Up to this
point in my life, I’ve been through four motorbikes. I’m certain I won’t be
stopping there; nor do I want to stop! Motorbikes these days are far more
affordable than they used to be. With the globalized production of consumer
goods, things aren’t made to last, and bikes don’t run well for very long,
because the faster they break down, the faster people go buy new ones, and the
faster that producers can turn around their inventory. And so, your new bike
will only chug along for a few years before breaking down and “asking for some
cash.” Inevitably at this point, every time you look down at the street, it
will seem to be filled with an endless parade of beautiful people, gliding past
your window on the latest models.
The
word-of-mouth when talking about a rich person, though, is, “he’s already
bought one.” “One” here refers to a
car, but never to a motorbike. Too bad for the motorbike, which was also worth
a fortune back in the day. To tell the truth, where I’m concerned, a motorbike
is still worth a fortune. Should I happen to lose a bike, heaven forbid, I
would really be shocked. To lose a bike is to lose money, to lose something
that has stuck with you for some time, but also, it foretells the succession of
days to be spent finding enough money to buy a new bike, and then fretting over
which type of bike to buy. And many are the lengthy stories about legal
procedure: you have to report the loss to the police, worry over the
registration papers, and depending on which district you live in, you’ll have
to go out to Hà Đông, or up to Lý Thường Kiệt, or across the bridge to Gia Lâm[1]
(in Hanoi, vehicle registration is assigned according to your area, and at
different locations)…
I am also like
many of my acquaintances, who’ve a mind to buy a bike that’s inexpensive, safe
and doesn’t guzzle gas. Although it’s not necessary that the bike be
super-durable, frugality is clearly the order of the day. The only time I’ve
deviated from this thinking was two years ago, when in a fit of inspired
spontaneity I bought a Vespa PX150. This was the most advanced of the “classic”
Vespas. I call it a “classic,” but in fact it was manufactured between the
years 1980-1990. And I call it “advanced,” but at that time they were basically
loud, heavy boxes of metal.
Why I bought
that bike I no longer remember, I only know that it looked fun-loving, like a
sign of good taste. The only drawback was that the bike’s hand-clutch bike
caused me no end of fear and misery, whether from near-deaths on the road or
the impossibility of getting the thing started. This bike also needed constant
paint touchups to look nice and new, otherwise it would start to get scratched
and dusty until it looked like nothing short of scrap iron on wheels. I also
remember that first day when I drove it from the place where I bought it back
home; I had to sweat over the machine for half an hour in order to re-start it
after once stopping in the street. I felt helpless before this dead hunk of
metal, the reason being I did not yet know the machine’s tricks. I felt as
frustrated as a boy whose girl has suddenly gone all sulky on him, and when he
asks why, she says, “you of all people should know!”
But the bike
did have some strong points. First of all, it was very elegantly designed,
manly and modest. Driving it wasn’t as zippy as a newer bike, but you had to
hand it to them, they knew just how to arrange the seat and handlebars so that
your back didn’t hurt every time you sat down. You’ll notice the Honda motorbike, for example, with its
seat sloping to the front; whenever you hit a bump in the road, it
always throws your body forward as though you were planning to leap from the
bike at any moment. The Vespa seat
was always flat, horizontal, allowing the driver to sit up as straight as an
English nobleman taking tea. Secondly, it made the owner stand out, for better
or worse. Thirdly, one didn’t have to register it[2], and thus avoided wasting three days
going to apply for a license plate. Fourth, it was cheap. I spent less than
twenty million but I still owned a bike from Italy—the country of motorbike
prestige. And yet I could throw the motorbike on the sidewalk without locking
it up and come back later to find it intact. Thieves also couldn’t carry it off
because it was too heavy!
The person who
sold me this bike was also a mechanic familiar with the Vespa PX. He told me
that I could expect to ride it for up to a year; if I kept it past that and
continued to maintain it through the years to come, then I might as well become
a member of the Vespa fan club. Driving a very... “vintage” bike like this, the
clatter of the engine starting might deafen the neighbors, and one is never
sure whether bystanders are looking on in hate or pity, admiration or derision.
All the same, those who love the special music of the vintage motor are a class
unto themselves. Just like the kind of people who go nuts for pre-war music, a
vintage bike suggests a sense of the past recreated, of black-and-white movies
like Roman Holiday with Gregory Peck
driving Audrey Hepburn through the cobblestone streets. The motorbike is a site
of time past, both a preserved cultural space and a means of dwelling there.
Vintage bike lovers still preserve their machines, even if they only retain the
outer shell with a new or reprocessed engine. Maintaining a vintage bike may
invite a million headaches, but it is not without its mechanical pleasures:
removing this, grinding down that, feeling out the calibrations of various
metal components from the pre-digital era. Just looking at how the entire structure
comes together is a thing of beauty.
But
my temperament was not patient enough to stick with the upkeep. I panicked as
the frequency of repairs began to mount, so as the deadline of my “challenge”
approached I started planning the resale. The guy who bought my bike was none
other than the guy who sold it to me. And my only mementos are a few
photographs and the original ignition key that I forgot to return with the
bike.
After all, only
one’s earliest bikes, or one’s most bizarre, are significant enough to
remember. Now, however, one scooter follows the next, each carrying us quietly,
safely onward (just as we would have it; uneventful transit being our greatest
wish), leaving us truly unabsorbed by those aggressively tricked-out bikes,
whose custom exhaust pipes scream like they’re trying to burst the eardrums of
everyone in town. Today’s bikes idle meekly in the shadow of the automobile;
there’s a single playboy about town who wants to ride on a mere $7,000,
cheek-and-jowl with the two-wheeling masses flooding the streets in an endless
congestion. The life of a motorbike is no longer the measure of “social
mobility” that it once was.
Nguyen Truong Quy
Translated by Jacob O. Gold
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét