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.
He glances over his shoulder into the parking area. Not because he’s bothered about that damned cat, obviously. He just hopes nothing’s happened to it, because then there’ll be hell to pay from Ove’s wife, he’s quite sure about that. He just doesn’t want a ticking-off because of the damned cat. That’s all.
The sirens of an approaching ambulance can be heard in the distance, but he barely takes any notice. Just gets into the driver’s seat and starts the engine. Opens the back electric window a couple of inches. Gets out of the car. Closes the garage door. Fixes the plastic tube tightly over the exhaust pipe. Watches the exhaust fumes slowly bubbling out of the other end of the tube. Then feeds the tube through the open back window. Gets into the car. Closes the door. Adjusts the wing mirrors. Fine-tunes the radio one step forward and one step back. Leans back in the seat. Closes his eyes. Feels the thick exhaust smoke, cubic inch by cubic inch, filling the garage and his lungs.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. You work and pay off the mortgage and pay taxes and do what you should. You marry. For better or for worse until death do us part, wasn’t that what they agreed? Ove remembers quite clearly that it was. And she wasn’t supposed to be the first one to die. Wasn’t it bloody well understood that it was his death they were talking about? Well, wasn’t it?
Ove hears a banging at the garage door. Ignores it. Straightens the creases of his trousers. Looks at himself in the rearview mirror. Wonders whether perhaps he should have put on a tie. She always liked it when he wore a tie. She looked at him then as the most handsome man in the world. He wonders if she will look at him now. If she’ll be ashamed of him turning up in the afterlife unemployed and wearing a dirty suit. Will she think he’s an idiot who can’t even hold down an honest job without being phased out, just because his knowledge has been found wanting on account of some computer? Will she still look at him the way she used to, like a man who can be relied on? A man who can take responsibility for things and fix a water heater if necessary. Will she like him as much now that he’s just an old person with no purpose in the world?
There’s more frenetic banging at the garage door. Ove stares sourly at it. More banging. Ove thinks to himself that it’s enough now.
“That will do!” he roars and opens the door of the Saab so abruptly that the plastic tube is dislodged from between the window and the molding and falls onto the concrete floor. Clouds of exhaust fumes pour out in all directions.
The Pregnant Foreign Woman should probably have learned by now not to stand so close to doors when Ove is on the other side. But this time she can’t avoid getting the garage door right in her face when Ove throws it open violently.
Ove sees her and freezes. She’s holding her nose. Looking at him with that distinct expression of someone who just had a garage door slammed into her nose. The exhaust fumes come pouring out of the garage in a dense cloud, covering half of the parking area in a thick, noxious mist.
“I . . . you have to bloo— you have to watch out when the door’s being opened. . . .” Ove manages to say.
“What are you doing?” the Pregnant One manages to bite back at him, while watching the Saab with its engine idling and the exhaust spewing out of the mouth of the plastic tube on the floor.
“Me? . . . nothing,” says Ove indignantly, looking as if he’d prefer to shut the garage door again.
Thick red drops are forming in her nostrils. She covers her face with one hand and waves at him with the other.
“I need a lift to the hospital,” she says, tilting her head back.
Ove looks skeptical. “What the hell? Pull yourself together. It’s just a nosebleed.”
She swears in something Ove assumes is Farsi and clamps the bridge of her nose hard between her thumb and index finger. Then she shakes her head impatiently, dripping blood all over her jacket.
“Not because of the nosebleed!”
Ove’s a bit puzzled by that. Puts his hands in his pockets.
“No, no. Well then.”
She groans.
“Patrick fell off the ladder.”
She leans her head back, so that Ove stands there talking to the underside of her chin.
“Who’s Patrick?” Ove asks the chin.
“My husband,” the chin answers.
“The Lanky One?” asks Ove.
“That’s him, yeah,” says the chin.
“And he fell off the ladder?” Ove clarifies.
“Yes. When he was opening the window.”
“Right. What a bloody surprise; you could see that one coming from a mile away. . . .”
The chin disappears and the large brown eyes reappear.
They don’t look entirely pleased.
“Are we going to have a debate about this or what?”
Ove scratches his head, slightly bothered.
“No, no . . . but can’t you drive yourself? In that little Japanese sewing machine you arrived in the other day?” he tries to protest.
“I don’t have a driver’s license,” she replies, mopping blood from her lip.
“What do you mean you don’t have a driver’s license?” asks Ove, as if her words are utterly inexplicable to him.
Again she sighs impatiently.
“Look, I don’t have a driver’s license and that’s all, what’s the problem?”
“How old are you?” Ove asks, almost fascinated now.
“Thirty,” she says impatiently.
“Thirty?! And no driver’s license? Is there something wrong with you?”
She groans, holding one hand over her nose and snapping her fingers with irritation in front of Ove’s face.
“Focus a bit, Ove! The hospital! You have to drive us to the hospital!”
Ove looks almost offended.
“What do you mean, ‘us’? You’ll have to call an ambulance if the person you’re married to can’t open a window without falling off a ladder—”
“I already did! They’ve taken him to the hospital. But there was no space for me in the ambulance. And now because of the snow, every taxi in town is occupied and the buses are getting bogged down everywhere!”
Scattered streams of blood are running down one of her cheeks. Ove clamps his jaws so hard that he starts gnashing his teeth.
“You can’t trust bloody buses. The drivers are always drunks,” he says quietly, his chin at an angle that might make someone believe he was trying to hide his words on the inside of his shirt collar.
Maybe she notices the way his mood shifts as soon as she mentions the word “bus.” Maybe not. Anyway, she nods, as if this in some way clinches it.
“Right, then. So you have to drive us.”
Ove makes a courageous attempt to point threateningly at her. But to his own dismay he feels it’s not as convincing as he might have hoped.
“There are no have-tos around here. I’m not some bloody mobility service!” he manages to say at last.