A Man Called Ove: Chapters 7–12

The Lanky One is busy touching every part of his face with some reluctance, as if to check that every protuberance is still where it should be.

Ove nods tersely and concisely.

Ove nods tersely and concisely.

Ove decides not to help him out of his quandary.

“Persian, not Arabian. I’m from Iran—you know, where they speak Farsi?” she explains.
“Farcical? That’s the least you could say,” Ove agrees.
Her laughter catches him off guard.

Once the Lanky One has finished perusing it, he leans forward and peers into Ove’s house.

Ove looks at him, as one does at a person who has just said “What are you doing?” to a man standing with a hammer-action drill in his hand.
“I’m drilling,” he replies scathingly.

He looks slightly crestfallen.

Rune’s wife, Anita, from farther down the street, is standing next to Parvaneh, blithely watching the spectacle.

"Ove!" Parvaneh roars at him at once, as if she’s a reprimanding schoolmistress. Ove glares at her. She glares back. “Stop being rude,” she orders.

“Maybe this could have been thought about before you organized a coup d’état in the Residents’ Association,” he says quietly, his words punctuated by a series of discreet coughs.

Ove, conscientious and dutiful, completed his two-week stint on the railways.

Ove, conscientious and dutiful, completed his two-week stint on the railways.

When Ove, startled, threw himself out of the way just in time, Tom laughed contemptuously and roared: “Look out or you’ll end up like your old man!”

He smiled amicably at Ove and gestured cursorily at a chair in the middle of the floor.

“You do understand, Ove...that if you don’t tell us who it was, and if we have one or more witnesses who say it was you...then we’ll have to draw the conclusion that it was you?” said the director, not as amicable now.

With those red shoes and the gold brooch and all her burnished brown hair.

With those red shoes and the gold brooch and all her burnished brown hair.

It was more an argument where the little disagreements had ended up so entangled that every new word was treacherously booby-trapped, and in the end it wasn’t possible to open one’s mouth at all without setting off at least four unexploded mines from earlier conflicts.

And it truly was: endless appeals and writs and petitions and letters to newspapers.

He swears profusely while he furiously tries to untangle his legs.

And if there was anything this middle class was not enamored of, it was whatever stood in the way of progress.

Whatever the case, he parked his first very own car in the garden that evening and sat in the driver’s seat for several hours, gazing at the house. It was, to be blunt, decrepit. His father’s specialty had been machines, not building, and Ove was not much better himself.

He didn’t know a dovetail joint from a pot of potatoes.

So he spent his nights picking up litter on the line heading south out of town; then, after three hours of sleep, he used what time remained to dart up and down the scaffolding, listening to the men in hard hats talking about construction techniques.

When he damaged the wall in the living room, a wiry colleague with wonky front teeth, after spending twenty minutes telling Ove what an idiot he was for not knowing better from the start, taught him how to calculate the load-bearing parameters.

He watched them surreptitiously through the bedroom window.

Ove answered candidly that he’d never given it much thought.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The exhaust fumes come pouring out of the garage in a dense cloud, covering half of the parking area in a thick, noxious mist.

She loved only abstract things like music and books and strange words. Ove was a man entirely filled with tangible things. He liked screwdrivers and oil filters.

He’d never been one for dancing. It seemed far too haphazard and giddy. He liked straight lines and clear decisions.

The younger colleague was smiling disdainfully at him.

The recruitment officer liked this taciturn young man who seemed as strong as a bear, and he pressed him to consider a career as a professional soldier.

A week later he was informed that he had a rare congenital heart condition.

He sat on the platform, more despondent than at any time since his father’s death.