Driving Lessons
by Christian Lesmes ︎︎︎Lesson one, I am in a car with a stranger. "What's your name?" he asked. Gabriel, I answered, resisting the wear and tear of saying my name and hearing my voice. "I live in that house", I said, pointing with my finger. "The street is called Elektroweg. You'll see a golden cat around", I added.
"Elektro what? Oh, Elektroweg", he said, correcting my pronunciation. "What is your name?" I asked. "The Furry Handis how they know me", he answered, laughing, while extending his arm and unnecessarily steering the car. His hand was, unsurprisingly, hairy on both sides. Lesson two. "Gear one, two and three. Four, five and six," he said. Ready or not, here I come, I remembered. "Do you have any friends?" I asked. "Break!" he shouted, "There's a bike coming!" he said, and then coughed hard. "I don't make friends, in any case", he replied—and a short piece of advice: when I make friends in this car, I wash my hands after I finish; otherwise, the police will smell them, you know what I mean, I don't want to go to jail" he added laughing, while soap bubbles invaded the air exposing a layer of a suffocating effect. His words remained with me, like pieces of loose, broken plastic, like a ghost haunting a dilapidated house in a port city in the tropics. In a city without water or an aqueduct, targeted by the enemy, at 40 degrees Celsius—toxic, I thought. Lesson three. Just follow instructions and don't engage in short talk. Car drivers are phoney people, I told myself. "Don't take shortcuts; turn the steering wheel on time!" His words crashed into my thoughts—poor driver—time to go home, I thought.
I drove home with the Furry Hand in the car, tiny, like a keyring in my back pocket. I opened the front door and then stared through a condensation-streaked window. It was the beginning of spring. The moss looked wet and healthy, and a golden cat walked over an asbestos-era roof covered in a damp breeze. The cat moved softly, step by step. The roof belonged to an old wooden shed in the corner of a square wooden-fenced garden with two green tropical plants and a stone-framed grill. Like a vintage car, without a ceiling, slowly riding through the Andean mountains, a car with a chassis made of care and tyres bound by the moments we loved a tree. The cat stared at me. I could see she was a mother. She started scraping the roof with her sharp nails. I wondered if she knew she was slowly poisoning us, and I smiled. Lesson four, Beep! "The Beep is only for emergencies", the instructor said, radiating fresh and mushy manhood on a sunny day. "This isn't an emergency yet, but it could be. Listen", he said, "I don't have anything against refugees, but this is what I don't like about them: walking in groups, crossing the streets here and there where they aren't supposed to." Beep.
Lesson Five: "You must improve your 'looking'", he said. Cough. "This is not Brazil". Cough, cough. I have never been to Brazil, I thought. "There are rules here in Europe", he added, "After some rides, you are still not looking!" he coughed again and said, "How many times do I have to tell you?"—Lesson 6. "Hey, boss, I got a tattoo", the instructor said. My nephew and I were walking in the city and decided to make a pact: tattoo ourselves a heart", he said.
"It looks like a cat", I replied, and he laughed.
"Look", he exclaimed, lifting his sleeve. "It doesn't hurt. It's beautiful," he said, coughing like he was asking for help.
I got a call before my seventh lesson. The golden cat stared at me like a heart. She stood on the roof, breathing—pumping air, expanding, and softly contracting. I picked up the phone, and she kept staring. "Your instructor won't come", the voice said. "He got Asbestosis", the voice added. The cat smiled.