A Man Called Ove: A Novel

Ove glances at her as if considering a firm retort, but instead he just looks down at the ground.

“Or is that too much to ask?” she continues, drilling him with her gaze and crossing her arms firmly across her stomach.

Ove shakes his head.

“You don’t breathe radiators, you bleed them . . . Jesus.”

He looks up and gives them the once-over.

“Have you never bled a radiator before, or what?”

“No,” says Parvaneh, unmoved.

Rune’s wife looks at the Lanky One a little anxiously.

“I haven’t got a clue what they’re talking about,” he says calmly to her.

Rune’s wife nods resignedly. Looks at Ove again.

“It would be really nice of you, Ove, if it isn’t too much of a bother. . . .”

Ove just stands there staring down at the threshold.

“Maybe this could have been thought about before you organized a coup d’état in the Residents’ Association,” he says quietly, his words punctuated by a series of discreet coughs.

“Before she what?” says Parvaneh.

Rune’s wife clears her throat.

“But, dear Ove, there was never a coup d’état. . . .”

“Was so,” says Ove grumpily.

Rune’s wife looks at Parvaneh with an embarrassed little smile. “Well, you see, Rune and Ove here haven’t always gotten along so very well. Before Rune got ill he was the head of the Residents’ Association. And before that Ove was the head. And when Rune was voted in there was something of a wrangle between Ove and Rune, you could say.”

Ove looks up and points a corrective index finger at her.

“A coup d’état! That’s what it was!”

Rune’s wife nods at Parvaneh.

“Well, yes, well, before the meeting Rune counted votes about his suggestion that we should change the heating system for the houses and Ove thou—”

“And what the hell does Rune know about heating systems? Eh?” Ove exclaims heatedly, but immediately gets a look from Parvaneh which makes him reconsider and come to the conclusion that there’s no need to complete his line of thought.

Rune’s wife nods.

“Maybe you’re right, Ove. But anyway, he’s very sick now . . . so it doesn’t really matter anymore.” Her bottom lip trembles slightly. Then she regains her composure, straightens her neck with dignity, and clears her throat.

“The authorities have said they’ll take him from me and put him in a home,” she manages to say.

Ove puts his hands in his pockets again and determinedly backs away, across his threshold. He’s heard enough of this.

In the meantime the Lanky One seems to have decided it’s time to change the subject and lighten up the atmosphere. He points at the floor in Ove’s hall.

“What’s that?”

Ove turns to look at the bit of floor exposed by the loose plastic sheet.

“It looks as if you’ve got, sort of . . . tire marks on the floor. Do you cycle indoors, or what?” says the Lanky One.

Parvaneh keeps her observant eyes on Ove as he backs away another step so he can impede the Lanky One’s view.

“It’s nothing.”

“But I can see it’s—” the Lanky One begins confusedly.

“It was Ove’s wife, Sonja, she was—” Rune’s wife interrupts him in a friendly manner, but she only has time to get to the name “Sonja” when Ove, in turn, interrupts her and spins around with unbridled fury in his eyes.

“That’ll do! Now you SHUT UP!”

All four of them fall silent, equally shocked. Ove’s hands tremble as he steps back into his hall and slams the door.

He hears Parvaneh’s soft voice out there asking Rune’s wife what all that was about. Then he hears Rune’s wife fumbling nervously for words, and then exclaiming: “Oh, you know, I’d better go home. That thing about Ove’s wife . . . oh, forget it. Old bats like me, we talk too much, you know. . . .”

Ove hears her strained laugh and then her little dragging footsteps disappearing as quickly as they can around the corner of his shed. A moment later the Pregnant One and the Lanky One also leave.

And all that’s left is the silence of Ove’s hall.

He sinks down on the stool, breathing heavily. His hands are still shaking as if he were standing waist-deep in ice-cold water. His chest thumps. It happens more and more these days. He has to sort of struggle for a mouthful of air, like a fish in an overturned bowl. His company doctor said it was chronic, and that he mustn’t work himself up. Easy for him to say.

“Good to go home and have a rest now,” said his bosses at work. “Now your heart is playing up and all.” They called it “early retirement” but they might as well have said what it was: “liquidation.” A third of a century in the same job and that’s what they reduced him to.