The Fredrik Backman Collection: A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, and Britt-Marie Was Here

by Fredrik Backman

  Just before the man left he asked in passing about Ove’s house insurance. Ove answered candidly that he’d never given it much thought. His father had not been very interested in insurance policies.

  The jovial man with the round face was filled with consternation, and he explained to Ove that it would be a veritable catastrophe for him if something happened to the house. After listening carefully to his many admonishments, Ove felt bound to agree with him. He had never given much thought to it until then. Which made him feel rather stupid now.

  The man then asked if he might use the telephone; Ove said that would be fine. It turned out that his guest, grateful for a stranger’s hospitality on a hot summer’s day, had found a way of repaying his kindness. For it transpired that he actually worked for an insurance company, and was able to pull some strings to arrange an excellent quotation for Ove.

  Ove was skeptical at first. He asked again about the man’s credentials, which he was happy to reiterate. He then spent a considerable amount of time negotiating a better price.

  “You’re a tough businessman,” said the man with the round face with a laugh. Ove felt surprisingly proud when he heard this—“a tough businessman.” The man then glanced at his watch, thanked Ove, and said he’d best be on his way. As he left he gave Ove a piece of paper with his telephone number and said that he’d very much like to come by another day and have some more coffee and talk some more about house renovation. This was the first time anyone had ever expressed a wish to be Ove’s friend.

  Ove paid the man with the round face the full year’s premium in cash. They shook hands.

  The man with the round face never contacted him again. Ove tried to call him on one occasion but no one answered. He felt a quick stab of disappointment but decided not to think about it again. At least when salesmen called from other insurance companies he was able to say without any bad conscience that he was already insured. And that was something.

  Ove continued avoiding his neighbors. He didn’t want any problems with them. But unfortunately the problems seemed to have decided to seek out Ove instead. A few weeks after his house repairs were finished, one of his suited neighbors was burgled. It was the second burglary in the area in a relatively short period. The suits got together early next morning to deliberate on that young rascal in the condemned house, who must have had something to do with it. They knew very well “where he’d got the money for all that renovation.” In the evening someone stuck a note under Ove’s door, on which was written: “Clear off if you know what’s good for you!” The night after that a stone was thrown through his window. Ove picked up the stone and changed the glass in the window. He never confronted the suits. Saw no purpose in it. But he wasn’t going to move either.

  Early the next morning he was woken by the smell of smoke.

  He was out of his bed in an instant; the first thing that came into his head was that whoever had thrown that stone had apparently not finished yet. On his way down the stairs he instinctively grabbed a hammer. Not that Ove had ever been a violent man. But you could never be sure, he decided.

  He was wearing only his underpants when he stepped onto the front veranda. All that lugging of construction materials in the last months had turned Ove into an impressively muscular young man without him even noticing. His bare upper body and the hammer swinging in his clenched right fist made the group gathered in the street momentarily take their eyes off the fire, and instinctively take a step back.

  And that was when Ove realized that it was not his house that was burning, but his neighbor’s.

  The suits stood in the street, staring like deer into headlights. The elderly man emerged out of the smoke, his wife leaning on his arm. She was coughing terribly. When the elderly man handed her over to one of the suits’ wives, and then turned back towards the fire, several of the suits cried out to him, telling him to leave it. “It’s too late! Wait for the fire brigade!” they roared. The elderly man didn’t listen. Burning material fell over the threshold as he tried to step inside into a sea of fire.

  Ove stood in the face of the wind by his gate and saw how scattered glowing balls had already set the dry grass alight between his house and the neighbor’s. For a few long-drawn-out seconds he evaluated the situation as best he could: the fire would be all over his house in a few minutes if he didn’t charge off to get the water hose at once. He saw the elderly man trying to push his way past an overturned bookcase on his way into the house. The suits shouted his name and tried to make him stop, but the elderly man’s wife was screaming out another name.

  Their grandchild.

  Ove rocked on his heels as he watched the embers stealing their way through the grass. In all honesty he was probably not thinking so much about what he wanted to do, but about what his father would have done. And as soon as that thought had taken root there was not much choice about it.

  He muttered, irritated, looking at his house a last time, instinctively calculating to himself how many hours it had taken to build it. And then he ran towards the fire.

  The house was so filled with thick, sticky smoke that it was like being struck in the face with a shovel. The elderly man struggled to move the fallen bookcase, which was blocking a door. Ove threw it aside as if it were made of paper and cleared a way up the stairs. By the time they emerged into the light of dawn, the elderly man was carrying the boy in his soot-covered arms. Ove had long, bleeding grazes across his chest and arms.

  The bystanders just ran around panicking, screaming. The air was pierced by sirens. Uniformed firemen surrounded them.

  Still wearing only his underpants and with aching lungs, Ove saw the first flames climbing his own house. He charged across the lawn but was immediately stopped by a group of firemen. They were everywhere, all of a sudden.

  Refused to let him through.

  A man in a white shirt, some sort of chief fireman as Ove understood it, stood before him with his legs wide apart and explained that they couldn’t let him try to extinguish the fire in his own house. It was much too dangerous. Unfortunately, the white shirt explained after that, the fire brigade could not put it out either until they had the appropriate permissions from the authorities.

  It turned out that because Ove’s house now lay exactly on the municipal boundary, clearance from the command center was required on the shortwave radio before they could get to work. Permission had to be sought, papers had to be stamped.

  “Rules are rules,” the man in the white shirt explained in a monotone voice when Ove protested.

  Ove tore himself free and ran in fury towards the water hose. But it was futile—by the time the firemen got the all-clear signal, the house was already engulfed by fire.

  Ove stood in his garden and watched, helpless and in sorrow, as it burned.

  When a few hours later he stood in a telephone booth calling the insurance company, he learned that they had never heard of the jovial man with the round face. There was no valid insurance policy on the house. The woman from the insurance company sighed, impatiently explaining that swindlers often went from door to door claiming to be from their company, and that she hoped at least Ove hadn’t given him any cash.

  Ove hung up, and clenched his fist in his pocket.

  11

  A MAN CALLED OVE AND A LANKY ONE WHO CAN’T OPEN A WINDOW WITHOUT FALLING OFF A LADDER

  It’s quarter to six and the first proper snowfall of the year has laid itself like a cold blanket over the slumbering community of row houses. Ove unhooks his jacket and goes outside for his daily inspection. With equal surprise and dissatisfaction, he sees the cat sitting in the snow outside his door. It seems to have been sitting there all night.

  Ove slams the front door extra hard to scare it away. Apparently it doesn’t have the common sense to take fright. Instead it just sits there in the snow, licking its stomach. Utterly unconcerned. Ove doesn’t like that sort of behavior in a cat. He shakes his head and plants his feet firmly on the ground. The cat gives him the briefest
of glances, clearly uninterested, then goes back to licking itself. Ove waves his arms at it. The cat doesn’t budge an inch.

  “This is private land!” says Ove.

  When the cat still fails to give him any sort of acknowledgment, Ove loses his patience and, in a sweeping movement, kicks one of his clogs towards it. Looking back, he couldn’t swear that it wasn’t intentional. His wife would have been furious if she’d seen it, of course.

  It doesn’t make much difference anyway. The clog flies in a smooth arc and passes a good yard and a half to the left of its intended target, before bouncing softly against the side of the shed and landing in the snow. The cat looks nonchalantly first at the clog, and then at Ove.

  In the end it stands up, strolls around the corner of Ove’s shed, and disappears.

  Ove walks through the snow in his socks to fetch the clog. He glares at it, as if he feels it should be ashamed of itself for not having a better sense of aim. Then he pulls himself together and goes on his inspection tour.

  Just because he’s dying today doesn’t mean that the vandals should be given free rein.

  When he comes back to his house, he pushes his way through the snow and opens the door to the shed. It smells of mineral spirits and mold in there, exactly as it should in a shed. He steps over the Saab’s summer tires and moves the jars of unsorted screws out of the way. Squeezes past the workbench, careful not to knock over the jars of mineral spirits with brushes in them. Lifts aside the garden chairs and the globe barbecue. Puts away the rim wrench and snatches up the snow shovel. Weighs it a bit in his hand, the way one might do with a two-handed sword. Stands there in silence, scrutinizing it.

  When he comes out of the shed with the shovel, the cat is sitting in the snow again, right outside his house. Ove glares in amazement at its audacity. Its fur is thawing out, dripping. Or what remains of its fur. There are more bald patches than fur on that creature. It also has a long scar running along one eye, down across its nose. If cats have nine lives, this one is quite clearly working its way through at least the seventh or eighth of them.

  “Clear off,” says Ove.

  The cat gives him a judgmental stare, as if it’s sitting on the decision-making side of the desk at a job interview.

  Ove grips the shovel, scoops up some snow, and throws it at the cat, which jumps out of the way and glares indignantly at him. Spits out a bit of snow. Snorts. Then turns around and pads off again, around the corner of Ove’s shed.

  Ove puts his snow shovel to work. It takes him fifteen minutes to free up the paving between the house and the shed. He works with care. Straight lines, even edges. People don’t shovel snow that way anymore. Nowadays they just clear a way, they use snowblowers and all sorts of things. Any old method will do, scattering snow all over the place. As if that was the only thing that mattered in life: pushing one’s way forward.

  When he’s done, he leans for a moment against the shovel in a snowdrift on the little pathway. Balances his body weight on it and watches the sun rising over the sleeping houses. He’s been awake for most of the night, thinking of ways to die. He has even drawn some diagrams and charts to clarify the various methods. After carefully weighing up the pros and cons, he’s accepted that what he’s doing today has to be the best of bad alternatives. Admittedly he doesn’t like the fact that the Saab will be left in neutral and use up a lot of expensive gas for no good reason afterwards, but it’s simply a factor that he’ll have to accept in order to get it done.

  He puts the snow shovel back in the shed and goes into the house. Puts on his good navy suit again. It will get stained and foul-smelling by the end of all this, but Ove has decided that his wife just has to go along with it, at least when he gets there.

  He has his breakfast and listens to the radio. Washes up and wipes down the counter. Then goes around the house checking the radiators. Turns off all lights. Checks that the coffee percolator is unplugged. Puts on the blue jacket over his suit, then the clogs, and goes back into the shed; he returns with a long, rolled-up plastic tube. Locks the shed and the front door, tugs three times at each door handle. Then goes down the little pathway between the houses.

  The white Škoda comes from the left and takes him by such surprise that he almost collapses in a snowdrift by the shed. Ove runs down the pathway in pursuit, shaking his fist.

  “Can’t you read, you bloody idiot!” he roars.

  The driver, a slim man with a cigarette in his hand, seems to have heard him. When the Škoda turns off by the bike shed, their eyes meet through the side window. The man looks directly at Ove and rolls down his window. Lifts his eyebrows, disinterested.

  “Motor vehicles prohibited!” Ove repeats, pointing at the sign where the very same message is written. He walks towards the Škoda with clenched fists.

  The man hangs his left arm out of the window and unhurriedly taps the ash off his cigarette. His blue eyes are completely unmoved. He looks at Ove as one looks at an animal behind a fence. Devoid of aggression, totally indifferent. As if Ove were something the man might wipe off with a damp cloth.

  “Read the si—” says Ove harshly as he gets closer, but the man has already rolled up his window.

  Ove yells at the Škoda but the man ignores him. He doesn’t even pull away with a wheel spin and screaming tires; he simply rolls off towards the garages and then onward to the main road, as if Ove’s gesticulation was of no more consequence than a broken streetlight.

  Ove stands rooted to the spot, so worked up that his fists are trembling. When the Škoda has disappeared he turns around and walks back between the houses, so hurried that he almost stumbles over his own legs. Outside Rune and Anita’s house, where the white Škoda has quite clearly been parked, are two cigarette butts on the ground. Ove picks them up as if they were clues in a high-level criminal case.

  “Hello, Ove,” he hears Anita say, cautiously, behind him.

  Ove turns towards her. She is standing on the step, wrapped in a gray cardigan. It looks as if it’s trying to grab hold of her body, like two hands clutching a wet bar of soap.

  “Yeah, yeah. Hello,” answers Ove.

  “He was from the council,” she says, with a nod in the direction in which the Škoda drove off.

  “Vehicles are prohibited in this area,” says Ove.

  She nods cautiously, again.

  “He said he has special permission from the council to drive to the house.”

  “He doesn’t have ANY bloody—” Ove begins, then stops himself and clamps his jaws around the words.

  Anita’s lips are trembling.

  “They want to take Rune away from me,” she says.

  Ove nods without answering. He is still holding the plastic tube in his hand. He pushes his other clenched fist into his pocket. For a moment he thinks about saying something, but then he looks down, turns around, and leaves. He’s already gone several yards when he realizes that he has the cigarette butts in his pocket, but by then it’s too late to do anything about it.

  Blond Weed is standing in the street. Mutt starts barking hysterically as soon as it catches sight of Ove. The door to the house behind them is open and Ove assumes they are standing there waiting for that thing known as Anders. Mutt has something like fur in its mouth; its owner grins with satisfaction. Ove stares at her as he goes past; she doesn’t avert her eyes. Her grin gets even broader, as if she’s grinning at Ove’s expense.

  When he passes between his house and that of the Lanky One and Pregnant Woman, he sees the Lanky One standing in the doorway.

  “Hi there, Ove!” he calls out inanely.

  Ove sees his ladder leaning up against the Lanky One’s house. The Lanky One waves cheerfully. Apparently he’s got up early today, or at least early by the standard of IT consultants. Ove can see that he’s holding a blunt silver dinner knife in one hand. And he realizes he’s most likely intending to use it to lever the jammed upstairs window. Ove’s ladder, which the Lanky One is clearly about to scale, has been shoved at an angle in
to a deep snowdrift.

  “Have a good day!”

  “Yeah, yeah,” answers Ove without turning around as he trudges past.

  Mutt is outside that Anders thing’s house, barking furiously. Out of the corner of his eye, Ove sees the Weed still standing there with a scorching smile in his direction. It disturbs Ove. He doesn’t quite know the reason for it, but he feels a disturbance in his bones.

  As he walks up between the houses, past the bicycle shed, and into the parking area, he reluctantly admits to himself that he’s walking around looking for the cat, but he can’t seem to find it anywhere.

  He opens his garage door, unlocks the Saab, and then stands there, his hands in his pockets, for what must be in excess of a half hour. He doesn’t quite know why he’s doing it, he just feels that something like this requires some kind of sanctified silence before one heads off.

  He considers whether the paintwork of the Saab will become terribly dirty as a result of this. He supposes so. It’s a pity and a shame, he realizes, but not much can be done about it. He gives the tires a couple of evaluating kicks. They’re in fine order, they really are. Good for at least another three winters, he estimates, judging by his last kick. Which quickly reminds him about the letter in the inside pocket of his jacket, so he fishes it out to check whether he has remembered to leave instructions about the summer tires. Yes, he has. It’s written here under “Saab + Accessories.” “Summer tires in the shed,” and then clear instructions that even a genuine moron could understand about where the rim bolts can be found in the trunk. Ove slides the letter back into the envelope and puts it in the inside pocket of his jacket.