The priest and—above all—the receptionist continued to search for the meaning of life. After six days, they were more in agreement than ever that it was not to be found in the Riddarholm Suite at the Hilton.
It wasn’t until they decided to find somewhere to live that it occurred to them how expensive housing was. A three-room apartment in Stockholm would mean using the entire contents of the suitcase, and what would be the point in having fun without bankrupting themselves if they started off by bankrupting themselves? And it was pretty senseless to enter the housing queue for a reasonable rental property unless you aimed to live to nine hundred and fifty, as we know only one person, so far, has managed to do.
Neither the receptionist nor the priest had any experience with the workings of the housing market. Per Persson had spent his entire adult life sleeping behind a hotel lobby or in a camper. Johanna Kjellander’s knowledge of the same matter encompassed little more than her dad’s parsonage, a student-housing corridor in Uppsala, and her dad’s parsonage again (as a new graduate she’d had to commute between her childhood bedroom and her job, twelve miles away; this was the most freedom her dad would allow).
But now they knew, and they made a joint decision that they were far too enamored of the contents of the yellow suitcase to use it just for living.
The most economically sustainable option they discovered was a fishing shack on an island in the middle of the Baltic Sea. They had discovered this pearl of Gotland online and were attracted to the price (slightly more than free), in conjunction with the distance (just over a hundred nautical miles) from those Stockholm criminals who had not yet blown one another up.
There were reasons for the low price. One was not allowed to live in the shack on a permanent basis, one was not allowed to insulate the walls or roof, and one was not allowed to install a toilet.
“I’m sure we can make uninsulated work if we just build a big enough fire in the stove,” said the priest, “but I’m feeling so-so about the prospect of sitting in a snowbank in freezing temperatures to do you-know-what.”
“I think we should take it, then start a test fire in the stove first thing, using the authorities’ rulebook as kindling. After that, we can insulate the walls and build a bathroom in all our ignorance.”
“What if someone catches us?” The priest still had a fear of authority after all those years under her father’s thumb.
“If someone catches us? Who would catch us? The special toilet inspector of the Gotland region? The man or woman who goes from door to door to make sure that people poop where they’re supposed to?”
In addition to the aforementioned rules, it was hardly permitted to walk around outside, or that was how the shack’s seller made it sound as he prattled on, over the phone, about protected beaches, protected waters, protected animals, protected biotopes, and a handful of other protections that not even the priest, in the end, could tolerate listening to. But at last he got to the point, which was that he couldn’t imagine handing his cultural treasure to just anyone. But now he felt confident: a servant of the Lord wished to take over its care.
“Glad to hear it,” said the priest. “If you could send us the documents right away, I’m quite eager to do the taking over.”
The seller preferred that they meet in person: they could seal the deal over a bowl of seaweed soup. But the eavesdropping receptionist heard this, decided enough was enough, took the receiver, introduced himself as the assistant of parish priest Kjellander, and said that he and the priest were currently at a conference at the Hilton in Stockholm but that in just two days they were to leave for Sierra Leone to take part in a humanitarian project aiding leper colonies; it would be best for the seller to sign the documents and forward them to the hotel. They would be countersigned and sent back by return.
“Wow,” said the man who had wanted to give them soup, then immediately promised to do as he’d been asked.
When the phone call was over, the priest informed her receptionist that leper colonies didn’t really exist nowadays, and the illness was treated with antibiotics rather than by the laying on of hands of former parish priests.
“But in general, well done,” she praised him. “Sierra Leone—what made you think of that?”
“I don’t know,” said the receptionist. “But if they don’t have leprosy there, I’m sure they have something else.”
* * *
Time to pack their bag. Singular. Thanks to the cost of the Hilton, their store of money had dwindled enough to allow their negligible personal belongings to fit in along with the remaining millions.
The couple and the yellow suitcase checked out one last time. The red one remained in the room, empty. Their aim was to walk to Central Station and continue their journey by bus to Nynäshamn, where the ferry to Gotland awaited them.
But none of that came to be.