A Man Called Ove: A Novel

“Coffee, then. Black.”

Adrian scratches his hair under the cap.

“So . . . espresso?”

“No. Coffee.”

Adrian transfers his scratching from hair to chin.

“What . . . like black coffee?”

“Yes.”

“With milk?”

“If it’s with milk it’s not black coffee.”

Adrian moves a couple of sugar bowls on the counter. Mainly to have something to do, so he doesn’t look too silly. A bit late for that, thinks Ove.

“Normal filter coffee. Normal bloody filter coffee,” Ove repeats.

Adrian nods.

“Oh, that. . . . Well. I don’t know how to make it.”

Ove points aggressively at the percolator in the corner, only barely visible behind a gigantic silver spaceship of a machine, which, Ove understands, is what they use for making espresso.

“Oh, that one, yeah,” says Adrian, as if the penny has just dropped. “Ah . . . I don’t really know how that thing works.”

“Should have bloody known. . . .” mutters Ove as he walks around the counter and takes matters into his own hands.

“Can someone tell me what we’re doing here?” calls Parvaneh.

“This kid here has a bicycle that needs repairing,” explains Ove as he pours water into the carafe.

“The bicycle hanging off the back of the car?”

“You brought it here? Thanks, Ove!”

“You don’t have a car, do you?” he replies, while rummaging around a cupboard for coffee filters.

“Thanks, Ove!” says Adrian and takes a step towards him, then comes to his senses and stops before he does something silly.

“So that’s your bicycle?” Parvaneh smiles.

“Kind of—it’s my girlfriend’s. Or the one I want to be my girlfriend . . . sort of thing.”

Parvaneh grins.

“So me and Ove drove all this way just to give you a bike so you can mend it? For a girl?”

Adrian nods. Parvaneh leans over the counter and pats Ove on the arm.

“You know, Ove, sometimes one almost suspects you have a heart. . . .”

“Do you have tools here or not?” Ove says to Adrian, snatching his arm away.

Adrian nods.

“Go and get them, then. The bike’s on the Saab in the parking lot.”

Adrian nods quickly and disappears into the kitchen. After a minute or so he comes back with a big toolbox, which he quickly takes to the exit.

“And you be quiet,” Ove says to Parvaneh.

She smirks in a way that suggests she has no intention of keeping quiet.

“I only brought the bicycle here so he wouldn’t mess about in the sheds back home. . . .” Ove adds.

“Sure, sure,” says Parvaneh with a laugh.

“Oh, hey,” says Adrian as the soot-eyed boy appears again a moment later. “This is my boss.”

“Hi there—ah, what . . . sorry, what are you doing?” asks the “boss,” looking with some interest at the spry stranger who has barricaded himself behind the counter of his café.

“The kid’s going to fix a bicycle,” answers Ove as if this were something plain and obvious. “Where do you keep the filters for real coffee?”

The soot-eyed boy points at one of the shelves. Ove squints at him.

“Is that makeup?”

Parvaneh hushes him. Ove looks insulted.

“What? What’s wrong with asking?”

The boy smiles a little nervously.

“Yes, it’s makeup.” He nods, rubbing himself around his eyes. “I went dancing last night,” he says, smiling gratefully as Parvaneh with the deftness of a fellow conspirator hauls out a wet-wipe from her handbag and offers it to him.

Ove nods and goes back to his coffee-making.

“And do you also have problems with bicycles and love and girls?” he asks absentmindedly.

“No, no, not with bicycles anyway. And not with love either, I suppose. Well, not with girls, anyway.” He chuckles.

Ove turns on the percolator and, once it begins to splutter, turns around and leans against the inside of the counter as if this is the most natural thing in the world in a café where one doesn’t work.

“Bent, are you?”

“OVE!” says Parvaneh and slaps him on the arm.

Ove snatches back his arm and looks very offended.

“What?!”

“You don’t say . . . you don’t call it that,” Parvaneh says, clearly unwilling to pronounce the word again.

“Queer?” Ove offers.

Parvaneh tries to hit his arm again but Ove is too quick.

“Don’t talk like that!” she orders him.

Ove turns to the sooty boy, genuinely puzzled.

“Can’t one say ‘bent’? What are you supposed to say nowadays?”

“You say homosexual. Or an LGBT person,” Parvaneh interrupts before she can stop herself.

“Ah, you can say what you want, it’s cool.” The boy smiles as he walks around the counter and puts on an apron.

“Right, good. Good to be clear. One of those gays, then,” mumbles Ove. Parvaneh shakes her head apologetically; the boy just laughs. “Well then,” says Ove with a nod, and starts pouring himself a coffee while it’s still going through.

Then he takes the cup and without another word goes outside and across the street to the parking area. The sooty boy doesn’t comment on his taking the cup outside. It would seem a little unnecessary, under the circumstances, when this man within five minutes of his arrival at the boy’s café has already appointed himself as barista and interrogated him about his sexual preferences.

Adrian is standing by the Saab, looking as if he just got lost in a forest.