2
AUTOMATIC ENGINE
1.
I’ll always have a clear memory of it because it happened so simply and without fuss.
Julio Cortázar, “House Taken Over,” translated by Paul Blackburn
I hope I haven’t wasted this quotation by using it now.
2.
Then we woke up.
She smiled.
We got out of the car and stood leaning against the hood. Eating the last of our supplies—half a packet of cookies, 3 peaches, and the water—we decided that the prison sign was deterrent enough. We wouldn’t go on.
The sun was low and the long shadow of the car met ours out across the vast scrubland. I saw in this projection, in this combination of our shadows and that of the car, a cat’s head. We wondered what our cat might have been doing in that moment.
* * *
While she, sitting on the hood, ate the last cookies, I put the key in the ignition; the needle on the gas gauge swung close to empty. I turned the engine on. At the sound of the exhaust a number of small birds shot up out of the bushes, lurching a little way through the air, like they had ballast in their feet, before landing once more. I revved the engine a little to warm it. She, still outside the car, hiked up her skirt, took off her panties, and took another pair out of the back. She flung the used ones away and they caught on the tapestry of the bushes, where we left them hanging.
3.
We made our way along now-familiar roads, and after 3 hours came to the main road. A Shell station soon appeared. We filled the tank and had some breakfast in the cafeteria, decaf coffees, croissants, and some very strangely branded mineral water. We sat at a table by the door and watched a large number of trucks drive by. Freezer trucks, trucks transporting lumber and sand, others transporting we didn’t know what, and still others transporting things we would never have imagined could be transported: an entire three-story brick building drifted past at one point. She wondered aloud if the people who lived in it were inside.
We noticed that the truck drivers wore shirts, but then when they got out you saw that the only thing covering their hairy legs were their underpants, briefs to be precise, all of them wore Y-fronts. We laughed quite a lot at this.
4.
It is quite clear that the problem of slums is mostly deeply ingrained—not only permitted but promoted by the authorities—in campsites. The only time we had ever set foot in one was in northern Italy, years earlier, having failed to find a hotel one time. We stayed for a night, and swore never to do so again.
So I was surprised when, having driven a little farther, she suggested we stop at one. She didn’t go into her reasoning.
“Look,” she merely said, and pointed at the sign.
* * *
I hung an instinctive right. The fact that I didn’t object also seemed strange.
5.
The campsite conformed more or less to everyone’s idea of a campsite, thus demonstrating that thought and nature are one. There was a shower area, tree area, tent area, trailer area, reception, and small shop.
A sketch I did at the time gives a clearer idea:
6.
We rented a trailer at the edge of the property (see sketch). It was beige and had a dining table that folded out into a bed.
There was a family staying in the trailer on our right, the son cried over the tiniest thing. On our left was a hippie couple with dreads—they had a couple of imitation-African drums and weren’t afraid to use them. Across from us was an empty trailer, and behind us a valley and then a stretch of arable farmland.
The Nocilla Trilogy: Nocilla Dream ; Nocilla Experience ; Nocilla Lab Page 26
