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

  She bites her lip and lets go of his hand. Takes a firm grip on the vase and clambers out of the car.

  “Damn it, darling! Don’t get annoyed again! I mean how long does this job last? How long will you be employed?”

  “Three weeks,” she forces herself to say.

  “And then? When those three weeks are over and you don’t have a job anymore? Will you be staying on in Borg as an unemployed person, then?”

  When she doesn’t answer he sighs and gets out of the car.

  “You do understand this is not your home, don’t you, darling?”

  She is walking away, but she knows he’s right.

  He breaks into a run and catches up with her. Takes the ceramic pot with the tulips from her, and carries them into the house. She walks slowly behind him.

  “I’m sorry, my darling,” he says, with his hands cupped softly around her face, as they stand there in the hall.

  She closes her eyes. He kisses her on the eyelids. He always used to do that, in the beginning, just after her mother had died. When she was at her loneliest in the world, until one day when he stood there on the landing in their apartment building, and then she was no longer at her loneliest. Because he needed her, and you are not alone when someone needs you. So she loves it when he kisses her eyelids.

  “I’m just a bit stressed. Because of the meeting tomorrow. But everything is going to be all right. I promise.”

  She wants to believe him. He grins and kisses her cheek and tells her not to worry. And that he will be picking her up tomorrow morning at six o’clock, so they don’t end up in the morning rush hour traffic.

  Then he scoffs: “But you never know, if all three cars in Borg are out at the same time it could get a bit crowded!” She smiles, as if that’s funny. Stands in the hall with the door closed until he drives away.

  Then she goes up the stairs and makes the bed. Puts her bags in order. Folds all the towels. Goes down the stairs again, out of the door, and walks through Borg. It’s dark and silent as if no one lives here, as if the soccer cup never even took place.

  But the lights are on in the pizzeria; she can hear Bank and Somebody laughing in there.

  There are other voices too. Clinking glasses. Songs about soccer, and other songs sung by Bank, the lyrics of which, certainly as far as Britt-Marie is concerned, do not bear repeating.

  She unlocks the recreation center and turns on the kitchen light. Sits on a stool and hopes the rat will turn up. It fails to do so. Then she sits with her cell phone held in her cupped hands, as if it was liquid and might otherwise be spilled. She waits for a long time before she can bring herself to make the call.

  The girl from the unemployment office answers on her third attempt.

  “Britt-Marie?” she manages to say, sounding drowsy.

  “I should like to hand in my notice,” Britt-Marie whispers.

  It sounds as if the girl is stumbling about and knocking something over at the other end of the line. A lamp, perhaps.

  “No, no, Mummy is just talking on the telephone, darling, go back to sleep, sweetie. . . .”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Sorry. I was talking to my daughter. We fell asleep on the sofa.”

  “I wasn’t aware you had a daughter.”

  “I have two,” the girl replies, and it sounds as if she walks into a kitchen and turns on a lamp and starts making coffee. “What time is it?”

  “Hardly a good time to be drinking coffee,” answers Britt-Marie.

  “What can I do for you, Britt-Marie?”

  “I should like to hand in my notice. I need to . . . come home,” whispers Britt-Marie.

  “How did the soccer cup go?” the girl asks after a long silence.

  Something about that question impacts Britt-Marie. It may be the case that after Ben’s goal she really did come back to earth as a different human being. She doesn’t know. But she takes a deep breath and tells the girl everything.

  About communities situated by main roads and rats and people who wear their caps indoors. About boys’ first dates and jerseys hung up on pizzeria walls. It all pours out of her. About Faxin and bamboo screens, beer bottles presented in cellophane, and IKEA furniture. Pistols and crossword supplements. Policemen and entrepreneurs. Doing the Idiot in the beam of a truck’s headlights. Blue doors and old soccer matches. Purple tulips and whiskey and cigarettes and dead mothers. Flu. Soft-drink cans. 1–0 against the team from the town. A girl who covers a shot with her face. The universe.

  “I suppose this must all sound very . . . silly,” she concludes.

  The girl at the other end of the line can’t quite keep her voice steady as she replies:

  “Have I told you why I work here, Britt-Marie? I don’t know if you know this, but you’re at the receiving end of an unbelievable amount of crap when you work at the unemployment office. People can be incredibly mean. And when I say ‘crap,’ Britt-Marie, you should know that I really do mean that quite literally. One time, someone sent me some shit in an envelope. As if it’s my fault that there’s a financial crisis, sort of thing?”

  Britt-Marie coughs.

  “Might one ask how on earth they got it into the envelope?”

  “The shit?”

  “It must have been quite hard to . . . aim.”

  The girl laughs loudly for several minutes. Britt-Marie is pleased about losing her voice, because it means the girl can’t hear that she’s also laughing. It may not be the universe, maybe not so, but the emotion levitates her slightly off the stool.

  “Do you know why I work when there’s all this crap, Britt-Marie?”

  “Why?”

  “My mother worked for the social services all her life. She always said that in the middle of all the crap, in the thick of it all, you always had a sunny story turning up. Which makes it all worthwhile.” The next words that come are smiling:

  “You’re my sunny story, Britt-Marie.”

  Britt-Marie swallows.

  “It’s inappropriate to talk on the telephone in the middle of the night. I should like to contact you again tomorrow.”

  “Sleep well, Britt-Marie,” says the girl softly.

  “You too.”

  Britt-Marie sits on the stool with the palms of her hands cupped around the telephone.

  She catches herself wishing so fervently for the rat to turn up that when there’s a knock on the door, she thinks it finally has. Then she comes to her senses and realizes that rats can’t knock on doors, because they don’t have knuckles. At least she thinks they don’t.

  “Anyone home?” Sami calls out from the door.

  Britt-Marie flies off her stool.

  “Did something happen? Has there been an accident?”

  He stands calmly leaning against the doorpost.

  “No. Why?”

  “It’s the middle of the night, Sami. Surely one doesn’t just show up unannounced at people’s homes like some vacuum cleaner salesman unless something has happened!”

  “Do you live here?” asks Sami, with a grin.

  “You must surely understand what I mean—”

  “Chill, Britt-Marie. I was driving past and I saw your lights were on. Wanted to see if you fancied a cigarette. Or a drink.” He laughs at her expense.

  She doesn’t appreciate that at all.

  “Certainly not,” she hisses.

  “Okay, cool,” he laughs.

  She adjusts her skirt.

  “But if you’ll make do with a Snickers instead you can come in.”

  They each take a stool by the kitchen window. Look at the stars through the cleanest windows in Borg.

  “It was nice today,” says Sami.

  “Yes. It was . . . nice.” She smiles.

  She wants to tell him she has to leave Borg first thing tomorrow and go home, but before she has time to open her mouth he says:

  “Right, I have to go into town. I have to help a friend.”

  “What sort of friend is that? It’s the middle
of the night.”

  “Magnus. He’s having problems with a few guys there. Owes them money, you know.”

  Britt-Marie stares at him. He nods. Smiles ironically at himself.

  “I know what you’re thinking. But this is Borg. We forgive each other in Borg. We don’t have a choice. If we didn’t there wouldn’t be any friends left to get pissed off at.”

  She stands up. Gently takes his plate. Hesitates for a long time, then at long last tenderly lays her bandaged hand against his cheek.

  “You don’t always have to be the one who steps in, Sami.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  She washes up. He stands next to her, drying the plates.

  “If something happens to me can you promise you’ll look out for Omar and Vega and make sure they’re all right? Can you promise me you’ll find good people to look after them?”

  “Why would something happen to you?” she asks, the color draining from her face.

  “Ah, nothing is going to happen to me, I’m fucking Superman. But you know. If something does happen. Will you make sure they can live with some good people?”

  She elaborately dries her hands on the towel, so he won’t notice that they are shaking.

  “Why are you asking me? Why don’t you ask Sven or Bank or . . .”

  “Because you’re not the type to walk out, Britt-Marie.”

  “Neither are you!”

  He places himself on the threshold and lights a cigarette. She stands to one side behind him, breathing in the smoke.

  The sun hasn’t come up yet. She picks a hair off the arm of his jacket. Puts it in a handkerchief and folds it up.

  “What soccer team did your mother support?” she asks quietly.

  He grins, as if it’s quite obvious, and answers the question as all sons with mothers do:

  “Our team.”

  He drives her to Bank’s house. Kisses her hair. She sits on the balcony with her packed bags and watches him driving off towards town. He has made her promise that she won’t sit up all night waiting for his car to come back.

  But she does it anyway.

  33

  I should like you to know that I’ve handed in my notice. I have to go home, you understand.”

  Britt-Marie fiddles with the bandage around her ring finger.

  “Admittedly I can perfectly understand that you don’t understand. But I belong with Kent. A person has to have a home. Obviously I don’t mean to say that you also have to have a home. I’m not sticking my nose into that. I’m quite sure you have a perfectly adequate home.”

  The rat sits on the floor, looking at the plate in front of it as if the plate had stepped on its tail and called it a blithering idiot.

  “I ran out of Snickers,” Britt-Marie says apologetically.

  The rat looks at the jars on the plate.

  “That one is peanut butter. And this is something known as Nutella,” she says proudly. “They’d run out of Snickers in the grocery, but I’ve been informed that in all important respects this is the same thing.”

  It’s still the middle of the night. Somebody was not at all pleased about being woken up, but Britt-Marie couldn’t bring herself to sit on her own with her bags on Bank’s balcony. Couldn’t bear it. So she came back here, to say good-bye. To both the rat and the village.

  Britt-Marie stands by the window. It’ll soon be dawn. Somebody has turned out the lights in the pizzeria and gone to bed again, in the hope that Britt-Marie won’t be banging on her door because she needs peanut butter and chocolate. The party is long since over. The road lies deserted. Britt-Marie rubs her wedding ring with a potato smeared with baking soda, because that is the best way to clean wedding rings. She often does that with Kent’s wedding ring; he often leaves it on his bedside table. He’s often so distracted, Kent is, whenever he’s about to meet with the Germans.

  Britt-Marie usually cleans the ring until it gleams, so he won’t be able to avoid noticing it when he gets out of bed the next morning.

  This is the first time she has cleaned her own ring. The first time she has not worn it on her finger. She whispers, without looking at the rat:

  “Kent needs me. A person needs to be needed, you have to understand.”

  She doesn’t know if rats sit awake in their kitchens at night, thinking about how they are going about their lives. Or who they are going about their lives with.

  “Sami told me I’m not the type to clear off, but you have to understand that that is most certainly exactly what I am. Whichever way I turn, I’m leaving someone behind. So the only thing that’s right must be to blasted well stay where you belong. In your normal life.”

  Britt-Marie tries to sound sure of herself. The rat licks its feet. Makes a little semi-loop on the napkin. Then dashes out of the door.

  Britt-Marie doesn’t know if it thinks she talks too much. Doesn’t know why it keeps coming here. The supply of Snickers, obviously, but she hopes there’s something more to it. She takes the plate and puts plastic wrap over the remains of the peanut butter and Nutella, then puts everything in the fridge out of an old habit, because she’s not one to throw away food. She wipes her wedding ring carefully and folds it in a piece of paper towel before tucking it into her jacket pocket. It’ll be nice to take off the bandage and put the ring back on her finger. Like getting into her own bed after a long journey.

  A normal life—she has never wanted anything but a normal life. She could have made other choices, she tells herself, but she chose Kent. A human being may not choose her circumstances, but she does choose her actions, she insists quietly to herself. Sami was right. She’s not the kind that clears off. So she must go home, where she is needed.

  She sits on the stool in the kitchen, staring at the wall and waiting for a black car. It does not come. She wonders if Sami thinks about how one should live one’s life, if he has ever had that luxury. A human being can’t choose his circumstances, admittedly, but in Sami’s life there have been more circumstances than events. She asks herself if choices or circumstances make us the sort of people we become—or what it was that made Sami the sort of person who steps in. She wonders what takes the most out of a person: to be the kind that jumps, or the kind that doesn’t?

  She wonders how much space a person has left in her soul to change herself, once she gets older. What people does she still have to meet, what will they see in her, and what will they make her see in herself?

  Sami went to town to protect someone who doesn’t deserve it, and Britt-Marie is getting ready to go home for the same reason. Because if we don’t forgive those we love, then what is left? What is love if it’s not loving our lovers even when they don’t deserve it?

  The headlights from the road give off a sudden gleam, slowly reach out of the darkness like arms in the water, passing the “Welcome to Borg” sign.

  They slow down by the bus stop. Turn off into the graveled parking area. Britt-Marie is already standing in the doorway.

  Later, when people speak of it, it will be said that a few young men found Magnus in the early hours of morning, standing outside a bar. One of them was holding a knife. Another man stepped in between them. He was the kind that always steps in.

  The car stops gently on the gravel. Makes a little warm sigh as the engine is turned off. The headlights are switched off at the same time as the pizzeria lights are turned on. In certain types of communities people always know what it means when cars stop outside their windows before dawn. People know it is never because something good has happened. Somebody comes rolling onto the porch; her wheelchair stops at once when she sees the police uniform.

  Sven stands with his cap in both hands and his bottom lip full of teeth marks, caused by his attempt to hold it all in. Despair, which has run down his cheeks and caused red lines, speaks volumes about just how futile his attempt has been.

  Britt-Marie yells out. Falls to the ground. And lies there under the weight of another human being, who no longer exists.

  34


  This is no slow grief. It does not emerge at the tail end of denial, anger, negotiation, depression, or acceptance. It flares up at once, like an all-consuming fire within her, a fire that takes all the oxygen from the air until she’s lying on the ground, lashing at the gravel and panting for air. Her body tries to twist into itself, as if there’s no spine, as if it is desperately trying to quench the flames inside.

  Death is the ultimate state of powerlessness. Powerlessness is the ultimate despair.

  Britt-Marie doesn’t know how she gets back on her feet. How Sven gets her into the car. He must have carried her. They find Vega halfway between the flat and the recreation center, and she’s lying in the gravel. Her hair is plastered to her skin, her words come out in stuttered gurgles, as if tears have filled her lungs. As if the girl is drowning from the inside.

  “Omar. We have to find Omar. He’ll kill them.”

  Britt-Marie doesn’t know if, sitting there in the backseat, she’s holding Vega so tightly herself, or if, in fact, it’s the other way around.

  Around them, the dawn gently wakes Borg like someone breathing into the ear of someone they love. With sun and promises. Tickling light falls over warm duvets, like the smell of freshly brewed coffee and toasted bread. It shouldn’t be doing this. It’s the wrong day to be beautiful, but the dawn doesn’t care.

  The police car hurtles along in these first few moments of morning, the only thing moving on the road. Sven’s fingers are curled so hard around the steering wheel it must surely be hurting him. As if he has to keep the pain in some place. He speeds up when he sees the other car. The only car that has any reason to leave Borg at this time of morning. The only brother left for Vega to save.

  Every death is unjust. Everyone who mourns seeks someone to blame. Our fury is almost always met by the merciless insight that no one bears responsibility for death. But what if someone was responsible? And what if you knew who had snatched away the person you love? What would you do? Which car would you be sitting in, and what would you be holding in your hands?