Why We Took the Car (20 page)

“Down?” he yelled. I didn't know how to answer. He hit the brakes one last time, and then we were over the brink and that was it — we were hurtling down the embankment.

We probably could have made it if we had driven straight down. But Tschick tried to go sideways and switch back and there was no stopping the Lada at that point. We started skidding, got hung up on something, and flipped over. We rolled over three, four, five, six — I don't know how many times — and came to rest upside down. I wasn't sure what had happened. What I was sure of, though, was that the passenger door was open, so I tried to climb out. But I couldn't. It took about half an hour before I realized the reason I couldn't get out wasn't because I was injured but because I hadn't unbuckled my seat belt. Then I was finally out and I noticed the following things: a green Dumpster directly in front of me, an overturned Lada with steam coming out of the hood and hissing, and Tschick crawling along the ground on all fours. He hoisted himself up, stumbled for a few steps, and yelled, “Come on!” and started to run.

I didn't run. Where were we going to run? Behind us was the plateau and most likely the cops, in front of us was the autobahn, and beyond the autobahn were fields stretching to the horizon. Not exactly the ideal topography to escape from the law. There were a few trees and bushes around the rest area, and off across the fields was a big white box — probably a factory.

“What's going on?” Tschick yelled. “Are you hurt?”

Was I hurt? No, apparently not. Maybe a few bruises.

“Is something wrong?” he asked, coming back toward me.

I wanted to offer an explanation for why I thought it was such a stupid idea to try to escape on foot. Then there was a rustling of leaves and cracking of branches, and a hippo came through the bushes in front of us. Somewhere in Germany, right on the side of the autobahn, in the middle of a wasteland, a hippo came out of the bushes and rushed at us. It was wearing a blue pantsuit, had a curly blond perm, and was carrying a fire extinguisher in its hand. Four or five rings of fat jiggled around its waist. It had two barrels sticking out of the bottom of the pantsuit, and it stomped across the ground, stopped in front of the overturned Lada, and held up the fire extinguisher.

Nothing was burning.

I looked at Tschick and Tschick looked at me. We looked at the woman. Because that's what it was. A woman, not a hippo. Nobody said a word and I was thinking that a jet of white would shoot out of the fire extinguisher and bury us beneath a mountain of foam.

The woman waited a while for the car to explode in flames so she could put her fire extinguisher to use. But the Lada was just as underwhelming in death as it had been in life. There was only a hissing from the engine compartment. One of the back wheels was still spinning, getting slower and slower, and then it stopped.

“Are you boys okay?” the woman asked, still looking warily at the hood of the car.

Tschick tapped his finger on the fire extinguisher. “Something burning?” he said.

“Oh my God,” the woman said lowering the extinguisher. “Did anything happen to you?”

“Nothing,” said Tschick.

“You're not hurt?”

I shook my head.

“Where is your father? Or your mother? Who was driving?”

“I was driving,” said Tschick.

“You just got the car from . . .”

“It's stolen,” said Tschick.

If the doctor who later examined me was right, I was in shock during this time. When you're in shock all the blood rushes to your legs and there's basically no more blood in your head and you can't think straight. At least, that's what the doctor said. He also said it was a reaction from caveman times — when the Neanderthals were wandering through the woods and a mammoth suddenly appeared, they went into shock, and all the blood in their legs allowed them to run away faster. Thinking wasn't so important back then. Sounds odd to me, but that's what the doctor told me. Maybe Tschick had been right to try to run away and maybe I was stupid not to, but hindsight is twenty-twenty. And here was a woman standing in front of us with a fire extinguisher — and she was shocked too. Because even though I was in shock, and Tschick was in shock, this woman was in much worse shape. It would have been enough just to see the car flip down the hill or to have Tschick tell her it was a stolen car. She was shaking really bad. She looked at Tschick, pointed to a trickle of blood running down his chin, and said, “Oh my God.” Then the extinguisher fell from her hand and onto Tschick's foot. He immediately fell to the ground, lifting his leg, grabbing it with his hands, and screaming.

“Oh my God!” the woman screamed again, kneeling next to Tschick in the grass.

“Shit,” I said. I took a quick look at the ridge above us — still no cops.

“Is it broken?”

“How should I know?” screamed Tschick, rolling around in pain.

CHAPTER 38

So this was the situation: We'd driven hundreds of miles around Germany, ridden over an abyss on a scaffold, been shot at by Horst Fricke, had gone off the end of an embankment and rolled the car a half-dozen times, and come through it all basically unscathed — and then a hippo charged out of the bushes and destroyed Tschick's foot with a fire extinguisher.

We leaned down over his foot but had no idea if it was broken or just bruised. One thing was clear — Tschick couldn't stand on it.

“I'm so sorry!” said the woman. And she really did feel bad, you could tell. She seemed more pained than Tschick, at least judging by their faces. But while my head was still reeling and Tschick was rolling around on the ground moaning, she was the first one to get herself together. She felt Tschick's chin again and then lifted his lower leg in the air. “Ouch,” she said as she twisted his ankle this way and that, and Tschick whimpered.

“You need to go to the hospital” was her conclusion.

“Hang on,” I wanted to say, but the hippo had already shoved her front hooves under Tschick and lifted him up as easily as if he were a piece of toast.

Tschick screamed, but more out of surprise than pain. She disappeared through the bushes as quickly as she had come. I ran after them.

Beyond the shrubs was a green BMW 5 Series. The woman tossed Tschick into the passenger seat. I got in the back. When she climbed into the driver's seat, the car sunk two feet on her side and Tschick bounced up in his seat. Crazy, I thought, but it turned out I should have saved that word for what happened during the next few minutes.

“We have to hurry!” said the woman gravely, though when she said it presumably she wasn't thinking about fleeing from the police.

I was the only one who kept turning around and noticed that the police car must have managed to find a way down the embankment — because in the far distance the car was fighting its way through the scrub brush at the base of the slope.

“Buckle up,” said the woman, stepping on the gas pedal. The BMW was doing a hundred kilometers an hour in two seconds. As she went around bends, I was thrown around the backseat like a paper airplane. Tschick was moaning.

“Put your seat belt on,” she repeated.

I clicked my seat belt.

“What about you?” said Tschick to the woman.

Through the back window, I could see the traffic behind us recede. Somewhere in the distance you could hear a police siren, but not for long. And no wonder — we were up to two hundred and fifty kilometers an hour. Neither the woman nor Tschick seemed to have heard the siren. They were still talking about seat belts.

“It's not my car,” said the woman. “I need a belt two meters long.” She giggled. She spoke in a normal voice, but when she giggled it was squeaky, like the sound a little girl would make while being tickled.

When we came upon any obstacles, the woman honked her horn or flashed her lights. And if that didn't work she just calmly blew past them in the service lane as if she was pulling through the McDonald's drive-in. She'd obviously gotten over her shock.

“It's permitted in an emergency,” she said. Then she giggled again. “So you guys were driving that car?”

“We're on vacation,” said Tschick.

“And you stole it?”

“Borrowed, actually,” said Tschick. “Or stolen. But we were going to take it back. I swear.”

The BMW barreled along. The woman didn't respond. What could she have said? We had stolen a car and she had dropped a fire extinguisher on Tschick's foot. Studying her in the rearview mirror, I couldn't tell what kind of look flashed across her face, if any look flashed across her face at all. She certainly didn't seem hysterical.

She passed two tractor-trailers, and then she said, “So you guys are car thieves.”

“If you say so,” said Tschick.

“I say so.”

“What are you?”

“This car belongs to my husband.”

“No, I mean, what do you do for a living? And do you know where there's a hospital?”

“The hospital's not far from here. And I'm a speech therapist.”

“What does a speech therapist do therapy on?” asked Tschick. “People's language?”

“I teach people to speak.”

“Babies or what?”

“No. Children sometimes. But mainly adults.”

“You teach adults to talk? Illiterate people or something?” Tschick grimaced, totally focused on the woman. I think he was basically trying to keep his mind off the pain in his foot, but the topic of conversation really did seem to grab him.

As the two of them were talking up front, I spent the whole time looking out the back. I probably missed some parts of the conversation. And like I said, I was in shock. But what I caught was the following:

“Vocal formation,” said the woman. “Singers, people who do a lot of public speaking, people who mumble. Most people don't speak properly. You don't speak properly, actually.”

“But you can still understand me.”

“It's about your voice. You need to project your voice, it needs to resonate. See, your voice comes from here,” she said, indicating her throat. Probably without even noticing it, she had let up on the gas a little once they had started talking. We were only going about a hundred and eighty now. I tapped Tschick on the shoulder, but he was deep into the conversation.

“I talk with my mouth.”

“Normal speech has nothing to do with being able to project your voice. A good, resonant voice comes from here, from the core. But when you talk it comes from here. It needs to come from here.” As she said the last “here,” she hit herself twice beneath her breasts, making a sound something like
hee-R-R
.

“From hee-R-R?” said Tschick, hitting himself on the chest the same way.

“You have to think of it like athletics. The whole body is involved. The diaphragm, the abdominal muscles, the pelvis, it takes all of them. Two-thirds comes from the diaphragm versus only one third from the lungs.”

Now we were down to a hundred and sixty kilometers an hour. If this kept up, she'd bring the car to a halt with her speech therapy.

“The important thing is to get to the hospital quickly,” I said.

“It's okay,” said Tschick. “It doesn't hurt so bad anymore.”

I buried my head in my hands.

“When you talk from here,” said the woman, “you get nothing but a little croaking sound. The air comes out of your throat —
uh, uh
. It has to come from here.” She opened her mouth into a big O, held her hands in front of her gut, and lifted them as though she were hoisting an invisible box. She had to let go of the steering wheel to do it. Tschick reached across and steadied the wheel.

“From here,” said the woman, calling, “Oooo!”

It scared me. But Tschick was all excited. I tried again to gesture to him, but he didn't understand it. Or he wasn't paying attention. Or maybe the woman's state of mind had infected him. The speedometer said one hundred and forty kilometers an hour. Still no sign of the cops.

“Oooo! Oooo! Oooo!” went the woman.

“Uh! Uh!” went Tschick.

“More in the middle, and move it down,” said the woman, stepping on the gas again. “The human body is like a tube of toothpaste — when you squeeze it, something comes out the top. Oooooo! Ooooo!”

“Uh! Uh!” went Tschick.

“Better. Ooooooaaaaaaah!”

“Ooaaah!”

That's seriously how it went — all the way to the hospital.

We catapulted down the off-ramp, made two hard rights, and two minutes later we pulled up in front of a huge white building in the middle of nowhere. No cops in sight.

“An excellent hospital,” said the woman.

“I don't have any health insurance,” said Tschick.

The woman looked briefly upset. Then she leaned across Tschick and opened the door for him. “Don't worry. I'm the one who hurt you, and I'll pay for it, of course. Or my insurance will. Or whatever. Keep your chin up.”