A Man Called Ove: A Novel

“Girl talk,” says Parvaneh succinctly when at last she comes back to the parking area and gets into the driver’s seat. Ove doesn’t know what she means by that, but he decides to leave it alone. Nasanin’s big sister helps her with her belt, in the backseat. In the meantime Jimmy, Mirsad, and Patrick have managed to squeeze into Adrian’s new car in front of them. A Toyota. Hardly an optimal choice of car for any kind of thinking person, Ove had pointed out to him many times while they stood there at the dealership. But at least it wasn’t French. And Ove managed to get the price reduced by almost eight thousand kronor and made sure that the kid got winter tires thrown in for the same price. So it seemed acceptable, in spite of it all.

When Ove got to the dealership the bloody kid had been checking out a Hyundai. So it could have been worse.

Once they make it back to their street, they go their separate ways. Ove, Mirsad, and the cat wave at Parvaneh, Patrick, Jimmy, and the children and turn off around the corner by Ove’s toolshed.

It’s difficult to judge how long the stocky man has been waiting outside Ove’s house. Maybe all morning. He has the determined look of a straight-backed sentry posted somewhere in the field, in the wilderness. As if he’s been cut from a thick tree trunk and the below-freezing temperature is of no concern to him. But when Mirsad comes walking around the corner and the stocky man catches sight of him, he quickly comes to life.

“Hello,” he says, stretching, shifting his body weight back to the first foot.

“Hello, Dad,” mumbles Mirsad.

That evening Ove has his dinner with Parvaneh and Patrick, while a father and son talk about disappointments and hopes and masculinity in two languages in Ove’s kitchen. Maybe most of all they speak of courage. Sonja would have liked it, Ove knows that much. But he tries not to smile so much that Parvaneh notices.

Before the seven-year-old goes to bed she presses a paper into Ove’s hand, on which is written “Birthday Party Invitation.” Ove reads through it as if it were a legal transfer of rights for a leasehold agreement.

“I see. And then you’ll be wanting presents, I expect?” he huffs at last.

She looks down at the floor and shakes her head.

“You don’t have to buy anything. I only want one thing anyway.”

Ove folds up the invitation and puts it in the back pocket of his trousers. Then, with a degree of authority, presses the palms of his hands against his sides.

“Right?”

“Mum says it’s too expensive anyway so it doesn’t matter,” she says without looking up, and then shakes her head again.

Ove nods conspiratorially, like a criminal who has just made a sign to another criminal that the telephone they are using is wiretapped. He and the girl look around the hall to check that neither her mother nor her father have their nosy ears around some corner, surreptitiously listening to them. And then Ove leans forward and the girl forms her hands in a funnel round her face and whispers into his ear:

“An iPad.”

Ove looks a little as if she just said, “An awyttsczyckdront!”

“It’s a sort of computer. There are special drawing programs for it. For children,” she whispers a little louder.

And something is shining in her eyes.

Something that Ove recognizes.

38

A MAN CALLED OVE AND THE END OF A STORY

Broadly speaking there are two kinds of people. Those who understand how extremely useful white cables can be, and those who don’t. Jimmy is the first of these. He loves white cables. And white telephones. And white computer monitors with fruit on the back. That’s more or less the sum of what Ove has absorbed during the car journey into town, when Jimmy natters on excitedly about the sorts of things every rational person ought to be so insuperably interested in, until Ove at last sinks into a sort of deeply meditative state of mind, in which the overweight young man’s babbling turns to a dull hissing in his ears.

As soon as the young man thundered into the passenger seat of the Saab with a large sandwich in his hand, Ove obviously wished he hadn’t asked for Jimmy’s help with this. Things are not improved by Jimmy aimlessly shuffling off to “check a few leads” as soon as they enter the shop.

If you want something done you have to do it yourself, as usual, Ove confirms to himself as he steers his steps alone towards the sales assistant. And not until Ove roars, “Have you been frontally lobotomized or what?!” to the young man who’s trying to show him the shop’s range of portable computers does Jimmy come hurrying to his aid. And then it’s not Ove but rather the shop assistant who needs to be aided.

“We’re together.” Jimmy nods to the assistant with a glance that sort of functions as a secret handshake to communicate the message, “Don’t worry, I’m one of you!”

The sales assistant takes a long, frustrated breath and points at Ove.

“I’m trying to help him but—”