Why We Took the Car (12 page)

“That's south,” said Tschick.

“No, that's east.”

We got out and ate a couple chocolate-coated cookies that were already partly melted. The bugs in the cornfield were making an overwhelming buzz.

“You know an ordinary watch can show you the points of a compass?” Tschick took off his watch. It was an old Russian model, the kind you have to wind. He held it out between us, but I didn't know how the trick worked, and he didn't either. I think you're supposed to aim one hand at the sun, and then the other one will point north. Something like that. But if we aimed one hand at the sun at eleven in the morning, both hands pointed in the same direction — and that was definitely not north.

“Maybe it points south?” said Tschick.

“What — and half an hour from now south is that way?”

“Or maybe it's because of daylight savings? It doesn't work in summer. I'll turn it back an hour.”

“What will that change? The hands turn completely around in the space of an hour, but north and south aren't constantly shifting around.”

“Yeah, but if a compass spins — maybe it's a gyrocompass.”

“A gyrocompass?”

“You've never heard of a gyrocompass?”

“A gyrocompass has nothing to do with a gyroscope. It doesn't spin,” I said. “It works with alcohol — there's alcohol inside it.”

“You're pulling my leg.”

“I know that from a book about a ship that capsizes. One of the sailors is an alcoholic, and he breaks open the gyrocompass to drink the fluid inside. And they have no way to orient themselves.”

“Doesn't sound like a true story.”

“It's true. The book is called
The Sea-Bear
or
The Sea-Wolf
, I think.”

“You mean Steppenwolf. That's also about drugs. That's the kind of stuff my brother reads.”

“Steppenwolf is a
band
,” I say.

“Well, I'd say if we don't know which way is south, we should just take the dirt road,” said Tschick, strapping his watch back on his wrist. “Less likely to see other cars.”

As always, he was right. It was a good decision. We didn't come across another car for an hour. We were someplace where there weren't even any houses on the horizon. In one field there were pumpkins as big as medicine balls.

CHAPTER 21

The wind picked up, and the wind died down again. The sun disappeared behind dark clouds, and two raindrops fell on the windshield. The drops were so big that they wet almost the entire windshield. Tschick drove faster as tall trees bent in the wind. Suddenly a gust of wind blew our car practically across the street. Tschick turned into a bumpy track that cut between two fields of wheat. The tinkling piano seemed more dramatic now. And then, after one kilometer, the farm road just stopped, right in the middle of the field.

“I'm not driving back now,” said Tschick, rumbling forward without even braking. The stalks of wheat crackled against the fenders and doors. Tschick let the vehicle coast in the field, downshifted, and stepped on the gas. The engine revved and the grille of the Lada parted the sea of golden wheat like a snowplow. Though the Lada was making strange noises, it plowed through the field effortlessly. But it was tough to tell which way we were going. You couldn't see over the stalks of wheat. No horizon to aim for. Another drop of rain fell on the windshield. The field started to slope gently upward. We must have meandered and turned because we came across a section of grain we'd already plowed a path through. I told Tschick we should try to write our names in the field — somebody in a helicopter could read them. Or maybe we could see our names on Google Earth. But we lost our sense of direction when we were crossing the first T. We just drove around, then went up a hill again and when we got to the top the wheat suddenly ended. Tschick braked at the last second. The back of the car was still in the grain. The front of the Lada peeked out at the landscape. A lush green cow pasture sloped steeply away below us, giving us a wide-open view over endless fields, groups of trees, farm roads, hills and ridges, mountains, meadows, and woods. Clouds were lined up on the horizon and you could see lightning hitting the steeple of a distant church, but you couldn't hear any thunder. It was dead quiet. The fourth raindrop plopped down on the windshield. Tschick turned off the engine. I turned off the cassette player.

We just sat there looking out over the landscape for a few minutes. Smaller white clouds floated along below the dark storm clouds. Blue-gray mist swirled around the distant ridges and some ridges closer by. The dark clouds swelled and billowed toward us.

“Independence Day,”
said Tschick.

We pulled out bread and jam and a couple of Cokes, and as we were setting up for a picnic in the car, it got very dark. It was early afternoon, but it was suddenly as dark as night outside. Just then I saw a cow fall over in one of the meadows. At first I thought I was seeing things, but Tschick saw it too. All the other cattle had turned their butts into the wind, but the one just fell over. Then the wind stopped as quickly as it had started. For a moment, nothing happened. It was so dark you couldn't read the labels on the soda bottles. Then it sounded like a bucket of water had splashed onto our windshield and the rain hit us like a wall.

It lasted for hours. It crashed and thundered and poured. A tree bough as thick as my arm and covered with foliage went flying across the valley below us as if some kid was flying it like a kite. When it finally stopped raining that evening, the entire wheat field behind us had been matted down, and the pasture in front of us had been turned into a swamp. It would have been impossible to drive in any direction. We were stuck. So we spent our first night sleeping in the car on top of that hill. It wasn't terribly comfortable, but given the mud all around us, there wasn't any alternative.

CHAPTER 22

I didn't sleep much, but luckily that meant that at first light I saw the farmer driving his tractor through the valley below us. I didn't know whether he'd seen us, but I woke up Tschick and he immediately started the car. We inched backward through the wheat, more coasting than driving down the hill, and at some point hit the road again. Off we went.

The chocolate cookies were edible again, and after we ate them for breakfast, Tschick tried to teach me how to drive in a meadow next to some woods. I wasn't crazy about the idea at first, but Tschick said it was embarrassing to steal cars when you couldn't even drive. He also accused me of being scared, which I was.

Tschick did a practice run so I could watch exactly what he was doing — which pedals he was pushing and how he shifted. I'd seen my parents drive a million times, but I never really paid attention to how they did things. I didn't even know which pedal was which.

“The clutch is on the left. You let that up very slowly and step on the gas pedal at the same time — see? See?”

Of course I didn't see a thing. Let the pedal up? Step on the gas? Tschick showed me.

When you start, you put it in first gear. But you have to stand on the clutch and also, with your right foot, tap the gas pedal. Then you have to let up the clutch and give it gas at the same time. That's the most difficult part — getting the car going when it's standing still. It took me twenty tries before I got the Lada rolling, and then when I finally did I was so surprised that I pulled up both my feet — and the car jumped and then the engine cut out.

“Just step on the clutch and you won't stall. The same thing when you brake — push the clutch at the same time or else the engine will stall.”

It took a while before I could brake properly. You're supposed to push the brake pedal with your right foot, but I couldn't get that through my head at first. For whatever reason, I kept stepping on it with both feet. Once I'd finally mastered everything and got the car rolling, I cruised around the meadow in first gear and it was amazing. The Lada actually did what I wanted it to do. When I got going a little faster, the engine really started to whine and Tschick told me to step on the clutch for three full seconds. I stood on the pedal and Tschick shifted into second gear for me.

“Now step on the gas!” he said, and suddenly I shot off. Fortunately the meadow was huge. I practiced for a few hours. That's how long it took before I could get the car going and shift up to third gear and back down again without constantly stalling. I was drenched with sweat, but I didn't want to stop. Tschick was sunning himself on the air mattress at the edge of the woods. The only people we saw all day were two walkers who passed by without even noticing us. At some point I skidded to a stop next to Tschick and asked how he hotwired the car. Now that I could drive, I wanted to know about everything else too.

Tschick pushed his sunglasses onto the top of his head, hopped into the driver's seat, and rummaged around in the mess of wires beneath the steering wheel. “You have to connect this wire, the steady-plus wire, number thirty, which is connected to the battery, to the one that runs power to the car's electrical system when the key is turned — number fifteen. See, thirty to fifteen. The duct tape is holding them together. You have to wrap it around there real thick. Once they are connected, the ignition system has power. Then you just touch the starter relay wire — this one, the number fifty — to those two wires. Done.”

“And that works for any car?”

“I've only ever tried it on this one. But my brother says it'll work on any car. Fifteen, thirty, and fifty.”

“And that's it?”

“The only other thing you have to do is break the locking pin on the steering column. The rest is easy-peasy. To free up the steering wheel, you put your foot here, and boom, done. And obviously you have to bypass the fuel pump.”

Obviously. Bypass the fuel pump. I didn't say anything for a minute. We'd learned about electrical currents in physics class. That there was plus and minus, and that the electrons flowed through wires like water and all that. But that seemed to have nothing to do with what was happening in our Lada. Steady-plus? It sounded as if a completely different sort of electricity was flowing in this car than in the wires in physics class. Like we'd landed in some alternate reality. But maybe physics class was the alternate reality. Because the fact that Tschick's system worked showed he must be right.

CHAPTER 23

Tschick drove back onto the road. After we'd passed a bakery in a little village, we both got the itch for a coffee. We parked the car in some bushes outside town and walked back to the bakery. There we bought coffee and fresh rolls topped with cheese and cold cuts. And just as I was about to bite into my roll, somebody behind me said, “Klingenberg, what are you doing here?”

Lutz Heckel, the tub of lard on stilts, was sitting at a table behind us. Sitting next to him was an even bigger tub of lard on stilts and a not quite as big tub of lard on more solid columns.

“And the Mongolian's here too,” Heckel said, surprised, but also in a tone that left no doubt as to what he felt about Mongols in general and about Tschick in particular.

“Visiting relatives,” I said and turned quickly away. It didn't seem like a good time for an extended conversation.

“I didn't know you had relatives around here.”

“I do,” said Tschick, raising his cup of coffee like he was making a toast. “There's a detention center in Zwietow.”

I couldn't remember seeing Heckel at Tatiana's party, but the next thing he asked us was
how
we'd gotten here. Tschick made up something about a bicycle tour.

“Schoolmates of yours?” I heard the big tub of lard ask, and then I didn't hear much of anything for a while. At some point I heard car keys rattle on the table behind us and the chairs were pushed back. Daddy Heckel walked past us on his stilts and went back up to the counter. He came back with an armload of rolls, put four of them down on our table, and said, “Gotta make sure our bikers have enough energy out there on the road!” Then he rapped his knuckles on the table as a good-bye, and the tub of lard family walked off across the town square.

“Uh,” Tschick said.

I didn't know what to say either.

We sat in front of the bakery for a good long time. We'd really needed the coffee. And the bread.

Every half an hour a bus packed with tourists rolled into the town square. There was a little castle somewhere in town. Tschick was sitting with his back to the square, where the buses stopped and let people off, but I had to look at the senior citizens spilling out of the buses. Because the tourists were all old. They were all wearing brown or beige clothing and stupid-looking hats, and when they passed the spot where we were sitting — which was slightly uphill from where the buses stopped — they were huffing and puffing like they'd just finished running a marathon.

I could never imagine becoming so old, being all beige like that. All the old men I knew looked like that. And the old women. They were beige. It was incredibly difficult to conceive of the fact that these old women must have once been young. That they had once been the same age as Tatiana, and that they had gotten dressed up and gone out to dance at places where people referred to them as “hot dishes” or whatever they said fifty or a hundred years ago. Not all of them, of course. Some of them were dull or ugly even then, no doubt. But even the dull and ugly ones probably had dreams about how their lives would pan out. They must have had plans for the future. Even the totally normal ones had plans for the future. And what I guarantee was not in those plans was becoming a beige senior citizen. The more I thought about these old folks who kept climbing out of the buses, the more depressed I got. The thing that got to me the most was the thought that even among the people on these bus tours, there must have been some who weren't boring or dull when they were young. Some had been attractive. Some were the prettiest girls in their class even — the ones everybody had a crush on. And seventy years ago some kid probably sat in a playground fort and got excited when he saw the light go on in some of these old ladies' rooms. But those girls had become beige senior citizens too, and you couldn't tell them apart from the rest. They all had gray skin and fleshy noses and ears now, and it made me so depressed that I practically threw up.