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 police car roars past and cuts off the other car. Sven’s feet hit the asphalt before any of them have even come to a stop. For an eternity he stands there in the road, alone, his face streaked with red lines and his lip buckled with bite marks. Finally a car door opens and Omar steps out. A man’s eyes in the body of a boy. Is this the end of a childhood?

  It’s the sort of night that can’t be undone in a person.

  “What, Sven? What are you going to tell me? That I have too much to lose? What the fuck do I have to lose?”

  Sven holds out his palms. His eyes flicker towards what Omar is holding in his hands. His voice hardly makes itself heard.

  “Tell me where it ends, Omar. When you’ve killed them, and they’ve killed you. Tell me where it ends after that.”

  Omar just stands there dumbly, as if he also has to focus his pain somewhere. Two young men in the back of the car open the doors, but they don’t get out, merely sit there waiting for Omar to make a choice. Britt-Marie recognizes them. They play soccer with Sami and Magnus in the glare of headlights from Sami’s black car . . . how long ago did they last play? Days? Weeks? A whole lifetime ago. They are almost boys.

  Death is powerlessness. Powerlessness is desperation. Desperate people choose desperate measures. Britt-Marie’s hair moves in the draft when the door of the police car opens and Vega steps out. She looks at her brother. He’s on his knees now. She keeps his head pressed against her throat and whispers:

  “Where would Sami have stood?”

  When he doesn’t immediately answer she repeats:

  “Where. Would. Sami. Have stood?”

  “Between us,” he pants.

  The two young men give Sven one last look. At another time, perhaps, they could have been stopped. One day it may be possible to stop them again. But not tonight.

  The car leaves Britt-Marie, Sven, and two children in the road.

  Dawn rises over them.

  The police car slowly drives back through Borg, exits on the other side, continues down a gravel track. Keeps driving forever, until Britt-Marie no longer knows if she has fallen asleep or just gone numb. They stop by a lake.

  Britt-Marie wraps the pistol in every handkerchief she’s got in her bag, she doesn’t know why, perhaps mainly because she doesn’t want the girl to get dirty. Vega insists she’s got to be the one that does it. She gets out and throws it as hard as she can into the lake.

  Britt-Marie doesn’t know how the hours turn into days, or how many of them pass by. By night, she sleeps between the children in Sami’s bed. The beating of their hearts in her hands. She stays there for several nights. It is not something she plans, no decision has been made, she just stays there. One dawn after another seems to merge with dusk. Looking back, she has a vague memory of having spoken to Kent on the telephone, but she can’t remember what was said. She thinks she may have asked him to arrange some practical things, possibly she asks him to make some telephone calls, he’s good at those things. Everyone says Kent is good at those things.

  One afternoon, she’s unsure when it is, Sven comes to the apartment. He has brought a young woman with him from the social services. She is warm and pleasant. Sven’s neck doesn’t seem capable of holding up all his thoughts any longer. The woman sits with them all at the kitchen table, speaking slowly and softly, but no one is able to concentrate. Britt-Marie’s eyes keep straying out of the window, one of the children is looking up at the ceiling, and the other is looking down at the floor.

  The following night, Britt-Marie is woken by a sound of slamming in the flat. She gets up and fumbles for the light switch. The wind is blowing in through the balcony door. Vega moves maniacally back and forth in the kitchen. Tidying up. Cleaning everything she finds. Her hands scrub frenetically at the dish rack and frying pans.

  Again and again. As if they were magic lamps that could give her everything back. Britt-Marie’s hands hesitate in the air behind her shaking shoulders.

  Her fingers grip without touching.

  “I’m so sorry, I know you must feel—”

  “I don’t have time to feel things. I have to take care of Omar,” the girl interrupts vacantly.

  Britt-Marie wants to touch her, but the girl moves away, so Britt-Marie fetches her bag. Gets out some baking soda. The girl meets her eyes, and her sorrow has nothing else to say. Words cannot achieve anything.

  So they keep cleaning until morning comes again. Although not even baking soda can help against this.

  It’s a Sunday in January. While Liverpool are playing Stoke six hundred miles away, Sami is buried next to his mother, sleeping softly under a carpet of red flowers. Mourned by two siblings, missed by a whole community. Omar leaves a scarf in the churchyard.

  Britt-Marie serves coffee in the pizzeria and makes sure each of the mourners has a coaster. Everyone in Borg is there. The graveled parking area has lit candles around its boundary. White jerseys have been neatly hung up on the wooden plank fence next to it. Some of them are new, and some so old and faded that they’ve turned gray. But they all remember.

  Vega stands in the doorway, in a freshly ironed dress and with her hair combed. She receives people’s condolences as if they have a greater right to mourn than she does. Mechanically shakes their hands. Her eyes are empty, as if someone has turned off a switch inside her. Something is making a thumping noise outside in the parking area but no one listens to it. Britt-Marie tries to get Vega to eat, but Vega doesn’t even answer when spoken to. She allows herself to be led to the table and lowered into a chair, but her body reacts as if it’s sleeping. It turns so that she faces the wall, as though she wants to avoid any possible physical contact. The thumping gets louder.

  Britt-Marie’s despair intensifies. People have different ways of experiencing powerlessness and grief, but for Britt-Marie it’s never so strong as when she’s unable to get someone to eat.

  The mumbling voices from the crowded pizzeria grow into a hurricane in her ears, her resigned hand fumbles for Vega’s shoulder as if it were reaching over the edge of a precipice. But the shoulder moves away. Glides towards the wall. And the eyes flee inwards. The plate remains untouched.

  When the thumping from the parking area gets even louder, as if trying to prove something, Britt-Marie turns angrily towards the door with her hands clenched so tightly that the bandage comes loose from her fingers. She’s just about to scream when she feels the girl’s body pushing past her, through the throng of people.

  Max is standing outside, leaning on his crutches. He suspends himself from his armpits, his whole weight swinging through the air, and then swings his uninjured leg at the soccer ball, firing it at a tight angle so it flies first against the wall of the recreation center, then at the wooden fence where the white jerseys are hanging, then back at him. Du-dunk-dunk, it sounds like. Du-dunk-dunk. Du-dunk-dunk.

  Du-dunk-dunk.

  Like a heartbeat.

  When Vega gets close enough he lets the ball roll past him without turning around. It rolls up to her, and stops against her feet. Her toes touch it through her shoes. She leans over it and runs her fingertips over the stitched leather.

  Then she cries without measure.

  Six hundred miles away, Liverpool win 5–3.

  35

  Omar and Dino are the first to throw themselves into the game with Vega. At first they are guarded, as if every movement is made in sorrow, but before long they are playing as if it’s just another evening. They play without memory, because they don’t know any other way of doing it. More children turn up, first Toad and Ben but soon others too. Britt-Marie doesn’t recognize every one of them, but they all have jeans that are ripped over their thighs. They play as if they live in Borg.

  “Britt-Marie?” says Sven in a formal tone that she’s not used to.

  He’s standing beside her with a very tall man. Really astonishingly tall. Britt-Marie doesn’t even know how one could manage to have fully functional lighting at home with him around.

  �
�Ha?” she says.

  Sven presents Dino’s uncle in English marred by a heavy accent, but Britt-Marie doesn’t criticize; she’s not the sort of person that criticizes.

  “Hello,” says Britt-Marie, this being about the long and short of the conversation for her part.

  It’s not that Britt-Marie can’t speak English. It’s just that she doesn’t know how to speak it without feeling like an utter idiot. She wouldn’t even know how to say “utter idiot” in English. As far as she’s concerned this illustrates her point very well.

  The very tall man, who really is quite unreasonably tall, points at Dino and explains that they lived in three countries and seven cities before they came to Borg. Sven helpfully translates. Britt-Marie understands English perfectly well, but she lets him go on, fearing that she might otherwise be expected to say something. The tall man’s mouth judders up and down in a melancholy way when he says that small children don’t remember things, which is a blessing. But Dino was old enough to see and hear and remember. He remembers everything they had to flee from.

  “He’s saying he still hardly says anything. Only with them . . .” Sven explains, pointing out of the window.

  Britt-Marie clasps one hand in the other. The tall man does the same.

  “Sami,” he says with a sort of music in the way he pronounces the name, as if he’s nursing every nuance of sound. Her eyelashes grow heavy.

  “He says that Sami saw a boy walking on his own in the road. Vega and the others called out and asked him if he wanted to play, but he didn’t understand. So Sami rolled a ball over to him, and then he kicked it,” says Sven.

  Britt-Marie looks at the tall man and her common sense prevents her from saying that once when she and Kent were staying at a hotel and someone had left a foreign newspaper behind, she almost solved a crossword in English entirely on her own.

  “Thank you,” says the tall man.

  “He wants to thank you for coaching the team. It meant a lo—”

  Britt-Marie interrupts him, because she understands:

  “I’m the one who should say thank you.”

  Sven starts translating to the tall man, but he stops him because he also understands. He presses Britt-Marie’s hand.

  She goes back into the pizzeria, with Sven following, and helps Somebody clear glasses and plates from the tables.

  “It was a beautiful funeral,” says Sven, because that’s what you say.

  “Very beautiful,” says Britt-Marie, because you have to say that as well.

  He gets something out of his pocket and hands it to her. The keys to her car. His eyes flicker. Through the window they see Kent’s BMW pulling into the parking area.

  “I assume you’ll be going home now, you and Kent,” says Sven, his eyes remote.

  “It’s best that way,” says Britt-Marie, sucking in her cheeks, but then a few more words slip out of her in spite of it all: “Unless I’m needed here with . . . Vega and Omar . . .”

  Sven looks up and crumples in the brief instant between the first question and the realization that what she’s asking is whether the children need her. Not whether he does.

  “I . . . I, of course, of course, I have contacted the social services. They have sent a girl to Borg,” he says with a grim expression, as if he’s already forgotten that it was actually several nights earlier that he first brought the girl to the children.

  “Of course,” she says.

  “She’s . . . you’ll like her. I’ve worked with her many times before. She’s a good person. She wants what’s best for them, she’s not like . . . like you imagine the social services could be.”

  Britt-Marie mops the sweat from her brow with a handkerchief, so he doesn’t notice that she’s also mopping her eyes.

  “I promised Sami they’d be all right. I promised . . . I want . . . they have to have an opportunity to . . . there must be a sunny story in their lives, Sven. At some point,” she manages to say at long last.

  “We’re going to do our best. We’ll all do everything we possibly can.”

  “Of course, of course,” she replies, directing her words at her shoes.

  Sven fingers the police cap in his hands.

  “The girl from the council, yes, she’ll be staying with the children for a few days. Until they’ve sorted it all out. She’s very considerate. You don’t have to worry about that, I, well, I’ve been asked to drive the children home tonight.”

  It takes a few seconds before the significance of what he has said sinks in for Britt-Marie. Before she’s hit with the insight that she’s no longer needed.

  “Obviously, obviously. It’s best that way, obviously,” she whispers.

  Outside on the soccer pitch, Kent has gotten out of his BMW. He sees Britt-Marie and Sven through the window and puts his hands in his pockets, slightly nonplussed, looking as if he’s standing on a street corner and not quite willing to admit that he’s lost. He’s never been good at talking about death, Britt-Marie knows that. He’s the kind of person who can sort out all the practicalities; he can make calls; he’ll kiss your eyelids. But he’s never been good at feeling things.

  His eyes seem to be considering walking into the pizzeria, but his feet steer off in the opposite direction. He makes a few movements with which he seems to be heading back into the BMW, but then the soccer ball comes rolling up and stops by his feet. Omar is standing a few feet away. Kent puts the sole of his shoe on the ball and looks at the boy. Kicks the ball to him. Omar stops it with the side of his foot, so it bounces back to Kent.

  Thirty seconds later Kent is in the middle of the pile of children, his shirt creased and hanging down outside his belt, his hair untidy. Instantly, he’s happy. When the ball comes flying to him at knee-height, he gathers himself and kicks as hard as he can, misses the ball, and watches one of his shoes flying off and clearing the top of the fence along the side of the recreation center.

  “Mother of God,” mumbles Britt-Marie from the window. The children watch the shoe flying off. Turn to Kent. He looks back at them and starts laughing. They also laugh. He plays the rest of the match with one shoe, and when he scores he runs around the pitch with Omar perched on his back.

  Omar hugs him a little too hard. A little too long. As teenagers get few chances to do outside of a soccer pitch. Kent hugs him back. Because soccer allows him to do it.

  Sven has turned away from the window when he mumbles:

  “Don’t dislike me, Britt-Marie, for not calling the social services earlier. I just wanted to give Sami the chance to get things organized. I thought . . . I . . . I . . . I just wanted to give him the chance. Don’t dislike me for it.”

  Her fingers skim through the air between them as close as they can without actually touching him.

  “Quite the opposite, Sven. Quite the opposite.”

  He looks about to say something, so she quickly interjects:

  “There are more kids here now than earlier. Where are they all from?”

  Sven puts his police cap back on his head. It ends up slightly wonky.

  “They’ve been coming here every evening since the cup. More and more of them every evening. If it carries on like this, soon Borg won’t be a team, it’ll be a club.”

  Britt-Marie doesn’t know what that means, but it sounds beautiful. She thinks Sami would have liked it.

  “They look so happy. Even in the midst of all this they can look so happy when they’re playing,” she says, almost enviously.

  Sven rubs the back of his hand against his beard stubble. He looks tired. She has never seen him tired. But at long last the corners of his mouth twitch slightly, his eyes glitter at her, and he says:

  “Soccer forces life to move on. There’s always a new match. A new season. There’s always a dream that everything can get better. It’s a game of wonders.”

  Britt-Marie straightens out a crease in his shirt, her hand landing as lightly as a butterfly, without actually touching his body under the fabric.

  “If it’s no
t too inappropriate, I should like to ask you a very personal question, Sven.”

  “Of course.”

  “What soccer team do you support?”

  Surprised, his face releases and changes.

  “I’ve never supported a team. I think I love soccer too much. Sometimes your passion for a team can get in the way of your love for the game.”

  It seems quite fitting for a man like Sven that he should believe more in love than in passion. He’s a policeman who believes more in justice than in the law. It suits him, she thinks to herself. But she doesn’t tell him as much.

  “Poetic,” she says.

  “Course.” He smiles back.

  She wants to say so much more. Maybe he does too. But in the end all he can manage to utter is: “I want you to know, Britt-Marie, that every time there’s a knock on my front door, I hope it’s you.”

  Maybe he is also intending to say something bigger, but he holds off and walks away. She wants to call out to him, but it’s too late.

  The door tinkles cheerfully behind him, because doors really don’t seem to get when the moment is or isn’t right.

  Britt-Marie dabs her cheeks with her handkerchief so no one can see she’s wiping her eyes. Then she walks purposefully through the pizzeria to Somebody. There are still people everywhere. Ben’s mother and Dino’s uncle and Toad’s parents, but also a lot of other people whose faces Britt-Marie can only dimly recall from the soccer cup. They are cleaning up and putting the chairs in order, and she only just manages to resist the urge to straighten them again.

  “It was, what’s-it-called? Beautiful funeral, huh?” says Somebody, her voice a little gravelly.

  “Yes,” agrees Britt-Marie, before getting out her wallet and immediately continuing: “I should like to ask what I owe you for the car door.”

  Somebody drums the edge of her wheelchair.

  “Well. I been, you know, thinking about that car, huh, Britt-Marie. I don’t have good car mechanic, huh? Maybe did it wrong, you know? So first you check the work, huh? Then you come back. Pay.”