A Corner of the World by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: City Lights Publishers
Published: 2014-08-14T22:00:00+00:00

II

The mechanic poked his head out from under the car to sing me the well-known song that it was a wreck and whoever was buying it was acquiring a problem.

I had decided to sell it, and who better than a mechanic to find me a buyer? They know everyone who’s in the market for a used automobile—people with the money, the desire, and no earthly way to get authorization to buy one new.

So I also sang him my well-known song, that selling the car was no big deal to me, that I wasn’t going to lose any sleep over whether it happened or not. I adopted the air of someone trying to shake off an object she really didn’t want to have around anymore, for whom economic need was a strictly secondary aspect.

The third act of this opera involved each of us trying to avoid falling into the trap of the other. So we came to a face-off in the neutral territory where there were no great obstacles to selling the car, and I was getting rid of it because I’d rather have the money than a Moskvich that made such exhausting demands.

“Do you want it fixed before you sell it, or would you rather get rid of it right away?”

Now the lyrics were growing more difficult. They required a mix of Muscovite auto mechanics and Swiss bank calculus. We grappled a bit and decided on rendering the car as attractive as possible with a minimum of expense. He told me he didn’t want any percentage of the sale, which implied that his profit was already built into the price of the absolutely necessary repairs, which meant that the minimum would be far from minimal. That’s how these things usually go.

The mechanic managed to get the Moskvich started and drove it up the ramp from the garage. He waved happily and took off into the distance as if the car had never belonged to me.

I said to myself, aloud, “Goodbye car.” I didn’t feel anything, other than a temptation to call Daniel to tell him about it. As if selling the car, something that for us here is a very serious operation with grave consequences, was important only in offering me a reason to get in touch with him.

Or try to get in touch. Because in fact I had already called him quite a few times since he had left my house.

At first I was afraid of giving myself away. As if the mere ring of the telephone would finger me as the caller, rather as I’d feel if discovered in act of picking someone’s pocket. However, caller ID is a very scarce service here, a completely unnecessary luxury, so one’s anonymity is almost always guaranteed. One of the advantages of underdevelopment: mystery.

Daniel had no answering machine. These too are not very abundant. Even if he did, I wouldn’t have been able to leave him a message, because then I’d have cast myself in the role of waiting for him to call me back.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.