Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All (12 page)

S
tarting a church is not as simple as purchasing premises and unlocking the door. Not in Sweden. In the country that hasn't been at war for more than two hundred years, people have had plenty of time to think up regulations for most things of a peaceful nature. There are, for example, clear stipulations that must be followed by anyone who has experienced a divine revelation and wants to share it with others in an organized fashion.

The priest happened to know that the authority in charge of applications to register religious communities was Kammarkollegiet, or the Legal, Financial, and Legislative Services Committee. Since she, the receptionist, and their intended religious leader had no address other than a camper van, she chose to visit the committee in question, on Birger Jarlsgatan, in central Stockholm.

She nodded “good day” and said she wished to start a new faith community because she had seen the light.

The official at the committee, a man of upper middle age, had dealt with many seers of lights in his eighteen years at the same place of work, but he had never before had a customer come calling. “All right,” he said. “In that case, all you have to do is ‘see' a few forms and complete them in the appropriate manner. To which address may I send them?”

“Send?” said Johanna Kjellander. “But I'm standing here among you, as the Lord almost puts it in Leviticus.”

The Kammarkollegiet official happened to be an organist in the Church of Sweden and had a good memory, so he was on the verge of responding that the same book said that a person who did not follow the statutes of God would be struck by terror, consumption, fever, and more besides. Blindness, if he remembered correctly.

The official's problem was that at no point had the Lord stipulated that the necessary forms be sent by mail. Now that a real live addressee was standing in front of him for the first time, he could hand them over in person.

As the official spent a brief moment reflecting on this, the priest (nimble as ever) had time to switch to another angle of attack. “I forgot to introduce myself,” she said. “My name is Johanna Kjellander and I am a former parish priest. In my previous role, I was expected to serve as the congregation's bridge between the worldly and the heavenly, but all the while I was aware of my own inadequacy. Now I have found the bridge in question. The real one!”

The official did not allow himself to be carried away. Even if this was his debut for direct contact with an applicant, he had seen a lot over the years, including one group who wanted to register their belief that the root of all goodness could be found in a windmill in northwestern Värmland. In fact, their last two members had frozen to death up there one winter, while the contents of the windmill had not intervened in the least.

The salient point about those frozen believers (before they froze, that is) was that they had statutes, a governing council, and clear objectives, like gathering for common prayer and meditation outside the windmill each Sunday at three p.m. Thus there was no reason to reject the sect's petition. Meditating each Sunday in zero-to-ten-degree temperatures and five feet of snow was plenty religious.

The committee official decided that the rules allowed him not only to hand over the forms, which he had already pulled out, but to be helpful as well.

And thus he filled in everything that could be filled in for the for
mer parish priest; he asked all the obligatory questions and made certain that they received proper answers. When it came to the name of the new religious community, the official informed the priest of the requirements. The name must differentiate the community's activities from those of others, and it must not be in poor taste or contrary to law and order.

“With that in mind, what would you like your religion to be called?”

“The Church of Anders. After our spiritual leader.”

“I see. What might his last name be?” asked the official, absently.

“His name isn't Anders, it's Johan. Johan Andersson.”

The official looked up from his forms. He read his evening tabloid each day on the way home from work, and this caused him to say spontaneously (and a mite unprofessionally), “Hitman Anders?”

“He has been given that name in certain contexts. Beloved children have many names.”

The official cleared his throat and apologized for getting personal, then nodded and said that this was such a true observation, about beloved children and so on . . . Thereupon he informed her that it cost five hundred kronor to start the Church of Anders and he preferred payment via bank transfer.

The priest placed a five-hundred-krona bill in his hand, yanked the stamped forms from his other hand, thanked him for the good service, and walked out to the waiting camper.

“Pastor Anders!” she said, as she climbed in. “You need new clothes.”

“And a church,” said the receptionist.

“But how about some communion first?” said the pastor.

A
ll at once there was a lot to organize, and in the shortest amount of time possible.

It fell to the priest to cobble together a powerful message and prepare Pastor Anders to make use of it. She considered this quite taxing, and said as much to her receptionist. At first he didn't understand. Surely it didn't matter what their superstar said, did it? As long as it sounded a little religious, which it usually did nowadays every time the hitman opened his trap. Elvis wants to give away money, and everyone wants to be like Elvis: wasn't that how the equation was supposed to work?

Yes, it was true that their plan was based on Hitman Anders's words filling the yellow and the red suitcases again, and with any luck the suitcases would be joined by another pair, whose colors were beside the point. But this could not be accomplished with a single crazy sermon. Rather, they needed an ongoing, seemingly religious idea week after week. And this idea had to be based on something better than the pastor of the church standing in the pulpit alternately saying “Hosanna” and bending down to take a gulp of wine. What's more, their project must not be too dependent on a single person.

“What do you mean? The Church of Anders without Anders?”

“Pretty much.”

“You're thinking of the count and the countess?”

“Yes. And close to twenty other gangsters with varying degrees
of rank. There's no way for us to know whether it will take three minutes or three months for one of them to get him. But once it happens, he'll have preached his last.”

“And then what?”

“Our activities must go on, in fond memory of our founder. There has to be a second, well-prepared voice to take over once Pastor Anders is no longer with us. Someone who can grieve and remember along with the flock of the so tragically departed shepherd. Who can continue to bring in money in his honor, after his death.”

“You're talking about yourself now, right?” said the receptionist, who was starting to catch on.

The complication, for the priest, rested in which message she would be forced to inherit on the day Pastor Anders left his earthly life for a journey either upward or downward. Johanna Kjellander's fate in life was, undeniably, such that she would have an exceptionally difficult time returning to the pulpit even to pretend to carry on the Kjellander tradition. Truly, anything but that.

The receptionist felt he should not involve himself in details concerning the religious aspects of the church they had just started. He also understood the priest's dilemma, but he had to remind her that Jesus seemed to walk at Hitman Anders's one side, and perhaps they couldn't place just anyone on the other.

The priest had already realized that Jesus had to be part of the plan in some fashion or another, no matter what else happened. This also went for communion, or an equivalent alcohol level in the blood of their preacher-in-chief.

The receptionist gave his priest a comforting hug and said that she would surely find a reasonable solution. Perhaps
with
Jesus but
without
the gospels?

“Hmm,” said the priest, thoughtfully. “Everyone who searches finds. Matthew seven, verse eight.”

An overhaul of personal security was already high on the receptionist's to-do list. The priest's worries led him to do another lap of
thinking. The truth was, they were about to expose not only Hitman Anders but also themselves to the sort of people who would rather see them all dead than anything else.

There was a risk that it would be a piece of cake to off Hitman Anders as he was preaching peace, joy, and love. The pastor had already thought of that, and his death would be bad enough from a financial perspective. But, given their plan, the priest and the receptionist themselves would have to step out of the shadows, and there was no guarantee whatsoever that they would survive. If all three of them were to kick the bucket, it would be no exaggeration to say that their business plan didn't hold water. And they could hardly avert such a development by sending apologetic postcards to counts, countesses, and other people they'd cheated.

“You're thinking a bodyguard, it seems,” said the priest.

“I
was
thinking a bodyguard,” said her receptionist. “Now I'm thinking a team of bodyguards.”

The priest praised him for that and wished him luck as he strove to secure for them a long and preferably happy life. And she felt he might as well include Hitman Anders in this, as long as he remained financially relevant.

“But you'll have to excuse me now. I have a religion to make up,
with
Jesus but preferably
without
God,” she said, with a smile, then gave her receptionist a kiss on the cheek.

B
odyguards, the right building, set up the bank transfer, telephones, phone numbers, email . . . The receptionist certainly had a lot on his plate. In his capacity as marketing manager, he was also thinking along the lines of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram . . .

Thus far, Facebook had not been his favorite scene. He had his own account, but he had only one friend, and that was his mother in Iceland; she had stopped responding to him some time ago.

There was no way for her son to know that she had moved and ended up in a barracks at the edge of Europe's largest glacier, Vatnajökull. This had occurred after the husband-slash-banker had made a serious blunder in Reykjavik and felt the need to escape to the ends of the world along with his still sufficiently attractive wife (if only she weren't so damned angry all the time). Her husband said it would be best to stay put until things cooled off in Reykjavik, London, and, really, everywhere else. There was something about a statute of limitations, that everything would be fine as long as three years went by first.

“Three years?” said the receptionist's mother.

“Yes, or five. The legal situation is a tad unclear.”

The receptionist's mother asked herself what she had done with her life. “I have removed myself to a barracks next to a glacier on an island where no one understands anything I say, even if I were to come across someone to speak to. God! Why have you done this to me?”

It's not clear whether it was, in fact, God who answered. But after the despairing woman's question came a dull yet vigorous rumble. An earthquake. Right under the glacier.

“I'm afraid Bárðarbunga is waking up,” said her husband.

“Bardar who?” asked the wife, though she wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer.

“The volcano. It's a quarter of a mile below the ice. It's been dormant for a hundred years, so I imagine it's thoroughly rested . . .”

Since there hadn't been any internet service in the receptionist's mother's barracks even before the volcanic eruption, the son had no contact with his sole Facebook friend. Thus he had limited experience of how the media platform worked, with sharing and all of that. But he quickly discovered that he had a talent for it:

Church of Anders

More blessed to give than to receive

A nice touch, if he said so himself. And an image of a backlit Hitman Anders, Bible and iPad in hand.

“What do I need this computer for?” the hitman had protested, when the picture was taken.

“It's not a computer, it's an iPad, and it's to contrast the old with the new. Our message is for everyone.”

“And what was it again?”

“That it's better to give than to receive.”

“So true, so true,” said Hitman Anders.

“Not really, but still,” said the receptionist.

As soon as the priest had put together the religious message to be preached, the receptionist could add the finishing touches. But he already disliked the “Like” button, because it gave people the ability to give something a thumbs-up instead of going to the trouble of sending in a hundred-krona bill. Or even a twenty.

Finding a location was another concern. The receptionist searched
for hangars, barns, warehouses, and all sorts of places before he realized he didn't need a sledgehammer to swat a fly.

All they had to do was buy a church.

There had been a time when the Evangelical Lutheran State Church ruled supreme in Sweden. It was forbidden to believe in anything else, it was forbidden to believe in nothing at all, and it was forbidden to believe in the right God in the wrong way.

The Church was at its nadir in the eighteenth century, but it was challenged now and again by a Pietist who, with inspiration from horrid foreign lands, believed that a person ought to be allowed to experience a bit of
enthusiasm
about religious life, something more than just the cut-and-dried Lutheran ways.

Enthusiasm? The State Church made sure to have anyone whose beliefs were right but wrong arrested and sentenced before things got out of hand.

Most of them apologized and got off lightly in that they were merely deported. But now and again someone stood his ground. The most stubborn of these was named Thomas Leopold. Instead of falling into line, he said a prayer for the judge in the courtroom, thus annoying the judge to such an extent that Leopold received seven years' imprisonment in Bohus Fortress.

When even that did not cause Pietist Leopold to give in, they added five years at Kalmar Fortress, and then just as long at Danviken Hospital.

After seventeen years, one might think that Leopold would have softened around the edges, but no such luck.

All they could do was give up. He was sent back to Bohus, locked up in the cell where his prison journey had begun, and then they threw away the key.

It was twenty-six more fretful years before Thomas Leopold finally had the good sense to die, at the age of seventy-seven. It certainly was a sad story, but it demonstrated the resolve of the State Church. Order and discipline, services on Sunday.

But the severe eighteenth century turned into a significantly milder nineteenth. A few free churches were allowed to exist for real, not just in secret. And then came misery upon misery: the Freedom of Religion Act in 1951 and the separation of Church and State fifty years later.

So, there had been a time when you would get forty-three years in prison (before you died and were carried off) because you didn't believe in the correct thing. Just two hundred and fifty years later, five thousand Swedes left the State Church each month without so much as a parking ticket by way of punishment. They could go wherever they liked, or nowhere; this was guaranteed by law. Those who remained attended Sunday services not because they didn't dare do otherwise, but because they really and truly wanted to. Or, like most people, they didn't go.

Congregations merged at the same rate as they shrank. The consequences of the eighteenth century becoming the twentieth meant, in the end, that empty churches stood all over the proud kingdom of Sweden, falling into ruin unless great investments kept them in good order.

Of course, large amounts of money were something the Church of Sweden did possess. Its cumulative capital lay somewhere just short of seven billion kronor. But the annual dividends brought a ridiculously low three percent, since for many years the Church had virtuously (and a little reluctantly) refused to invest in oil, tobacco, alcohol, bombers, or tanks. A portion of that three percent was reinvested in the Church's own operations, but if it's raining on the priest that doesn't mean the bell-ringer will get wet. Or, translated loosely: the individual congregations were often on their last legs. Anyone who looked one of these up and offered a bag containing three million kronor in cash in exchange for taking over a church building that was nothing but a boarded-up money pit—that person would find an audience.

“Three million?” said the Reverend Mr. Granlund, who suddenly
realized all the lovely things he could do with that money in the parish's main church, which was also in need of sprucing up.

Sure, the asking price was set at 4.9 million, but the building had already been for sale for more than two years with no interested parties.

“Did you say the Church of Anders?” wondered Granlund.

“Yes, after our main pastor, Johan Andersson. A fantastic life story. Truly a miracle of God,” said the receptionist, thinking that if God did exist he would probably aim a bolt of lightning down at his head any second now.

“Yes, I've been following that in the papers,” said the reverend. He was thinking that there would be advantages to having another Christian community take over. It was, after all, a holy building, and in this way it could continue to be so.

Granlund obtained full negotiation rights from his congregation and decided to accept the three million. The church building was of considerable size; it had passed its best-before date about a hundred years earlier; it was far too close to European Highway 18, and it had a cemetery scattered with gravestones, all at least fifty years old. Granlund thought about the graves and how lucky it was that no one had been buried there for so long. How restful could it be to have your final resting place right next to one of Sweden's most heavily trafficked highways?

And yet he happened to bring up the matter of gravestones with his potential buyers. “Do you intend to respect the peace of the burial grounds?” he wondered, well aware that there were no legal restrictions on doing the exact opposite.

“Of course,” said the receptionist. “We won't dig up a single grave. We're just going to even it out a little on top and put down some asphalt.”

“Asphalt?”

“Parking lot. Shall we settle this now? A speedy deal: we get access on Monday, and there's cash in hand for you now as long as I can have a receipt.”

Granlund regretted asking about the gravestones and decided to pretend he hadn't heard the answer. He extended his hand. “Deal,” he said. “Mr. Persson, you've got yourself a church.”

“Lovely,” said Per Persson. “I don't suppose you'd consider joining our faith, sir? It would be quite a feather in our cap. We'll throw in a free parking space if you like.”

Granlund had the feeling he was bringing misfortune upon the building he had just unloaded. He and the congregation most assuredly did need the three million kronor. But that didn't mean they had to suck up to the buyer. “Get out of here, Persson, before I change my mind,” he said.