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Lemon Red
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©
2005 R.C. Barajas
felt for the man, I really did. It brought back to me the acrid smoke of roasting metal and plastic, a noxious, non-organic burning reek accompanied by the soft, rhythmic sound of bubbling radiator seepage. It also brought back a murderous rage, a desire for revenge, an overwhelming impotence previously unimagined. In our case, the particular candidate for euthanasia was an anemic red money pit with four doors and a crappy attitude. In all fairness, it was a used vehicle, purchased in Bogotá, Colombia. Bogotá is notoriously hard on cars – apparently particularly so on this 1986 Renault 9. As I drive my almost laughably reliable car today, 16 years later, I wonder where the old Renault Naught is now. I would like to imagine that it is enjoying its eternal rest. I’d like to, but I am just as certain the pathetic thing is still coughing around the streets of Bogotá, its fourth-hand parts cobbled together with exhaust soot, glue, and surplus duct tape, its insolent refusal to die driving its tenth owner to the brink of insanity.
Living in a new country (new to me, at least – Adolfo is Colombian and was well schooled already) affords one many lessons about the ways of the world. Any residual innocence infecting me was quickly cured. Here are some excerpts from what I called my Running Letters – about life in Bogotá during those years. We were just married, and quite without money – Adolfo was still in the midst of Graduate school, and I had just left a modestly paid job as a jeweler’s apprentice. By comparison, life was cheap in Colombia – but salaries were low and inflation was high. It amuses me now to read back on these letters, to see how green I was - and to note how quickly my blood pressure rises again, as if for the first time…
