A Man Called Ove: A Novel

Ove’s next move involved trying to convince the man that Rune should not be put in a home. The man informed Ove that “Illiterate bastard!” was a very bad choice of words for bringing up that subject. After this, there was a long series of impolite phrases on both ends of the telephone line, before Ove declared in clear terms that things could not be allowed to work like this. One couldn’t just come along and remove people from their homes and transport them to institutions any old way one liked, just because their memory was getting a bit defective. The man at the other end answered coldly that it didn’t matter very much where they put Rune now “in the state he was in” because for him it “would probably make a very marginal difference where he was.” Ove roared a series of invectives back. And then the man in the white shirt said something very stupid.

“The decision has been made. The investigation has been going on for two years. There’s nothing you can do, Ove. Nothing. At all.”

And then he hung up.

Ove looked at Parvaneh. Looked at Patrick. Slammed Parvaneh’s cell phone into their kitchen table and boomed that they needed a “New plan! Immediately!” Parvaneh looked deeply unhappy but Patrick nodded at once, grabbed his crutches, and hobbled quickly out the door. As if he’d just been waiting for Ove to say that. Five minutes later, to Ove’s deep dissatisfaction, he came back with that silly fop Anders from the neighboring house. With Jimmy cheerfully tagging along.

“What’s he doing here?” said Ove, pointing at the fop.

“I thought you needed a plan?” said Patrick, nodding at the fop and looking very pleased with himself.

“Anders is our plan!” Jimmy threw in.

Anders looked around the hall a little awkwardly, apparently slightly dissuaded by Ove’s expression. But Patrick and Jimmy insistently pushed him into the living room.

“Go on, tell him,” Patrick prompted.

“Tell me what?”

“Okay, so I heard you had some problems with the owner of that Škoda, yeah?” began Anders, giving Patrick a nervous glance. Ove nodded impatiently for him to continue.

“Well, I don’t think I’ve ever told you what sort of company I have, have I?” Anders went on tentatively.

Ove put his hands in his pockets. Adopted a slightly more relaxed position. And then Anders told him. And even Ove had to admit that it sounded almost more than decently opportune.

“Where are you keeping that blond bimbo—” he started saying once Anders had finished, but he stopped himself when Parvaneh kicked his leg. “Your girlfriend,” he corrected himself.

“Oh. We split up. She moved out,” said Anders and looked at his shoes.

Whereupon he had to explain that apparently she’d become a bit upset about Ove feuding so much with her and the dog. But her annoyance had been small beer compared to her agitation when Anders found out that Ove called her dog “Mutt” and had not quite been able to stop himself smiling about it.

And so it came to pass that when the chain-smoking man in the white shirt turned up on their road that afternoon accompanied by a police officer to demand that Ove release the white Škoda from its captivity, both the trailer and the white Škoda were already gone. Ove stood outside his house with his hands calmly tucked into his pockets, while his adversary finally lost his composure altogether and started roaring expletives at him. Ove maintained that he had no idea how this had happened, but pointed out in a friendly manner that none of this would have happened in the first place if he’d just respected the sign that made it clear that cars were prohibited in the area. He obviously left out the detail that Anders owned a car towing company, and that one of his tow trucks had picked up the Škoda at lunchtime and then placed it in a large gravel pit twenty-five miles outside town. And when the police officer tactfully asked if he had really not seen anything, Ove looked right into the eyes of the man in the white shirt and answered:

“I don’t know. I may have forgotten. You start losing your memory at my age.”

When the policeman looked around and then wondered why Ove was standing about here in the street if he had nothing to do with the disappearance of the Škoda, Ove just innocently shrugged his shoulders and peered at the man in the white shirt.

“There’s still nothing good on TV.”

Anger drained the man’s face of color until, if possible, his face was even whiter than his shirt. He stormed off, raging that this was “far from over.” And of course it wasn’t. Only an hour or so later, Anita opened the door to a courier, who gave her a certified letter from the council. Signed, confirmed, with the time and date of the “transfer into care.”

And now Ove stands by Sonja’s gravestone and manages to say something about how sorry he is.

“You get so damned worked up when I fight with people, I know that. But the reality of it is this. You’ll just have to wait a bit longer for me up there. I don’t have time to die right now.”