The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man

Sweden

‘Your job is certainly full of variety,’ Julius stated, as he studied the three latest coffins, all ready to be delivered.

The one on the left was black with swastikas and white-power symbols. The one in the middle was yellow, red and blue in homage to Djurgården hockey. And the one on the right was pale blue with white rabbits on each of its sides, hopping in a dignified manner through a green meadow. On the lid were fluffy white clouds and the words ‘God who holds His children dear, watch over me as I sleep here.’

‘Yes,’ Sabine said, as she washed her hands. ‘Today swastikas, football and bunnies. Tomorrow Lenin awaits. Apparently the last Communist is not yet dead. Unless he was the one who just died. Can’t we go out and celebrate at a restaurant tonight?’

‘I’d love to! But what are we celebrating?’

‘Anything. You decide. That we found each other? That we’re starting to do well financially? That you haven’t had a blister in several months?’

Julius thought the best reason was that they’d found each other. ‘Shall we take the hearse or a taxi?’ he wondered.

To make a Lenin coffin, Sabine began by lacquering the entire thing in the proper shade of red. As the paint dried she began practising Lenin himself. It turned out right every time. He was easy to make: his face was the right level of angular.

‘It’s no Picasso, but it’s close,’ she said to herself, pleased.

Then she took off her painter’s smock and spiffed herself up to perform the week’s deliveries. Two coffins were going to a single morgue south of the capital, and a third to a different one just thirty kilometres away. As the money flowed in, she sent more and more of her deliveries via DHL. Once, in the early days, she had driven all the way to Sundsvall and back, but now she outsourced anything that needed to go beyond the Mälaren Valley and its immediate environs.

It was Friday, and there was just one day left to disaster.