Marina Lewycka - Two Caravans

But these good mzungus showed me the use of the Abomination by means of a Banana in such a cunning way that the Banana would frizzle and not my own Immortal Soul. They took the Banana and clothed it in the Abomination and Andree said now Emanuel when you are coming together with woman you put it not upon Banana but upon your own manly part. This caused me to smile then Andree unclothed the Banana and ate it being Ukrainian and much beloved of Bananas. So by using a Banana instead of my own upstanding manhood it would frizzle up in the Fiery Pit and I would be spared.

For the life of the soul endures beyond the life of the body which has only a brief flowering then is cast like grass into the oven said Father Augustine who is a kind man with a big belly and crooked teeth and very short-sighted. Then he put his arm round me and said don’t worry boy your parents were not bad people but they suffered from the frailty of our fallen human condition. And seeing the questioning look still on my face he sighed and said dear boy there are some mysteries in the ways of the Lord which we are not given to understand but some among us believe there is no evil without a purpose and we believe He only permits evil because it is a test for our own Goodness.

But still I have been rubbing some questions over and over in my head until they begin to smoke and burn like fire sticks and I pray feveredly for His guidance as I contemplate the Decision I must make. For if I choose the earthly delights of canal knowledge then I will never know the heavenly Love nor sing in the Choir of Angels.

It had rained in the night. I could tell, because the air smelt different. I woke up early in my blue-and-white attic room, full of excitement and anticipation, because at last I was going to see London, the city of my dreams, and especially because I was going to see it with him.

It was strange, at first, being just the two of us in the Land Rover, him sitting at the wheel and me sitting in the passenger seat with the dog at my feet. What were we going to say to each other? I wanted to talk to him. London is a very beautiful city. English men wear bowler hats . No, not that stupid stuff. I wanted to talk about us, him and me. Tell me who you are, Andriy Palenko. Do you love me? Are you the one? But you can’t say that. So we just drove in silence, crawling in the heavy traffic.

According to the map Maria had given me, we were on the South Circular Road. He had that fixed look on his face, concentrating on his driving. And I know this sounds strange, but although he was a Donbas miner I noticed for the first time that in profile he had a slight look of Mr Brown about him. Then he said, still with that look on his face, as though he was talking to himself, “I wonder what happened to all the carrots.”

“Which carrots?”

“From the caravan. Didn’t you notice? Two bags gone. Only six small carrots left.”

“Only six? Maybe she stole them.”

“To feed to her husband.”

Then we both started laughing, and that broke the tension between us, so we laughed even more, till our sides ached. Then we drove on in silence for a bit, but now it was a different kind of silence.

Suddenly Andriy slammed the brakes on. “Devil’s bum! Did you see that?” The Land Rover lurched all over the road as the caravan bounced on its bracket. “These Angliski drivers! Cut-throat bandits!”

I couldn’t help myself. I burst out laughing. “Is that what they say in Donbas?”

“What?”

“Devil’s bum!” I laughed.

He gave me a hard look.

“Do you think we’re all hooligans in Donbas? Primitive types?”

“No, it’s not that. It just sounds funny.”

“And so what did you think when you saw all these uncivilised coalminers coming into your Kiev? All with blue-and-white flags to protest against your Orange Revolution? All talking with Donbas accent? Did you think it is the barbarians’ invasion?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, but I can see what you are thinking. Every time I open my mouth you start to grin.”

“Andriy, why are you saying these things?”

“I don’t know.” He frowned again and clenched his jaw. “I should concentrate. Where are we going?”

“ Kensington Park Road.” Maria had looked it up for me and shown me on the map. “You have to turn left somewhere up here. About eight kilometres.”

On Putney Bridge we got stuck in a traffic jam and then it was solid cars all the way, so by the time we got to Kensington Park Road the consulate was just closing. I pleaded with the woman behind the desk. I explained my passport had been stolen and I needed to get a new one. But she was one of those pouty-mouth types who looks as though she finds talking to people too exhausting.

“Come back Monday.” She rolled her eyes, and tottered off in her pencil-tight skirt, which in my opinion she did not have the figure to wear.

“Well?” asked Andriy, who was waiting outside, and when I told him, he said, “These new Ukrainians. They forget who pays their wages.”

Then we went quiet, because obviously we had a decision to make.

“Do you want to go back to Richmond?” he said.

“Do you?”

“It’s up to you.”

“No, you decide.” I was being careful-careful not to upset him again.

“I’ll do whatever you want,” he said.

“I don’t mind.”

“Well, let’s toss a coin. Heads we go back, tails we go on.”

He found a coin in his pocket and flicked it in the air with his thumb, and it landed heads up.

“That’s it. We’ll go back, then,” he said.

“All right.” I looked at the coin, and I looked at him. “But we don’t have to if we don’t want to, do we?”

“I’ll do whatever you want.”

“I don’t mind. But I don’t really want to go back to Richmond, unless you do. I mean, they were nice…”

“Nice but crazy,” he said.

We both laughed.

“Where do you want to go, then?” He had that Mr Brown look on his face again.

“I don’t mind. You decide.”

This girl-he’s getting nowhere with her. One minute she’s smiling, then she won’t talk at all, and then sometimes she laughs at him as though he’s some kind of idiot. It’s like the Land Rover gearbox: fourth gear and reverse are too close together. You’re just going along nicely in third, and ready to change up to fourth, and suddenly you find you’ve slammed it into reverse and you stop dead or jump backwards. Now she’s smiling again, saying she wants to look around London and see Globe Theatre, Tabard Inn, Chancery, Old Curiosity Shop. What is this stuff? What does she think he is-an exclusive VIP tour guide? First he’d better find somewhere to park, because driving in this traffic with a caravan is no joke. He can’t even get up into third most of the time, and that second gear keeps slipping out, so he’s been driving in first, and they’re burning up petrol fast, and he’s going to need at least another tankful to get up to Sheffield. If he had the tools, he’d take a look at that gearbox. He has heard that the Land Rover gearbox is quite something. How would it compare with their old Zaporozhets, he wonders? Yes, that had had a similar gearbox fault.

When he was thirteen, his father had bought a second-hand sky-blue Zaporozhets 965-the Zaz they called it affectionately, humpbacked like a kind old granddad. It was the first mass-produced workers’ car in Ukraine. Real metal body-not fibreboard rubbish like the Trabant. He was the first person in their apartment block to own one. Every Sunday he cleaned and polished it out in the street, and sometimes he and Andriy would spend a couple of hours together, head to head under the bonnet, just tinkering. (Listen, boy, his father had said. Listen to the music of internal combustion.) His dad would tune the engine fine-fine, to make it run sweetly. Tut-ut-ut-ut-ut-ut. Those were good times. As the car got older, the tinkering sessions grew longer. Together, they ground down the valves and replaced the solenoid and the clutch. He learnt something about car engines, but the main thing he learnt was that all problems can be solved if you approach them in a patient and methodical way. In the end, the car outlived his father. Poor Dad.