The 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.