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HONORABLE MENTION
El Mercedes de Don Orlando
Gustavo Arcia
I was fourteen the summer Don Orlando bought a Mercedes Benz. He lived down
the block from us in Granada, Nicaragua, in a small red house without a
garage. Granada is an old colonial city - t was founded by the conquistador
Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba in 1524, just a couple of years before his
father-in-law beheaded him for treason. As colonial cities go, Granada is one
of the nicer ones, with a mix of Spanish architecture and small town boredom.
The houses are all next to each other, and most have an inner courtyard with a
few ornamental plants that everyone waters everyday and prunes every now and
then to give them some resemblance to topiaries they have seen in postcards
from France or Spain. If you had a car, you parked it inside the house, in
one of the corridors. First you opened the double doors of the zaguan, which
is the entrance for deliveries and for the domestic help. Then you
went back to the car and releasing the clutch veeeryy ssslowwwwllllly you went
up two small cement ramps into the house. If you entered the zaguan too fast,
the bottom of the car would scrape the floor. If you entered the zaguan a
little faster, you would hit the transmission case and you would flinch so
hard, that your forehead would touch the steering wheel.
Don Orlando's house did not have a zaguan. He also did not know how to drive.
He bought the car first, and had planned to pay a taxi driver to teach him how
to drive. Don Orlando was a chartered accountant with a gas company in
Managua, 45 kilometers away. He was as fastidious with his clothing - starched white
shirt, starched white pants, thin black tie with a gold bar clip, shiny shoes
with thin all-leather soles - as he was with his conversation, his delicate,
close-mouthed chewing, his tiny mincing steps when he walked, his careful
speech and his thin laugh. My friends and I did not think much about the fact
that Don Orlando did not know how to drive, since learning could only take a
couple of days. We knew all there was to know about sex and cars; learning to
drive would not be a problem. Every fourteen year old knew that.
That day my uncle Max and went to visit Don Orlando to congratulate him on
his car. He had parked it in front of his house, where he could see it from
his living room. Since our families were close, I went inside the car with
his nephew Melico, and began to examine every atom of the car 's interior, as
if I were a forensic mechanic. It has been 35 years since that event and I
still remember every detail. Que lindo, a 220SE, with
about 30,000 kilometers on it. The car's exterior was cream and the paint was so smooth to the touch that we imagined it was the closest
thing to a girl's inner thigh. It also had two short fins. It was 1963: big
fins were cool. The 220SE was no '60 Impala, but since it was a Mercedes,
then, Impalas immediately became too flashy in our minds. The deck had a
vertical odometer, with a yellow marker that went up the scale like a magical
measuring tape that would change to a red/yellow if you went past 60
miles per hour. If you went past 75 miles per hour the tape would change to red.
We had never seen anything like it. It had a Blaupunkt radio with AM, short
wave and a scan mode. You pressed a button, Don Orlando explained, and the
needle would go up and down the dial until it found a strong radio signal.
There was no FM then. We had never seen anything like it. It was not until
1985, when I bought my first Jetta, that I ever saw a radio with a scan
feature on it.
The upholstery was burgundy and the seats were very, very firm. The front
seats had a huge knob that you turned counter clockwise to recline the seat
back all the way down. Melico turned the knobs, turned on the radio, found
Radio Mundial, and for a few glorious minutes, we layed back with silly grins
on our faces, as if we had taken a peek under a girl's dress.
That car was beautiful. It had handles on the inside of the roof, next to the
door frame, to help you get in and out; it had a middle arm in the back seat. It had a huge steering wheel with an inner chrome ring and the large Mercedes
star. It had long-faced headlights and a radiator grill that went up when you
opened the hood. It had it all, and all of it I admired and memorized
forever.
Don Orlando began his driving lessons in the early evenings, at the hottest
time of day. His teacher was an old taxi driver who normally drove a '56
Chevrolet during his rounds. Since he kept his taxi in beautiful condition,
Don Orlando figured that he would be a meticulous and thoughtful teacher.
Despite the heat, Don Orlando wore black leather gloves to his driving
lessons. For the next three months, six nights a week, Don Orlando went up
and down La Calzada, our street, learning how to turn left, how and when to
change the light beam, how to use the clutch when starting up uphill, and how
to pass. By the end of the first month he could let one hand go from the
wheel and wave, while keeping a firm grip with the other. By the second
month he was holding the steering wheel with the right hand, and just using
the fingertips of his left hand to touch the steering wheel while resting his
arm on the door sill. That car made even Don Orlando look cool.
Finally, after three months of training, Don Orlando began to drive by
himself, first around the city - which had very few cars and only two traffic
lights - and later to work. Usually there would be two or three other people
riding with him. The pleasure of riding in a Mercedes made his riders forget
the brief moments of sheer terror when Don Orlando tried to pass another car going up a hill while a large lumber truck came down the hill in the
opposite direction. He always drove to work with the black leather gloves on,
doing 40 miles per hour in a two-lane highway with a speed limit of 60
miles per hour. He drove people crazy; everyone had to pass him on the way to
work, and in a busy two-lane highway, that was an aggravation. But from time
to time Don Orlando would discover the concept of acceleration, take off in a
momentary burst, and pass several cars at once. Every time Don Orlando did
this, his three passengers would spend a few terrifying seconds that would
last an eternity, or at least long enough for them to swear off alcohol
forever and promise the Immaculate Conception that if they lived on after that
trip, they would go to Mass every day until they died, but Virgencita
Linda, don't let that day be today, please. Passing was not Don Orlando's
strong point.
About two weeks after he began to commute to work in the Mercedes, Don Orlando
had an accident. He passed a loaded minibus and moved into the right lane too
soon. His rear bumper - its shiny chrome topped with additional bumper handles
that protected the stop lights - hooked the front bumper of the minibus. Every passenger in it thought they were going to crash, because the Mercedes
would not budge, while the minibus, a 15-passenger Daihatsu, nearly shook
itself to pieces. The front bumper of the minibus gave way and bent
outward, liberating the Mercedes. Don Orlando drove on without noticing
anything at all, let alone the panic of fifteen other people. He became a tropical Mr. Magoo, doing the most incredible acrobatics in
the Mercedes, always coming away unscathed and completely oblivious to his
surroundings. I had never suspected that accountants could be so dangerous.
He stopped wearing the black leather gloves about a year after he began
driving to work. Someone began to call him at his office to tease him about
the gloves. It was a whispering male voice who would always ask him, "Did you
wear the gloves today, big man?" or "You looked so macho this morning, driving
with those beautiful gloves on." We knew about the calls because Don Miguel,
another family friend, used to drive with Don Orlando to Managua and overheard
him a couple of times. Don Orlando was caught between the pain of
being teased about the gloves, and the intimate pleasure he derived from
wearing them while his hands were on the wheel. He was a private man who
never let you into his inner world. Driving with the gloves on - in the
Nicaraguan heat - must have been part of it. We found out about the calls after
they stopped. By then, Don Orlando had been driving the Mercedes without the
gloves, or "bareback," as he used to say afterwards. He made fun of the man
calling him. After he stopped wearing gloves Don Orlando became less uptight
about the car - he began to truly enjoy driving it. After 18 months of
quiet persistence, Don Orlando had conquered his fears and began to joke about
his driving. He felt so good that his driving improved and we kids stopped
making fun of him behind his back. Being caught in his fantasy world by
an anonymous caller must have made him choose another fantasy to dream by.
I was sixteen when I finally drove Don Orlando's Mercedes. Having been his
passenger a few times in short rides around Granada, the thrill of driving the
Mercedes was not the same as when I had first sat inside it. But I still remember that day. I did not feel the potholes; between
the firm seats and the superb suspension, the car felt as I always dreamt a
car should feel: neither like a nervous dog that you must always keep your
eyes on, nor like a sofa. That Mercedes was solid. I particularly remember
how good it was for a short guy like me to be able to sit high and see the
hood of the car and - best of all - feel completely in control. I loved the
smooth sound of the engine, like a turbine sound, without the clickitty clack
you heard in four cylinder engines of lesser, mortal cars. Between the smell
of leather, the soft murmur of the engine, the responsiveness of the steering
wheel, and the wind in my face, I stopped being a young man of sixteen with a
testosterone imbalance, and became a nine year-old again. I was transformed
into a fighter pilot, a race car driver, a hero.
The car survived every one of Don Orlando's driving mistakes. To make it even
better, the car never broke down. At some point, it was very safe to drive
with him, since every driver on the road to Managua would stay away Don
Orlando. "You never know!" they said. He kept the Mercedes from 1963 until
1980, when he moved to Costa Rica, after the Sandinistas came into power. By
then I had married, had a child, and had other dreams to follow. I never saw
the car again.
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