фредрик бакман (Fredrik Backman)
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To you who talk too much and sing too loud and cry too often and love something in life more than you should.
1
Stories
Everyone who knew Benjamin Ovich, particularly those of us who knew him well enough to call him Benji, probably knew deep down that he was never the sort of person who would get a happy ending.
Obviously we still hoped. Dear God, how we hoped. Naive dreams are love’s last line of defense, so somehow we always convince ourselves that no terrible tragedies will ever afflict those we love, and that our people will succeed in escaping fate. For their sakes we dream of eternal life, we wish for superpowers and try to build time machines. We hope. Dear God, how we hope.
But the truth is that stories about boys like Benji hardly ever end with them as old men. They don’t get long stories, and they don’t die peacefully in old people’s homes with their heads resting on soft pillows.
Boys like Benji die young. They die violently.
2
Storms
“Keep it simple.” That’s a common piece of advice in hockey, as it is in life.
Never make things more complicated than they need to be, don’t think too much, and ideally not at all. Perhaps that ought to apply to stories like this as well, because it shouldn’t take long to tell, it starts right here and ends in less than two weeks, and how much can happen in two hockey towns during that time? Not much, obviously.
Only everything.
The problem with both hockey and life is that simple moments are rare. All the others are a struggle. This story doesn’t start today, it’s been going on for two years, because that was when Maya Andersson moved away from here.