A Man Called Ove: A Novel

On the way back along the hall he’d gone past the seven-year-old’s room. She was sitting in front of her computer, of course, tapping away. This seemed to be all kids did these days, as Ove understood it. Patrick had explained that he’d “tried to give her newer games but she only wanted to play that one,” which made Ove more favourably disposed both to the seven-year-old and to her computer game. Ove liked people who didn’t do what Patrick told them to do.

There were drawings everywhere on the walls in her room. Black-and-white pencil sketches, mostly. Not at all bad, considering they had been created by the absence of deductive faculties and highly undeveloped motor function of a seven-year-old, Ove was willing to admit. None of them were of people. Only houses. Ove found this extremely engaging.

He stepped into the room and stood beside her. She looked up from the computer with the dour expression this kid always seemed to lug about with her, and in fact she didn’t seem too pleased about his presence. But when Ove stayed where he was, she pointed at last to an upside-down storage crate, made of plastic, on the floor. Ove sat down on it. And she started quietly explaining to him that the game was about building houses and then making cities out of the houses.

“I like houses,” she muttered quietly.

Ove looked at her. She looked at him. Ove put his index finger on the screen, leaving a large fingerprint, pointing at an empty space of the town and asking her what happened if she clicked that spot. She moved her cursor there and clicked, and in a flash the computer had put up a house there. Ove looked fairly suspicious about it. Then he made himself comfortable on the plastic box and pointed at another empty space. Two and a half hours later Parvaneh stomped in angrily and threatened to pull out the plug if they didn’t call it a night at once.

As Ove stood in the doorway getting ready to leave, the seven-year-old carefully tugged at his shirtsleeve and pointed at a drawing on the wall right next to him. “That’s your house,” she whispered, as if it was a secret between her and Ove.

Ove nodded. Maybe they weren’t totally worthless after all, those two kids.

He leaves Parvaneh in the parking area, crosses the street, opens the glass door, and steps in. The café is empty. The fan heater overhead coughs as if it’s full of cigar smoke. Amel stands behind the counter in a stained shirt, wiping glasses with a white towel.

His stocky body has sunk into itself, as if at the end of a very long breath. His face bears that combination of deep sorrow and inconsolable anger which only men of his generation and from his part of the world seem capable of mastering. Ove stays where he is, in the center of the floor. The two men watch one another for a minute or so. One of them a man who can’t bring himself to kick out a homosexual youth from his house, and the other who couldn’t stop himself. Eventually Ove nods grimly and sits down on one of the bar stools.

He folds his hands together on the counter and gives Amel a dry look.

“I wouldn’t be averse to that whiskey now if it’s still on offer.”

Amel’s chest rises and falls in a couple of jerky breaths under the stained shirt. At first he seems to be considering opening his mouth, but then he thinks again. In silence he finishes wiping his glasses. Folds up the towel and puts it next to the espresso machine. Disappears into the kitchen without a word. Comes back with two glasses and a bottle, the letters on the label illegible to Ove. Puts these down on the counter between them.

It is difficult to admit that one is wrong. Particularly when one has been wrong for a very long time.

37

A MAN CALLED OVE AND A LOT OF BASTARDS STICKING THEIR NOSES IN

I’m sorry about this,” Ove creaks. He brushes the snow off the gravestone. “But you know how it is. People have no respect at all for personal boundaries anymore. They charge into your house without knocking and cause a commotion, you can hardly even sit on the crapper in peace anymore,” he explains, while he digs the frozen flowers out of the ground and presses down the new ones through the snow.

He looks at her as if he’s expecting her to nod her agreement. But she doesn’t, of course. The cat sits next to Ove in the snow and looks like it absolutely agrees. Especially with that bit about not being allowed to go to the toilet in peace.

Lena had come by Ove’s house in the morning to drop off a copy of the newspaper. He was on the front page, looking like the archetypal grumpy old sod. He’d kept his word and let her interview him. But he wasn’t smiling like a donkey for the camera; he told them that in no uncertain terms.

“It’s a fantastic interview!” she insisted proudly.

Ove didn’t respond, but this did not seem to concern her. She looked impatient and sort of paced on the spot, while glancing at her watch as if in a hurry.

“Don’t let me hold you up,” muttered Ove.

She managed a teenager’s repressed titter by way of an answer.