Once I decided to learn to drive.
No, no, I did not have a car, not even in the plans, nor, for that matter, the possibility of buying one. But a certain excitement appeared — a drive, I would even say. My colleague-driver took offense: then what was he for? Another colleague, with whom I was working on a joint project at the time, passionately tried to dissuade me from this step: “It’s not for you, not for you.” And, apparently to soften the blow, he added: “And not for me either.” The others said nothing.
So after work I began going to lessons, since the driving school was not far from home.
The drive that had brought me to the leader’s desk actively interfered with the learning process. I wanted to get up and run ahead of the locomotive. Or the automobile.
Unexpected notes began appearing in the margins of my notebooks and traffic rules, such as:
I sit here at driving
And dream of the personal.
I am possessed by a vision,
Everything is wonderful.
Or:
A light circle of plastic —
A café table.
With an eraser I wipe away
The auto-da-fé.
Studying the theory went easily and joyfully. My first drive out onto the avenue with the instructor swept by on such a high note of joy and flight that the drive had no end.
I came to driving lessons either early in the morning before work, or already in the evening. But one day the instructor’s plans changed, and he asked me to come during the lunch break.
That day, although the calendar did not yet promise anything new, winter unexpectedly began.
The instructor, previously always positive and charming, was gloomy, bilious, and angry.
In short, a sharp change of scenery.
“We won’t go onto the avenue today,” said the instructor, and we set off in the opposite direction. Beautiful autumn snow was falling, softly swirling and covering the roads, smooth from that very snow melting after having fallen out of season. The streets were winding and unpredictable. When, in an unexpected place, two women unexpectedly emerged from behind a house and walked on, not noticing me, proudly driving a beautiful car, to say that I was upset is to say nothing. “Ladies!” I shouted through the closed car window, from indignation forgetting where all the pedals and buttons were. “Where are you going under the car? Don’t you notice me and the beautiful learner’s sign on our beautiful car?”
But although my questions were loud, apparently they were rhetorical. Not only the women, but also the instructor did not react to them.
When at last all the streets had been driven around, the cones on the training ground knocked down, and the time allotted for this educational extravaganza had expired, the most interesting part began: returning to the school along the icy Second Longitudinal Road at rush hour. In one of the thrilling moments the instructor calmly asked whether I was firmly determined to ram a trolleybus, to which I sarcastically inquired whether he was sure he had been put into my car merely for beauty.
At that point the drive ended. I did not go to the exams, agreeing with the colleague with whom I had been doing the project that it was “not for me.”
The colleague-driver breathed a sigh of relief.
