All that morning Suarez had sat on the wooden bench behind the training ground. Laid out in front of him were the earthly remains of his beloved Mirabela. Her slim blue frame buckled, bent and bruised; the glistening wheels he loved to see spinning beneath him amputated from the frame. Their slim spokes that had glistened so brightly in the late autumn sun were now twisted or snapped.
Suarez leant forward and picked up Mirabela’s brass bell, he flicked the lever but there was only silence. Her chain was broken in four places and the soft white saddle ripped open so Mirabela’s insides were spilling out. They had only been together a few short months but Suarez could feel the loss carved deep into his heart. He dropped his head into his hands and began to weep for his lost lady.
The large hands of Don Blanco gently squeezed the shaking shoulders of Suarez who looked up into the Dons deep eyes.
“Do not worry Suarezito, I may have found a man who can help” as the Don pointed at the pieces of Mirabela in front of him.
A passer-by stopped and watched as the pair delicately, one by one, picked up the parts of the broken blue bicycle then placed them down with care onto of a soft Peruvian blanket that the Don had laid over the boot of his Lincoln Continental.
Don Blanco closed the boot and touched Suarez gently on the cheek.
“Don’t worry old friend, we will take care of Mirabela, you will see.”
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Old Zuberto’s Polish cousin Zbizek slowly made his way out of the workshop that had been his home for the last forty years. He could hear an incessant banging from the shutters at the front of the building. Zbizek did not light guests, he preferred the company of his tools and broken down pieces of machinery to that of people. The thing Zbizek hated the most were uninvited guests and whoever this was he had certainly not invited them.
The shutters kept shaking as the uninvited guest outside hammered against them.
“We are closed” shouted Zbizek.
A strange accent he could not quite place answered back. “My client requires your services.”
“WE ARE CLOSED, PLEASE GO AWAY!!” There was a desperate tone in Zbizek’s voice now.
The man who hammered at the shutters seemed undeterred, “My client was sent here by your cousin Zuberto of Rio Grandé”
The old mechanic felt confused now, no one here in Poland even knew he had a cousin, albeit one he had not spoken to in over forty years. There had been a monumental fall out between Zbizek and Zuberto over a dubious offside decision. The result had caused the disintegration of relations between the two distant cousins.
Zbizek deliberated whether to let the man outside in for a few seconds, before reluctantly pulling up the shutters with a loud clatter.
Stood in front of the entrance to his workshop was the tall and toothy grin of Charles the Don’s Senegalese wing man and driver. Zbizek a stunned look on his face was rooted to the spot. He did not get many customers, mainly because he actively discouraged them but this was the first time in forty years he had opened his shutter to find an African man stood in front of him. He just watched as the man called Charles singing and chuckling to himself opened the door of the long white Lincoln Continental parked in the street.
Out of the soft leather seat stepped the impressive figure of Don Polvere Blanco, dressed in a Pacific blue suit with a matching Panama, sticking out from his huge moustache was a cigar that was throwing blue smoke into the air. He strode over and took the hands of Zbizek warmly in his own, planting a kiss on either cheek of the blushing mechanic.
“I bring greetings from Rio Grandé and from your cousin Zuberto, who told me he has long forgotten about the offside decision and sends all his love and wishes. He asked if you would do a kindness for him and help out his fellow Rio Grandeans in their hour of need.”
This was all too much to take in for Zbizek as he stood there in his oil soaked overall that hung awkwardly from his skinny body. A day had not passed in the last forty years where he had not thought of his cousin Zuberto and the terrible things he had said to him all those years ago.
Zbizek had spent a magical year as a twenty year old, high in the Rio Grandean Mountains with his cousin, who had shown him all the wonderful lakes, streams and rivers that ran through the lush green hills around the village. The day before he had been set to leave there had been a disagreement between the pair during a football match. It had been a trivial offside decision that he had not agreed with. He had said such unspeakable things to Zuberto that, on returning to Poland his shame had grown and grown year by year until he could not find the courage to try and make amends to his cousin Zuberto. Now here was someone from the land of his memories and regret stood in his tiny workshop. It felt as if the great footballing gods of old had answered his nightly prayers and were offering him a chance at redemption, from those years of shame and bitterness.
Zbizek stepped forward and bowed in front of Don Blanco.
“it would be my honour Signor, to help you, Rio Grandé and my dear cousin Zuberto. How may my humble workshop be of service to you?”
Don Blanco thanked Zbizek, turned and nodded towards his driver Charles. The Senegalese man walked around to the back of the car, opened the boot and beckoned the mechanic over.
Zbizek peered in the cavernous boot of the car, there laid out on a soft and colourful blanket were a number of broken pieces and parts of a beautiful blue bicycle. At once Zbizek could tell that this had once been a perfectly built machine. Whoever had constructed the bike must have spent years lovingly and carefully crafting each component. When it had been finished Zbizek suspected each part had taken on a life of its own.
The damaged looked as if it had been done intentionally, as if the frame had been buckled and bent with the force of a large motor vehicle that had been aiming directly for the bike. Excited by the chance to restore such an enchanting feat of engineering to its former glory, Zbizek hurriedly lifted the blue frame out of the boot of the car and carried the buckled metal into his workshop. He laid the body of the bicycle down on the rough and hewn wooden worktop, then lit two gas lamps.
Don Blanco and Charles followed the skinny mechanic with the dirty overalls into the narrow workshop and placed the other parts of Mirabela down where instructed to by the excited Pole.
His eyes gleaming Zbizek opened the leather pouch that lay on the worktop and ran his hand over the tool before choosing one (that looked to the Don and Charles more like a surgical implement than something they expected a mechanic to use.) and began to work.
Don Blanco placed his hand on the craftsmen’s shoulder “money is no object, I will pay whatever it takes”
Zbizek looked up from his patient and replied
“ there is no need for money, I will do it for the people of Rio Grandé and my dear Zuberto”
The Don thanked him for his kindness, patted Charles on the back and the pair started to walk out of the narrow workshop. Zbizek called after them.
“What is her name?”
“Mirabela” said the Don without stopping to turn around.
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