Fredrik Backman - A Man Called Ove - A Novel

“To fix something,” Ove answers curtly, three steps ahead of her, with the cat half jogging at his side.

“What thing?”

“A thing!”

Parvaneh stops and catches her breath.

“Here!” Ove calls out and stops abruptly in front of a little café.

A scent of fresh-baked croissants comes through the glass door. Parvaneh looks at the parking area on the other side of the street where they left the Saab. In the end they could not have parked closer to the café. At first Ove had been absolutely convinced that the café was at the other end of the block. That was when Parvaneh had suggested they could possibly park on that side, but the notion was abandoned once they found that parking cost one kronor more per hour.

Instead they had parked here and walked all around the block looking for the café. Because Ove, as Parvaneh had soon realized, was the sort of man who, when he was not quite certain where he was going, just carried on walking straight ahead, convinced that the road would eventually fall into line. And now when they find that the café is directly opposite the spot where they parked, Ove looks as if this was his plan all along. Parvaneh mops some sweat off her cheek.

A man with a ragged, dirty beard is leaning against a wall halfway down the street. He has a paper cup in front of him. Outside the café Ove, Parvaneh, and the cat meet a slim boy aged about twenty who has what looks very much like black soot around his eyes. It takes Ove a moment to realize it’s the boy who was standing behind the lad with the bicycle when Ove met him the first time. He looks a little cautious; although he smiles at Ove, Ove can’t think of anything to do but nod back. As if wanting to clarify that while he has no intention of returning the smile, he is prepared to acknowledge receipt of it.

“Why didn’t you let me park next to the red car?” Parvaneh wants to know as they open the glass door and step inside.

Ove doesn’t answer.

“I would have managed it!” she says self-confidently.

Ove shakes his head wearily. Two hours ago she didn’t know where the clutch was; now she’s irritated because he won’t let her squeeze into a narrow parking space.

Once they’re inside the café, Ove sees from the corner of his eye how the slim soot-eyed boy offers the sandwiches he’s hiding to the vagrant.

“Hi there, Ove!” a voice calls out so eagerly that it cracks into falsetto in the high notes.

Ove turns around and sees the lad from the bike shed. He’s standing behind a long, polished counter at the front of the premises, wearing a baseball cap, Ove notes. Indoors.

The cat and Parvaneh make themselves at home, the latter mopping sweat from her forehead although it’s ice-cold in there. Colder than outside in the street, actually. She pours herself some water from a pitcher on the counter. The cat unconcernedly laps up some of it from her glass when she isn’t looking.

“Do you know each other?” Parvaneh asks with surprise, looking at the youth.

“Me and Ove are sort of friends.” The youth nods.

“Are you? Me and Ove are sort of friends too!” Parvaneh grins, tenderly imitating his enthusiasm.

Ove stops at a safe distance from the counter. As if someone might give him a hug if he gets too close.

“My name’s Adrian,” says the youth.

“Parvaneh,” says Parvaneh.

“You want something to drink?” he asks them.

“A latte for me, please,” says Parvaneh, in a tone of voice as if she’s suddenly having her shoulders massaged. She dabs her forehead with a napkin. “Preferably an iced latte if you have it!”

Ove shifts his weight from his left foot to his right and peers around the premises. He’s never liked cafés. Sonja, of course, loved them. Could sit in them for an entire Sunday “just looking at people,” as she put it. Ove used to sit there with her, reading a newspaper. Every Sunday they did it. He hasn’t put his foot in a café since she died. He looks up and realizes that Adrian, Parvaneh, and the cat are waiting for his answer.

“Coffee, then. Black.”

Adrian scratches his hair under the cap.

“So . . . espresso?”

“No. Coffee.”

Adrian transfers his scratching from hair to chin.

“What . . . like black coffee?”

“Yes.”

“With milk?”

“If it’s with milk it’s not black coffee.”

Adrian moves a couple of sugar bowls on the counter. Mainly to have something to do, so he doesn’t look too silly. A bit late for that, thinks Ove.

“Normal filter coffee. Normal bloody filter coffee,” Ove repeats.

Adrian nods.

“Oh, that. . . . Well. I don’t know how to make it.”

Ove points aggressively at the percolator in the corner, only barely visible behind a gigantic silver spaceship of a machine, which, Ove understands, is what they use for making espresso.

“Oh, that one, yeah,” says Adrian, as if the penny has just dropped. “Ah . . . I don’t really know how that thing works.”

“Should have bloody known. . . .” mutters Ove as he walks around the counter and takes matters into his own hands.

“Can someone tell me what we’re doing here?” calls Parvaneh.

“This kid here has a bicycle that needs repairing,” explains Ove as he pours water into the carafe.

“The bicycle hanging off the back of the car?”

“You brought it here? Thanks, Ove!”

“You don’t have a car, do you?” he replies, while rummaging around a cupboard for coffee filters.

“Thanks, Ove!” says Adrian and takes a step towards him, then comes to his senses and stops before he does something silly.

“So that’s your bicycle?” Parvaneh smiles.

“Kind of—it’s my girlfriend’s. Or the one I want to be my girlfriend . . . sort of thing.”

Parvaneh grins.

“So me and Ove drove all this way just to give you a bike so you can mend it? For a girl?”

Adrian nods. Parvaneh leans over the counter and pats Ove on the arm.

“You know, Ove, sometimes one almost suspects you have a heart. . . .”

“Do you have tools here or not?” Ove says to Adrian, snatching his arm away.

Adrian nods.

“Go and get them, then. The bike’s on the Saab in the parking lot.”

Adrian nods quickly and disappears into the kitchen. After a minute or so he comes back with a big toolbox, which he quickly takes to the exit.

“And you be quiet,” Ove says to Parvaneh.

She smirks in a way that suggests she has no intention of keeping quiet.

“I only brought the bicycle here so he wouldn’t mess about in the sheds back home. . . .” Ove adds.

“Sure, sure,” says Parvaneh with a laugh.

“Oh, hey,” says Adrian as the soot-eyed boy appears again a moment later. “This is my boss.”

“Hi there—ah, what . . . sorry, what are you doing?” asks the “boss,” looking with some interest at the spry stranger who has barricaded himself behind the counter of his café.

“The kid’s going to fix a bicycle,” answers Ove as if this were something plain and obvious. “Where do you keep the filters for real coffee?”

The soot-eyed boy points at one of the shelves. Ove squints at him.

“Is that makeup?”

Parvaneh hushes him. Ove looks insulted.

“What? What’s wrong with asking?”

The boy smiles a little nervously.

“Yes, it’s makeup.” He nods, rubbing himself around his eyes. “I went dancing last night,” he says, smiling gratefully as Parvaneh with the deftness of a fellow conspirator hauls out a wet-wipe from her handbag and offers it to him.

Ove nods and goes back to his coffee-making.

“And do you also have problems with bicycles and love and girls?” he asks absentmindedly.

“No, no, not with bicycles anyway. And not with love either, I suppose. Well, not with girls, anyway.” He chuckles.