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

  “My dear, there’s no bargaining in this shop,” says the man in the shop in exactly the sort of tone one might expect of men in shops. “It costs four hundred and ninety-five.”

  “I’ll give you two fifty.”

  The man smiles mockingly.

  “Now I’ll only give you two hundred,” Elsa informs him.

  The man looks at Elsa’s dad. Dad looks at his shoes. Elsa looks at the man and shakes her head seriously.

  “My dad is not going to help you. I’ll give you two hundred.”

  The man arranges his face into something that’s probably supposed to look like an expression of how you look at children when they’re cute but stupid.

  “This is not how it works, my dear.”

  Elsa shrugs. “What time do you close today?”

  “In five minutes,” sighs the man.

  “And do you have a big warehouse space here?”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “I was just wondering.”

  “No. We don’t have any warehouse space at all.”

  “And are you open on Christmas Eve?”

  He pauses. “No.”

  Elsa pouts her lips with pretend surprise.

  “So you have a tree here. And no warehouse. And what day is it tomorrow, again?”

  Elsa gets the tree for two hundred. She gets a box of balcony lights and an insanely big Christmas elk thrown in for the same price.

  “You MUSTN’T go back in and give him any extra money!” Elsa warns Dad while he’s loading it all into Audi. Dad sighs.

  “I only did it once, Elsa. On one occasion. And that time you were actually exceptionally unpleasant to the salesman.”

  “You have to negotiate!”

  Granny taught Elsa to do that. Dad also used to hate going to the shops with her.

  Audi stops outside the house. As usual, Dad has turned down the volume of the stereo so Elsa doesn’t have to listen to his music. Alf comes out to help Dad carry up the box, but Dad insists on carrying it himself. Because it’s a tradition that he brings the tree home for his daughter. Before he leaves, Elsa wants to tell him that she’d like to stay with him more after Halfie’s been born. But she doesn’t want to upset him, so in the end she says nothing. She just whispers, “Thanks for the tree, Dad,” and he’s happy and then he goes home to Lisette and her children. And Elsa stands there watching as he leaves.

  Because no one gets upset if you don’t say anything. All almost-eight-year-olds know that.

  26

  PIZZA

  In Miamas you celebrate Christmas the evening before, just like in Sweden, but it’s because that’s when the Christmas tales are told. All tales are regarded as treasures in Miamas, but the Christmas tales are something truly special. A normal story can either be funny or sad or exciting or scary or dramatic or sentimental, but a Christmas tale has to be all those things. “A Christmas tale has to be written with every pen you own,” Granny used to say. And they have to have happy endings, which is something that Elsa has decided completely on her own.

  Because Elsa’s no fool. She knows if there was a dragon at the beginning of the story, the dragon will turn up again before the story is done. She knows everything has to become darker and more horrible before everything works out just fine at the end. Because that is how all the best stories go.

  She knows she’s going to have to fight, even though she’s tired of fighting. So it has to end happily, this fairy tale.

  It has to.

  She misses the smell of pizza when she goes down the stairs. Granny said there was a law in Miamas about having to eat pizza at Christmas Eve. Granny was full of nonsense, of course, but Elsa went along with it, because she likes pizza and Christmas food kind of sucks if you’re a vegetarian.

  The pizza also had the added bonus of making a cooking smell in the stairwell that drove Britt-Marie into a fury. Because Britt-Marie hangs Christmas decorations on her and Ken’s front door, because Kent’s children always come for Christmas and Britt-Marie wants to “make the stairs look nice for everyone!” And then the Christmas decorations smell of pizza all year, which provokes Britt-Marie and makes her condemn Granny as “uncivilized.”

  “As if THAT old bat can talk about being uncivilized?! No one is more damned civilized than I am!” Granny would snort every year while she sneaked about, as was the tradition, hanging little pieces of calzone all over Britt-Marie’s Christmas decorations. And when Britt-Marie appeared at Mum and George’s flat on Christmas Eve morning in such a foul mood, in that way of hers, that she said everything twice, Granny defended herself by saying that they were “pizza Christmas decorations” and that Granny actually just wanted to “make things look nice for everyone!” On one occasion she actually dropped the whole calzone through Britt-Marie and Kent’s mail slot, and then Britt-Marie got so angry on Christmas morning that she forgot to put on her floral-print jacket.

  No one was ever able to explain how one can drop a whole calzone through someone’s letter box.

  Elsa takes a couple of deep, controlled breaths on the stairs, because that’s what Mum has told her to do when she gets angry. Mum really does everything that Granny never did. Such as asking Elsa to invite Britt-Marie and Kent for Christmas dinner with all the other neighbors, for example. Granny would never have done that. “Over my dead body!” Granny would have roared if Mum had suggested it. Which she couldn’t have done now that her body was actually dead, Elsa realizes, but still. It’s about the principle. That’s what Granny would have said if she’d been here.

  But Elsa can’t say no to Mum right now, because Mum, after a lot of nagging, has agreed to let the wurse hide in Granny’s flat over Christmas. It’s quite difficult saying no to a mum who lets you bring a wurse home, even if Mum still sighs about Elsa “exaggerating” when Elsa says Kent is trying to kill it.

  On the other hand, Elsa is happy that the wurse took an instant dislike to George. Not that Elsa feels anyone should hate George, but really no one ever has, so it’s nice just for a change.

  The boy with a syndrome and his mum are about to move into Granny’s flat. Elsa knows that because she played hide-the-key with the boy all afternoon while Mum, George, Alf, Lennart, Maud, and the boy’s mother sat in the kitchen talking about secrets. They deny it, of course, but Elsa knows how secretive voices sound. You know that when you’re almost eight. She hates that Mum has secrets from her. When you know someone is keeping secrets from you it makes you feel like an idiot, and no one likes feeling like an idiot. Mum of all people should know that.

  Elsa knows they’re talking about Granny’s flat being easier to defend if Sam comes here. She knows that Sam will come sooner or later, and that Mum is going to assemble Granny’s army on the top floor. Elsa was in Lennart and Maud’s flat with the wurse when Mum told Maud to just “pack the essentials” and tried to sound as if it wasn’t at all serious. And then Maud and the wurse packed all the cookie tins they could find into big bags, and when Mum saw that she sighed and said: “Please, Maud, I said just the essentials!” And then Maud looked at Mum in a puzzled way and replied: “Cookies are the essentials.”

  The wurse growled happily at that statement, then looked at Mum as if it was more disappointed than angry and pointedly pushed an extra tin of chocolate and peanut cookies into the bag. Then they carried it all upstairs to Granny’s flat and George invited everyone for mulled wine. The wurse drank the most mulled wine of them all. And now all the grown-ups are sitting in Mum and George’s kitchen, having secrets together.

  Although Britt-Marie and Kent’s door is full of Christmas decorations, no one answers when Elsa rings the doorbell. She finds Britt-Marie in the corridor downstairs, just inside the entrance. She stands with her hands clasped together on her stomach, staring disconsolately at the stroller, which is still locked to the banister. She’s wearing the floral-print jacket and the brooch. And there’s a new notice on the wall.

  The first sign was the one that said it was fo
rbidden to leave strollers there. And then someone took that sign down. And now someone has put up a new sign. And the stroller is still there. And it’s actually not a sign, Elsa notices when she goes closer. It’s a crossword.

  Britt-Marie is startled when she catches sight of her.

  “I suppose you find this funny,” she starts, “you and your family. Making the rest of us look foolish in this house. But I’ll get to the bottom of it and find those who are responsible for this, you can be quite sure about that. It’s actually a fire risk to have strollers in the stairwell and to keep taping up notices on the walls! The paper can actually start burning!”

  She rubs an invisible stain from her brooch.

  “I’m actually not an idiot, I’m actually not. I know you talk behind my back in this leaseholders’ association, I know you do!”

  Elsa doesn’t quite know what happens inside her at that point, but it must be the combination of the words “not an idiot” and “behind my back,” perhaps. Something very unpleasant and acidic and foul-smelling rises in Elsa’s throat, and it takes a long time before, with disgust, she has to admit to herself that it’s sympathy.

  No one likes feeling like an idiot.

  So Elsa says nothing about how maybe Britt-Marie could try to stop being such a bloody busybody all the time, if she wants people to talk to her a bit more. She doesn’t even mention that this is not actually a leaseholders’ association. She just swallows all the pride she’s feasting on and mumbles:

  “Mum and George want to invite you and Kent for Christmas dinner tomorrow. Everyone in the house is going to be there.”

  Britt-Marie’s gaze wavers for just an instant. Elsa briefly recalls the look she gave earlier today, the human look, but then she seems to snap out of it.

  “Well, well, I can’t respond to invitations just like that, because Kent is actually at the office right now, and certain people in this house have jobs to take care of. You can give your mother that message. Not all people have time off all Christmas. And Kent’s children are coming tomorrow and they actually don’t like running about, going to other people’s parties, they like being home with me and Kent. And we’re eating some ordinary Christmas food, like a civilized family. We are. You can give your mother that message!”

  Britt-Marie storms off; Elsa stays where she is, shaking her head and mumbling, “Muppet, muppet, muppet.” She looks at the crossword above the stroller; she doesn’t know who put it there, but now she wishes she’d thought of it herself, because it’s obviously driving Britt-Marie barmy.

  Elsa goes back up the stairs and knocks on the door of the woman with the black skirt.

  “We’re having Christmas dinner at our house tomorrow. You’re welcome, if you like,” says Elsa, and adds: “It could actually be quite nice, because Britt-Marie and Kent aren’t coming!”

  The woman freezes.

  “I . . . I’m not so good at meeting people.”

  “I know. But you don’t seem so good at being on your own either.”

  The woman looks at her for a long time, drags her hand slowly through her hair. Elsa stares back determinedly.

  “I . . . maybe I can come. A . . . short while.”

  “We can buy pizza! If you don’t, you know, like Christmas food,” says Elsa hopefully.

  The woman smiles. Elsa smiles back.

  Alf comes out of Granny’s flat just as Elsa’s climbing the stairs. The boy with a syndrome is circling him happily, doing a little dance, and Alf has an enormous toolbox in one hand, which he tries to hide when he catches sight of Elsa.

  “What are you doing?” asks Elsa.

  “Nothing,” Alf says evasively.

  The boy jumps into Mum and George’s flat and heads towards a large bowl of chocolate Santas. Alf tries to get past Elsa on the stairs but Elsa stands in his way.

  “What’s that?” she asks, pointing at the toolbox.

  “Nothing!” Alf repeats and tries to hide it behind his back.

  He smells strongly of wood shavings, Elsa notices.

  “Sure it’s nothing!” she says grumpily.

  She tries to stop feeling like an idiot. It doesn’t go so very well.

  She looks into the flat at the boy. He looks happy in the way that only an almost-seven-year-old can look happy when standing in front of a whole big bowl of chocolate Santas. Elsa wonders if he’s waiting for the real Santa, who isn’t made of chocolate. Obviously, Elsa doesn’t believe in Santa, but she has a lot of faith in people who do believe in him. She used to write letters to Santa every Christmas, not just wish lists but whole letters. They weren’t very much about Christmas, mainly about politics. Because Elsa mostly felt that Santa wasn’t involving himself enough in social questions, and believed he needed to be informed about that, in the midst of the floods of greedy letters that she knew he must be receiving from all the other children every year. Someone had to take a bit of responsibility. One year she’d seen the Coca-Cola ad, and that time her letter was quite a lot about how Santa was a “soulless sellout.” Another year she’d seen a TV documentary about child labor and, immediately after that, quite a few American Christmas comedies, and because she was unsure whether Santa’s definition of “elf” should be classified as the same as the elves that exist in Old Norse mythology or the ones that live in forests in Tolkien’s world, or just in the general sense of a short person, sort of thing, she demanded that Santa immediately get back to her with a precise definition.

  Santa never did, so Elsa sent another letter that was very long and angry. The year after, Elsa had learned how to use Google, so then she knew the reason for Santa never answering was that he didn’t exist. So she didn’t write any more letters. She mentioned to Mum and Granny the next day that Santa didn’t exist, and Mum got so upset that she choked on her mulled wine, and when Granny saw this she immediately turned dramatically to Elsa and pretended to be even more upset, and burst out: “DON’T you talk like that, Elsa! If you do, you’re just reality-challenged!”

  Mum didn’t laugh at all about that, which didn’t bother Granny, but on the other hand Elsa did laugh a good deal, and that pleased Granny immeasurably. And the day before Christmas, Elsa had a letter from Santa in which he gave her a right ticking-off because she’d “got herself an attitude,” and then there followed a long haranguing passage that started with “you ungrateful bloody brat” and went on to say that because Elsa had stopped believing in Santa, the elves hadn’t been able to reach a proper collective agreement on salaries that year.

  “I know you wrote this,” Elsa had hissed at Granny.

  “How?” Granny asked with exaggerated outrage

  “Because not even Santa is so dumb that he spells ‘collective’ with a double ‘t’!”

  And then Granny had looked a little less outraged and apologized. And then she tried to get Elsa to run to the shop to buy a cigarette lighter, in exchange for Granny “timing her.” But Elsa didn’t fall for that one.

  And then Granny had grumpily got out her newly purchased Santa suit, and they went to the children’s hospital where Granny’s friend worked. Granny went around all day telling fairy tales to children with terrible diseases and Elsa followed behind her, distributing toys. That was Elsa’s best-ever Christmas. They would make a tradition of it, Granny promised, but it was a really crappy tradition because they only had time to do it one year before she went and died.

  Elsa looks at the boy, then at Alf, and locks eyes with him. When the boy catches sight of a bowl of chocolate Santas and disappears from view, Elsa slips into the flat’s front hall, opens the chest in there, and pulls out the Santa suit. She goes back onto the landing and presses it into Alf’s arms.

  Alf looks at it as if just tried to tickle him.

  “What’s that?”

  “What does it look like?” asks Elsa.

  “Forget it!” says Alf dismissively, pushing the costume back towards Elsa.

  “Forget that you can forget about it!” says Elsa, and pushes the costu
me back even more.

  “Your grandmother said you don’t even believe in bloody Santa,” mutters Alf.

  Elsa rolls her eyes.

  “No, but not everything in the world is about me, right?”

  She points into the flat. The boy is sitting on the floor in front of the TV. Alf looks at him and grunts.

  “Why can’t Lennart be Santa?”

  “Because Lennart couldn’t keep a secret from Maud,” Elsa answers impatiently.

  “What’s the bloody relevance of that?”

  “The relevance is that Maud can’t keep a secret from anyone!”

  Alf squints at Elsa. Then he reluctantly mutters that that’s true enough. Because Maud really couldn’t keep a secret even if it was glued to the insides of her hands. While George was playing hide-the-key with Elsa and the boy with a syndrome earlier, Maud had walked behind them and repeatedly whispered, “Maybe you should look in the flowerpot in the bookshelf,” and when Elsa’s mum explained to Maud that the whole point of the game was sort of to find out for yourself where the key was hidden, Maud looked disconsolate and said, “The children look so sad while they’re searching, I don’t want them to be sad.”

  “So you have to be Santa,” Elsa says conclusively.

  “What about George?” Alf tries.

  “He’s too tall. And anyway it’ll be too obvious, because he’ll wear his jogging shorts on the outside of the Santa suit.”

  Alf doesn’t look as if that would make much of a difference to him. He takes a couple of dissatisfied steps across the landing and into the hall, where he peers over the edge of the chest as if hoping to find a better option. But the only things he sees there are bedsheets and then Elsa’s Spider-Man suit.

  “What’s that?” asks Alf, and pokes at it, as if it might poke him back.

  “My Spider-Man suit,” grunts Elsa, trying to close the lid.

  “When do you get to wear that?” wonders Alf, apparently expecting to know the exact date of the annual Spider-Man day.