The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir who got Trapped in an Ikea Wardrobe

by Romain Puertolas

  JULIO SYMPA AND Michou Lapaire, the manager of Ikea Paris Sud Thiais and his chief designer, climbed the stairs that led to the showcase rooms, followed by a herd of men and women in yellow T-shirts and navy cargo pants.

  They were working late because they had to install a new collection.

  Julio Sympa, who was six foot six and had climbed Mont Blanc four times, stopping at the top each time to read Why I Am So Cold by Josette Camus before going back down eight hundred and fifty-three pages later, paused in front of the ‘American Teenager’ bedroom and pointed in several directions before continuing on his way.

  Michou Lapaire, who always wished he had been born a woman, wrote down, in a pink notebook, the furniture pointed out by his bombastic boss.

  While this was happening, the members of the technical team, most of whom had undoubtedly never heard of Why I Am So Cold by Josette Camus nor wished they had been born a different sex, put on their gloves, unrolled the bubble wrap, and moved the crates that would be used to protect the furniture during transportation. Due to a shortage of time, the manager had given instructions not to disassemble the furniture (at Ikea! Can you believe it?) but to pack it as it was in the large wooden crates. This way, they would avoid the physically and mentally exhausting process of disassembly and reassembly.

  While the technical workers busied themselves lifting up the blue metal wardrobe and putting it inside a much larger wooden crate, a gentle splashing sound could be heard, like water trickling from a tap. If one of them had opened the wardrobe, they would have seen Ajatashatru in a very unfortunate position, standing up, huddled into a corner, concentrating on giving free rein to his bladder’s imagination while he was carried, rather shakily, an inch or two above the ground. It is as difficult to piss in a wardrobe as it is in an aeroplane, observed the Indian, who never would have believed that he would one day be in a position to make such an observation.

  Anyway, no one opened the wardrobe door.

  ‘When you’ve finished doing that, I want someone to fix that leak,’ said Julio Sympa, who had excellent hearing.

  Then he pointed at a bunk bed, a few yards away, as if he were sentencing it to death. Which was more or less the case.

  AT THAT VERY moment – in other words, at the precise instant that Julio Sympa was pointing at the bunk bed as if he were sentencing it to death, which occurred at 11 p.m. on the dot – Gustave Palourde parked his taxi by the side of the road, checked that his windows and doors were locked, and, rubbing his hands, prepared to count the day’s takings.

  This was his little post-shift ritual, a satisfying conclusion to a day of hard work. Ever since his wife, Mercedes-Shayana, had one day caught him, in their house (which was what they called their caravan), counting his money after a day’s work, and, having found his hiding place, stolen quite a lot of the money to buy herself a crocodile calfskin bag, Gustave had got into the habit of doing it this way. Best not to tempt fate, as he told his colleagues after this incident, though what he really meant was best not to tempt Mercedes-Shayana.

  Having counted his takings, the old gypsy glanced at his notebook and noticed that the total on the paper did not correspond with the amount of money in his hands. Somewhat vexed, he recalculated several times, first in his head and then with the calculator on his mobile phone, but the result was always the same. There was a difference of one hundred euros. He rummaged through the make-up bag he had ‘borrowed’ from his wife (a simple act of compensation), in which he kept all his change, then he searched his wallet, and, increasingly anxious, felt around under his seat, under the passenger seat, in the glove compartment, and finally, in desperation, in the hollow around the gearstick. But all he found was dust.

  One hundred euros. Gustave thought again of the green note that the Indian had given him at Ikea. That had been the most lucrative trip of the day, so he couldn’t have given it to another customer in change.

  ‘And if I don’t have that damn note, then . . .’

  It did not take the gypsy long to realise that he had been the victim of someone more crooked than him. He went through the scene again in his memory. The Indian handing him the note. Him taking it in his hand. Him opening his wallet and sliding it inside. The Indian waving his arms to show him something. Him looking. Him not seeing anything very interesting. Him thinking that the Indian was a bit of a loony. Him putting his wallet away. Him leaning over the glove compartment to pick up a business card.

  ‘That toerag!’ exclaimed Gustave. ‘He only waved his arms about to distract me while he took his note back. Cabrón!’2

  If there was one thing the Parisian taxi driver could not stand, it was being taken for a ride when he was the one giving the ride; being swindled when he should have been swindling. He swore, on his honour as a gypsy, he would find that Indian without delay and make him eat his turban.

  As he did this, he stroked the little statue of St Sarah, the patron saint of gypsies, which hung from his rear-view mirror. When he drove off at top speed, she banged against St Fiacre, the patron saint of taxi drivers, who hung next to her.

  For the entire duration of the journey back to his house (caravan), Gustave cursed the Indian under his breath. He didn’t even listen to his Gipsy Kings CD, which he always kept in the CD player. That’s how annoyed he was. As he waited for a traffic light to turn green, an idea took seed in his mind. Having made his purchases in Ikea, the Indian might have used the Gypsy Taxis business card that he had given him. If so, one of Gustave’s colleagues would obviously have driven him. So, all he had to do was ask where they had dropped him off, and he could go there, find him, and give him a good hiding. Without a second thought, Gustave grabbed the radio transmitter.

  ‘Calling all units [he had copied this phrase from Starsky & Hutch], have any of you picked up an Indian today – crumpled grey suit, red tie pinned to his shirt, white turban on his head, huge moustache, tall, thin and gnarled like a tree . . . a Hindu, basically – from Ikea Paris Sud Thiais? This is a code T (for Thief), I repeat, a code T (for Twat). Everybody understand? That’s a code T (for waiT Till I geT my hands round your ThroaT, you filThy Indian Thief!)

  ‘I can’t believe I trusted a gorgio, never mind an Indian, for a journey from Roissy to Ikea! I’ll never do that again,’ groaned the taxi driver, while thinking that such an event must happen about as often as the appearance of Halley’s Comet (which was next expected on 28 July 2061), and that perhaps it was not such a great idea, after all, to talk about this at dinner with his wife and look like an idiot in the eyes of his daughter, who already thought he was a bit of a jerk.

  A few minutes elapsed, but none of his colleagues working that afternoon said they had picked up the mysterious passenger. So, Gustave calculated, either he had used a different taxi firm, or he had hired a minivan, or he was still somewhere in the industrial zone. In the first two scenarios, he thought, there is nothing I can do until tomorrow. But for the third, I could go and see if there’s a hotel near the store. I’m in the area anyway, and it’ll only take me ten or fifteen minutes.

  The car noisily skidded through a sudden U-turn while St Sarah pressed herself for several seconds against the body of the smiling St Fiacre.

  When Gustave arrived outside Ikea, a large freight truck was leaving. He pulled to the side and let it past, blissfully unaware that inside it was a huge wooden crate which, like a Russian doll, itself contained a metal wardrobe which, in turn, contained the Indian he was looking for.

  He started up again and drove around, but saw nothing suspicious. A very large and closed furniture store, a Starbucks which was open but empty . . . you could find almost anything here. Anything except a hotel. Anything except a tall, thin Indian, gnarled like a tree, in a suit, tie and turban, who conned honest French gypsy taxi drivers.

  There was a residential estate on the other side of the road, but unless he knew someone who lived there, the thief could not be there.

  Then again . . . thought Gustave. You could never be sure
, with this kind of person. With his slick charm and his magic tricks, he might have taken refuge with one of the residents for the night.

  Just in case, he drove his Mercedes through streets lined with pretty houses, losing at least five minutes in that labyrinth of homes, and came back out on the main road on which he had begun.

  He had to sort this problem out as quickly as possible, because the next day he was leaving for a family holiday in Spain. So he saw only one solution: he would have to call in the professionals.

  THE NATIONAL POLICE’S new charter for welcoming the public stated that, from now on, every French citizen had the right to file a complaint about any kind of infraction whatsoever, no matter how futile it might be, at the police station of their choice. It was the duty of the policeman, who had no rights, to register the complaint, no matter how futile he might consider it, and, in particular, not to send the plaintiff to another police station in order to get rid of him, which had been standard practice before the charter. So, for the past several months, there had been an unpleasant tension between the irate victims, fed up of waiting in queues that moved no more quickly than those at the post office or the local butcher’s, and police officers embittered by the fact that they were mere humans rather than octopuses, because at least if they had eight tentacles they would have been able to type several statements at once. This tension grew even worse after nightfall, when the number of police stations open to the public diminished as quickly as an ice cube melting in Kim Basinger’s navel, funnelling all the victims of crime in Paris into one single point – something the new charter was expressly intended to avoid.

  No less than three hours passed between the moment when Gustave took the decision to notify the police and the moment he triumphantly signed his statement in the presence of the officer on duty.

  Very concerned not to damage the harmonious relationship established by local police with the gypsy community located on the other side of the ring road, the policeman had immediately dispatched the night officer and a colleague to Ikea, accompanied by the victim, in order to inspect the video recorded by the store’s security cameras during the day. They were going to find him – that damn Indian fakir who’d come here stirring up trouble with their minorities – and they were going to make him pay back what he had stolen from the taxi driver, right down to the last centime.

  That was how Gustave Palourde, Police Commander Alexandra Fouliche and Police Officer Stéphane Placide came to be crammed into the store’s cupboard-like control room in the middle of the night, watching a video of an Indian, fresh off the plane, spending a good twenty minutes admiring the automatic doors that led to the entrance hall, before finally deciding to walk through them.

  ‘If he does this with each door, we’ll be here until tomorrow night,’ said the security guard who was controlling the video recorder.

  ‘There aren’t any more doors after this,’ the store manager, Julio Sympa, corrected him, wiping his round Harry Potteresque spectacles with a thick cloth handkerchief.

  ‘We could always watch the tape on fast-forward,’ suggested Commander Fouliche, certain that such a proposal would not make her look like an idiot, in contrast to her name.

  ‘It’ll probably look like a Benny Hill episode,’ exclaimed the taxi driver, whose cultural references were limited entirely to television.

  ‘Shut up and let us work!’ Placide interrupted him angrily. The police officer always had a hard time remaining calm.

  Meanwhile, on-screen, the Indian wandered through the corridors. As soon as he moved out of shot of one camera, another picked him up. And he hadn’t spotted a single one! They watched him eat in the restaurant, accompanied by a beautiful blonde woman who had bumped into him in the queue and broken his sunglasses.

  ‘She’ll end up with her legs spread,’ observed Gustave, who felt as if he were watching an episode of Big Brother in his caravan.

  They fast-forwarded through the meal, and through the man’s wanderings, alone now, along the corridors. It did indeed resemble an episode of Benny Hill. When the Indian unexpectedly hid under a bed, they played the video at its normal speed again.

  ‘Birkeland. Excellent choice. That’s our best bed,’ said Julio Sympa. Four pairs of eyes gave him dirty looks.

  Next, the thief came out from his hiding place, made himself a nice snack in the kitchen, and ate it while watching a blank plastic television screen in a showcase living room. After that, he read a newspaper, sprawled out on the sofa in his socks. He could hardly have looked any more comfortable had he been at home.

  ‘We’ve got him!’ shouted the security guard, tapping the monitor with his index finger.

  Then he jumped up from his seat like a little jack-in-the-box, rushed towards the door and left, without anyone having the faintest idea what had got into him.

  The others continued to watch the recording. Around 10.15 p.m., the store manager appeared on the screen, accompanied by a small fat man who looked like he had always wanted to be a woman, and a full technical team. Julio Sympa thought he looked very photogenic and regretted not having chosen a career in film.

  ‘But the role of Harry Potter was already taken,’ he sighed resignedly, adjusting his spectacles.

  They watched the Indian hop into a blue metal wardrobe before the technical team appeared and covered it in bubble wrap, and put it inside a wooden crate. The team tied the whole thing up with long straps, then carried it on a huge electric trolley to the goods lift.

  At that moment, the security guard, who was a big fan of American cop shows, entered the control room. He was carrying the Indian’s meal tray, which he’d found on the coffee table in the black-and-white lacquered living room. Piled on top of the tray were a grey jacket, a red tie and a pair of black shoes.

  ‘The plate and glass are riddled with fingerprints,’ he declared proudly, ‘and you’ll undoubtedly find some of his hair on these clothes.’

  The police commander wrinkled her nose in disgust at the smelly shoes. Ignoring the security guard, she turned towards the store manager.

  ‘What did you do with that wardrobe?’

  ‘The wardrobe we saw on the video?’ the man stammered.

  ‘Yes, exactly. The wardrobe we saw on the video.’

  ‘Dispatched . . .’

  ‘Dispatched?’

  ‘Yes, sent away. Transferred.’

  ‘I know perfectly well what the word “dispatched” means,’ snapped Fouliche, who sensed that she was being treated like an idiot. ‘But where did you send it?’

  Julio Sympa chewed his upper lip. If only he had been Harry Potter at that moment, he could have made himself disappear with a wave of his magic wand.

  ‘To England . . .’

  Everyone gulped at the same time.

  * * *

  1 Author’s note: In the interests of the reader’s understanding, we will polish up Marie’s pidgin English during future conversations.

  2 Author’s note: Spanish insult a tiny bit ruder than ‘naughty boy’.

  Great Britain

  AJATASHATRU WAS WOKEN by the sound of voices.

  Loud, booming men’s voices.

  He had not even noticed that he’d nodded off. Since he had been in the wardrobe, he had been shaken about all over the place. He had felt himself lifted off the ground. He had felt himself moving on wheels. He had also been banged against walls, stairs and other UOs (unidentified objects).

  Several times, he had been tempted to come out and confess everything. It seemed preferable to being taken on a roller-coaster ride towards an unknown destination. There was something oppressive about the combination of the darkness and the incomprehensible French voices on the other side of the wardrobe.

  Nevertheless, Ajatashatru had held out.

  After some time, he had no longer been able to hear or feel anything. He had wondered if he were dead. But the pain he suffered when he pinched the back of his hand had confirmed to him that he was still alive, at least for the momen
t, and that he had simply been abandoned to his fate in the silence and darkness. He had attempted to escape from the wardrobe, but without success. Exhausted and resigned, he must have fallen into the sweet embrace of sleep.

  Now, listening to the loud voices, the Indian thought he could identify five different speakers. It was not easy – they all had the same deep, muffled tone, as if they were coming from beyond the grave – but one thing was sure: these were no longer the same voices he had heard around him in Ikea. These men spoke very quickly in a language full of onomatopoeia and sudden sharp sounds that was not unknown to him. An Arabic language spoken by black people, thought the Indian.

  One of the men laughed. It sounded like a spring mattress groaning under the bouncing weight of two lovers.

  The fakir held his breath, unsure whether these were the voices of friends or enemies. A friend would be anyone who was not offended by finding him in this wardrobe. An enemy would be anyone else: Ikea employees, policemen, any potential female purchaser of the wardrobe, any potential husband of the potential female purchaser coming home from work and finding a shoeless Indian in their new wardrobe.

  He swallowed with great difficulty and attempted to make saliva in his mouth. His lips were sticky, as if someone had glued them together. He was filled with a terrible feeling of panic, far worse than the fear of being discovered alive: the fear of being found dead in this cheap sheet-metal wardrobe.