There’s no modern pop song on the radio, Ove hears, when he comes back into the hall and picks up the rifle again. It’s the local news bulletin. So he stays where he is for a moment and listens. Not that it’s so important to listen to the local news when you’re about to shoot yourself in the head, but Ove thinks there’s no harm in keeping yourself updated. They talk about the weather. And the economy. And the traffic. And the importance of local property owners staying vigilant over the weekend because of a large number of burglary rings on the rampage all over town. “Bloody hooligans,” Ove mutters, and grips the rifle a little more firmly when he hears that.
From a purely objective point of view, the fact that Ove was wielding a gun was something two other hooligans, Adrian and Mirsad, would ideally have been aware of before they unconcernedly trotted up to Ove’s front door a few seconds later. They would then quite likely have understood that when Ove heard their creaking steps in the snow he would not immediately think to himself, Guests, how nice! but rather, Well, I’ll be damned! And they’d probably also know that Ove, wearing nothing but socks and underpants, with a three-quarter-century-old hunting rifle in his hands, would kick the door open like an aging, half-naked, suburban Rambo. And maybe then Adrian would not have screamed in a high-pitched voice that went right through every window on the street, nor would he have turned in panic and run into the toolshed, almost knocking himself unconscious.
It takes a few confused cries and a good deal of tumult before Mirsad has time to clarify his identity as that of a normal hooligan, not a burglar hooligan, and for Ove to come to grips with what is happening. Before then he has had time to wave his rifle at them, making Adrian scream like an air raid warning.
“Shush! You’ll wake the bloody cat!” Ove hisses angrily while Adrian reels backwards, a swelling as large as a medium-size pack of ravioli on his forehead.
“What in the name of God are you doing here?” he raves, the gun still firmly fixed on them. “It’s the middle of the bloody night!”
Mirsad is holding a big bag in his hand, which he gently drops into the snow. Adrian impulsively holds his hands up as if he’s about to be robbed, and almost loses his balance and falls into the snow again.
“It was Adrian’s idea,” Mirsad begins, looking down into the snow.
“Mirsad came out today, you know!” Adrian blurts out.
“What?”
“He . . . came out, you know. Told everyone he was . . .” says Adrian, but he seems slightly distracted, partly by the fact that a fuming old man in his underpants is pointing a gun at him, and partly because he is increasingly convinced that he’s sustained some sort of concussion.
Mirsad straightens up and nods at Ove with more determination.
“I told my dad I’m gay.”
Ove’s eyes grow slightly less threatening. But he doesn’t lower his rifle.
“My dad hates gays. He always said he’d kill himself if he found out that any of his children were gay,” Mirsad goes on.
After a moment’s silence he adds:
“He didn’t take it so well. You might say.”
“He throwed him out!” Adrian interjects.
“Threw,” Ove corrects.
Mirsad picks up his bag from the ground and nods anew at Ove.
“This was a stupid idea. We shouldn’t have disturbed—”
“Disturbed me with what?” Ove cuts him short.
Now that he’s standing here in his underpants in below-freezing temperatures, he might as well at least find out the reason why, it seems to him.
Mirsad takes a deep breath. As if he’s physically shoving his pride down his throat.
“Dad said I was sick and not welcome under his roof with my . . . ‘unnatural ways,’” he says, swallowing hard before he manages to spit out the word “unnatural.”
“Because you’re a bender?” Ove clarifies.
Mirsad nods.
“I don’t have any relatives here in town. I was going to stay the night at Adrian’s, but his mum’s new boyfriend is staying. . . .”
He goes quiet. Looks like he’s feeling very silly.
“It was an idiotic idea,” he says in a low voice and makes a move to turn around and leave.
Adrian, on the other hand, seems to be rediscovering a desire for discussion, and he stumbles eagerly through the snow towards Ove.
“What the hell, Ove! You’ve got a load of space in there! So we thought maybe he could crash here tonight?”
“Here? This is not a damned hotel!” says Ove, raising the rifle so that Adrian’s chest collides right into the barrel.
Adrian freezes. Mirsad takes two quick steps forward through the snow and puts his hand on the rifle.
“We had nowhere else to go, sorry,” he says in a low voice while gently turning the barrel away from Adrian.
Ove looks like he’s coming to his senses slightly. He lowers his weapon to the ground. When he almost imperceptibly takes a half step backwards into the hall, as if he’s only now become aware of the cold which envelops his not-so-well-dressed body, he notices, from the corner of his eye, the photo of Sonja on the wall. The red dress. The bus trip to Spain when she was pregnant. He asked her so many times to take that bloody photo down, but she refused. Said it was “a memory worth as much as any other.”
Obstinate woman.
So this should have been the day Ove finally died. Instead it became the evening before the morning when he woke with not only a cat but also a bent person living in his row house. Sonja would have liked it, most likely. She liked hotels.
33
A MAN CALLED OVE AND AN INSPECTION TOUR THAT IS NOT THE USUAL
Sometimes it is difficult to explain why some men suddenly do the things they do. Sometimes, of course, it’s because they know they’ll do them sooner or later anyway, and so they may as well just do them now. And sometimes it’s the pure opposite—because they realize they should have done them long ago. Ove has probably known all along what he has to do, but all people at root are time optimists. We always think there’s enough time to do things with other people. Time to say things to them. And then something happens and then we stand there holding on to words like “if.”
As he marches down the stairs the next morning, he stops in the hallway. It hasn’t smelled like this in the house since Sonja died. Watchfully he takes the last few steps down, lands on the parquet floor, and stands in the doorway of the kitchen, his body language that of a man who has just caught a thief red-handed.
“Is that you who’s been toasting bread?”
Mirsad nods anxiously.
“Yes . . . I hope that’s okay. Sorry. I mean, is it?”
Ove notices that he’s made coffee too. The cat is on the floor eating tuna. Ove nods, but doesn’t answer the question.
“Me and the cat have to go for a little walk around our road,” he clarifies instead.
“Can I come?” asks Mirsad quickly.
Ove looks at him a little as if Mirsad has stopped him in a pedestrian arcade, dressed up as a pirate, and asked him to guess under which of the three teacups he’s hidden the silver coin.
“Maybe I can help?” Mirsad continues eagerly.
Ove goes into the hall and shoves his feet into his clogs.
“It’s a free country,” he mutters as he opens the door and lets out the cat.
Mirsad interprets this as “Of course you can!” and quickly puts on his jacket and shoes and goes after Ove.