Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All by Jonas Jonasson

person. If Johanna Kjellander hinted that she didn’t have the time or the energy, he threatened her with refusal to work and/or a beating.
    â€œNot a big one, just a little one at first,” he said, to smooth things over. “After all, we’re colleagues. And it says in the Bible that—”
    â€œYeah, yeah,” said the priest.
    Her only remaining option was to drag God through the dirt, thereby making Hitman Anders think worse of him. Thus she claimed, citing the Book of Job, that the main similarity between Hitman Anders and God was that they both killed people but, unlike God, Hitman Anders spared the children.
    â€œOnce he killed ten children in one blow, to show Satan that it wouldn’t make the children’s dad lose faith.”
    â€œTen kids? What did their mom say?”
    â€œAlthough her main purpose in life was to remain silent and obedient, it’s said that she took offense. And just imagine—I canunderstand why. But after a few ups and downs, God gave ten new children to this nice dad. I expect his grumpy wife birthed them, or else they came in the mail. It doesn’t mention anything about that.”
    Hitman Anders was quiet for a few seconds. He was searching his memory for a reasonable way to explain this, even if that was not exactly how he put it in his mind. The priest saw that he was shaken: there was hope!
    The former hitman first mumbled that at least the Lord had sent ten new children . . . That was good, right? To this the priest replied that perhaps God wasn’t quite the right hand-holder if he couldn’t see that children, in relation to their parents, were not as interchangeable as car tires.
    Car tires? In Job’s day? But by now Hitman Anders had thought up a better way forward: “What was that expression you used the other day when I had a go at you out for throwing around difficult words?”
    Oh, no! The priest knew what the hitman was getting at. “I don’t remember,” she lied.
    â€œNo, you said that the ways of the Lord are . . . unfathomable.”
    â€œI ought to have called him fickle, or seriously disturbed. I apologize . . .”
    â€œAnd then you said that God’s wisdom is infinite and cannot be understood by man , didn’t you?”
    â€œNo—I mean yes—I mean I said that people tend to hide behind such wording when they need to explain the inexplicable. Like, for example, God’s ability to tell the difference between ten children and four car tires.”
    Hitman Anders continued to listen only to that which he wanted to hear. And he argued accordingly: “I remember a prayer my mom taught me when I was little—you know, the piece of shit with the knocked-out teeth. She wasn’t quite so horrible at first, before the booze took over—how did it go? ‘God, who holds his children dear, Watch over me as I lie here . . .’”
    â€œSo?” said the priest.
    â€œWhat do you mean, ‘so’? You heard it for yourself. God loves the children. We are all his children, by the way. I read that just yesterday while I was on the throne and—”
    The priest stopped the hitman mid-sentence. She didn’t need to hear the other half. He’d already tricked her into giving him a copy of the New Testament and he had left it on a stool in the first-floor bathroom. Presumably he’d landed in the Gospel of John. Be that as it may, she had no ammunition left, apart from the central theological issue, the one that asks how the world can be as it is if God is good and all-powerful. This conflict was as talked to death as everything else, but perhaps Hitman Anders had never considered it before. Maybe there was a chance that . . .
    At some point, the priest was interrupted. Hitman Anders stood up and said what he said.
    And with that, catastrophe had become a reality.
    â€œI’m not going to beat people up anymore. Or drink alcohol. From now on,