A Man Called Ove: A Novel by Fredrik Backman Page A

for his father and so it would also have to do for Ove. His colleagues learned to appreciate him for it. “When people don’t talk so much they don’t dish out the crap either,” one of his older workmates said to him one afternoon down on the track. And Ove nodded. Some got it and some didn’t.
    There were also some who got what Ove ended up doing one day in the director’s office, while others didn’t.
    It was almost two years after his father’s funeral. Ove had just turned eighteen. Tom had been caught out stealing money from the cash box in one of the carriages. Admittedly no one but Ove saw him take it, but Tom and Ove had been the only two people in the carriage when the money went missing. And, as a serious man from the director’s office explained when Tom and Ove were ordered to present themselves, no one could believe Ove was the guilty party. And he wasn’t, of course.
    Ove was left on a wooden chair in the corridor outside the director’s office. He sat there looking at the floor for fifteen minutes before the door opened. Tom stepped outside, his fists so clenched with determination that his skin was bloodless and white on his lower arms.
    He kept trying to make eye contact with Ove; Ove just kept staring down at the floor until he was brought into the director’s office.
    More serious men in suits were spread around the room. The director himself was pacing back and forth behind his desk, his face highly colored, and there was an insinuation that he was too angry to stand still.
    “You want to sit down, Ove?” said one of the men in suits at last.
    Ove met his gaze, and knew who he was. His dad had mended his car once. A blue Opel Manta. With the big engine. He smiled amicably at Ove and gestured cursorily at a chair in the middle of the floor. As if to let him know that he was among friends now and could relax.
    Ove shook his head. The Opel Manta man nodded with understanding.
    “Well then. This is just a formality, Ove. No one in here believes you took the money. All you need to do is tell us who did it.”
    Ove looked down at the floor. Half a minute passed.
    “Ove?”
    Ove didn’t answer. The harsh voice of the director broke the silence at long last. “Answer the question, Ove!”
    Ove stood in silence. Looking down at the floor. The facial expressions of the men in suits shifted from conviction to slight confusion.
    “Ove . . . you do understand that you have to answer the question. Did you take the money?”
    “No,” said Ove with a steady voice.
    “So who was it?”
    Ove stood in silence.
    “Answer the question!” ordered the director.
    Ove looked up. Stood there with a straight back.
    “I’m not the sort that tells tales about what other people do,” he said.
    The room was steeped in silence for what must have been several minutes.
    “You do understand, Ove . . . that if you don’t tell us who it was, and if we have one or more witnesses who say it was you . . . then we’ll have to draw the conclusion that it was you?” said the director, not as amicable now.
    Ove nodded, but didn’t say another word. The director scrutinized him, as if he were a bluffer in a game of cards. Ove’s face was unmoved. The director nodded grimly.
    “So you can go, then.”
    And Ove left.
    Tom had put the blame on Ove when he was in the director’s office some fifteen minutes earlier. During the afternoon, two of the younger men from Tom’s shift, eager as young men are to earn the approval of older men, came forward and claimed that they had seen Ove take the money with their own eyes. If Ove had pointed out Tom, it would have been one word against another. But now it was Tom’s words against Ove’s silence. The next morning he was told by the foreman to empty his locker and present himself outside the director’s office.
    Tom stood inside the door of the changing rooms and jeered at him as he was leaving.
    “Thief,” hissed Tom.
    Ove passed him without raising his