A Son of the Rock

Michael Joseph, 2017, 75 p; including 3 p “A few words before the rest of the words.”  Translated from the Swedish Ditt livs affär (Helsingborgs Dagblad, 2016,) by Alice Menzies.

This is a short, but powerful, illustrated tale of a very successful business man’s attempt to make sense of his life; and amends to his neglected son.

He has terminal cancer and in the hospital room next to his is a young girl who tries to make friends with him and has coloured one of the chairs red using a crayon, “‘You’re allowed to draw on the furniture when you have cancer,’ the girl suddenly exclaimed with a shrug. ‘No one says anything.’”

His plight has caused the unnamed narrator to reflect on his life, and his story, as written, is an apology of sorts to his son. “But the vast majority of successful people don’t become bastards, we were bastards long before. That’s why we’ve been successful.” Also, “Weak people always look at people like me and say, ‘He’s rich, but is he happy?’ As though that was a relevant measure of anything. …..  Happy people don’t create anything …. All leaders, all of your heroes, they’ve been obsessed. Happy people don’t get obsessed.”

All his life he seems to have been followed around by a greyly dressed woman with a folder, even from when he was born as the only survivor of a set of twins. When he finally intercepts her and calls her Death she demurs. “I’m not Death. It’s the job.” And the job has rules. You cannot just exchange one life for another; yours must be erased. He cannot save both the girl and himself; or, rather, he cannot save the girl and his life as he lived it.

This is an all but perfect meditation on home and family and the things that, in the end, are important.

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