Fredrik Backman - A Man Called Ove - A Novel

“The hormones are on the warpath,” Rune said with an insightful nod during one of the nights when he and Ove sat in the outside space behind his house, while the women kept to Sonja and Ove’s kitchen, talking about whatever it is women talk about.

Rune told him that he had found Anita crying her eyes out by the radio the day before, for no other reason than that it “was a nice song.”

“A . . . nice song?” said Ove, perplexed.

“A nice song,” Rune answered.

The two men shook their heads in mutual disbelief and stared out into the darkness. Sat in silence.

“The grass needs cutting,” said Rune at last.

“I bought new blades for the mower.” Ove nodded.

“How much did you pay for them?”

And so their friendship went on.

In the evenings, Sonja played music for her belly, because she said it made the child move. Ove mostly just sat in his armchair on the other side of the room and pretended to be watching television while she was doing it. In his innermost thoughts he was worried about what it would be like once the child finally decided to come out. What if, for example, the kid disliked Ove because Ove wasn’t so fond of music?

It wasn’t that Ove was afraid. He just didn’t know how to prepare himself for fatherhood. He had asked for some sort of manual but Sonja had just laughed at him. Ove didn’t understand why. There were manuals for everything else.

He was doubtful about whether he’d be any good at being someone’s dad. He didn’t like children an awful lot. He hadn’t even been very good at being a child. Sonja thought he should talk to Rune about it because they were “in the same situation.” Ove couldn’t quite understand what she meant by that. Rune was not in fact going to be the father of Ove’s child, but of an altogether different one. At least Rune agreed with Ove about the point of not having much to discuss, and that was something. So when Anita came over in the evenings and sat in the kitchen with Sonja, talking about the aches and pains and all those things, Ove and Rune made the excuse of having “things” to talk about and went out to Ove’s shed and just stood there in silence, picking at various bits on Ove’s workbench.

Standing there next to each other behind a closed door for the third night running without knowing what they were supposed to do with themselves, they agreed that they needed to get busy with something before, as Rune put it, “the new neighbors start thinking there’s some sort of monkey business going on in here.”

Ove agreed that it might be best to do as he said. And so it was. They didn’t talk much while they were doing it, but they helped each other with the drawings and measuring the angles and ensuring that the corners were straight and properly done. And late one evening when Anita and Sonja were in the fourth month, two light blue cribs were installed in the prepared nurseries of their row houses.

“We can sand it down and repaint it pink if we get a girl,” mumbled Ove when he showed it to Sonja. Sonja put her arms around him, and he felt his neck getting all wet with her tears. Completely irrational hormones.

“I want you to ask me to be your wife,” she whispered.

And so it was. They married in the Town Hall, very simply. Neither of them had any family, so only Rune and Anita came. Sonja and Ove put on their rings and then all four of them went to a restaurant. Ove paid but Rune helped check the bill to make sure it “had been done properly.” Of course it hadn’t. So after conferring with the waiter for about an hour, the two men managed to convince him it would be easier for him if he halved the bill or they’d “report him.” Obviously it was a bit hazy exactly who would report whom for what, but eventually, with a certain amount of swearing and arm-waving, the waiter gave up and went into the kitchen and wrote them a new bill. In the meantime Rune and Ove nodded grimly at one another without noticing that their wives, as usual, had taken a taxi home twenty minutes earlier.

Ove nods to himself as he sits there in the Saab looking at Rune’s garage door. He can’t remember when he last saw it open. He turns off the headlights of the Saab, gives the cat a poke to wake it up, and gets out.

“Ove?” says a curious, unfamiliar voice.

Suddenly an unknown woman, clearly the owner of the unfamiliar voice, has stuck her head into the garage. She’s about forty-five, wearing tatty jeans and a green windbreaker that looks too large for her. She doesn’t have any makeup on and her hair is in a ponytail. The woman blunders into his garage and looks around with interest. The cat steps forward and gives her a threatening hiss. She stops. Ove puts his hands in his pockets.

“Ove?” she bursts out again, in that exaggerated chummy way of people who want to sell you something, while pretending it’s the very last thing on their mind.

“I don’t want anything,” says Ove, nodding at the garage door—a clear gesture that she needn’t bother about finding another door, it’ll be just fine if she walks out the same way that she came.

She looks utterly unchastened by that.

“My name is Lena. I’m a journalist at the local newspaper and, well . . .” she begins, and then offers her hand.

Ove looks at her hand. And looks at her.

“I don’t want anything,” he says again.

“What?”

“I suppose you’re selling subscriptions. But I don’t want one.”

She looks puzzled.

“Right. . . . Well, actually . . . I’m not selling the paper. I write for it. I’m a journalist ,” she repeats slowly, as if there were something wrong with him.

“I still don’t want anything,” Ove reiterates as he starts shooing her out the garage door.

“But I want to talk to you , Ove!” she protests and starts trying to force herself back inside.

Ove waves his hands at her as if trying to scare her away by shaking an invisible rug in front of her.

“You saved a man’s life at the train station yesterday! I want to interview you about it,” she calls out excitedly.

Clearly she’s about to say something else when she notices that she’s lost Ove’s attention. His gaze falls on something behind her. His eyes turn to slits.

“I’ll be damned,” he mumbles.

“Yes. . . . I’d like to ask y—” she begins sincerely, but Ove has already squeezed past her and started running towards the white Škoda that’s turned in by the parking area and started driving down towards the houses.

The bespectacled woman is caught off guard when Ove charges forward and bangs on the window and she throws the file of documents into her own face. The man in the white shirt, on the other hand, is quite unmoved. He rolls down the window.

“Yes?” he asks.

“Vehicle traffic is prohibited in the residential area,” Ove hisses and points at each of the houses, at the Škoda, at the man in the white shirt, and at the parking area.

“In this Residents’ Association we park in the parking area!”

The man in the white shirt looks at the houses. Then at the parking area. Then at Ove.

“I have permission from the council to drive up to the houses. So I have to ask you to get out of the way.”

Ove is so agitated by his answer that it takes him many seconds just to formulate some swear words by way of an answer. Meanwhile, the man in the white shirt has picked up a pack of cigarettes from the dashboard, which he taps against his trouser leg.

“Would you be kind enough to get out of the way?” he asks Ove.

“What are you doing here?” Ove blurts out.

“That’s nothing for you to worry yourself about,” says the man in the white shirt in a monotone voice, as if he’s a computer-generated voice mail message letting Ove know that he’s been placed in a telephone line.