discount?’
‘Friends-and-family?’ said Per Persson. ‘Exactly when did we become friends, the two of us?’
‘Well,’ said the priest. ‘It’s not too late.’
The priest was assigned room eight, which shared a wall with Hitman Anders’s room. But unlike the murderer, whom Per Persson never dared to ask for payment, the new guest was required to pay a week up front. At the regular price.
‘Up front? But that’s the last of my money.’
‘Then it’s extra important it doesn’t go astray. I could whip up a prayer for you, absolutely free of charge, and maybe it will all work out,’ said the receptionist.
At that instant, a man with a leather jacket, sunglasses and stubble appeared. He looked like a parody of the gangster he presumably was, and skipped the greeting to ask where he could find Johan Andersson.
The receptionist stood up straighter and replied that who was or was not staying at the Sea Point Hotel was not information he could share with just anyone. Here it was considered a duty of honour to protect the guests’ identities.
‘Answer the question before I shoot your dick off,’ said the man in the leather jacket. ‘Where’s Hitman Anders?’
‘Room seven,’ said Per Persson.
The menace vanished into the hallway. The priest watched him go and wondered if there was about to be trouble. Did the receptionist think there was anything she could do to help, as a priest?
Per Persson thought nothing of the sort, but he didn’t have time to say so before the man in the leather jacket was back.
‘The hitman is out cold on his bed. I know how he can be – it’s best if he’s allowed to stay like that for the time being. Take this envelope and give it to him when he wakes up. Tell him the count says hello.’
‘That’s it?’ said Per Persson.
‘Yes. No, tell him there’s five thousand in the envelope, not ten thousand, since he only did half the job.’
The man in the leather jacket went on his way. Five thousand? Five thousand that apparently ought to have been ten. And now it was up to the receptionist to explain the deficit to Sweden’s potentially most dangerous person. Unless he delegated the task to the priest, who had just offered her services.
‘Hitman Anders,’ she said. ‘So he really exists. That wasn’t just something you made up?’
‘A lost soul,’ said the receptionist. ‘Extremely lost, in fact.’
To his surprise, the priest inquired whether this extremely lost soul was so lost that it would be morally sound for a priest and a receptionist to borrow a thousand kronor from him in order to eat their fill at some pleasant establishment nearby.
Per Persson asked what kind of priest she was if she was capable of coming up with such a suggestion, but he admitted that the idea was tempting. Though there was, of course, a