His own set of car keys

Will Hackett-Jones

“Please, sir, you have to get out of the car now.”

The old man didn’t move. He remained slumped over the steering wheel, sobbing quietly, muttering occasionally in a language the examiner didn’t understand.

“Sir, I understand you’re upset, but it’s not the end of the world. You can always take the driving test again.”

“Igor!” the old man bellowed, suddenly looking up at the hapless examiner. “My name — Igor! No ‘Sir’, no nothing! Igor!”

The examiner accidentally dropped his cigarette as he backed away from the open door, stumbling on the kerb as he went. Igor pulled himself out of the undersized car.

“Yes si— yes, Igor. Here,” he said, handing him the list of major and minor infractions that added up to a driving test fail.

Igor crumpled it up without looking and threw it into the gutter. He stalked back to the examination centre.

“Hello Igor, dear, did you win?” asked the receptionist cheerily.

“No win. I lose. Again.”

“Oh dear, I’m sorry to hear that. Will you take the test again?”

“Yes, yes, take. But maybe I pay?”

“Yes, of course, it’s £62, just like last time.”

“No, pay real money. You!”

She looked up at him through her obsessively curled hair, puzzled.

“I pay two hundred, I win?” he asked her gruffly.

“Umm… It’s only £62, though.”

“I pay you two hundred, I win?” he clarified.

“Oh… I… no, we don’t, we can’t do that…”

“Three hundred?” he asked, pulling notes out of his wallet.

The receptionist scuttled away, embarrassed and unable to deal with this old man and his money.

Igor swore loudly, and demonstrably threw his ancient leather wallet down onto the counter in front of him. Banknotes, cards, and coins scattered across it and onto the floor.

He turned to storm out, glaring at the few people waiting in the reception area, but then turned back to gather up his belongings: this wasn’t the old country. He couldn’t afford to throw his money around. He couldn’t even afford a driver!

Besides, there’d be the humiliation of having to go to his bank and explain in his erratic English that he’d ‘lost’ his bank cards. That was if they even had a branch.

Stooping half-heartedly to reach for a note, he began to lose his balance. He managed to stand up just enough to get his arm over the countertop and stop his fall. But he now had a sore shoulder.

As he stood, puffing from the exertion and the pain, massaging his shoulder, muttering abominations under his breath, a tattooed young man approached.

Igor moved quickly to scrape his coins together with his foot, but the youngster was quicker, dipping under the counter to grab up the notes.

Thief!

Igor couldn’t catch his breath, his fury was now so overpowering, he just puffed, and half-heartedly stamped feet, hoping someone would stand up for this old man in the face of daylight robbery.

But nobody did. They all just stared at their phones, as they had when he’d tried glaring at them earlier.

The young thug had by now collected up all of Igor’s things, and turned to him with a smile, holding the wallet and its contents out to Igor.

“Here you go. Are you Russian?”

Igor’s breathing froze. He met the thug’s eyes, and nodded.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to frighten you. I heard her calling you ‘Igor’ so I figured you might be Russian.”

“Yes.” He took his wallet and the contents, and began stuffing notes back into it.

“Well, I’m John. Now, this might sound odd, but hear me out.”

Igor’s eyes flickered up to look at him.

“My uncle died recently, and—”

Igor pushed his hand out in front of him, into the young man’s chest, declaring “No, no, I no give money for poproshaiki.” *

He turned fumbling the contents of his wallet, and eventually just shoving it all into his trouser pocket.

The young man laughed. “I don’t need your money Igor! My uncle used to collect Soviet cars. He died and left them to me. I have, umm, a Lada, two in fact! Only one works. And a ZAZ, some spares from an Izh…”

Igor stopped in his tracks.

“You have Zhiguli?” he asked, turning back to the young man.

“Oh, I don’t know that brand.”

“No, no, Zhiguli is Lada. Zhiguli — Soviet name.”

“Oh! Then yes, I have two. I also have a big black Volga, he used to call it his KGB car!”

“Volga?! No! Not KGB. Well, sometimes. But also — government official car. I have Volga. And driver!”

Igor by now had stepped back up towards the young man, and was smiling with the memories, gesticulating agitatedly.

“He get me every morning 9, to drive in laboratory. I — director laboratory!”

“Wow, you had a driver?”

“Yes, yes, big important car for big important man!” Igor exclaimed, gesticulating towards himself.

“Well, so I thought maybe you want to learn to drive in a car that you’re familiar with? You could have my Volga. Or Lada, whatever.”

Igor weighed up this tattooed young thug for a long second, then grabbed hold of him in a big embrace, wincing at the pain from his shoulder.

“Nu, ti chelovechische!” ** he said over and over. “Yes, yes, I learn drive Volga. OK?”

“Sure, whatever. I’ve got my bike test in, like, 5 minutes, are you gonna wait around?”

“I wait, I wait.”

Igor glared at a middle-aged woman whose bag was on the spare seat next to her, then burst into a smile as she moved it for him, and covered her with “Spasibos”. ***

He tried to wait patiently, but the excitement was too much for him. He paced up and down. He worked his sore shoulder while sitting, then stood to swing his arm, before thinking better of it.

He made an assault on the coffee machine, which involved much swearing, the emergence of a latte (an abomination he couldn’t abide), the spilling of said latte down the front of the machine, the chucking of the remains into the bin, and a bit more swearing while hands were washed.

Eventually, John returned, pleased at having passed his motorbike test, and they went outside to discuss details.

The next day he turned up at Igor’s rented bungalow in the black Volga, and Igor came scuttling out to greet him. The joy of familiarity left him mostly speechless, though the occasional “Yes!” came out among all the gasping.

Once on the road, John was dismayed to see that Igor’s familiarity with the car didn’t make him into any better of a driver. However, it did make him a happier one, and thus perhaps less of a danger to other road users. He kept up a near-constant monologue, pausing only occasionally to point wordlessly at a fork in the road, or a roundabout, expecting John to tell him which direction to take.

The monologue consisted of barely comprehensible tales of his life in the Soviet Union, and how he worked his way up to become director of the laboratory. There were numerous hints at dalliances with alluring lab assistants in short skirts, lab traditions of vodka and cognac binges on special occasions, and the odd mention of the misappropriation of his work car and driver for personal purposes. John was both baffled and fascinated, and barely noticed how the hours passed.

On their return to the bungalow Igor suggested John come in for some tea and honey, which John gracefully declined, and made to leave when Igor asked about their next session.

“You come tomorrow?”

“Uh… you want to do that again?”

“Yes, yes, I practice more.”

“Right. Well, I have a job and things, I can’t really spend all my time doing this.”

“You no come?”

“Well, look, I can come and leave the car with you for as long as you need to practice. Like, a week? Or a month?”

“I practice much. Month?”

“OK. Let’s do that. A month.”

“How much?”

“Igor, I don’t need your money, I’m just glad to help.”

“Hmm.”

John popped in on Igor at the end of the second week and was dismayed to see that the rear left light cluster had taken a battering.

“Yes, yes, Igor — idiòt!” he claimed cheerily when John mentioned it over a cup of black tea and, oddly, spoons dipped into a honey jar.

“But I have surprise!” he continued, and pulled out his phone. He shoved the phone at John and said, “Open email.” He then took the phone back, and holding it at arm’s length, scrolled till he found the one he was looking for.

“Open, look!” he said, handing it to John again.

“But it’s all in Russian.”

“Ah! You no speak Russian. I buy new light!” said Igor, and showed John a photo in the email of a new light cluster for the Volga. “Come next week. New light for you car.”

“Oh! Wow. Well, thank you.”

Another slurp of tea.

“Actually, you know, that could be useful. You buying spares, I mean.”

“Yes? What is ‘spares’?”

“Spare parts for the car. Parts that are broken.”

“Ah yes, like light.”

“Exactly. I can’t buy them, because I don’t speak Russian, I can’t find them on the internet. But you can. Perhaps you could get me the spares I need to fix up the other cars, and we could sell them, make some money?”

“You sell Zhiguli?”

“The Ladas, yes. And the ZAZ.”

“Yes, sell, sell.”

And so at the weekend they drove down to the barn where John’s uncle had housed his cars. Igor’s excitement at seeing such a collection was remarkable for a man in his 70s, and John even slightly worried if his heart could take so much gesticulation, but once he’d sat in each of them, sniffed, poked, stared, prodded, and fiddled, he quietened down into a satisfied old man.

They went through the lists of parts that the cars needed, according to the files left by John’s uncle, translated them into Russian, found the parts online, priced them up, and finally settled on a plan. They’d fix up the car that needed the least work first, to get some capital from selling it, and then use that to buy the parts for the next-best car, and so on.

The repair project lasted well past the month they’d originally agreed that Igor could use the Volga for, but John didn’t mind. Igor would drive down to the barn at the weekends with whatever had arrived in the post that week, and meet John there. He’d help translate the cars’ user manuals, to make the repair job easier. Then John would set to work, and Igor would regale him with tales of his life.

There was talk of a wife, Maria, which must have been a difficult relationship, given how many lab assistants there had been.

Confusingly, it then turned out there’d been a few wives, the second called Manya, though at times he mentioned a Masha, too. John hesitated to ask what’d happened to them all.

Intriguingly, with all his visits to the post office to pick up packages that couldn’t be delivered, Igor had apparently struck up something of a relationship with the postmistress.

He occasionally got parts suppliers to send him packs of pryaniki — gingerbread-type biscuits — along with his axles and light clusters, and apparently the postmistress had developed a soft spot for pryaniki over a cup of tea. And honey.

They managed to sell the first Lada for a remarkable sum, and quite quickly, so they soon set about fixing up the ZAZ. This was then sold to a chap who was recommended as “Nuts for Soviet stuff” by the Lada buyer, and indeed he was. He also bought up the Izh parts that John had lying around.

One weekend after a couple of months of driving practice, Igor didn’t turn up on the Saturday morning as agreed. John called a few times, but didn’t get a reply.

Early in the evening, Igor called back.

“Hello? Are you alright Igor? I was expecting you.”

The reply was muffled, as if through a pillow.

“Sorry, I didn’t get that. Are you OK?”

There were some ruffling sounds, then a belaboured “I OK! Not OK, but I alive. I hangover.”

“Oh dear! And you’ve been asleep all day?”

“I dying all day. Now I alive. I celebrate!”

“Really, what were you celebrating?”

“I won my driving test! In Volga!” the elation was short lived, cut short by a bout of coughing.

“Careful there! I’m so glad to hear that. But you… you know, easy on the booze. We haven’t finished our project, I need you here.”

“Yes yes, I no die from drink. Car, maybe, but no drink. OK, time for opokhmelitsa**** with beer. Bye.”

At the end of three months, they’d repaired and sold all the cars but the black Volga. It being the most prestigious car of the collection, John had been hoping to get a tidy sum for it. When they met that Saturday morning in the barn, Igor was subdued.

“What’s the matter, Igor?”

“Ah…”

“Is it not working out with the postmistress?”

“Ha! Actually, we have date, she like white wine. We have kiss!”

“What?! Where do you find the…?”

“I — always hungry man. Women like director!”

“I see. Well I won’t pry. Look, you’ve had the Volga for months now — you must know what’s wrong with it, what we need to fix.”

Igor’s face dropped, and he turned away to study some of the junk in the barn.

“Oh, so it’s not women you’re worried about, it’s the car?” asked John, approaching Igor, who turned around, his eyes brimming with tears.

“I love Volga. She — perfect.”

“Oh, Igor, my friend, here,” said John, taking him in a hug. “There, there. It’s OK. I understand, you’re attached to it. But I can’t keep it here, the barn is being sold by my cousins. And I could get a couple of grand for the Volga in good condition, so I’ve got to sell it.”

Igor sat down heavily on one of the grease-stained chairs.

“Clutch,” he said, beginning a list. “Accelerator cable. Horn wire. Engine mount. Rear wheel bearing. All works, but all need replace.” He put his head in his hands.

The parts arrived one by one over the following weeks, and they set a date to meet at the barn and do as much as they could over a long weekend.

Igor brought a range of snacks, vodka, beer, all the parts, and an oral tradition of unprintable stories. John arranged for lodgings for Igor and himself in his uncle’s old farmhouse, which the barn belonged to, and which was currently vacant. They worked late (Igor by now also wielding a spanner when possible), talked, and drank on the job.

On Friday, Igor managed to keep himself upbeat, but by Saturday evening he was morose, occasionally sitting at the wheel of the Volga when there was nothing for him to do, and pretending to drive it, commenting on the streets of his hometown as he took John on a tour.

“We turn off Nevsky Prospect onto Moika River, we go to Astoria Hotel, best hotel in St Petersburg! In Soviet times — hotel only for foreigners, and top people. I go one time, to meeting there. All very good. Then I see cleaning maid, short skirt. She have hotel room door open. I go in, and oh! What a bed! What a maid! We no have those beds so comfortable in our home” and he laughed himself to tears remembering the story.

But the tears continued as he remembered why they were fixing the Volga up, and his mood turned dark with the night.

On Sunday, Igor stayed in bed, refusing to help with the final few jobs, shouting something along the lines of “Always they take everything away!” after John as he went downstairs.

He appeared in the doorway of the barn in the early afternoon, nursing a steaming cup of coffee.

“Help?”

“No, thanks, I’m nearly done. I’ll just get these two wheels back on, check they spin freely, and that’ll be the bearings done.”

Igor nodded and slurped his coffee.

After about half an hour more of fiddling, John finally stood up, pulled his gloves off, washed his hands, and sat down across from Igor.

“Finish?”

“Yes, Igor. Job done.”

“You have buyer?”

“Yes, he’ll be here soon.”

Igor stared down into his empty mug.

“How much?”

“Oh, crazy money. He’s offered me thousands for it. Apparently, it’s a rare one — it really was a KGB car. He researched it.”

Igor looked up at him, sad, verging on angry.

“Your car, you sell. It’s OK. I go.” and he stood to leave.

John jumped up, laughing, and ran to stop him.

“Come on, Igor, I’m only kidding! I couldn’t sell this car from under you, not after all the work you’ve done on it, and passing your test in it. Here” he said.

There was a jingle as he dropped something into Igor’s hand.

“You’ve earned it.”

* poproshaiki — beggars

** Nu, ti chelovechische! — What a guy!

*** Spasibo — Thank you

**** opokhmelitsa — hair of the dog

Will Hackett-Jones is a UK-born writer based in St Petersburg. A self-described ‘long-overdue’ writer, he spent years running a magazine and a translation company before turning to fiction. He also runs the YouTube channel Шекспир плачет.