Chapter 3 A Man Called Ove Backs Up with a Trailer #2
He sinks onto the stool in the hall and stays there for a long time. Bloody woman. Why do she and her family have to come here if they can’t even read a sign right in front of their eyes? You’re not allowed to drive cars inside the block. Everyone knows that.
Ove goes to hang up his coat on the hook, among a sea of his wife’s overcoats. Mutters “idiots” at the closed window just to be on the safe side. Then goes into his living room and stares up at his ceiling.
He doesn’t know how long he stands there.
He loses himself in his own thoughts. Floats away, as if in a mist. He’s never been the sort of man who does that, has never been a daydreamer, but lately it’s as if something’s twisted up in his head.
He’s having increasing difficulty concentrating on things. He doesn’t like it at all.
When the doorbell goes it’s like he’s waking up from a warm slumber. He rubs his eyes hard, looks around as if worried that someone may have seen him.
The doorbell rings again. Ove turns around and stares at the bell as if it should be ashamed of itself. He takes a few steps into the hall, noting that his body is as stiff as set plaster. He can’t tell if the creaking is coming from the floorboards or himself.
“And what is it now?” he asks the door before he’s even opened it, as if it had the answer.
“What is it now?” he repeats as he throws the door open so hard that a three-year-old girl is flung backwards by the draft and ends up very unexpectedly on her bottom.
Beside her stands a seven-year-old girl looking absolutely terrified. Their hair is pitch black. And they have the biggest brown eyes Ove has ever seen.
“Yes?” says Ove.
The older girl looks guarded. She hands him a plastic container. Ove reluctantly accepts it. It’s warm.
“Rice!” the three-year-old girl announces happily, briskly getting to her feet.
“With saffron. And chicken,” explains the seven-year-old, far more wary of him.
Ove evaluates them suspiciously.
“Are you selling it?”
The seven-year-old looks offended.
“We LIVE HERE, you know!”
Ove is silent for a moment. Then he nods, as if he might possibly be able to accept this premise as an explanation.
“Okay.”
The younger one also nods with satisfaction and flaps her slightly-too-long sleeves.
“Mum said you were ’ungry!”
Ove looks in utter perplexity at the little flapping speech defect.
“What?”
“Mum said you looked hungry. So we have to give you dinner,” the seven-year-old girl clarifies with some irritation. “Come on, Nasanin,” she adds, taking her sister by the hand and walking away after directing a resentful stare at Ove.
Ove keeps an eye on them as they skulk off. He sees the pregnant woman standing in her doorway, smiling at him before the girls run into her house. The three-year-old turns and waves cheerfully at him. Her mother also waves. Ove closes the door.
He stands in the hall again. Stares at the warm container of chicken with rice and saffron as one might look at a box of nitroglycerin.
Then he goes into the kitchen and puts it in the fridge.
Not that he’s habitually inclined to go around eating any old food provided by unknown, foreign kids on his doorstep.
But in Ove’s house one does not throw away food. As a point of principle.
He goes into the living room. Shoves his hands in his pockets.
Looks up at the ceiling. Stands there a good while and thinks about what sort of concrete-wall anchor bolt would be most suitable for the job.
He stands there squinting until his eyes start hurting.
He looks down, slightly confused, at his dented wristwatch.
Then he looks out the window again and realizes that dusk has fallen. He shakes his head in resignation.
You can’t start drilling after dark, everyone knows that. He’d have to turn on all the lights and no one could say when they’d be turned off again. And he’s not giving the electricity company the pleasure, his meter notching up another couple of thousand kronor. They can forget about that.
Ove packs up his useful-stuff box and takes it to the big upstairs hall.
Fetches the key to the attic from its place behind the radiator in the little hall.
Goes back and reaches up and opens the trapdoor to the attic.
Folds down the ladder. Climbs up into the attic and puts the useful-stuff box in its place behind the kitchen chairs that his wife made him put up here because they creaked too much.
They didn’t creak at all. Ove knows very well it was just an excuse, because his wife wanted to get some new ones.
As if that was all life was about. Buying kitchen chairs and eating in restaurants and carrying on.
He goes down the stairs again. Puts back the attic key in its place behind the radiator in the little hall.
“Taking it a bit easy,” they said to him.
A lot of thirty-one-year-old show-offs working with computers and refusing to drink normal coffee.
An entire society where no one knows how to back up with a trailer.
Then they come telling him he’s not needed anymore. Is that reasonable?
Ove goes down to the living room and turns on the TV.
He doesn’t watch the programs, but it’s not like he can just spend his evenings sitting there by himself like a moron, staring at the walls.
He gets out the foreign food from the fridge and eats it with a fork, straight out of the plastic container.
It’s Tuesday night and he’s canceled his newspaper subscription, switched off the radiators, and turned out all the lights.
And tomorrow he’s putting up that hook.