Their mother looks as if she's going to have a go at Ove, but seems to decide that there's no time for that. She waddles off towards the entrance, one hand on her pouting belly, as if concerned that the child may try to escape.

Ove's funny," titters the three-year-old with delight.

"Yeah," the seven-year-old mumbles, not at all as impressed. She takes her little sister by the hand and walks with grown-up steps towards the hospital entrance.

Ove walks behind, dragging his steps. He doesn't care that she thinks "it's easier just to pay up and stop arguing." Because it's actually about the principle. Why is that parking attendant entitled to give Ove a ticket for questioning why one has to pay for hospital parking? Ove is not the sort of man who'll stop himself from roaring: "You're just a fake policeman!" at a parking attendant. That's all there is to say about it.

You go to the hospital to die, Ove knows that. It's enough that the state wants to be paid for everything you do while you're alive. When it also wants to be paid for the parking when you go to die, Ove thinks that's about far enough. He explained this in so many words to the parking attendant. And that's when the parking attendant started waving his book at him. And that's when Parvaneh started raging about how she'd be quite happy to pay up. As if that was the important part of the discussion.

Women don't seem to get principles.

He hears the seven-year-old complaining in front of him that her clothes are smelling of exhaust. Even though they kept the Saab's windows rolled down all the way, it wasn't possible to get rid of the stench. Their mother had asked Ove what he'd really been doing in the garage, but Ove had just answered with a sound more or less like when you try to move a bathtub by dragging it across some tiles. Of course, for the three-year-old it was the greatest adventure of her life to be able to drive along in a car with all its windows down although it was below freezing outside. The seven-year-old, on the other hand, had burrowed her face into her scarf and vented a good deal more skepticism. She'd been irritated about slipping around with her bottom on the sheets of newspaper Ove had spread across the seat to stop them "filthifying things." Ove had also spread newspaper on the front seat, but her mother snatched it away before she sat down. Ove had looked more than advisably displeased about this, but managed not to say anything. Instead he constantly glanced at her stomach all the way to the hospital, as if anxious that she might suddenly start leaking on the upholstery.

"Stand still here now," she says to the girls when they are in the hospital reception.

"Where did Ove get to now?" Parvaneh bursts out.

They're surrounded by glass walls and benches smelling of disinfectant. There are nurses in white clothes and colorful plastic slippers and old people dragging themselves back and forth in the corridors, leaning on rickety walkers. On the floor is a sign announcing that Elevator 2 in Entrance A is out of order, and that visitors to Ward 114 are therefore asked to go to Elevator 1 in Entrance C. Beneath that is another message, announcing that Elevator 1 in Entrance C is out of order and visitors to Ward 114 are asked to go to Elevator 2 in Entrance A. Under that message is a third message, announcing that Ward 114 is closed this month because of repairs. Under that message is a picture of a clown, informing people that Beppo the hospital clown is visiting sick children today.

"He went to the bathroom, I think," mumbles the seven-year-old.

"Clauwn!" says the three-year-old, pointing happily at the sign.

"Forget it, just forget it… When does the parking meter run out?" she asks instead.

"In that case I'll go out and feed the meter in ten minutes," says Ove, as if this was quite obvious.

"Don't you understand it'll take longer than ten minutes?"

"Oh, I don't have the strength for this…" sighs Parvaneh and holds her forehead.

She looks at her daughters.

She groans.

Parvaneh spins around and gives Ove a harassed look.

"Do you need change?"

"Because that's exactly what they want! They're not getting a load of money for time we might not even use!"

"But you said --" she begins, then stops herself and shakes her head.

"I don't need to go to the bathroom."

"Why would I need change?"

"Ten minutes."

"Why don't you just pay for longer and save yourself the bother?" she asks and looks like she wishes she hadn't as soon as the question crosses her lips.

"Will you sit here nicely with Uncle Ove while Mum goes to see how Dad is? Please?"

Ove looks offended.

"For the bathroom?"

"Do you know you have to pay them here to go to the bathroom?" Ove exclaims incredulously.

"You have to sit here and keep an eye on them," she states curtly and disappears down the corridor before Ove can raise further objections.

Parvaneh stands up.

"What do you mean, 'with Ove'? Where do you think you're going?" To his great consternation, the Pregnant One seems not to register the level of upset in his voice.

"Yeah, yeah," agrees the seven-year-old grumpily.

Ove stands there staring after her. As if he is expecting her to come rushing back and cry out that she was only joking. But she doesn't. So Ove turns to the girls. And in the next second he looks as if he's just about to shine a desk lamp into their eyes and interrogate them on their whereabouts at the time of the murder.

Ove nods and, having confirmed to himself that this three-year-old seems to be reasonably self-motivating, he turns his attention to the seven-year-old.

"Yeeeees!" the three-year-old shrieks with excitement.

"What?" whispers Ove.

"BOOK!" screams the three-year-old at once and rushes off towards the corner of the waiting room, where there's a veritable chaos of toys, games, and picture books.

"Read!" she demands again, climbing the bench in the waiting room with surprising agility.

The child looks at him as if he just offered her a beer and a cigarette.

"Do you need food or do you have to go for a wee or anything like that?"

Ove throws out his arms abruptly.

Ove looks at the book more or less as if it just sent him a chain letter insisting that the book was really a Nigerian prince who had a "very lucrative investment opportunity" for Ove and now only needed Ove's account number "to sort something out."

"Read!" she orders him in an excitable manner, holding up a book with her arms stretched out so far that she almost loses her balance.

"What do you mean, me?" she counters with indignation.

"Sure, sure. So bloody sorry for asking."

He skeptically peruses this grammatically challenged little natural disaster. She looks up and her whole face smiles at him.

"Right, and what about you?"

"You swored!" yells the three-year-old as she turns up again, running to and fro between Ove's trouser legs.

"Mmm," she snorts.

"I'm almost EIGHT! I can go to the bathroom MYSELF!"

"You have to say what happens on that page as well. And do voices," she says.

"What bloo --"

Then he turns the page. The three-year-old stops him and goes back. The seven-year-old shakes her head tiredly.

Ove stares at her.

"What voices?" he corrects himself.

"Maybe you're no good at reading stories," notes the seven-year-old.

"Once upon a time there was a little train," reads Ove, with all the enthusiasm of someone reciting a tax statement.

"We're not doing any bloo -- we're not doing any voices!"

"Maybe you're no good at listening to them!" Ove counters.

He clears his throat midsentence.

"Fairy-tale voices," replies the seven-year-old.

"You swored," the three-year-old announces with glee.

"Did not," says Ove.

Ove reluctantly sits about a yard away on the bench. The three-year-old sighs impatiently and disappears from sight, her head reappearing seconds later under his arm with her hands leaning against his knee for support and her nose pressed against the colorful pictures in the book.

"Yes," says the three-year-old.

"CLAAUUWN," the toddler howls, jumping up and down on the bench in a way that finally convinces Ove that the kid is on drugs.

"And I'm not a CLOWN either!" he roars.

"Maybe there's something about nutty old men instead," mutters the seven-year-old.

"She doesn't mean you. She means the clown."

"I'm not an 'old man,'" Ove hisses.

"And who's this little girl here, then? Does she want to see a magic trick, perhaps?" the clown exclaims helpfully and squelches over to them like a drunken moose in a pair of large red shoes which, Ove confirms to himself, only an utterly meaningless person would prefer to wear rather than getting himself a proper job.

Ove looks up and catches sight of a full-grown man who's quite seriously got himself dressed up as a clown, standing in the doorway of the waiting room. He's got a big stupid grin on his face as well.

The older one rolls her eyes at Ove, not unlike the way her mother often rolls her eyes at Ove.

Ove looks at the book, very unimpressed.

"Clauwn!" the three-year-old cries out jubilantly.

He's heard about that sort of thing. They have that attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and get to take amphetamines on prescription.

"What kind of sh -- nonsense is this anyway? Some talking train? Is there nothing about cars?"

"Maybe you're no good at TELLING THEM!"

"CLAAUUWN!" screams the three-year-old.

The clown looks surprised. Which isn't an entirely successful look for a clown.

Ove peers down with exasperation at the tiny speech defect and wrinkles his nose.

"Come on, I'm a hospital clown. It's for the children's sake. I'll give it back."

"But… listen, it's a magic trick, you do have a coin on you, don't you?" mumbles the clown in his more normal voice, which contrasts quite strongly with his character and reveals that behind this idiotic clown a quite ordinary idiot is hiding, probably all of twenty-five years old.

Minutes later, Parvaneh comes back down the corridor to the waiting room. She stops, confusedly scanning the room from side to side.

"No, Uncle doesn't, perhaps," Ove replies.

Then he points at the clown.

"But I want it back. Immediately. I'm paying for the parking with that."

The clown nods eagerly and snatches the coin out of his hand.

"Has Uncle got a five-kronor piece, perhaps?"

"Right," he says, taking out a five-kronor piece from his wallet.

The clown looks gaily at Ove.

"Just give him a five-kronor coin," says the seven-year-old.

"Are you looking for your girls?" a nurse asks sharply behind her.

Ove is sitting there with his arms crossed, looking very angry. On one side of him sits the seven-year-old, staring up at the ceiling with an utterly bored expression, and on the other side sits the three-year-old, looking as if she just found out she's going to have an ice cream breakfast every day for a whole month. On either side of the bench stand two particularly large representatives of the hospital's security guards, both with very grim facial expressions.

"Yes, what did they do?" Parvaneh wonders, almost terrified.

"There," says the nurse in a not entirely appreciative way and points at a bench by the large glass doors leading onto the parking area.

"Yes," Parvaneh answers, perplexed.

"Are these your children?" one of them asks.

"They didn't do anything," the other security guard replies, with a hostile stare at Ove.

"Me neither," Ove mutters sulkily.

"Ove hit the clauwn!" the three-year-old shrieks delightedly.

He doesn't look at all as if he's having an ice cream breakfast.

Parvaneh stares for a long time at Ove, the three-year-old, seven-year-old, and the two security guards.

"Can we go home now?" she asks, standing up.

"Why… hold on… what… what clown?"

"Daddy fall!" says the three-year-old.

"And then he tried to give back another five-kronor coin!" Ove interjects, with an insulted stare at the nearby security guards, as if this should be enough of an explanation.

"The clauwn Beppo," the toddler explains, nodding wisely.

Parvaneh stares at him, agape, and can't even think of anything to say.

"Like, he was going to make Ove's five-kronor coin go away," the seven-year-old elaborates.

"Sneak," says Ove.

"Ove HIT the clauwn, Mum," the three-year-old titters as if this was the best thing that ever happened in her whole life.

"He was no good at magic anyway," the seven-year-old groans.

"We're here to visit my husband. He's had an accident. I'm bringing in the children now to say hello to him," she explains to the guards.

"He was going to do magic," says her sister.

"Stupid magic," says Ove.

"But it feels a bit like it was my fault," she says, concerned.

"Honestly, he was no good at magic anyway," says the seven-year-old grumpily in Ove's defense as they leave to visit their father.

"Is it your car?" Ove grunts.

"I hardly hit him. I just gave him a little poke," Ove mumbles, adding, "Bloody fake policemen," just to be on the safe side.

"But this one stays here," confirms the other security guard and points at Ove.

"Please, Ove, are you sure you won't let me pay the parking fine?" says Parvaneh.

"You don't hand out parking fines. The council does. So it's the bloody council's fault," says Ove and closes the door of the Saab. "And those fake policemen at the hospital," he adds, clearly still very upset that they forced him to sit without moving on that bench until Parvaneh came back to pick him up and they went home. As if he couldn't be trusted to wander about freely among the other hospital visitors.

"Well then," he replies.

"No."

An hour later they are back at Ove's garage. The Lanky One has one arm and one leg in casts and has to stay at the hospital for several days, Ove has been informed by Parvaneh. When she told him, Ove had to bite his lip very hard to stop himself laughing. He actually got the feeling Parvaneh was doing the same thing. The Saab still smells of exhaust when he collects the sheets of newspaper from the seats.

"That's fine." One of the security guards nods.

"And I think we have a radiator, as well, that doesn't work," she adds -- a passing thought. "Would be nice of you if you could have a look at it. Patrick doesn't know how to do things like that, you know," she says and takes the three-year-old by the hand.

Ove kicks distractedly at the asphalt.

Ove nods slowly.

"You're funny!" she declares.

"I could do with a bit of help taking the ladder away…" she says, as if she was in the middle of a much longer thought.

Parvaneh looks at him for a long time in thoughtful silence. The seven-year-old gets tired of waiting and starts walking across the parking area towards the house. The three-year-old looks at Ove with a radiant smile.

"Uh-huh, uh-huh. You shouldn't turn out too bad yourself."

The three-year-old nods excitedly. Parvaneh looks at Ove, looks at the plastic tube on the floor of his garage. Looks at Ove again, a touch worried.

Ove looks at her and puts his hands in his trouser pockets.

"No. Might have known."

Parvaneh nods. Then she suddenly gives off a satisfied smile. "And you can't let the girls freeze to death tonight, Ove, right? It's quite enough that they had to watch you assault a clown, no?"

Ove gives her a dour glance. Silently, to himself, as if negotiating, he concedes that he can hardly let the children perish just because their no-good father can't open a window without falling off a ladder. There'd be a hellish amount of nagging from Ove's wife if he went and arrived in the next world as a newly qualified child murderer.

Then he picks up the plastic tube from the floor and hangs it up on a hook on the wall. Locks the Saab with the key. Closes the garage. Tugs at it three times to make sure it's closed. Then goes to fetch his tools from the shed.

Tomorrow's as good a day as any to kill oneself.