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

  Britt-Marie doesn’t like it at all. She gets confused when anyone defends her—it doesn’t happen very often.

  Somebody comes back with Karl’s packaging; Karl looks with irritation at Vega and hostility at Britt-Marie. Then he nods grumpily to the two men at the corner table. They nod back even more grumpily. The door tinkles merrily behind Karl as he lopes out.

  Somebody pats Britt-Marie encouragingly on the shoulder.

  “Never bloody mind about him. Karl has . . . like . . . what do you say? A lemon up his arse, you know what I mean? Pissed off at life and the universe and everything. People around here don’t like visitors from the city,” she says to Britt-Marie, and nods at the men by the table when she says “people.” They keep reading their newspapers and drinking their coffee as if neither of the women are there.

  “How did he know I was from the city?”

  Somebody rolls her eyes. “Come on! I’ll show you the recreation center, huh!” she shouts and rolls off towards the door.

  Britt-Marie looks at a section that leads off the pizzeria, health care center, post office, or whatever it is. There are shelves of groceries in there. As if it were a mini market.

  “Could I ask, is this a grocer’s?”

  “They closed down the supermarket, you know, we do what we can!”

  Britt-Marie remembers the dirty windows in the recreation center.

  “Might one ask if you have Faxin available here?” she asks.

  Britt-Marie has never used any other brand than Faxin. She saw an advertisement for it in her father’s morning newspaper when she was a child. A woman stood looking out of a clean window and underneath was written: FAXIN LETS YOU SEE THE WORLD. Britt-Marie loved that picture. As soon as she was old enough to have her own windows, she polished them with Faxin, continued doing so daily for the rest of her life, and never had any problems seeing the world.

  It was just that the world did not see her.

  “I know, you know, but there’s no Faxin now . . . you know?” says Somebody.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” asks Britt-Marie, only a touch reproachfully.

  “Faxin is not anymore in manufacturer’s . . . what’s-it-called? Product range! Not profitable, you know.”

  Britt-Marie’s eyes open wide and she makes a little gasp.

  “Is . . . but how . . . is that even legal?”

  “Not profitable,” says Somebody with a shrug.

  As if that’s an answer.

  “Surely people can’t just behave like that?” Britt-Marie bursts out.

  Somebody shrugs again. “Never mind though, eh? I have another brand! You want Russian brand, good shit, over there—” she starts to say, and gestures at Vega to run over and get it.

  “Absolutely not!” Britt-Marie interrupts, walking towards the door as she hisses: “I’ll use baking soda!”

  Because you can’t change Britt-Marie’s way of seeing the world. Because once Britt-Marie has taken a position on the world there’s no changing her.

  6

  Britt-Marie stumbles on the threshold. As if it’s not just the people in Borg who are trying to push her away, but also the actual buildings. She stands on the wheelchair ramp leading up to the door of the pizzeria. Curls her toes, making her foot into a little fist in her shoe to dull the pain. A tractor goes past on the road in one direction, a truck in the other. And then the road lies desolate. Britt-Marie has never been in such a small community, only driven through places like this sitting next to Kent in the car. Kent was always very sneering about them.

  Britt-Marie regains her composure and grips her handbag more firmly as she steps off the wheelchair ramp and crosses the large graveled parking area. She walks fast, as if she’s being chased by someone. Somebody rolls behind her. Vega takes the soccer ball and runs towards a group of other children, who are all wearing jeans that are torn across their thighs. After a couple of steps, Vega stops, peers at Britt-Marie and mumbles:

  “Sorry the ball hit your head. We weren’t aiming at you.”

  Then she says quite curtly to Somebody:

  “But we could have hit it if we’d been aiming!”

  She turns around and shoots the ball past the boys into a wooden fence between the recreation center and the pizzeria. One of the boys is at the receiving end, and he fires it into the fence again. Only then does Britt-Marie realize where the thumping sounds in Borg come from. One of the boys takes aim at the fence but instead manages to shoot the ball right back to Britt-Marie, which, if you consider the angle, is quite an impressive feat as far as underachievements go.

  The ball rolls back slowly to Britt-Marie. The children seem to be waiting for her to kick it back. Britt-Marie moves out of the way as if the ball was trying to spit at her. The ball rolls past. Vega comes running.

  “Why didn’t you kick it?” she asks, perplexed.

  “Why on earth would I want to kick it?”

  They glare at each other, filled with mutual conviction that the opposing party is utterly deranged. Vega kicks the ball back to the boys and runs off. Britt-Marie brushes some dust from her skirt. Somebody takes a gulp of vodka.

  “Bloody brats, you know. Crap at soccer. They couldn’t hit the water from, you know? A boat! But they don’t have nowhere to play, right? Bloody crap. The council closed down the soccer pitch. Sold the land and now they’re building flats there. Then the financial crisis and all that shit and now: no flats like they said, and no soccer pitch either.”

  “Kent says the financial crisis is over,” Britt-Marie informs her amicably.

  Somebody snorts.

  “Maybe that Kent bloke has, what’s-it-called? His head up his arse, huh?”

  Britt-Marie doesn’t know if she’s more offended because she doesn’t know what this means, or because she has an idea of what it means.

  “Kent probably knows more about this than you do. He’s an entrepreneur, you have to understand. Incredibly successful. Does business with Germany,” she says, putting Somebody to rights.

  Somebody looks unimpressed. Points at the children with her vodka bottle and says:

  “They closed down the soccer team when they closed down the pitch. Good players moved to crap team in town.”

  She nods down the road towards what Britt-Marie has to assume is “town,” then back at the children.

  “Town. Twelve miles that way, huh? These are, you know, the kids left behind. Like your what’s-it-called? Faxin! Discontinued product line. You have to be profitable. So this Kent, huh, he may have his arse full of head, huh? Maybe financial crisis cleared out of the city, you know, but it likes Borg. It’s living here now, the bastard!”

  Britt-Marie notes the clear distinction between how she speaks of the “town” twelve miles away and the city Britt-Marie comes from. There are two different levels of contempt. Somebody takes such a big hit on her bottle that her eyes tear up as she goes on:

  “In Borg, everyone drove trucks, you know. There was, what’s-it-called, a trucking company here! Then you know, the bastard financial crisis. More people in Borg now than trucks, and more trucks than jobs.”

  Britt-Marie keeps a firm grasp on her handbag and feels a need, for reasons that are not entirely transparent, to defend herself.

  “There are rats here,” she informs Somebody, not at all unpleasantly.

  “Rats have to live somewhere, don’t they?”

  “Rats are filthy. They live in their own dirt.”

  Somebody digs in her ear. Looks at her finger with interest. Drinks some more vodka. Britt-Marie nods and adds in a tone that, in every possible way, is extremely helpful:

  “If you got involved in keeping things a bit cleaner here in Borg, then maybe you wouldn’t have so much of a financial crisis.”

  Somebody doesn’t give the impression that she’s been listening very carefully.

  “It’s one of those, what’s-it-called? Myths? Dirty rats. It’s a myth, huh. They’re, what’s-it-called? Clean! Wash themselves like cats, y
ou know, with tongue. Mice are crappy, crap everywhere, but rats have toilets. Always crap in same place, huh.” She points at Britt-Marie’s car with her bottle.

  “You should move the car. They’ll shoot the soccer ball at it, huh.”

  Britt-Marie shakes her head patiently.

  “It certainly cannot be moved, it exploded as I was parking it.”

  Somebody laughs. She pushes her wheelchair around the car, and looks at the soccer ball–shaped dent in the passenger door.

  “Ah. Flying stone.” She chuckles.

  “What’s that?” asks Britt-Marie, reluctantly following behind and glaring at the soccer ball–shaped dent.

  “Flying stone. When the car workshop call insurance company, huh. Then the workshop say, ‘flying stone,’ ” chuckles Somebody.

  Britt-Marie fumbles after her list in her handbag.

  “Ha. Might I ask where I’ll find the nearest mechanic?”

  “Here,” says Somebody.

  Britt-Marie peers skeptically—at Somebody, obviously, not at the wheelchair. Britt-Marie is not one of those types who judges people.

  “You repair cars, do you?”

  Somebody shrugs.

  “They shut down the car workshop, huh. We do what we can. But never bloody mind that now! I show you the recreation center, yeah?”

  She holds up the envelope with the keys. Britt-Marie takes it, looks at Somebody’s bottle of vodka, and keeps a firm grip on her handbag.

  Then she shakes her head.

  “That’s perfectly all right, thank you. I don’t want to create any bother.”

  “No bother for me,” says Somebody and nonchalantly rolls her wheelchair back and forth.

  Britt-Marie smiles superbly.

  “I wasn’t alluding to your bother.”

  Then she briskly turns around and marches off across the graveled courtyard, in case Somebody gets the idea of trying to follow her. She lifts out her bags and flowerboxes from the car and drags them over to the recreation center. Unlocks the door and steps inside, and locks it behind her. Not that she dislikes this Somebody person. Not at all.

  It’s just that the smell of vodka reminds her of Kent.

  She looks around. The wall is thumping from the outside, and there are rat tracks in the dust on the floor. So Britt-Marie does what she always does when facing emergencies in life: she cleans. She polishes the windows with a rag dipped in baking soda and wipes them with newspaper dampened with vinegar. It’s almost as effective as Faxin, but doesn’t quite feel as good. She wipes the kitchen sink with baking soda and water and then mops all the floors, then mixes baking soda and lemon juice to clean the tiles and taps in the bathroom, and then mixes baking soda and toothpaste to polish the sink. Then she sprinkles baking soda over her balcony boxes, otherwise there’ll be snails.

  The balcony boxes may look as if they only contain soil, but underneath there are flowers waiting for spring. The winter requires whoever is doing the watering to have a bit of faith, in order to believe that what looks empty has every potential. Britt-Marie no longer knows whether she has faith or just hope. Maybe neither.

  The wallpaper of the recreation center looks indifferently at her. It’s covered in photos of people and soccer balls.

  Everywhere, soccer balls. Every time Britt-Marie glimpses another one from the corner of her eye, she rubs things even more aggressively with her sponge. She keeps cleaning until the thumping against the wall stops and the children and the soccer ball have gone home. Only once the sun has gone down does Britt-Marie realize that the lights inside only work in the kitchen. So she stays in there, stranded on a little island of artificial, fluorescent light, in a soon-to-be-closed-down recreation center.

  The kitchen is almost completely taken up by a dish rack, a refrigerator, and two wooden stools. She opens the refrigerator to find it empty apart from a packet of coffee. She curses herself for not bringing any vanilla extract. If you mix vanilla extract with baking soda, the refrigerator smells fresh.

  She stands hesitantly in front of the coffee percolator. It looks modern. She hasn’t made coffee in many years, because Kent makes very good coffee, and Britt-Marie always finds it’s best to wait for him. But this percolator has an illuminated button, which strikes Britt-Marie as one of the most marvelous things she has seen in years, so she tries to open the lid where she assumes the coffee should be spooned in. It’s stuck. The button starts blinking angrily.

  Britt-Marie feels deeply mortified by this. She tugs at the lid in frustration. The blinking intensifies, upon which Britt-Marie tugs at it with such insistence that the whole machine is knocked over. The lid snaps open and a mess of coffee grounds and water sprays all over Britt-Marie’s jacket.

  They say people change when they go away, which is why Britt-Marie has always loathed traveling. She doesn’t want change.

  So it must be on account of the traveling, she decides afterwards, that she now loses her self-possession as never before. Unless you count the time Kent walked across the parquet floor in his golf shoes soon after they were married.

  She picks up the mop and starts beating the coffee machine with the handle as hard as she can. It blinks. Something smashes. It stops blinking. Britt-Marie keeps hitting it until her arms are trembling and her eyes can no longer make out the contours of the dish rack. Finally, out of breath, she fetches a towel from her handbag. Turns off the ceiling light in the kitchen. Sits down on one of the wooden stools in the darkness, and weeps into the towel.

  She doesn’t want her tears to drip onto the floor. They could leave marks.

  7

  Britt-Marie stays awake all night. She’s used to that, as people are when they have lived their entire lives for someone else.

  She sits in the dark, of course, otherwise what would people think if they walked by and saw the light left on as if there was some criminal inside?

  But she doesn’t sleep, because she remembers the thick layer of dust on the floor of the recreation center before she started cleaning, and if she dies in her sleep she’s certainly not going to risk lying here until she starts smelling and gets all covered in dust. Sleeping on one of the sofas in the corner of the recreation center is not even worth thinking about, because they were so filthy that Britt-Marie had to wear double latex gloves when she covered them with baking soda. Maybe she could have slept in the car? Maybe, if she were an animal.

  The girl at the unemployment office kept insisting that there was a hotel in the town twelve miles away, but Britt-Marie can’t even think of staying another night in a place where other people have made her bed. She knows that there are some people who do nothing else but dream of going away and experiencing something different, but Britt-Marie dreams of staying at home where everything is always the same. She wants to make her own bed.

  Anytime she and Kent are staying at a hotel she always puts up the “Do Not Disturb” sign, and then makes the bed and cleans the room herself. It’s not because she judges people, not at all; it’s because she knows that the cleaning staff could very well be the sort of people who judge people, and Britt-Marie certainly doesn’t want to run the risk of the cleaning staff sitting in a meeting in the evening discussing the horrible state of Room 423.

  Once, Kent made a mistake about the check-in time for the flight when they were going home after a hotel visit, although Kent still maintains that “those sods can’t even write the correct time on the sodding ticket,” and they had to run off in the middle of the night without even having time to take a shower. So, just before Britt-Marie rushed out of the door, she ran into the bathroom to turn on the shower for a few seconds so there would be water on the floor when the cleaning staff came, and they would therefore not come to the conclusion that the guests in Room 423 had set off wearing their own dirt.

  Kent snorted at her and said she was always too bloody concerned about what people thought of her. Britt-Marie was screaming inside all the way to the airport. She had actually mainly been concerned about what peopl
e would think of Kent.

  She doesn’t know when he stopped caring about what people thought of her.

  She knows that once upon a time he did care. That was back in the days when he still looked at her as if he knew she was there. It’s difficult to know when love blooms; suddenly one day you wake up and it’s in full flower. It works the same way when it wilts—one day it is just too late. Love has a great deal in common with balcony plants in that way. Sometimes not even baking soda makes a difference.

  Britt-Marie doesn’t know when their marriage slipped out of her hands. When it became worn and scratched up no matter how many coasters she used. Once he used to hold her hand when they slept, and she dreamed his dreams. Not that Britt-Marie didn’t have any dreams of her own; it was just that his were bigger, and the one with the biggest dreams always wins in this world. She had learned that. So she stayed home to take care of his children, without even dreaming of having any of her own. She stayed home another few years to make a presentable home and support him in his career, without dreaming of her own. She found she had neighbors who called her a “nag-bag” when she worried about what the Germans would think if there was rubbish in the foyer or the stairwell smelled of pizza. She made no friends of her own, just the odd acquaintance, usually the wife of one of Kent’s business associates.

  One of them once offered to help Britt-Marie with the washing-up after a dinner party, and then she set about sorting Britt-Marie’s cutlery drawer with knives on the left, then spoons and forks. When Britt-Marie asked, in a state of shock, what she was doing, the acquaintance laughed as if it was a joke, and said, “Does it really matter?” They were no longer acquainted. Kent said that Britt-Marie was socially incompetent, so she stayed home for another few years so he could be social on behalf of the both of them. A few years turned into more years, and more years turned into all years. Years have a habit of behaving like that. It’s not that Britt-Marie chose not to have any expectations, she just woke up one morning and realized they were past their sell-by date.