But this was something entirely different. Something that suited him much better.
When he clocked off from his last shift on the last day he was downcast. Not only because he had to go back to school, but because it had only occurred to him now that he didn’t know how to earn a living. Dad had been good in many ways, of course, but Ove had to admit he hadn’t left much of an estate except a run-down house, an old Saab, and a dented wristwatch. Alms from the church were out of the question, God should be bloody clear about that. Ove said as much to himself while he stood there in the changing rooms, maybe as much for his own benefit as God’s.
“If you really had to take both Mum and Dad, keep your bloody money!” he yelled up at the ceiling.
Then he packed up his stuff and left. Whether God or anyone else was listening he never found out. But when Ove came out of the changing rooms, a man from the managing director’s office was standing there waiting for him.
“Ove?” he asked.
Ove nodded.
“The director would like to express his thanks for doing such a good job over the past fortnight,” the man said, short and to the point.
“Thanks,” said Ove as he started walking away.
The man put his hand on Ove’s arm. Ove stopped.
“The director was wondering whether you might have an interest in staying and carrying on doing a good job?”
Ove stood in silence, looking at the man. Maybe mostly to check if this was some kind of joke. Then he slowly nodded.
When he’d taken a few more steps the man called out behind him:
“The director says you are just like your father!”
Ove didn’t turn around. But his back was straighter as he walked off.
And that’s how he ended up in his father’s old boots. He worked hard, never complained, and was never ill. The old boys on his shift found him a little on the quiet side and a little odd on top of that. He never wanted to join them for a beer after work and he seemed uninterested in women as well, which was more than weird in its own right. But he was a chip off the old block and had never given them anything to complain about. If anyone asked Ove for a hand, he got on with it; if anyone asked him to cover a shift for them, he did it without any fuss. As time went by, more or less all of them owed him a favor or two. So they accepted him.
When the old truck, the one they used to drive up and down the railway track, broke down one night more than ten miles outside of town, in one of the worst downpours of the whole year, Ove managed to repair it with nothing but a screwdriver and half a roll of gauze tape. After that, as far as the old boys on the tracks were concerned, Ove was okay.
In the evenings he’d boil his sausages and potatoes, staring out the kitchen window as he ate. And the next morning he’d go to work again. He liked the routine, liked always knowing what to expect. Since his father’s death he had begun more and more to differentiate between people who did what they should, and those who didn’t. People who did and people who just talked. Ove talked less and less and did more and more.
He had no friends. But on the other hand he hardly had any enemies either, apart from Tom, who since his promotion to foreman took every opportunity to make Ove’s life as difficult as possible. He gave him the dirtiest and heaviest jobs, shouted at him, tripped him up at breakfast, sent him under railway carriages for inspections and set them in motion while Ove lay unprotected on the cross ties. 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!”
Ove kept his head down, though, and his mouth shut. He saw no purpose in challenging a man who was twice his own size. He went to work every day and did justice to himself—that had been good enough for his father and so it would also have to do for Ove. His colleagues learned to appreciate him for it. “When people don’t talk so much they don’t dish out the crap either,” one of his older workmates said to him one afternoon down on the track. And Ove nodded. Some got it and some didn’t.
There were also some who got what Ove ended up doing one day in the director’s office, while others didn’t.
It was almost two years after his father’s funeral. Ove had just turned eighteen. Tom had been caught out stealing money from the cash box in one of the carriages. Admittedly no one but Ove saw him take it, but Tom and Ove had been the only two people in the carriage when the money went missing. And, as a serious man from the director’s office explained when Tom and Ove were ordered to present themselves, no one could believe Ove was the guilty party. And he wasn’t, of course.
Ove was left on a wooden chair in the corridor outside the director’s office. He sat there looking at the floor for fifteen minutes before the door opened. Tom stepped outside, his fists so clenched with determination that his skin was bloodless and white on his lower arms.
He kept trying to make eye contact with Ove; Ove just kept staring down at the floor until he was brought into the director’s office.
More serious men in suits were spread around the room. The director himself was pacing back and forth behind his desk, his face highly colored, and there was an insinuation that he was too angry to stand still.
“You want to sit down, Ove?” said one of the men in suits at last.
Ove met his gaze, and knew who he was. His dad had mended his car once. A blue Opel Manta. With the big engine. He smiled amicably at Ove and gestured cursorily at a chair in the middle of the floor. As if to let him know that he was among friends now and could relax.
Ove shook his head. The Opel Manta man nodded with understanding.
“Well then. This is just a formality, Ove. No one in here believes you took the money. All you need to do is tell us who did it.”
Ove looked down at the floor. Half a minute passed.
“Ove?”
Ove didn’t answer. The harsh voice of the director broke the silence at long last. “Answer the question, Ove!”
Ove stood in silence. Looking down at the floor. The facial expressions of the men in suits shifted from conviction to slight confusion.
“Ove . . . you do understand that you have to answer the question. Did you take the money?”
“No,” said Ove with a steady voice.
“So who was it?”
Ove stood in silence.
“Answer the question!” ordered the director.
Ove looked up. Stood there with a straight back.
“I’m not the sort that tells tales about what other people do,” he said.
The room was steeped in silence for what must have been several minutes.
“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.
Ove nodded, but didn’t say another word. The director scrutinized him, as if he were a bluffer in a game of cards. Ove’s face was unmoved. The director nodded grimly.
“So you can go, then.”
And Ove left.
Tom had put the blame on Ove when he was in the director’s office some fifteen minutes earlier. During the afternoon, two of the younger men from Tom’s shift, eager as young men are to earn the approval of older men, came forward and claimed that they had seen Ove take the money with their own eyes. If Ove had pointed out Tom, it would have been one word against another. But now it was Tom’s words against Ove’s silence. The next morning he was told by the foreman to empty his locker and present himself outside the director’s office.