A Man Called Ove: A Novel

“There’ll be no turning up of radiators here,” Ove announces firmly. He parks himself in the living room doorway and wonders whether she might try to swat him again with the glove if he tells her at least to put some newspapers under the cat. When she turns to him again he decides to give it a miss. Ove doesn’t know if he’s ever seen such an angry woman.

“I’ve got a blanket upstairs,” he says at long last, avoiding her gaze by suddenly feeling incredibly interested in the hall lamp.

“Get it then!”

Ove looks as if he’s repeating her words to himself, though silently, in an affected, disdainful voice; but he takes off his shoes and crosses the living room at a cautious distance from her glove-striking range.

All the way up and down the stairs he mumbles to himself about why it has to be so damned difficult to get any peace and quiet on this street. Upstairs he stops and takes a few deep breaths. The pain in his chest has gone. His heart is beating normally again. It happens now and then, and he no longer gets stressed about it. It always passes. And he won’t be needing that heart for very much longer, so it doesn’t matter either way.

He hears voices from the living room. He can hardly believe his ears. Considering how they are constantly preventing him from dying, these neighbors of his are certainly not shy when it comes to driving a man to the brink of madness and suicide. That’s for sure.

When Ove comes back down the stairs with the blanket in his hand, the overweight young man from next door is standing in the middle of his living room, looking with curiosity at the cat and Parvaneh.

“Hey, man!” he says cheerfully and waves at Ove.

He’s only wearing a T-shirt, even though there’s snow outside.

“Okay,” says Ove, silently appalled that you can pop upstairs for a moment only to find when you come back down that you’ve apparently started a bed-and-breakfast operation.

“I heard someone shouting, just wanted to check that everything was cool here,” says the young man jovially, shrugging his shoulders so that his back blubber folds the T-shirt into deep wrinkles.

Parvaneh snatches the blanket out of the Ove’s hand and starts wrapping the cat in it.

“You’ll never get him warm like that,” says the young man pleasantly.

“Don’t interfere,” says Ove, who, while perhaps not an expert at defrosting cats, does not appreciate at all having people marching into his house and issuing orders about how things should be done.

“Be quiet, Ove!” says Parvaneh and looks entreatingly at the young man. “What shall we do, then? He’s ice-cold!”

“Don’t tell me to be quiet,” mumbles Ove.

“He’ll die,” says Parvaneh.

“Die my ass, he’s just a bit chilly—” Ove interjects, in a new attempt to regain control over the situation.

The Pregnant One puts her index finger over his lips and hushes him. Ove looks so absurdly irritated at this it’s as if he’s going to break into some sort of rage-fueled pirouette.

When Parvaneh holds up the cat, it has started shifting in color from purple to white. Ove looks a little less sure of himself when he notices this. He glances at Parvaneh. Then reluctantly steps back and gives way.

The young, overweight man takes off his T-shirt.

“But what the . . . this has got to be . . . what are you DOING?” stutters Ove.

His eyes flicker from Parvaneh by the sofa, with the defrosting cat in her arms and water dripping onto the floor, to the young man standing there with his torso bare in the middle of Ove’s living room, the fat trembling over his chest down towards his knees, as if he were a big mound of ice cream that had first melted and then been refrozen.

“Here, give him to me,” says the young man unconcernedly and reaches over with two arms thick as tree trunks towards Parvaneh.

When she hands over the cat he encloses it in his enormous embrace, pressing it against his chest as if trying to make a gigantic cat spring roll.

“By the way, my name’s Jimmy,” he says to Parvaneh and smiles.

“I’m Parvaneh,” says Parvaneh.

“Nice name,” says Jimmy.

“Thanks! It means ‘butterfly.’” Parvaneh smiles.

“Nice!” says Jimmy.

“You’ll smother that cat,” says Ove.

“Oh, give it a rest, will you, Ove,” says Jimmy.

“I reckon it would rather freeze to death in a dignified manner than be strangled,” he says to Jimmy, nodding at the dripping ball of fluff pressed into his arms.

Jimmy pulls his good-tempered face into a big grin.

“Chill a bit, Ove. You can say what you like about us fatties, but we’re awesome when it comes to pumping out a bit of heat!”

Parvaneh peers nervously over his blubbery upper arm and gently puts the palm of her hand against the cat’s nose. Then she brightens.

“He’s getting warmer,” she exclaims, turning to Ove in triumph.

Ove nods. He was about to say something sarcastic to her. Now he finds, uneasily, that he’s relieved at the news. He distracts himself from this emotion by assiduously inspecting the TV remote control.

Not that he’s concerned about the cat. It’s just that Sonja would have been happy. Nothing more than that.