“Renault? Renault? That’s bloody FRENCH! You can’t bloody well go and buy a FRENCH car!!!”
The youth seems just about to say something but he doesn’t get the chance before Ove shakes his whole upper body as if trying to get rid of a persistent wasp.
“Christ, you puppy! Don’t you know anything about cars?”
The youth shakes his head. Ove sighs deeply and puts his hand on his forehead as if he’s been struck by a sudden migraine.
“And how are you going to get the bicycle to the café if you don’t have a car?” he says at long last, visibly struggling to regain his composure.
“I hadn’t . . . thought about that,” says the youth.
Ove shakes his head.
“Renault? Christ almighty. . . .”
The youth nods. Ove rubs his eyes in frustration.
“Where’s this sodding café you work at, then?” he mutters.
Twenty minutes later, Parvaneh opens her front door in surprise. Ove is standing outside, thoughtfully striking his hand with a paper baton.
“Have you got one of those green signs?”
“What?”
“You have to have one of those green signs when you’re a student driver. Do you have one or not?”
She nods.
“Yeah . . . yes, I have, but wh—”
“I’ll come and pick you up in two hours. We’ll take my car.”
Ove turns around and tramps back across the little road without waiting for an answer.
27
A MAN CALLED OVE AND A DRIVING LESSON
It happened now and then in the almost forty years they lived in the row of row houses that some thoughtless and recently moved-in neighbor was bold enough to ask Sonja what the real cause was for the deep animosity between Ove and Rune. Why had two men who had once been friends suddenly started hating one another with such overpowering intensity?
Sonja usually answered that it was quite straightforward. It was simply about how when the two men and their wives moved into their houses, Ove drove a Saab 96 and Rune a Volvo 244. A year or so later Ove bought a Saab 95 and Rune bought a Volvo 245. Three years later Ove bought a Saab 900 and Rune bought a Volvo 265. In the decades that followed, Ove bought another two Saab 900s and then a Saab 9000. Rune bought another Volvo 265 and then a Volvo 745, but a few years later he went back to a sedan model and acquired a Volvo 740. Whereupon Ove bought yet one more Saab 9000 and Rune eventually went over to a Volvo 760, after which Ove got himself a Saab 9000i and Rune part-exchanged to a Volvo 760 Turbo.
And then the day came when Ove went to the car dealer to look at the recently launched Saab 9-3, and when he came home in the evening, Rune had bought a BMW.
“A BMW!” Ove had roared at Sonja. “How can you reason with a human being like that? How?”
And possibly it was not the entire explanation for why these two men loathed one another, Sonja used to explain. Either you understood it or you didn’t. And if you didn’t understand, there was no point even trying to clarify the rest.
Most people never did understand, Ove often commented. But then people had no idea of loyalty these days. The car was just “a means of transport” and the road just a complication arising between two points. Ove is convinced this is why the roads are as bad as they are. If people were a little more careful with their cars they wouldn’t drive like idiots, he thinks, watching with concern as Parvaneh pushes away the newspaper he has spread across her seat. She has to retract the driver’s seat as far as it’ll go, so she can maneuver her pregnant belly into the car, then bring it forward all the way so she can reach the wheel.
The driving lesson doesn’t start so well. Or, to be precise, it begins with Parvaneh trying to get into the Saab with a bottle of carbonated juice in her hand. She shouldn’t have done that. Then she tries to fiddle with Ove’s radio to find “a more entertaining station.” She shouldn’t have done that either.
Ove picks up the newspaper from the floor, rolls it up, and starts nervously striking it against his hand, like a more aggressive version of a stress ball. She grabs the wheel and looks at the instruments like a curious child.
“Where do we start?” she yells eagerly, after at long last agreeing to hand over the juice.
Ove sighs. The cat sits in the backseat and looks as if it wished, with intensity, that cats knew how to strap on safety belts.
“Press the clutch pedal,” says Ove, slightly grim.
Parvaneh looks around her seat as if searching for something. Then she looks at Ove and smiles ingratiatingly.
“Which one’s the clutch?”
Ove’s face fills with disbelief.
She looks around the seat again, turns toward the seat belt fixture in the back rest, as if she may find the clutch there. Ove holds his forehead. Parvaneh’s facial expression immediately sours.
“I told you I want a driver’s license for an automatic! Why did you make me use your car?”
“Because you’re getting a proper license!” Ove cuts her short, emphasizing “proper” in a way that makes it plain that a license for an automatic is as much a “proper driver’s license” as a car with an automatic gearbox is a “proper car.”
“Stop shouting at me!” shouts Parvaneh.
“I’m not shouting!” Ove shouts back.
The cat curls up in the backseat, clearly anxious not to end up in the middle of this, whatever it is. Parvaneh crosses her arms and glares out of the side window. Ove strikes his paper baton rhythmically into the palm of his hand.
“The pedal on the far left is the clutch,” he grunts in the end.
After taking a breath so deep that he has to stop halfway for a rest before he inhales again, he continues:
“The one in the middle is the brake. On the far right is the accelerator. You release the clutch slowly until you find the point where it engages, then give it a bit of gas, release the clutch, and move off.”
Parvaneh seems to accept this as an apology. She nods and calms down. Takes hold of the steering wheel, starts the car, and follows his instructions. The Saab lurches forward with a little jump, then pauses before catapulting itself with a loud roar towards the guest parking and very nearly crashing into another car. Ove tugs at the hand brake. Parvaneh lets go of the steering wheel and yells in panic, covering her eyes with her hands until the Saab finally comes to an abrupt stop. Ove is puffing as if he’d had to make his way to the hand brake by forcing himself through a military obstacle course. His facial muscles twitch like a man whose eyes are being sprayed with lemon juice.
“What do I do now?!” roars Parvaneh when she realizes that the Saab is an inch from the taillights of the car in front.
“Reverse. You put it in reverse,” Ove manages to say through his teeth.
“I almost smashed into that car!” pants Parvaneh.
Ove peers over the edge of the hood. And then, suddenly, a sort of calm comes over his face. He turns and nods at her, very matter-of-fact.
“Doesn’t matter. It’s a Volvo.”
It takes them fifteen minutes to get out of the parking area and onto the main road. Once they’re there, Parvaneh revs the first gear until the Saab vibrates like it’s about to explode. Ove tells her to change gear and she replies that she doesn’t know how. Meanwhile the cat seems to be trying to open the back door.
When they get to the first red light, a big black SUV with two shaven-headed young men in the front pulls up so close to their rear bumper that Ove is pretty sure he’ll have their license number etched into his paintwork when they get home. Parvaneh glances nervously in the mirror. The SUV revs its engine, as if giving vent to some sort of opinion. Ove turns and looks out the back window. The two men have tattoos all over their throats, he notes. As if the SUV is not a clear enough advertisement for their stupidity.