Going round the Benz
Mercedes-Benz Pawel Huelle
At a slender 154 pages, this is a little gem of a book. I must confess I often struggle with biographical works no matter how interesting the subject; in the face of flat descriptions of this guy’s first marriage or that lady’s second funeral, the mind wanders, the eyes glaze. This book, however, based on fact and illustrated with delightfully oldschool black and white photos, gets it just right.
Mercedes-Benz is written as a letter from the Polish author to the late Czech writer Hrabal; in it, Huelle recounts the stories he told to his instructor during driving lessons in the 1990s, anecdotes spanning three generations of his family -it makes for an ingenious way of encompassing Poland’s history from pre-WW2 through the communist years and thence to the post-communist era.
It is, first and foremost, a collection of -on the whole- uplifting family memories, and what you do get is a montage of wonderful, engaging snapshots of the lives of the people from these times in a carefully crafted balance of happy, sad, amusing, and incredulity-producing stories. The most memorable has to be the one about the ‘fox hunt’ (polish style), in which a hot air balloon becomes the crafty quarry (there’s a picture to prove it), and the hunters ride in cars.
Great idea, no? By dint of extensive meteorological and astronomical studies and calculations, Huelle’s grandfather reigns supreme champion in the hunt. His steed was, of course, the eponymous Merc.: a four-door 170, to be precise, and something of an institution in the family. I am unsure whether the cover photo depicting the author as a boy leaning on a Citroen is intentionally ironic.
Fast-forward to modern-day Poland, we meet the driving instructor’s downand- out young friend, Physic, who, when caught washing his feet in the lavatories of an art gallery, screams, ‘I can’t fucking stand anyone spying on my rituals!,’ and is promptly booked to put on an art exhibition. Classic. There is perhaps an element of overkill when it comes to street-name dropping as part of the driving-lesson narrative, but this does help create the authentic Polish experience.
In the original Polish version, Mercedes-Benz is, I believe, without punctuation. In principle, I think I’m against its reinstatement on translation, but in practice I expect I would have been rendered short of breath had it been left in its untamed, streamof- consciousness form. Any book set in an Eastern European country in the latter half of the 20th century could so easily be gloomy. This one just ain’t and therein lies its beauty.
The prose glides along, buoyed up by a faintly ironic tone which is both refreshing and endearing. Mercedes- Benz has an understated intelligence and dignity like Susan from Neighbours and I love them both but in different ways.
10th Nov 2005