Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All (27 page)

T
he basic idea of Project Santa Claus, of course, was that the only thing that could possibly be more fun than giving was taking. A person who managed to do both, as the priest and the receptionist saw it, should have every chance of living a long and happy life. After all, it wasn't exactly their goal to starve to death along with their as-yet-unborn child. Not even Hitman Anders deserved that sort of fate.

With that in the back of his mind, the receptionist created a Facebook page with the slogan “The real Santa Claus—spreads joy year-round.”

The page was full of messages of love in varying tenors (none of which was of a religious nature). In the space that was left, a message ran that everyone was free to open his heart (that is, his wallet) to help Santa in his mission. This could occur via bank transfer, credit card, direct transfer, smartphone, or one of a few other methods. No matter which it was, the money ended up in an account at Handelsbanken in Visby. The account belonged to the Swedish firm Real Santa Claus AB, which was held by an anonymous Swiss foundation. Under no circumstances could they allow word to get out of who was spreading joy in people's lives; the Hitman Anders brand had been run into the ground. Meanwhile, Santa Claus's own brand had been way up there for ages, along with Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, and the guy who would remain nameless.

Thus far, the plan was remarkably similar to the internet-based division of Hitman Anders's previous donation site. (These days, that site was full of comments from people demanding their money back.)

To be on the safe side, the receptionist had also ordered the taxpayer's directory, all of Sweden's twenty-three editions of it, for 271 kronor a pop. This had cost more than 6,200 kronor, but it was worth it. In doing so, he gained access to names, addresses, and taxable employment income, plus capital income, for every taxpayer in the country. That was how Sweden worked. Nothing was a secret. Aside from the identity of Santa Claus. It would never do to donate money to someone the newspaper felt sorry for, then discover that this person was sitting on an annual income of two million kronor in a yellow turn-of-the-century thirteen-room manor house in Djursholm. With or without Spanish slugs.

Santa Claus's very first mission would instead come to involve a young woman with an address that spoke of apartment living. Further investigation revealed that the apartment was rented and the woman's taxable income was 99,000 kronor per year.

T
hirty-two-year-old Maria Johansson lived in a cramped two-room apartment in Ystad, as far south as you can get in Sweden, with her five-year-old daughter, Gisela. The dad was not at home; he hadn't been for over a year. Mama Maria was unemployed and someone, according to
Ystads Allehanda
, had thrown a stone through her bedroom window. There was a problem in getting the insurance money to repair it because the insurer considered it proven that Gisela's father had thrown that stone one Saturday night. The main point of evidence was that he had confessed during a police inquiry, in which he admitted that after visiting a restaurant he had gone to the home of his former girlfriend, screamed at her, and accused her of being a prostitute when she refused to open the door and allow him to have sex with her, even if he gave her money. He had rounded off his visit with that stone through the window.

The problem, from an insurance perspective, was that Gisela's father was still listed as living at the address in question. One who knowingly breaks items in his own home cannot expect reimbursement from the insurance company. Thus Maria and little Gisela would be forced to celebrate Christmas with a sheet of Masonite covering the bedroom window, or spend the last of Maria's savings on a new window and cancel Gisela's Christmas. Since winter was cold even way down south, Gisela would end up with neither presents nor tree. That was how things stood when there was a knock at the door
of Maria and her daughter's home. Mama Maria opened it cautiously, in case it was . . .

But it wasn't. It was Santa Claus. The real Santa Claus, it appeared. He bowed and gave Gisela an interactive doll, one she could talk to! The doll was given the name “Nanne” and became Gisela's most cherished possession, even though Nanne's programming had been rather sketchy.

“I love you, Nanne,” Gisela might say.

“I don't know. I can't tell the time,” Nanne would reply.

With the doll, Santa handed over an envelope containing twenty thousand kronor to Gisela's mom. And then he said, “Merry Christmas!” because that's what Santa says. After that, he happened to add, “Hosanna!” in violation of his instructions, because this Santa was one reindeer short of an airborne sleigh.

He vanished as quickly as he'd come, in a taxi driven by a man called Taxi Torsten. In the back seat sat two happy elves, neither in elf clothing, one eight months pregnant.

Operation Santa Claus had begun in Ystad. After this, the journey continued northward. Next stop, Sjöbo. Followed by Hörby, Höör, Hässleholm, and on up through the country. On average, another gift of between ten and thirty thousand kronor was given each day, for four weeks in a row. Sometimes in the form of money, sometimes Christmas presents, sometimes both.

Single mothers were good. Orphaned refugee children were almost better, though girls were preferable, and the younger they were, the more financial potential there was. The sick and the handicapped worked well, too. Cute little boys and girls with cancer—bingo.

As it happened, Santa Claus had been to Hässleholm in a former life. Taxi Torsten drove to a particular address, Santa entered the stairwell and rang the bell at the home of the elderly Salvationist he had rained money over once before.

The Salvationist opened the door, accepted a fat envelope containing a hundred thousand kronor, looked inside, and said, “God bless you. But haven't we met before?”

At this, Santa hurried off to his taxi and was gone before the Salvationist could say, “May I offer you some mashed turnips?”

According to the budget, the first month's expenses ought to come very close to the five hundred thousand kronor they had left. And that would mean their adventures and their money would be gone by February—assuming they received nothing in return.

But for the period from December 20 to January 20, the overall expenses were no higher than 460,000 kronor, despite the extraordinary outlay in Hässleholm and the fact that they had worked nonstop for those first four weeks. Beyond this, the plan for the future was to spend three weeks of each month on the Swedish roads and the fourth week resting at home on Gotland. Assuming—again—that they didn't go bankrupt. In which case their only recourse would be to produce children as rapidly as possible.

“Better than we budgeted for!” said the priest, becoming so excited that her waters broke. “Ow! Whoa! We have to go to the hospital now.”

“Hold on! I'm not ready yet,” said the receptionist.

“Hosanna!” said Santa Claus.

“I'll bring the car around,” said Taxi Torsten.

* * *

It was a girl, six pounds, nine ounces.

“There we go!” said the receptionist, to his exhausted priest. “Our first child allowance! When do you think you'll be ready for the production of number two?”

“Not today, thanks,” said the priest, as the midwife stitched her up in the necessary area.

A few hours later, as the little baby lay sleeping, full and content on her mother's belly, the priest found the strength to ask what it was the receptionist had not had time to finish saying when they were interrupted by other matters.

Just think, the receptionist had totally forgotten about that when the contractions had started for real. But there was no time like the present. “Oh, I was going to say that it's great our costs topped out at four hundred sixty thousand. But we've brought in a small amount via our internet campaign as well.”

“Oh, have we?” said Mama Priest. “How much?”

“In our first month?”

“The first month is fine.”

“An approximate number?”

“An approximate number is fine.”

“Well, with the caveat that I might be misremembering a little, because I didn't have time to write down the exact number, and with the caveat that another krona or two might have trickled in while we were having a baby, and with the caveat that—”

“Could you get to the point?” the priest said, while simultaneously thinking that, really, she had done more of the baby-having than he had.

“Right, sorry. With all those caveats in mind, I would say about two million three hundred and forty-five thousand seven hundred and ninety kronor.”

The priest's waters would probably have broken again, if only it had been technically possible.

T
he more visits Santa had time to make in one day, the more happiness he spread, and the better the business seemed to pay its way. Thousands in small donations came in each day, from around Sweden and, in fact, the world. Single mothers cried for joy; cute little girls did the same; puppies whined in gratitude. The daily papers wrote articles, the weekly magazines produced whole spreads, radio and TV did follow-ups. Santa Claus brought true happiness around Christmas, but he didn't stop when winter turned to spring and spring turned to summer. It seemed it would never end.

The Santa Lands in Mora and Rovaniemi were forced to rethink their concepts. It was no longer enough to have an old man with a polyester beard who nodded sympathetically when little Lisa wanted a pony of her own. Either the polyester Santa had to give her what she wished for (but this would never turn a profit), or he had to say, as pedagogically as he could, that what he had to offer was a small packet of Lego in cooperation with the Lego Group, Billund, Denmark. No ponies, not even hamsters. The small cost of the present (which would never satisfy little Lisa anyway) was offset by a slightly higher entry fee.

Investigative journalists tried to find out who Santa was and how much he or she might conceivably be bringing in in the form of donations. But none got any further than Handelsbanken in Visby,
where no one saw any reason to report how much was transferred, in accordance with Swedish law, to the anonymous foundation in Switzerland. And since each giver gave so little (after all, it was the large number of givers that had led to the millions), not a single journalist was able to poke holes in the image of the anonymous Santa as genuinely benevolent.

On one occasion, someone managed to capture Santa in a photograph, but he was so dolled up in his long beard and everything that no one made the connection to the former murderer/pastor of the Church of Anders. To play it safe, Taxi Torsten had stolen a pair of new license plates while running an errand to Stockholm. What's more, he had used a bit of paint to transform an F into an E, so now his taxi appeared at first glance to belong to no one or, at second glance, to an electrician in Hässelby.

Speculation abounded and rumors flew. Could it be the
King
, running around spreading joy among his people? After all, the Queen was well known for her devotion to children and the weak. This notion took hold in various threads of speculation on the internet up until the day His Majesty happened to bag a four-pointer in a Sörmland forest at exactly the same moment that Santa was blessing an orphaned twelve-year-old refugee girl in Härnösand.

The priest, the receptionist, Santa Claus, and Taxi Torsten jointly shared eight percent of the profits, which allowed them all to live and be happy on the island in the Baltic Sea that had become their home. The rest was reinvested in glorious giving. The receptionist had also begun to work on the priest's original plan to expand their activities into Germany. The Germans had money and heart. And they played good soccer. Plus there were so many of them that it was almost impossible to calculate how much Project Santa Claus would earn by giving away money there. The only issue was finding ten German Santas, understanding what they said, and making them understand what they were supposed to say. And getting them to keep their mouths shut about what they were up to.

***

And then there was all this stuff about the ways of the Lord and so on. Because at approximately the same time, the receptionist's mom—the woman who had nearly become a German teacher—got tired of all the eruptions from husband and volcano in Iceland. During one of their rare visits to civilization for provisions, she simply called the police and told them where her embezzling husband could be found and, with that, she was rid of him.

The next step was to contact her son via Facebook, and by the time all was said and done, she had her own fishing shack on Gotland, not far from her son and his family, as well as a job as head of development for the coming launch in Germany. Meanwhile, the Icelandic courts decided that her husband would spend six years and four months in prison for economically relevant moral rehabilitation.

Hitman Anders, for his part, met a certain Stina, whom he soon moved in with. She had fallen in love with him when he happened to know what cauliflower fungus was called in Latin (this, in turn, could be explained by the fact that the hitman, before he had become a hitman, had bought a book in the hope of learning how to make mushrooms magical in various drug-related ways, only to realize after his twelfth read-through that he knew the names of every mushroom in existence but nothing about how to make them any more entertaining than they already were).

Together they failed to find truffles (
Tuber melanosporum
) with the help of their tame but slightly dense pig, then started again and eventually attained the same level of success in growing asparagus (not least because the pig was a real scoundrel when it came to rooting in the garden).

Stina was simpleminded enough; she never did figure out what her beloved Johan was doing when he spent three weeks in a row on the mainland. The important thing was that he came home when he
said he would, carrying an even larger paycheck each time. And that they could go to church on the fourth Sunday and thank the Lord for everything except their luck with truffles and asparagus.

When he wasn't acting as Santa's private chauffeur, Taxi Torsten took the opportunity to drive his taxi on the island. Not because he needed the money, but because he liked driving. He never worked outside noon till four, on Monday through Thursday of every fourth week. He spent the rest of his time at the pub or sleeping in. He had a permanent room at an apartment hotel in central Visby, within staggering distance of every imaginable thirst-quenching establishment.

The priest and the receptionist chose to remain in the simple fishing shack by the sea, with their little baby; Grandma acted as babysitter in a pinch.

They no longer needed four or five more kids to scrounge food money via the paltry child allowance. But one or two more would probably be nice. Out of sheer love. There was no reason why they couldn't harbor ill will towards the rest of the world or stop doing so, as the receptionist accidentally suggested one night just before bedtime.

“Stop?” said the priest. “Why?”

Oh, it was just something he'd happened to say. It was probably because their list of exceptions was becoming cumbersome. The baby was on it, of course. And maybe the hitman. He was actually pretty nice, if only he weren't so stupid. And that lady, whatsername, the county governor, who allowed them to get married even though she might have suspected that the witnesses had no idea what they were witnessing.

The priest nodded. They could probably even make a few more additions to the list. The baby's grandma, the hitman's new girlfriend, and if not Taxi Torsten, at least his taxi.

“By the way, I saw a sand wasp buzzing around the seaweed today. We're out of bleach. We either have to buy some more or count sand wasps among hitmen, county governors, and the rest of them.”

“Let's do it. Add the sand wasps, I mean. There'll be quite a few, but I suppose there's always room for more. Should we draw the line at that for now? And keep hating everything else?”

Yes, that was a good compromise.

“But not tonight. I seem to be a little too tired for hating. It's been a long day. Good, but long. Good night, my dear former receptionist,” said the equally former parish priest, and fell asleep.