A Man Called Ove: A Novel

Then he digs up the old, frozen pink flowers out of the ground, plants the new ones, straightens up, folds up his deck chair, and walks towards the parking area while muttering something that sounds suspiciously like “because there’s a bloody war on.”

35

A MAN CALLED OVE AND SOCIAL INCOMPETENCE

When Parvaneh, with panic in her eyes, runs right into Ove’s hall and continues into the bathroom without even bothering to say “Good morning,” Ove immediately disputes how one can become so acutely in need of a pee in the space of the twenty seconds it takes her to walk from her own house to his. But “hell has no fury like a pregnant woman in need,” Sonja once informed him. So he keeps his mouth shut.

The neighbors are saying he’s been “like a different person” these last days, that they’ve never seen him so “engaged” before. But as Ove irritably explains to them, that’s only because Ove has never bloody engaged himself in their particular business before. He’s always been a bloody “engaged” person.

Patrick says the way he walks between the houses and slams the doors the whole time is like “a really angry avenging robot from the future.” Ove doesn’t know what he means by that. But, anyway, he’s spent hours at a time in the evenings sitting with Parvaneh and Patrick and the girls, while Patrick to the best of his abilities has tried to get Ove not to put angry fingerprints all over Patrick’s computer monitor whenever he wants to show them something. Jimmy, Mirsad, Adrian, and Anders have also been there. Jimmy has repeatedly tried to get everyone to call Parvaneh and Patrick’s kitchen “The Death Star” and Ove “Darth Ove.” They’ve considered countless plans over the last few days—including planting marijuana in the white-shirted man’s shed, as Rune might have suggested—but after a few nights Ove seems to give up. He nods grimly, demands to use the telephone, and shuffles off into the next room to make a call.

He didn’t like doing it. But when there’s a war on, there’s a war.

Parvaneh comes out of the bathroom.

“Are you done?” Ove wonders, as if he’s suspecting this to be some sort of halftime interval.

She nods, but just as they’re on their way out the door she notices something in his living room and stops. Ove is standing in the doorway but he knows very well what she’s staring at.

“It’s . . . Pah! What the hell, it’s nothing special,” he mumbles and tries to wave her out the door.

When she fails to move he gives the edge of the doorframe a hard kick.

“It was only gathering dust. I sanded it down and repainted it and applied another layer of lacquer, that’s all. It’s no big bloody deal,” he grumbles, irritated.

“Oh, Ove,” whispers Parvaneh.

Ove occupies himself checking the threshold with a couple of kicks.

“We can sand it down and repaint it pink. If it’s a girl, I mean,” he mutters.

Clears his throat.

“Or if it’s a boy. Boys can have pink nowadays, can’t they?”

Parvaneh looks at the light blue crib, her hand across her mouth.

“If you start crying now you’re not having it,” warns Ove.

And when she starts crying anyway, Ove sighs—“Bloody women”—and turns around and starts walking down the road.

The man in the white shirt extinguishes his cigarette under his shoe and bangs on Anita and Rune’s door about half an hour later. He’s brought along three young men in nurse uniforms, as if he’s expecting violent resistance. When frail little Anita opens the door, the three young men look a touch ashamed of themselves more than anything, but the man in the white shirt takes a step towards her and waves his document in the air as if holding an axe in his hands.

“It’s time,” he informs her with a certain impatience and tries to step into the hall.

But she places herself in his way. As much as a person of her size can place herself in anyone’s way.

“No!” she says without budging an inch.

The man in the white shirt stops and looks at her. Shakes his head tiredly at her and tightens the skin around his nose until it almost seems to be swallowed up in his cheek-flesh.

“You’ve had two years to do this the easy way, Anita. And now the decision has been made. And that’s all there is to it.”

He tries to get past her again but Anita stays where she is on her threshold, immovable as an ancient standing stone.

She takes a deep breath without breaking their eye contact.

“What sort of love is it if you hand someone over when it gets difficult?” she cries, her voice shaking with sorrow. “Abandon someone when there’s resistance? Tell me what sort of love that is!”

The man pinches his lips. There’s a nervous twitch around his cheekbones.

“Rune doesn’t even know where he is half the time, the investigation has showed th—”

“But I KNOW!” Anita interrupts and points at the three nurses. “I KNOW!” she cries at them.

“And who’s going to take care of him, Anita?” he asks rhetorically, shaking his head. Then he takes a step forward and gestures for the three nurses to follow him into the house.

“I’m going to take care of him!” answers Anita, her gaze as dark as a burial at sea.