Fredrik Backman - A Man Called Ove - A Novel

“Oh, give it a rest, will you, Ove,” says Jimmy.

“I reckon it would rather freeze to death in a dignified manner than be strangled,” he says to Jimmy, nodding at the dripping ball of fluff pressed into his arms.

Jimmy pulls his good-tempered face into a big grin.

“Chill a bit, Ove. You can say what you like about us fatties, but we’re awesome when it comes to pumping out a bit of heat!”

Parvaneh peers nervously over his blubbery upper arm and gently puts the palm of her hand against the cat’s nose. Then she brightens.

“He’s getting warmer,” she exclaims, turning to Ove in triumph.

Ove nods. He was about to say something sarcastic to her. Now he finds, uneasily, that he’s relieved at the news. He distracts himself from this emotion by assiduously inspecting the TV remote control.

Not that he’s concerned about the cat. It’s just that Sonja would have been happy. Nothing more than that.

“I’ll heat some water,” says Parvaneh, and in a single snappy movement she slips past Ove and is suddenly standing in his kitchen, tugging at his kitchen cabinets.

“What the hell,” mumbles Ove as he lets go of the remote control and tears off in pursuit.

When he gets there, she’s standing motionless and slightly confused in the middle of the floor with his electric kettle in her hand. She looks a bit overwhelmed, as if the realization of what’s happened has only just hit her.

It’s the first time Ove has seen this woman run out of something to say. The kitchen has been cleared and tidied, but it’s dusty.

It smells of brewed coffee, there’s dirt in the crannies, and everywhere are Ove’s wife’s things. Her little decorative objects in the window, her hair clips left on the kitchen table, her handwriting on the Post-it notes on the fridge.

The kitchen is filled with those soft wheel marks. As if someone has been going back and forth with a bicycle, thousands of times.

The stove and kitchen counter are noticeably lower than is usual.

As if the kitchen had been built for a child. Parvaneh stares at them the way people always do when they see it for the first time. Ove has got used to it. He rebuilt the kitchen himself after the accident. The council refused to help, of course.

Parvaneh looks as if she’s somehow got stuck.

Ove takes the electric kettle out of her outstretched hands without looking into her eyes. Slowly he fills it with water and plugs it in.

“I didn’t know, Ove,” she whispers, contrite.

Ove leans over the low sink with his back to her. She comes forward and puts her fingertips gently on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Ove. Really. I shouldn’t have barged into your kitchen without asking first.”

Ove clears his throat and nods without turning around. He doesn’t know how long they stand there. She lets her enervated hand rest on his shoulder. He decides not to push it away.

Jimmy’s voice breaks the silence.

“You got anything to eat?” he calls out from the living room.

Ove’s shoulder slips away from Parvaneh’s hand. He shakes his head, wipes his face with the back of his hand, and heads off to the fridge still without looking at her.

Jimmy clucks gratefully when Ove comes out of the kitchen and hands him a sausage sandwich. Ove parks himself a few yards away and looks a bit grim.

“So how is he, then?” he says with a curt nod at the cat in Jimmy’s arms.

Water is dripping liberally onto the floor now, but the animal is slowly but surely regaining both its shape and color.

“Seems better, no?” Jimmy grins as he wolfs down the sandwich in a single bite.

Ove gives him a skeptical look. Jimmy is perspiring like a bit of pork left on a sauna stove. There’s something mournful in his eyes when he looks back at Ove.

“You know it was . . . pretty bad with your wife, Ove. I always liked her. She made, like, the best chow in town.”

Ove looks at him, and for the first time all morning he doesn’t look a bit angry.

“Yes. She . . . cooked very well,” he agrees.

He goes over to the window and, with his back to the room, tugs at the latch as if to check it. Pokes the rubber seal.

Parvaneh stands in the kitchen doorway, wrapping her arms around herself and her belly.

“He can stay here until he’s completely defrosted, then you have to take him,” says Ove, shrugging towards the cat.

He can see in the corner of his eye how she’s peering at him. As if she’s trying to figure out what sort of hand he has from the other side of a casino table. It makes him uneasy.

“I’m afraid I can’t,” she says after that. “The girls are . . . allergic,” she adds.

Ove hears a little pause before she says “allergic.” He scrutinizes her suspiciously in the reflection in the window, but does not answer. Instead he turns to the overweight young man.

“So you’ll have to take care of it,” he says.

Jimmy, who’s not only sweating buckets now but also turning blotchy and red in his face, looks down benevolently at the cat. It’s slowly started moving its stump of a tail and burrowing its dripping nose deeper into Jimmy’s generous folds of upper-arm fat.

“Don’t think it’s such a cool idea me taking care of the puss, sorry, man,” says Jimmy and shrugs tremulously, so that the cat makes a circus tumble and ends up upside down. He holds out his arms. His skin is red, as if he’s on fire.

“I’m a bit allergic as well. . . .”

Parvaneh gives off a little scream, runs up to him, and takes the cat away from him, quickly enfolding it in the blanket again.

“We have to get Jimmy to a hospital!” she yells.

“I’m barred from the hospital,” Ove replies, without thinking.

When he peers in her direction and she looks ready to throw the cat at him, he looks down again and groans disconsolately. All I want is to die, he thinks and presses his toes into one of the floorboards.

It flexes slightly. Ove looks up at Jimmy. Looks at the cat.

Surveys the wet floor. Shakes his head at Parvaneh.

“We’ll have to take my car then,” he mutters.

He takes his jacket from the hook and opens the front door. After a few seconds he sticks his head back into the hall. Glares at Parvaneh.

“But I’m not bringing the car to the house because it’s prohibit—”

She interrupts him with some words in Farsi which Ove can’t understand. Nonetheless he finds them unnecessarily dramatic. She wraps the cat more tightly in the blanket and walks past him into the snow.

“Rules are rules, you know,” says Ove truculently as she heads off to the parking area, but she doesn’t answer.

Ove turns around and points at Jimmy.

“And you put on a sweater. Or you’re not going anywhere in the Saab, let’s be clear about that.”

Parvaneh pays for the parking at the hospital. Ove doesn’t make a fuss about it.

18

A MAN WHO WAS OVE AND A CAT CALLED ERNEST

Ove didn’t dislike this cat in particular. It’s just that he didn’t much like cats in general. He’d always perceived them as untrustworthy. Especially when, as in the case of Ernest, they were as big as mopeds. It was actually quite difficult to determine whether he was just an unusually large cat or an outstandingly small lion. And you should never befriend something if there’s a possibility it may take a fancy to eating you in your sleep.

But Sonja loved Ernest so unconditionally that Ove managed to keep this kind of perfectly sensible observation to himself. He knew better than to speak ill of what she loved; after all he understood very keenly how it was to receive her love when no one else could understand why he was worthy of it. So he and Ernest learned to get along reasonably well when they visited the cottage in the forest, apart from the fact that Ernest bit Ove once when he sat on his tail on one of the kitchen chairs. Or at least they learned to keep their distance. Just like Ove and Sonja’s father.