The 2CV In Love

The first 18 years of the 2CV’s life were rather uneventful: a series of owners at two-or three-year intervals. Hers was the usual story of a Paris car, five months with a hairdresser, then two years with a high school teacher. She had rather fond memories of seven years spent in the countryside at a vineyard where she only had to go into town once a week.

The defining event of her life happened only two years ago when she was 18, and was for sale at a used car lot in the 20th Arrondissement. “Nani” was purchased by an American college student who was studying Fashion Design at the Sorbonne. From that day her life was completely transformed. She had a garage to herself for the first time in her life, and the American student was completely infatuated with her. The owner, Sarah Meyers, felt that the car was as French as it was possible to be, and being a Francophile, she loved the vehicle to distraction.

If Sarah met anyone, the first thing they were subjected to was a ride in the countryside in her old 2CV, and on these rides Nani heard herself described in the most glowing and adoring terms. Sarah would even pick up hitchhikers on the road to share with them her purely American love for the car, a love not easily understood by the French, for whom the car is not a curiosity.

Sarah decided to do all the routine maintenance to Nani herself, and as a start she purchased the repair manual and read it from cover to cover. Sarah was not too mechanical, but she tried to picture to herself removing the transmission and taking it apart. First of all the oil had to be changed, and after that she would learn about a tune up, and how it is done. She read the passage about changing the oil and discovered there was also an oil filter to be removed and replaced. The directions were not clear to her however, and it took long time trying to find the filter in the engine compartment.

One Saturday morning, Ms. Myers put on some overalls, opened the bonnet of her 2CV, and attempted to remove the oil filter. Never having worked on a car in her life she made three mistakes: first, she did not remove the drain plug at the bottom of the engine; second she tried to remove it by hand; and third, she did not wait for the engine to cool off. This was not a disaster however. She removed her hands from the filter the very instant she felt its heat. She shut the bonnet, went into her apartment, and put Vaseline on her fingertips.

The tragic thing about this little event was that Nani saw it coming. She understood that her new owner was going to do the service herself and she was moved to the depths of her transmission gears with anticipation. She had dreamed of what it would be like and now, instead of the sublime experience she was anticipating, she had injured her owner instead. She was devastated.

On the following Saturday Nani was delighted to find that Sarah returned to her garage for another attempt at her maintenance. The oil change was put off at first and instead a much simpler operation was attempted, the cleaning of the battery terminals. This also resulted in instant failure because as she unscrewed the bolt holding the clamp of the battery cable, she accidentally let the wrench touch both polls of the battery. The wrench produced a huge spark and flew out of her hands onto the garage floor. This, like burning her fingers on the oil filter, was completely unanticipated, but Nani saw it coming also and now considered the situation hopeless.

But Sarah overcame her fears, completed the cleaning of the battery, and by the end of her Saturday session with her car had changed the oil and the filter according to more detailed instructions obtained from the boy at the service station where she bought gasoline. According to her manual the thing she had to do next was a mystery to her. She had to check the level of oil in the transmission. There were no details given in her manual and she couldn't figure out how to go about it. Not knowing what to do she drove down to the service station and, accosting the manager's son asked, "Can you show me what part of my car is the transmission and can you tell me how its oil level gets checked?"

The mechanic pointed out the transmission to her and wiped the dirt from the filler screw. He said, "Unscrew this and put your finger in there, the oil should be just below the opening."  Sarah ignored the very suggestive leer the boy gave her as he explained this very mechanical operation to her but Nani, who was listening to all this, did not. The suggestive looks of the auto mechanic produced in Nani her first experience of jealous rage, and as a result Sarah had great difficulty in getting her started later that morning. These feelings of jealousy were new to the 2CV, and were to persist and cause problems in the future.

What was going on, is that our 2CV, back just two years ago, was falling in love with her owner. This is not an unheard of occurrence, although it is rare. The 2CV was simply responding in kind to the affection her owner was showing her. This business of constantly checking the oil and looking to see if the transmission oil is topped up has a sexual aspect to it and there was no way that this sort of constant automotive petting could not have led to serious sexual responses in the 2CV, and so, at the end of a few months of this treatment Nani was a car hopelessly and passionately in love with her owner. And you have to keep in mind that this passionate involvement was taking place in Paris, a city that exacerbates and inflames passionate feelings. There were late night drives, picnics in the countryside, and cool evenings driving down the Champs-Elysees with the canvas top rolled back.

And then you should consider that Nani was in love with an American girl, a foreigner, whose odd way of speaking French, her accent and mispronunciations gave to the relationship a color, depth, and novelty you only see in movies.

You probably do not believe that a car can be in love and have sexual reactions. People believe that they, and only they have an exclusive monopoly on consciousness, sensation, thought and feeling. This is the reason they are so disconnected from the universe and their life experience is so pathetically limited compared say, to the average squirrel. It never crosses your mind that a mountain knows it is a mountain, the sun knows it is the sun, a car knows it is a car, and that all of these things have rich emotional lives you can never grasp, or even imagine. This truth looks you right in the eye out of the face of any dog, touches you in the caress of any breeze, but it is all lost on you poor people who are the least feeling of all sentient objects in the universe.

The romance ended tragically for Nani, and what made it even worse was the fact that Sarah was never for a moment even aware of the terrible damage she was inflicting on her beloved car. The relationship between Sarah Meyers and the 2CV lasted exactly 18 months, because that is how long Sarah was in France, completing the last year and a half of her time at Vassar.  At no time did she imagine that her ownership of the car would last longer than her stay in France.

For Nani it was a completely different story. In her imagination she saw herself being the only vehicle Sarah would own for the rest of her life. She had planned that they would move to a little cottage in the south of France when her coursework was finished: a cottage including a garage complete with a lift. Nothing spoiled this daydream of the 2CV during this time.  If there were problems in the relationship it arose from Nani's intense jealousy if Sarah should even look at another car. Tremendous mechanical problems arose if a passing comment were made in admiration of a Renault or another model of Citroen, but she was most aggravated by the fact that Sarah had occasional crushes on the Fiat 500, and even stopped to admire a Topolino one day.

During the last month of Sarah's stay in Paris very strange and ominous situations arose that the 2CV was at a loss to figure out. Why, for example was she parked for several hours in front of a travel agency, and why, when Sarah came out, was she so distracted and preoccupied. Why did she have to go for three weeks without her oil being checked? And what were three suitcases doing in the back seat all the time? Finally the situation was explained to her. Sarah gave a classmate a ride home after school, and in the conversation Nani found out that Sarah was moving back to America at the end of June.

That Sarah was leaving France actually did not upset the 2CV at first, because it never crossed her mind that she would be left behind. She was aware that Americans sometimes abandoned a dog or a cat, but she was a car, not a useless animal. Nani's confidence in Sarah's devotion to her was absolute. Her owner practically knew the repair manual by heart. Just a week ago the transmission would not shift into reverse. The garage said a new transmission was needed but Sarah knew it was just the linkage that needed to be tightened. Owners like that do not abandon a car like her; they might abandon a Renault on occasion but never a 2CV.

No, Nani did not anticipate abandonment, but she was worried about what life was going to be like in America?  She had never heard a single good thing about the place and its huge arrogant, pushy, vain, idiotically designed, automobiles. Nani was very prejudiced against America and its cars.  A Mustang for example, what would she do if she found herself parked near one.

Nani began feverishly to seek out information about America, and what life was like there for a 2CV. This was extremely difficult.  She had an uncle and an aunt that had immigrated to Canada, but Nani was only three at the time. There was only one source of information, she had to ask the other cars during the long Paris nights when the parked cars talked about everything under the sun, everything except America that is.

Talking to the other cars was very difficult. Cars have tremendous amounts of knowledge but most often it was of the “savant” type. Even the most expensive cars were entirely self-educated, and their information, for the most part, was concocted from the overheard conversation of their owners. 

One BMW, knew all about the stock market, was an expert in pork futures, and short selling, but would have to ask what a word like “peanut” meant.  There was a Peugeot who knew about the French revolution and was a direct descendant of one the tumbrels used to transport Marie Antoinette to the guillotine. This Peugeot was a socialist even though her owner was a conservative deputy. She longed for the days of the barricades, and hated that she lived in such politically placid times.

Some cars did have knowledge of America, but it was so mixed, confusing and contradictory it was of no use to her. Did the cars in New York City really have to have mattresses attached to their bumpers? Was life expectancy only twelve months? Some said that 2CVs were not legal in America, and that an oil change had to be done in a hermetically sealed garage to prevent pollution. But it was all just rumor compounded with speculation. Only one thing was certain, they all knew for a fact that Nani was going to be left behind, that she would never see America. They knew it but did not have the heart to tell her.

They had seen it all before. 2CVs were especially vulnerable to this catastrophe because they were not sold in America and so were more exotic looking creatures. Recently an almost-new 2CV plunged herself into the Seine after she was abandoned by an actor when the film he was working in was completed.  He didn't even bother to put her up for sale, just left her in the street. She was left in neutral, and the emergency brake was not engaged. The papers said it was an accident, but every car in the neighborhood knew it was a suicide.

Finally one of the old Paris prostitute cars, a taxi, decided she would break the news to her.  She had been in Rome and Milan, as well as Copenhagen and Berlin, and had seen the world. She had been abandoned by an art student in Sicily 30 years ago, and sold into taxi prostitution by the Mafia. What the taxi prostitute said to Nani is pretty much what you or I would have said if we found ourselves in a similar situation, forced to give unwanted advice that will break someone's heart.  She started with a blunt declaration of the truth, saying, "Little sister, you are not going to America, put that right out of your little head. People, especially Americans, are not like cars. Their love is shallow and not lasting. Their hearts can change with each new model year."

The taxi prostitute did not pull any punches. In her crass way she made no attempt to soften the blow. "Your precious Sarah will forget all about you the instant she is buckled into her seat in the plane. All the dear things she said to you will never even cross her mind, as she notes down in some notebook all the exciting things she will plan to do back in America."

The 2CV had no reaction to the things the taxi was telling her. All along she had known in her heart that it was over. Dreaming of America was just a smoke screen to divert her thoughts from the terrible reality of being put back on the used car market, something she thought she would never have to face again.

"Don't you see, you are going to be sold down the river? You may never even see Paris again. Teenagers will make you into a dune-buggy and drive you up and down huge piles of rocks all day long," the taxi said.  "Just be glad you had a few good years, perhaps you will be sold into taxi prostitution like me, that is what everyone fears, but take it from me, it is not so bad. Once you know true love is not a possibility, you take each day as it comes, and even in the midst of the fast food wrappers and vomit in your back seat. Life is still worth living in its own pointless way, you will see."

The old taxi prostitute knew she was right. For a car to have a devoted owner has its advantages. It was nice to be taken to be vacuumed on Saturday morning at ten o'clock every week, and that sort of thing.  On the other hand, consider the excitement of never knowing whom you would pick up next, Americans from Texas in the morning, drug runners at lunch, and movie stars in the evening. But there was no point telling this to Nani, she was in no state to hear it.

But the taxi wanted to soften the blow, and so she said. "Your Sarah will come back you know, they all do. She will come looking for you again in 20 years with a tour bus full of Americans on holiday. Back home she will be married with grown-up kids. Her Paris days will be a distant memory. But one day she will drive out to Walmart to buy more lawn furniture because of a big summer get together at her house, and in the parking lot she will come across an old 2CV, parked way in the distance where the fussy owner hopes to avoid dents and scratches. It will be a well-kept car, belonging to some old professor of literature at the local community college; he drives it only in the summer.

She will come across that car, and she will stare into its windows. Her past will rise up in her, and she will remember a time when she was 18 and thought, “I will throw some things in the back seat this morning and go see what Bulgaria looks like,” free as a bird, like a gypsy. Returning to his car, that old professor will not disturb her when he sees her, because he will know what her tears are all about, having seen this before.

From: “No Cure For The Medieval Mind”, by Richard Britell