The Garage

The garage had no smell. And the owner himself was clueless.

“It’s not that I like the smell. But, you know, it’s your identity. People come to know of a garage by its smell. They lose respect, if it doesn’t smell. And I lose my business.”

“How did this happen?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It was always like this.”

“Okay. Can you see my car?”

The topic made a glorious return after he was finished with my car.

“The damage was no biggie. You have to leave it here for a while. I’ll check on the brakes as well. Doesn’t seem right. And your left back-light is not working. Should I change it too?”

“How much will it cost?”

“Come on. You’re my old customer. Actually, my only customer these days. Did I tell you about the smell?”

He inherited the garage from his uncle, who was a very rich man with a very small heart. Not metaphorically exactly. He did have a heart the size of a one year old kid. But he managed. He never married. “Most probably he never slept with anybody,” added the garage-owner with a lopsided chuckle. He lived till he was sixty-four. And then he met a girl.

“Women,” the owner shook his head in frustration, “are like refrigerators. They are hot outside and cold inside.”

I didn’t know what to say. It was not an original observation. Not even intelligent.  

“The girl – that bitch – was a swimming instructor. You know those types. Always running after money.”

“Running or swimming?”

“Ha-ha. You are funny.”

I was not. I knew it. The joke was one of my worst in years. But who would explain that to him?

“My uncle met her at a shopping mall. He went there to buy some magazines. I guess he jerked off to them. Sad, isn’t it? The woman saw him buy those filth and stalked him. Can you imagine? A woman stalking a sixty year old man? What is this country coming down to?”

I had no idea. I didn’t bother tell him though. Clearly he took me to be a wise soul. Why break this delusion? We all need them, the delusions. Especially when we are healing from carbuncle.

“She made a pretext to meet him. I don’t know how. Most probably she feigned a backache or something. My uncle was a great masseur. When he was in army, they used to call him ‘sloppy-hands’. His hands were always sloppy with massage oil.”

I couldn’t resist an interjection, “He was in army? With such small heart?”

“Exactly my point. They give jobs to everybody. Even people with a heart of a child. How can they win wars? Not that we have wars frequently. It’s quite peaceful these days. But still, they should reconsider their employment policies.”

Unlike some of the other garage owners, the man seemed to take his wars seriously.

“I got the news late at night. My wife woke me up. She got a call from my uncle’s doctor.”

He paused and wiped his face with his hands.

“His body was floating in the pool. He had this big swimming pool at his place. Obviously he didn’t swim. He couldn’t. You need a normal size heart to swim.”

‘”Why did he have the pool then?” 

“It belonged to the previous owner. Anyway, they thought it was a murder. His body was intact. But the heart was missing. As if somebody stripped it off from his chest. Like a badge.”

I tried to visualize the scene. Macabre. An old man floating on water with no heart. Sounds like a situation from a David Lynch film.

“They looked for the girl. Nobody could tell her whereabouts. She worked at the local laundry house. They didn’t have her address. Apart from the heart, nothing else was stolen. So the police gave up after a few weeks.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” I murmured.

“Oh, don’t worry. It did me good. I got the garage. True it doesn’t smell of Mobile or Petrol, but I like cars. I always did. Since when I was a kid. That’s why he bought this garage, I guess. He wanted to help me.”

“So he liked you?”

“I don’t know,” the garage-owner looked contemplative. “Maybe I reminded him of my father. He was an engineer. He fell from a bridge he designed himself. The railings had big gaps. He fell through them.”

Did anyone in his family die a natural death? Should I ask him how his mother died? Or that would be too personal? Did they have any pets? How did they die? Food poisoning perhaps. But isn’t food poisoning a natural cause of death for pets?

“What do you think?” his question broke my trance. “What happened to the heart?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“You are right. I do have a theory. I told my wife, but she doesn’t believe me. That’s natural. No wife should believe her husband. My mother believed my father, but then he had to cook the meals everyday. If there was a choice between cooking meals and being not trusted, I would love to be unfaithful.”

“What’s your theory?”

“I have thought about it over and over and tried to picture what could have happened that day. It was a sunny day.”

I interrupted, “How do you know it was a sunny day?”

“I don’t know. I just assumed. You can’t picture anything when it’s overcast. It would be too dark.”

“Right. Carry on.”

“It was a sunny day. A perfect day for a back massage. As I have told you, my uncle always carried his oil, towel, and everything one needs to massage the back of a woman…”

“You didn’t exactly tell me that. But it’s okay.”

“He started to massage her back. It had been ages since he touched a woman. Actually never. Her skin, pale and soft, gleaming in the sun like the naked blade of a serial killer. It was setting fire in his veins. His fingers put pressure on the right spots. The girl moaned in pleasure. It was magical.”

“I can imagine.”

“The girl turned over. My uncle was surprised. Didn’t she just say she had a back pain? Why is she turning over now? The girl asked him to massage her front as well. He didn’t waste any time. Now his hands were moving on her breasts – full and plump. The tips of his frail, deprived fingers touched her erect nipples. His palms brushed them gently, then slid along the cleavage, cupping the contours of her domes of desire.”

His words seemed to be picked up from a yellowish porn magazine specializing on tantric sex. I didn’t want to stay, but couldn’t move my legs. They were frozen in a bucket. He was looking at me, and looking beyond. The wall behind his head was grey. There was a calendar hanging on it. It was an old calendar, probably from a couple of years back. I noticed that the month of September had only one holiday. I couldn’t figure out what the occasion was.

“What do you think?”

“Sorry?”

The garage owner grinned, “You are like lost somewhere. Are you that gripped by the story?”

“Well,” I crossed my legs, “it’s a gripping story. What happens next?”

“You see, here lies a problem. I am stuck between two alternatives – both equally possible. In the first situation, the woman encourages my uncle to have sex with her. Given his condition, he readily agrees. Then, in the course of the coitus, his heart explodes out of his body. The woman sees this and flees for life. The heart is broken into so many pieces that it eludes our scrutiny.”

“It is possible,” I nodded, but I wasn’t listening to the story anymore. My eyes were fixed on the calendar. What was I doing on the only holiday in September two-three years ago? How did I spend that precious day? Perhaps I did nothing. I just sat there and looked at the ceiling, thinking about death and Dostoevsky, and calculated how many pages of Brothers Karamazov I had skipped to finish it ahead of my friends. Why did we have that competition anyway?

“What’s the other situation?” I wanted to drive away the depressing memories.

“The second situation is a bit tricky. But not entirely incredible. These things happen. The girl is a heart-eater. She allures him and rips his heart out of his body and eats it. That’s all.”

“But how did the body get into the pool?”

“Well, in the first case, I think, they wanted to try something kinky. So they stepped into the pool to have water sex. Do you know about water sex? It’s having sex in water. Have you ever tried it?”

“No. I haven’t.”

“Ah, you should. It’s very good. I kind of had it once. With my girlfriend in school. She was rich. They had a sauna. We were frolicking in warm water. I just got to her shoulders, and then I had a premature ejaculation. What can I say? I was inexperienced.”

“I understand.”

“With my uncle, it was different. In stead of ejaculating semen, he managed to eject his heart.”

“That is unfortunate.”

“It should have freaked her like crazy! You are kissing somebody, you reach for his you-know-what, but wait, the shape doesn’t seem right. Oh no, it’s his heart! I mean, that’s a real downer.”

I couldn’t join him in his joviality. I was feeling nauseous. I was not mortified by the grotesquery of his mental picture, but by its sheer likelihood. This could actually have happened.

“I’m not sure about the other situation. But you should let your imagination run wild. And here is my explanation. After his heart being eaten up, my uncle becomes a zombie. He chases after the girl, but doesn’t have much luck. The girl is a champion swimmer. She jumps into the pool, and swims away. My uncle, alive or zombie, can’t swim. So he keeps floating on water until the police rescues him. By then he tires off and goes to sleep. Do you care for a smoke?”

I gently declined the offer by shaking my head. The garage owner leaned back and lit a cigarette. He looked relaxed and content. He must have thought that he gave out a majestic performance. And I couldn’t blame him.

“You don’t believe me, right?” he guessed something from my expression, or the absence of it.

“On the contrary,” I now stood up from the chair, “I believe you completely. Now can you show me the way to the toilet?”

After a while when I came back, the garage was empty. There was no sign of any man or any car. The garage owner had vanished from the face of the Earth, and so had been my car.

There might be two explanations of it. The man was a convicted felon and he broke out from prison. When I was in toilet, the police raided the joint, and he had to run away in my car. Or, my car was not a car actually, but an alien monster, which comes to life every ten years and eats everybody around. In my absence, the unfortunate garage owner gave in to its gluttonous advances. Once the car got the taste of human blood, it rushed towards the city with a murderous rage and a broken left backlight.

I blew my nose. Under the circumstances, the second alternative seemed more plausible. I walked up to the cash register and opened it. The man wasn’t lying; I was his only customer. Since I hadn’t paid yet, the register looked like the gaping mouth of a toothless shark.

And then I started to feel different. Something strange had happened. I turned back and took a deep breath. The smell had returned.

I smiled and positioned myself behind the counter. Soon everybody would get to know about this place and it would flourish like a disco pub in the Sahara. Perhaps people would desert the old town – who wants to live in a city devastated by a hungry automobile? – and settle down around here. I would be a rich man, and one day, I would tell this story to my grandchildren, sans the gory, pornographic details.

But first, I should find myself a copy of Brothers Karamazov and open page number twenty-nine. What’s better than reading Dostoevsky before starting a civilization?