ESSAY
The Drive
August 1995
by David Speranza
I should have seen storm clouds brewing the day my landlady's son arrived clutching keys to the apartment in one hand and his throbbing, broken heart in the other.
My landlady, with whom I shared a flat at the time, had warned me only the day before, using that child-like Czech she reserved especially for me.
"Petr and Katka are konec," she said—finished. "Petr is very sad. He was crying on the telephone. He is very sensitive."
It was with a vigorous enthusiasm that I had spent much of my first year in Prague studying Czech, so I took a certain pride in being able to express more than the basic expatriate desire for beer. But while the advantages of speaking another language meant I could enjoy a wide range of activities with the country’s non-English-speaking natives, I was about to discover that there are times when not being able to communicate may be far better for one's health.
I nodded, unsure how to react. I was sorry, of course: Petr and Katka had always seemed an attractive, stable couple, despite his being 28 and she only 17. But from what I could gather, Katka had lately been celebrating her maturing womanhood in the arms of men other than the Yellow Pages ad rep she'd spent her last two years with.
"It is terrible, David," Petr moaned. "Just terrible."
We sat commiserating in front of the television, a Czech dictionary on the table between us to aid in the trickier vocabulary.
Was there anything I could do? I politely asked.
As a matter of fact, he said, there was: He had to drop off a set of keys at his and Katka's house. Would I mind going along to keep him company?
I hesitated, understandably surprised by such a heartfelt request. Sure, I said—as long as I didn't have to break up any fights.
Cut to: later that evening. As we prepared to leave, Petr asked if I had a driver's license. I told him I had a New York license, but not a European one. That's fine, he said. Had I ever driven a stick? Well, ye-es, I began, but... And what about a Skoda? No, I couldn't recall that particular pleasure, but— Would I drive him to Katka's? I felt my head bob tentatively. Why? I asked. In his overwrought condition, he explained, he didn't trust himself behind the wheel. Ah-hah, I replied, not without relief. I was familiar enough with his family's driving history to know that even in the best of conditions they drove like maniacs. Okay, I agreed—telling myself it would be less a favor than simple self-preservation. Anyway, it was only a 20-minute drive outside the city. How hard could it be?
Outside we approached Petr's old Skoda, a fruity orange shell with a toy engine tucked under its hood. In that thick Liben air, entering the car was like donning a damp suit of armor, and pretty flimsy armor at that. There followed a brief demonstration of gear shift, lights and turn signals—all of which approximated their American counterparts—then we pulled out of the parking lot and lurched onto the highway.
My Czech driving vocabulary consisted of little more than "Right!" "Left!" and "Stop!", but for the first few minutes that seemed to be enough. True, I nearly decapitated a motorcyclist and broke into a cold sweat weaving in and around tram tracks — an obstacle-course maneuver as basic to Praguers as parallel parking to New Yorkers — but my careful, obsessive scrutiny of the road ensured we didn't slam into any street signs or traffic barriers.
And then the fog set in. The further we drove from Prague, the thicker it became. The road, meanwhile, grew narrower and windier, and soon I could see only a car’s length ahead of me. The only thing keeping me on the road was the reassuring white line to my left, though at times even that disappeared, leaving only the sound of tires on gravel to assure me I wasn't driving through pasture.
Meanwhile, moisture was beginning to spread like moss across the windshield, further blinding me despite Petr's helpful switching on and off of the wipers. "Left!" he would shout. "No, over here!" As his alarmed cries directed me from one seemingly invisible road to the next, I swerved and veered through the dense mist, our pace little more than a crawl, my hands forming a death-grip on the wheel. I was sure at any moment some Czech fugitive wildly waving his hands—or maybe a large wolf—would suddenly appear and go bouncing over the hood to the sound of our screeching tires.
But miraculously, we made it to Katka’s. It turned out that was the easy part.
First there was the lumpy babicka huddled in a blanket by the door. Upon greeting us, she immediately broke into hysterical sobs at the thought of Petr and Katka splitting up. Katka had yet to arrive, so while I passed the time thumbing through back issues of Czech Elle, Petr paced up and down restlessly—repeatedly offering an alarming assortment of beverages, then inserting a tape of Spanish love songs and consoling the weeping Grandma.
When Katka’s car pulled up out front, Petr rewound the cassette so that a certain song began playing the moment Katka—accompanied by her father and younger sister—opened the door.
But instead of breaking down into nostalgic tears and falling into his arms (as I'm sure Petr hoped), Katka moved stoically across the apartment to collect whatever belongings she'd need for the night. Her father, meanwhile, smoked a cigarillo and acted cheerful, while I pretended to be struggling through an article on hair rinse.
Once they left and we were back outside, I shifted the car into gear and backed out of the driveway, Petr sitting numb beside me. Despite the fog still choking the road, I was glad I was the one driving.
Glad, at least, until Petr fed the tape of Spanish love songs into the car stereo. Because, as it turned out, not all of the songs were in Spanish. Some were in English. And Petr, love-tortured romantic that he was, wanted a translation.
"What is he singing?" he asked.
I jumped, thinking I'd missed a turn.
"Whuh?"
"Tell me what the song is saying."
"Now?"
"Yes."
I tried to listen, but could only concentrate on the white blanket of air disgorging its threatening pairs of headlights.
"I don't know what he's saying."
"It's your language."
"But it's your car! Petr, I have to concentrate."
"So just listen a moment and tell me what it means."
I listened. The singer—could it have been Julio Iglesias?—was lamenting about a woman who'd left him.
"You don't want to know," I concluded.
"Yes I do."
"It's sad."
"Tell me!"
I told him. Silence. We continued through the fog, my nose pressed to the windshield, adding my own fog to the one outside.
A duet began.
"What are they singing?" Petr asked. It was the voice of someone consciously seeking pain.
It was a ballad, the kind you hear on radio stations with the word LITE in their call letters. I translated the kitschy, basic, lyrics into a rough Czech, then Petr repeated them back to me in a more grammatically correct form.
This continued for the rest of the drive, punctuated only by Petr's sudden shouts of "Left!" "Right!" and "Stop!" Until finally—unbelievably—we were home.
"How did it go?" my landlady asked, taking me aside as Petr slumped onto the living room couch.
"Beer," I grunted. Then, locating one quickly, I disappeared into my room.
I could tell she was surprised by the sudden
reduction of my
vocabulary to its most basic expatriate form. But I didn't care. I was
going to drink enough to forget that evening, that drive, those awful
Spanish love songs. And if I could, I would forget I ever did anything
as
silly as trying to learn Czech.