“Yeah, well . . . one thing’s for sure, I’m not the pope,” Ove replies.
The baggy skin on Rune’s face cracks into a sleepy smile. Both men, once as close as men of that sort could be, stare at each other. One of them a man who refuses to forget the past, and one who can’t remember it at all.
“You look old,” says Ove.
Rune grins.
Then Anita’s anxious voice makes itself heard and in the next moment her small, drumming feet are bearing her at speed towards the door.
“Is there someone at the door, Rune? What are you doing there?” she calls out, terrified, as she appears in the doorway. Then she sees Ove.
“Oh . . . hello, Ove,” she says and stops abruptly.
Ove stands there with his hands in his pockets. The cat beside him looks as if it would do the same, if it had pockets. Or hands. Anita is small and colorless in her gray trousers, gray knitted cardigan, gray hair, and gray skin. But Ove notices that her face is slightly red-eyed and swollen. Quickly she wipes her eyes and blinks away the pain. As women of that generation do. As if they stood in the doorway every morning, determinedly driving sorrow out of the house with a broom. Tenderly she takes Rune by the shoulders and leads him to his wheelchair by the window in the living room.
“Hello, Ove,” she repeats in a friendly, also surprised, voice when she comes back to the door. “What can I do for you?”
“Do you have any corrugated iron?” he asks back.
She looks puzzled.
“Corrected iron?” she mumbles, as if the iron has somehow been wrong and now someone has to put it right.
Ove sighs deeply.
“Good God, corrugated iron.”
Anita doesn’t look the slightest bit less puzzled.
“Am I supposed to have some?”
“Rune will have some in his shed, definitely,” says Ove and holds out his hand.
Anita nods. Takes down the shed key from the wall and puts it in Ove’s hand.
“Corrugated. Iron?” she says again.
“Yes,” says Ove.
“But we don’t have a metal roof.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
Anita shakes her head.
“No . . . no, maybe it doesn’t, of course.”
“One always has a bit of sheet metal,” says Ove, as if this was absolutely beyond dispute.
Anita nods. As one does when faced with the undeniable fact that a bit of corrugated iron is the sort of thing that all normal, right-thinking people keep lying about in their sheds, just in case there’s call for it.
“But don’t you have any of that metal yourself, then?” she tries, mainly to have something to talk about.
“I’ve used mine up,” says Ove.
Anita nods understandingly. As one does when facing the indisputable fact that there’s nothing odd about a normal man without a metal roof getting through his corrugated iron at such a rate that it runs out.
A minute later, Ove turns up triumphantly in the doorway, dragging a gigantic piece of corrugated iron, as big as a living room rug. Anita honestly has no idea how such a large piece of metal has even fitted in there without her knowing about it.
“Told you,” Ove says with a nod, giving her back the key.
“Yes . . . yes, you did, didn’t you,” Anita feels obliged to admit.
Ove turns to the window. Rune looks back. And just as Anita turns around to go back into the house, Rune grins again, and lifts his hand in a brief wave. As if right there, just for a second, he knew exactly who Ove was and what he was doing there.
Anita stops hesitantly. Turns around.
“They’ve been here from Social Services again, they want to take Rune away from me,” she says without looking up.
Her voice cracks like dry newspaper when she speaks her husband’s name. Ove fingers the corrugated iron.
“They say I’m not capable of taking care of him. With his illness and everything. They say he has to go into a home,” she says.
Ove continues fingering the corrugated iron.
“He’ll die if I put him in a home, Ove. You know that. . . .” she whispers.
Ove nods and looks at the remains of a cigarette butt, frozen into the crack between two paving stones. Out of the corner of his eye he notices how Anita is sort of leaning slightly to one side. Sonja explained about a year ago that it was the hip replacement operation, he remembers. Her hands shake as well, these days. “The first stage of multiple sclerosis,” Sonja had also explained. And a few years ago Rune got Alzheimer’s as well.
“Your lad can come and give you a hand, then,” he mumbles in a low voice.
Anita looks up. Looks into his eyes and smiles indulgently.
“Johan? Ah . . . he lives in America, you know. He’s got enough on his own plate. You know how young people are!”
Ove doesn’t answer. Anita says “America” as if it were the kingdom of heaven where her egotistical son has moved. Not once has Ove seen that brat here on the street since Rune sickened. Grown man now, but no time for his parents.
Anita jumps to attention, as if she’s caught herself doing something disreputable. She smiles apologetically at Ove.
“Sorry, Ove, I shouldn’t stand here taking up your time with my nattering.”
She goes back into the house. Ove stays where he is with the sheet of corrugated iron in his hand and the cat at his side. He mutters something to himself just before the door is closed. Anita turns around in surprise, peers out of the crack, and looks at him.
“Pardon me?”
Ove twists without meeting her eyes. Then he turns and starts to leave, while his words slip out of him involuntarily.
“I said if you have any more problems with those bloody radiators, you can come and ring my doorbell. The cat and me are at home.”
Anita’s furrowed face pulls itself into a surprised smile. She takes half a step out the door, as if she wants to say something more. Maybe something about Sonja, how deeply she misses her best friend. How she misses what they had, all four of them, when they first moved onto this street almost forty years ago. How she even misses the way Rune and Ove used to argue. But Ove has already disappeared around the corner.
Back in his toolshed, Ove fetches the spare battery for the Saab and two large metal clips. He lays out the sheet of corrugated iron across the paving stones between the shed and the house and carefully covers it with snow.
He stands next to the cat, evaluating his creation for a long time. A perfect dog trap, hidden under snow, bursting with electricity, ready to bite. It seems a wholly proportionate revenge. The next time Blond Weed passes by with that bloody mutt of hers and the latter gets the idea of peeing on Ove’s paving, it’ll do so onto an electrified, conductive metal plate. And then let’s see how amusing they find it, Ove thinks to himself.
The cat tilts its head and looks at the metal sheet.
“Like a bolt of lightning up your urethra,” says Ove.
The cat looks at him for a long time. As if to say: “You’re not serious, are you?” Eventually Ove sticks his hands in his pockets and shakes his head.
“No . . . no, I suppose not.” He sighs glumly.
And then he packs up the battery and clamps and corrugated iron and puts everything in the garage. Not because he doesn’t think those morons deserve a proper electric shock. Because they do. But because he knows it’s been a while since someone reminded him of the difference between being wicked because one has to be or because one can.
“It was a bloody good idea, though,” he concludes to the cat as they go back into the house.
The cat goes into the living room with the dismissive body language of someone mumbling: “Sure, sure it was. . . .”
And then they have lunch.
26
A MAN CALLED OVE AND A SOCIETY WHERE NO ONE CAN REPAIR A BICYCLE ANY MORE
Many people find it difficult living with someone who likes to be alone. It grates on those who can’t handle it themselves. But Sonja didn’t whine more than she had to. “I took you as you were,” she used to say.