Fredrik Backman - A Man Called Ove - A Novel

But everywhere, sooner or later, he was stopped by men in white shirts with strict, smug expressions on their faces. And one couldn’t fight them. Not only did they have the state on their side, they were the state. The last complaint was rejected. The fighting was over because the white shirts had decided so. And Ove never forgave them that.

Sonja saw everything. She understood where he was hurting. So she let him be angry, let all that anger find its outlet somewhere, in some way. But on one of those early summer evenings in May that always come along bearing gentle promises about the summer ahead, she rolled up to him, the wheels leaving soft marks on the parquet floor. He was sitting at the kitchen table writing one of his letters, and she took his pen away from him, slipped her hand into his, and pressed her finger into his rough palm. Leaned her forehead tenderly against his chest.

“That’s enough now, Ove. No more letters. There’s no space for life with all these letters of yours.”

And she looked up, softly caressed his cheek, and smiled.

“It’s enough now, my darling Ove.”

And then it was enough.

The next morning Ove got up at dawn, drove the Saab to her school, and with his own bare hands built the disabled ramp the council was refusing to put up. And after that she came home every evening for as long as Ove could remember and told him, with fire in her eyes, about her boys and girls. The ones who arrived in the classroom with police escorts yet when they left could recite four-hundred-year-old poetry. The ones who could make her cry and laugh and sing until her voice was bouncing off the ceilings of their little house. Ove could never make head nor tail of those impossible kids, but he was not beyond liking them for what they did to Sonja.

Every human being needs to know what she’s fighting for. That was what they said. And she fought for what was good. For the children she never had. And Ove fought for her.

Because that was the only thing in this world he really knew.

24

A MAN CALLED OVE AND A BRAT WHO DRAWS IN COLOR

The Saab is so full of people when Ove drives away from the hospital that he keeps checking the fuel gauge, as if he’s afraid that it’s going to break into a scornful dance. In his rearview mirror he sees Parvaneh unconcernedly giving the three-year-old paper and color crayons.

“Does she have to do that in the car?” barks Ove.

“Would you rather have her restless, so she starts wondering how to pull the upholstery off of the seats?” Parvaneh says calmly.

Ove doesn’t answer. Just looks at the three-year-old in his mirror. She’s shaking a big purple crayon at the cat in Parvaneh’s lap and yelling: “DROORING!” The cat observes the child with great caution, clearly reluctant to make itself available as a decorative surface.

Patrick sits between them, turning and twisting his body to try to find a comfortable position for his leg cast, which he’s wedged up on the armrest between the front seats.

It’s not easy, because he’s doing his best not to dislodge the newspapers that Ove has placed both on his seat and under the cast.

The three-year-old drops a color crayon, which rolls forward under the front passenger seat, where Jimmy is sitting. In what must surely be a move worthy of an Olympian acrobat for a man of his physique, Jimmy manages to bend forward and scoop up the crayon from the mat in front of him. He checks it out for a moment, grins, then turns to Patrick’s propped-up leg and draws a large, smiling man on the cast. The toddler shrieks with joy when she notices.

“So you’re going to start making a mess as well?” says Ove.

“Pretty neat, isn’t it?” Jimmy crows and looks as if he’s about to make a high-five at Ove.

Ove rolls his eyes.

“Sorry, man, couldn’t stop myself,” says Jimmy and, somewhat shamefaced, gives back the crayon to Parvaneh.

There’s a plinging sound in Jimmy’s pocket. He hauls out a cell phone as large as a full-grown man’s hand and occupies himself with frenetically tapping the display.

“Whose is the cat?” Patrick asks from the back.

“Ove’s kitty!” the three-year-old answers with rock-solid certainty.

“It is not ,” Ove corrects her at once.

He sees Parvaneh smiling teasingly at him in the rearview mirror.

“Is so!” she says.

“No it ISN’T!” says Ove.

She laughs. Patrick looks very puzzled. She pats him encouragingly on the knee.

“Don’t worry about what Ove is saying. It’s absolutely his cat.”

“He’s a bloody vagrant, that’s what he is!” Ove corrects.

The cat lifts its head to find out what all the commotion is about, then concludes that all this is sensationally uninteresting and snuggles back into Parvaneh’s lap. Or rather, her belly.

“So it’s not being handed in somewhere?” Patrick wonders, scrutinizing the feline.

The cat lifts its head a little, hissing briefly at him by way of an answer.

“What do you mean, ‘handed in’?” Ove says, cutting him short.

“Well . . . to a cat home or someth—” Patrick begins, but gets no further before Ove bawls:

“No one’s being handed in to any bloody home!”

And with this, the subject is exhausted. Patrick tries not to look startled. Parvaneh tries not to burst out laughing. Neither really manages.

“Can’t we stop off somewhere for something to eat?” Jimmy interjects and adjusts his seat position; the Saab starts swaying.

Ove looks at the group assembled around him, as if he’s been kidnapped and taken to a parallel universe. For a moment he thinks about swerving off the road, until he realizes that the worst-case scenario would be that they all accompanied him into the afterlife. After this insight, he reduces his speed and increases the gap significantly between his own car and the one in front.

“Wee!” yells the three-year-old.

“Can we stop, Ove? Nasanin needs to pee,” Parvaneh calls out, in that manner peculiar to people who believe that the backseat of a Saab is two hundred yards behind the driver.

“Yeah! Then we can have something to eat at the same time.” Jimmy nods with anticipation.

“Yeah, let’s do that, I need a wee as well,” says Parvaneh.

“McDonald’s has toilets,” Jimmy informs them helpfully.

“McDonald’s will be fine, stop there,” Parvaneh nods.

“There’ll be no stopping here,” says Ove firmly.

Parvaneh eyes him in the rearview mirror. Ove glares back. Ten minutes later he’s sitting in the Saab, waiting for them all outside McDonald’s. Even the cat has gone inside with them. The traitor. Parvaneh comes out and taps on Ove’s window.

“Are you sure you don’t want anything?” she says softly to him.

Ove nods. She looks a little dejected. He rolls up the window again. She walks around the car and hops in on the passenger side.

“Thanks for stopping.” She smiles.

“Yeah, yeah,” says Ove.

She’s eating french fries. Ove reaches forward and puts more newspaper on the floor in front of her. She starts laughing. He can’t understand at what.

“I need your help, Ove,” she says suddenly.

Ove doesn’t seem spontaneously or enormously enthusiastic.

“I thought you could help me pass my driving test,” she continues.

“What did you say?” asks Ove, as if he must have heard her wrong.

She shrugs. “Patrick will be in casts for months. I have to get a driver’s license so I can give the girls lifts. I thought you could give me some driving lessons.”

Ove looks so confused that he even forgets to get upset.