The Fredrik Backman Collection: A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, and Britt-Marie Was Here

by Fredrik Backman

  The truck thunders by, so close that her heart can’t tell whether it’s been run over or not, in a rain of hard lumps of mud gouged out of the road surface. Britt-Marie takes a few tottering steps; her coat is wet and dirty, and there’s a howling in her ears. Maybe a single second passes and maybe a hundred. She blinks at the headlights with a growing awareness that the howling is not coming from inside. There’s actually a car sounding its horn. She hears someone yelling. She holds up her hand to shield her eyes from the headlights of the BMW. Fredrik, the man who came to the café earlier, is standing in front of her, shouting furiously.

  “Are you bloody senile or what, you old bat?! What are you doing walking in the middle of the fucking road! I almost killed you!”

  The way he puts it, it’s as if her death would have been an inconvenience to him more than anyone else. She doesn’t know what to say. Her heart is racing so frantically that it’s giving her a stitch. Fredrik throws out his arms.

  “Can you hear what I’m saying or are you a spastic?”

  He takes two steps towards her. She doesn’t know why. Looking back on it, she’s unsure whether he was intending to hit her, but neither of them ever find out because he’s interrupted by another voice. A different kind of voice. Cold.

  “Problem?”

  Fredrik turns around first, so that Britt-Marie has time to see his eyes register the danger before she has time to see what he’s worried about. He swallows.

  “No . . . she was wal—”

  Sami is standing a few feet away, with his hands in his pockets. He is twenty years old at most, but judging by the suffocating grip of his presence in the darkness, you might describe him as a “spirit of violence.” Britt-Marie wonders whether in a crossword this might be rendered as “God of aggression.” Vertical, fifteen letters. People have time to think of all sorts of things while they face up to what they imagine is their imminent violent death, and this happens to be the first thing that comes to Britt-Marie’s mind. Fredrik stutters indecipherably. Sami says nothing. Another young man is moving up behind him. He’s taller. It’s not at all difficult to guess why he’s known as Psycho. His mouth is grinning, but it’s not so much a grin as a display of teeth.

  Britt-Marie has heard tell of this sort of thing on the natural history programs Kent used to watch when there was no soccer on the TV. Human beings are the only animals that smile as a gesture of peace, whereas other animals show their teeth as a threat. This is perfectly understandable now; she can see the animal inside the human being.

  Psycho’s smile grows wider. Sami doesn’t take his hands out of his pockets. Doesn’t even raise his voice.

  “Don’t you touch her,” he says, nodding towards Britt-Marie while keeping his gaze fixed on Fredrik.

  Fredrik totters back to his BMW. His self-confidence seems to grow with every step he takes towards it, as if the car is giving him superpowers. But he waits until he’s standing right by the door before he hisses:

  “Spastic! This whole bloody place is completely spastic!”

  Psycho takes half a step forward. The BMW does a wheelspin in the mud and gravel and makes its escape in the rain. Britt-Marie has time to see the boy in the passenger seat, the one who’s the same age as Ben and Vega and Omar, but taller and more grown up. Wearing the tracksuit top on which it says HOCKEY. He looks scared.

  Psycho looks at Britt-Marie. Displays his teeth. Britt-Marie turns around and does her absolute best to walk briskly without breaking into a run, because in the natural history programs they always say you shouldn’t try to run away from wild animals. She hears Sami calling out behind her, without anger or menace, in fact almost softly:

  “See you around, Coach!”

  She’s three hundred feet away when she finally has the courage to stop and catch her breath. When she turns around the two men have gone back to a group of other young men on a patch of asphalt between some apartment blocks and a cluster of trees. The black car is there, with its engine running and the headlights on. The young men are moving about in the beams of light. Sami yells something and surges forward, kicking his right leg into the air. Then he punches his fists up and cheers loudly at the sky.

  It takes Britt-Marie a minute to understand what they are doing.

  They’re playing soccer.

  Playing.

  The temperature drops below freezing in the night. Rain turns to snow.

  Britt-Marie stands on the balcony watching all this happening. She finds herself spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about sushi and how you make it.

  She cleans the mattress. Hangs up her coat. When she hears Bank coming back and closing the door downstairs, she paces around the room three times and thumps her feet as hard against the floor as she can. Just to clarify that she’s there. Then she sleeps the dreamless sleep of exhaustion, because she couldn’t even begin to say whose dreams she might have.

  The sun is already up when she wakes. She almost falls out of bed when she realizes. Waking up long after the late-rising January sun! What will people think? Still half asleep, she’s making her way to her clothes when she realizes why she’s woken up. Someone is knocking on the door. The whole thing is terribly vexatious, actually, waking up at an hour when people are actually quite entitled to knock on your door.

  She fixes her hair as quickly as she can, then stumbles down almost the entire length of the stairs, very nearly breaking her neck. It’s the sort of thing that happens every few minutes—people falling down stairs and killing themselves. She just about manages to land on her two feet at the bottom, in the hall, and then sets about gathering her wits. After a certain amount of hesitation she rushes into the kitchen, which is obviously as dirty as you can possibly imagine, and then looks in all the drawers until she finds an apron.

  She puts this on.

  “Ha?” she says with raised eyebrows when she opens the door.

  She adjusts her apron, as you do when you are interrupted by someone knocking at your door while you are busy with the washing-up. Vega and Omar are standing there.

  “What are you doing?” asks Vega.

  “I’m busy,” Britt-Marie answers.

  “Were you asleep?” asks Omar.

  “Certainly not!” Britt-Marie protests, while adjusting both her hair and her apron.

  “We heard you coming down the stairs,” says Vega.

  “That’s not a crime, is it?”

  “Cool it, will you? We only asked if you were asleep!”

  Britt-Marie clasps her hands together.

  “It’s possible that I may have overslept. It’s not something that happens often.”

  “Did you have something you had to get up for?” asks Omar.

  Britt-Marie doesn’t have a convincing answer to that one. There’s a silence for a few moments, until Vega’s patience runs out and she gets to the point with a frustrated groan:

  “We were wondering if you wanted to eat with us tonight.”

  Omar nods energetically.

  “And then we’re wondering if you want to be our new coach, for our team!”

  Then Omar shrieks, “Ouch!” and Vega hisses, “Idiot!” and tries to kick him again on the shin, but this time he gets out of the way.

  “We wanted to invite you for dinner so we could ask you to be our coach. Sort of like when they offer a contract in proper soccer teams,” says Vega sourly.

  “I’m not particularly taken with soccer,” says Britt-Marie as politely as she can, which quite possibly is not very politely at all.

  “You don’t need to do anything, all you have to do is sign a bloody form and come to our bloody training sessions!” protests Vega.

  “There’s this wicked knockout competition in town. The council is organizing it, and any team can take part, but you have to have a coach.”

  “There has to be someone else in Borg you could give this assignment to,” says Britt-Marie and starts backing away into the hall.

  “No one else has time,” says Vega. />
  “But we were thinking you don’t have anything to do, sort of thing!” says Omar with a cheerful nod.

  Britt-Marie pauses and looks thoroughly offended.

  Adjusts her apron.

  “I’ll have you know I have a great deal to do.”

  “Like what?”

  “I have a list!”

  “But I mean, God, this will hardly take anytime at all. You only have to be there when we’re training in case one of the competition organizers comes by! So they can see we have a sodding coach!” Vega groans.

  “We’re training at six this evening in the parking area by the recreation center,” says Omar with a nod.

  “But I don’t know anything about soccer!”

  “Nor does Omar, but we still let him play with us,” says Vega.

  “You bloody what?!” Omar exclaims.

  Vega, apparently losing her patience, shakes her head at Britt-Marie.

  “Never bloody mind, then! We thought you had it in you to be decent about it. This is Borg, so it’s not like there are so many other bloody adults to choose from. You’re the only one.”

  Britt-Marie has nothing to say to that. Vega starts going down the steps and makes an irritated gesture at Omar to come with her. Britt-Marie stays in the doorway, keeping her hands clasped together while opening and closing her mouth repeatedly, until at long last she calls out:

  “I can’t at six o’clock!”

  Vega turns around. Britt-Marie stares at her apron.

  “Civilized people have their dinner at six. You actually can’t play soccer in the middle of your dinner.”

  Vega shrugs. As if it doesn’t make any difference.

  “Okay. Come over to ours and have dinner at six, then, and we’ll train afterwards.”

  “We’re having tacos!” says Omar, nodding with great satisfaction.

  “What’s tacos?”

  The children stare at her.

  “Tacos,” says Omar, as if the problem could only have been that she didn’t hear him properly.

  “I don’t eat foreign food,” says Britt-Marie, even though what she really means is, “Kent doesn’t eat foreign food.”

  Vega shrugs her shoulders again.

  “If you don’t eat the tortillas it’s like having salad.”

  “We live in one of the high-rises, block two, second floor,” says Omar and points down the road.

  Of course it’s not there and then that Britt-Marie becomes the coach of a soccer team. It’s just the point at which someone tells her that’s what she’s become.

  She closes the door. Removes her apron. Puts it back in the drawer. Then cleans the kitchen, because she doesn’t know how not to. Then she goes upstairs and fetches her cell phone. The girl at the unemployment office picks up after a single ring.

  “Do you know anything about soccer?”

  “Is that Britt-Marie?” asks the girl, although she should have learned by now.

  “I need to know how one trains a soccer team,” Britt-Marie informs her. “Do you need a permit from the local authority for that type of thing?”

  “No . . . or what I mean is . . . what do you mean?” says the girl.

  Britt-Marie exhales. But does not sigh.

  “My dear, if for example you want to have your balcony glazed, you need a permit. I’m assuming the same thing applies to soccer teams. Surely they’re not beyond the rule of law just because the players run about kicking things all over the place?”

  “No . . . I’ve . . . or, I mean I assume their parents have to sign some letter to say they’re allowed to play in the team,” says the girl dubiously.

  Britt-Marie makes a note of that on her list. Nods soberly to herself and asks:

  “Ha. So can I ask, what’s the first thing you have to do at soccer practice?”

  “I’d say . . . but I don’t know . . . the first thing you do at training . . . I mean, is to take the register?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You have a register. You tick off the people who are there,” says the girl.

  “A list?”

  “Yes . . . ?”

  Britt-Marie has already hung up.

  She may not know a lot about soccer, but even the gods know that no one is more skilled at lists than Britt-Marie.

  16

  Dino opens the door. He laughs when he sees Britt-Marie, who assumes she has pressed the wrong doorbell, but in fact it turns out Dino always has his dinner with Vega and Omar, and Dino isn’t necessarily laughing at her. Apparently, in spite of her first impressions, that is how things are done in Borg. People seem to have their dinners at other people’s homes just like that, and then go around laughing as if they hadn’t a care in the world. Omar comes running into the hall and points at Britt-Marie.

  “Take off your shoes. Sami gets really pissed off otherwise because he just mopped the floor!”

  “I do not get pissed off!” comes a voice from the kitchen, sounding fairly pissed off.

  “He’s always in a foul one when it’s our cleaning day,” explains Omar to Britt-Marie.

  “Maybe I wouldn’t be in a foul one if we had a fucking cleaning day, but it’s always me who has a fucking cleaning day in this place. Every day!” yells Sami from the kitchen.

  Omar nods meaningfully at Britt-Marie.

  “You see. Pissed off.”

  Vega turns up in the doorway with a slumped upper-body posture, waving an invisible bottle of spirits, in imitation of Somebody.

  “You know, Britt-Marie, Sami he has, what’s-it-called? Citrus fruit up the anus, huh?”

  Dino and Omar laugh until they are hyperventilating. Britt-Marie responds with a brisk series of polite nods, because this is as close as she gets to laughing out loud. She removes her shoes, goes into the kitchen, and nods cautiously at Sami. He points at a chair.

  “The food is ready,” he says and removes his apron, before immediately roaring towards the hall:

  “Grub’s up!”

  Britt-Marie checks her watch. It’s exactly six o’clock.

  “Are we waiting for your parents?” she asks considerately.

  “They’re not here,” says Sami and starts putting coasters on the table.

  “I suppose they’re delayed coming home from work,” Britt-Marie says pleasantly.

  “Mum drives a truck. Abroad. She’s not home much,” says Sami curtly, putting glasses and bowls on the coasters.

  “And your father?”

  “He cleared off.”

  “Cleared off?”

  “That’s right. When I was small. Omar and Vega were just born. I guess he couldn’t take it. So we don’t talk about him in this home. Mum took care of us. The food’s ready now so come here before I fucking beat the hell out of you!”

  Vega, Omar, and Dino saunter into the kitchen and start devouring their food, hardly stopping to chew it; it might as well have been liquidized and served up with straws.

  “But who takes care of you now, then, when your mother’s not here?” asks Britt-Marie.

  “We take care of us,” says Sami, offended.

  She doesn’t know exactly what common conversational practice is after that, so she gets out the carton of cigarettes with the foreign letters on it.

  “Of course I usually bring flowers when I’m invited for dinner, but there’s no florist in Borg. I’ve noticed you like cigarettes. I suppose cigarettes must be like flowers for someone who likes cigarettes,” she explains, as if to defend herself.

  Sami takes the carton of cigarettes. He looks almost emotional. Britt-Marie sits in a spare seat and clears her throat.

  “You’re not afraid of cancer, I suppose?”

  “There are worse things to be afraid of,” says Sami with a smile.

  “Ha,” says Britt-Marie, and picks up something from her plate that she has to assume is a taco.

  Omar and Vega start talking at the same time. Mostly about soccer, as far as Britt-Marie can make out. Dino says almost nothing, but he laughs t
he whole time. Britt-Marie doesn’t understand what he’s laughing at. He and Omar don’t even need to say anything before they burst out laughing, all they have to do is look at each other. Children are unfathomable that way.

  Sami points at Omar with his fork.

  “How many times do I have to tell you, Omar? Take your fucking elbows off the fucking table!”

  Omar rolls his eyes. Removes his elbows.

  “I don’t get why you can’t have your elbows on the table. What difference does it make?”

  Britt-Marie observes him intensely.

  “It makes a difference, Omar, because we’re not animals,” she explains.

  Sami looks at Britt-Marie appreciatively. Omar looks at them both with puzzlement.

  “Animals don’t have elbows,” he objects.

  “Eat your fucking food,” says Sami.

  When Omar and Dino are done, they stand up and run into another room, still laughing. Vega puts her plate on the dish rack and looks as if she’s expecting a diploma for effort. After that she also runs off.

  “You could say thanks for the food,” Sami calls out after them, pissed off.

  “Thanks for the food!” the children roar from an indefinable part of the flat.

  Sami stands up and clatters demonstratively with the plates in the sink. Then he looks at Britt-Marie.

  “Right. So you didn’t like the food, then?”

  “Excuse me?” says Britt-Marie.

  Sami shakes his head, says something to himself punctuated by several “fucking” references, then snatches up the carton of cigarettes and disappears onto the balcony.

  Britt-Marie stays in the kitchen on her own. Eats what she is almost sure must be tacos. They taste less odd than she expected. She stands up, puts what’s left of the food into the fridge, washes up and dries the plates and cutlery, and opens the cutlery drawer. Leans over it, catches her breath. Forks-knives-spoons. In the right order.