Tom Cruise-Jesús Cortés Santamaría looked for a moment at the person sitting next to him: a small man, in his fifties, wearing cheap black trousers with darts and a black shirt. A large gold chain (the kind that are used to moor yachts) and a thick carpet of salt-and-pepper chest hair could be seen in the V at the top of his shirt. Had it not been for the ice cooler and the way the two women looked, the young man would have bet that this Frenchman was on his way to a funeral.
And then it hit him.
‘Are you gitano, hermano?’ he asked, almost certain of the answer.
‘Well, yeah!’ replied Gustave, as if this were obvious, wiggling his thick fingers covered in gold rings. ‘Of course I’m a gypsy.’
‘Well, why didn’t you say so?’ said Tom Cruise-Jesús Cortés Santamaría, suddenly cheering up. He, too, wiggled his long fingers covered in gold signet rings, as if this were a secret code they shared.
Then he raced his turbo-charged golf cart through the terminal. He was always first in line when it came to saving a pretty, young gypsy girl.
OVERCOME BY CURIOSITY, Ajatashatru had opened one of the mysterious cardboard boxes that were piled up next to him on the carousel and labelled, in pretty red-and-gold lettering, ensaïmada mallorquina.
To his surprise, it turned out to be a sort of large brioche, its shape somewhere between that of a snail and Princess Leia’s hairdo, its circumference more or less the same as a 33rpm vinyl record.
He took a bite. It was delicious. The cake was a bit floury and stodgy, but accompanied by a little water it would have been fine. The problem was that he didn’t have any water.
As he wondered how people could check in mountains of brioches as ordinary luggage, and how the baggage handlers could load them in the aeroplanes without eating a couple, he heard the purr of a car’s engine.
In an agile movement, he leapt from the carousel. It was high time, anyway, as the carousel was about to take him back to the other side of the terminal, where the Parisian was undoubtedly waiting for him with his deadly ice cooler.
A quick glance to the left, a quick glance to the right. Nothing. Nothing except for that brown leather trunk, as big as a fridge, that was passing a few yards from him on a carousel going in the opposite direction. Without a second’s thought, he jumped on it. As luck would have it, the trunk was not padlocked. He unzipped it while looking back over his shoulder. A little red-and-yellow golf cart was coming towards him. The driver and the passenger, whose face he couldn’t see properly, seemed not to have noticed him.
Inside the trunk was a portable wardrobe full to the brim with clothes. A wardrobe! Aja thought, his eyes glimmering with disbelief. He grabbed armfuls of the clothes and their hangers and threw them in a pile behind the carousel. There were elegant dresses, expensive lingerie, elaborate and well-stocked make-up bags. This probably belonged to someone important, or rich, or both.
The fakir got into the trunk, half an ensaïmada in his hand, just in case, and zipped it shut from inside. He had never been in such a big trunk in his life. He did not have to dislocate his shoulder, as he usually did when he was preparing to get inside his magic box. He exhaled. At least no one would be skewering this box with long, sharp swords. Well, not unless the Frenchman got his hands on it . . .
WHILE THE PLEBS continued to file between the seats to take their places on the aeroplane, like a centipede in Bermuda shorts and sandals, Sophie Morceaux, who had been the first to board, was already sipping from a glass of cheap champagne in the second row.
A passing Italian, speaking very loudly and waving his arms around, sent a minuscule particle of dust flying into one of the beautiful actress’s green eyes. In touching her eye to remove the irritating dust, she accidentally dislodged her contact lens, which instantly disappeared in the jungle of blue carpet on the floor.
The young woman spent several minutes kneeling on the floor, between two chairs, scratching around in the wool fibres with her long, slender fingers, until a stewardess finally came along to help her. The result was no better, however, and Sophie Morceaux was forced into the horrifying realisation: she was now one-eyed. Which was unbearable, I’m sure you’ll agree, for an actress who had not even been in Pirates of the Caribbean.
While the passengers moved towards their places, the stewardess swam against the tide like a salmon and spent a minute or two on the gangway in discussion with a woman wearing a fluorescent yellow vest and large headphones over her ears and holding a walkie-talkie.
They absolutely had to find Sophie Morceaux’s Vuitton trunk and bring her the toiletry bag from the outside pocket.
Luckily, it had not yet been loaded on the aeroplane. At the bottom of the gangway, the chief baggage handler explained to the woman with the walkie-talkie that the trunk was being given special treatment, in view of its owner (it was not every day that you had the famous and beautiful actress Sophie Morceaux in your aeroplane) and was therefore not travelling with the rest of the suitcases in the large metal AKH containers. He then pointed to a beautiful, brown Vuitton trunk, the size of a small refrigerator (22 × 50 × 22 inches), perched on a trolley.
The Spanish woman rummaged around in the outside pocket of the trunk, took out a matching toiletry bag, and zipped it back up again. This was the first time she had ever seen such a luxurious piece of luggage. With her miserable salary, and in these lean times of economic crisis, she knew she would never be able to buy anything like it. She could barely even afford the toiletry bag, in fact.
‘OK, we’re done,’ she told the chief baggage handler, who, aided by two other men, loaded the trunk into the only heated, ventilated and pressurised baggage hold on the aeroplane.
If, in the dark depths of that trunk, sandwiched between a pair of knickers and a piece of ensaïmada, Ajatashatru had called for a genie, the genie would have said to him, in a voice as deep as Barry White’s: ‘Fakir, I have some good news and some bad news for you. The good news is that you have been put in the only heated, ventilated and pressurised baggage hold on the aeroplane, which means you will not have turned into an ice cream by the time you arrive at your destination. The bad news is that you will never see Barcelona, because you have just been loaded in the hold of an aeroplane that is taking off shortly for an unknown destination. Here we go again!’
THE SCENE HAD only lasted a few minutes, but when Gustave Palourde and Tom Cruise-Jesús etc. etc. entered the baggage depot, the Indian had disappeared.
Gustave, who felt bad about lying to a fellow gypsy, had told the baggage handler the truth as soon as he got in the golf cart. And the truth was that he wanted to beat the shit out of the foreigner who had conned him out of €100. The young Spaniard, for whom blood ties were the most sacred of all and who never missed an opportunity to beat the shit out of somebody, rallied to the cause of his blood brother without any further explanation. Besides, he had been relieved to find out that the pretty teenage girl, who was not diabetic, was also not in any danger.
And so, excited by this impulsive manhunt, the two gypsies drove through the labyrinthine corridors in search of the Indian who had once offended one of them.
Gustave no longer had his ice cooler to hand, but in his pocket he was caressing the ivory handle of his beloved Opinel knife, which he had joyfully recovered from his luggage after disembarking from the aeroplane. If the thief did not pay him back what he owed him, plus interest, he would not hesitate to put so many holes in him that he could be used as a sieve.
The two men had soon examined the whole of the carousel inside the depot, but still without discovering any trace of the crook. A baggage handler walked past them, and the young Spaniard asked him if he had, by any chance, seen an Indian, tall, thin and gnarled like a tree, with a moustache and a white turban on his head.
‘The only Indian I can see is him!’ replied the man, pointing an accusatory finger at Gustave. ‘What is he doing here? He’s not allowed on this side.’
‘I know, I know, but we’re looking for a suitcase
containing a Gluco . . . um, sugar for his daughter, who’s having a fit,’ the young gypsy lied.
‘Oh, I see . . .’ Then a few seconds later: ‘But hang on, what does all that have to do with the Indian?’
Tom Cruise-Jesús did not know what to say. But he did realise that he would never be given his permanent contract if he got mixed up in crazy adventures like this. So he backed off.
Just as he was about to accompany the Frenchman to the passenger zone and forget this whole unhappy episode, his eye was caught by a pile of clothes that had been thrown to the floor near one of the baggage carousels.
More out of professional conscientiousness than suspicion, he stopped his golf cart and went to pick up the clothes. They turned out to be elegant ball gowns and some rather enticing sexy underwear in a size 8, which made him imagine that their owner was probably not too ugly.
‘What is all that?’ asked the taxi driver, who had gone over to join him.
‘I don’t know. It looks like someone threw all this away without really looking at it. These are some nice threads. I’m pretty sure they must belong to someone rich, or important, or both. Definitely a woman, anyway, and probably not an ugly one, if you want my opinion.’
‘Where are those bags going?’ Gustave interrupted him, pointing to the luggage that continued to move along the carousel.
The baggage handler went over to look at a passing pushchair and read on the green-and-white label attached to it:
‘FCO.’
‘FCO?’ Gustave repeated, uncomprehending.
‘Those bags are going to Fiumicino Airport, in Rome.’
AS SOON AS the engines roared and the aeroplane took off, Ajatashatru realised that: 1) he was in an aeroplane; and 2) the suitcase in which he had hidden had not just arrived, as he had thought, but was about to depart.
For someone who had never travelled before this adventure, it seemed the fakir could now do nothing else. Travel broadens the mind, according to the famous saying. At his current rate of progress, Ajatashatru’s mind would soon be so broad that his head would no longer fit inside the wardrobes and trunks which had, so far, been his means of conveyance.
He had been in Europe for twenty-four hours, but it seemed like an eternity. He had already set foot in France, England and Spain. And by tonight, he would be somewhere else again. Was Buddha going to condemn him to being an accidental illegal alien for the rest of his life? Or would he finally be allowed to stay this time?
He had no idea. He just hoped the aeroplane wasn’t going to New Caledonia. He could not imagine spending the next thirty-two hours crammed inside a four-foot trunk with nothing but half an ensaïmada to eat.
At least he wasn’t upside down. That would be unbearable. The trunk lay on its side, which was conducive to getting some sleep, even if he had his knees in his mouth. He hoped that this trunk would not become his coffin. A beautiful Vuitton coffin.
Because, while it was true that he wished to be buried – unlike other Hindu fakirs who continued the age-old tradition of cremation – he would prefer his death to be postponed as long as possible. He had told Marie, during their meal, about his wish to be buried. You never knew. If a terrorist carrying a bomb had blown the Ikea cafeteria to smithereens and Marie had survived, at least she would have been able to grant the poor Indian’s last wish.
‘I would rather be cremated, personally,’ the Frenchwoman had told him. ‘I’m too afraid of waking up inside a coffin.’
‘And waking up in an urn wouldn’t scare you?’ the fakir had retorted.
The idea that he might die without ever seeing Marie again haunted Ajatashatru’s mind. He remembered her smile, her beautiful hands, her face like a porcelain doll’s. He promised himself that he would call her as soon as he arrived at his destination, wherever that might be.
Let me survive, he prayed, and I will become a good, generous and honest man, just as she imagined me.
At that very moment, Buddha replied with a sleepy bark.
THERE WAS A dog in the baggage hold. And to judge from its plaintive whining, it was not a frequent flyer.
With his agile fingers, Ajatashatru searched blindly for the little mechanism that he had engaged when he closed the trunk after getting inside. If he had been able to close it from the inside, then he ought to be able to open it in the same way.
A few seconds later, he burst from the suitcase like an overripe banana escaping its skin. As luck would have it, there were not so many bags in the hold that his exit was blocked. Finally free, he stretched his legs for a while, massaging his lower back and his calves. One Indian airline used the slogan ‘Travel with us and we’ll treat you like a (holy) cow’. After travelling in the baggage hold of an aeroplane, locked inside a trunk, the fakir understood that the concept of a cow might not have the same meaning in every country.
The Indian stood up, but the ceiling of the hold was far too low for someone of his size, and he was obliged to double over. So he decided to crab-walk in the direction of the whining. Crab-walking towards a dog struck him as rather original.
As it was pitch black in the hold, Ajatashatru felt his way forward. Each time he came upon an obstacle – one of those UOs (unidentified objects) – he pushed it out of the way or moved around it, depending on how heavy it was.
Soon he arrived in front of two glistening eyes, which looked at him unblinking through the darkness. He liked animals. He was not afraid of them. No one who spent their early childhood cuddled up to a pet cobra is likely to be afraid of any other animal, and certainly not a dog, man’s best friend.
Ajatashatru held out what was left of the ensaïmada towards the cage.
‘Nice doggy, nice doggy,’ he said, just in case the animal preferred the taste of human flesh to that of brioche.
He felt a large, cold, wet tongue, with a texture like veal escalope, greedily licking his fingers.
The dog’s whining ceased. It seemed just as soothed by the piece of ensaïmada as by this unexpected company.
‘Do you happen to know where we’re going? Because I have no idea. I don’t even know if we’re going south, north, east or west, if we’re flying over sea or mountains. And I’m also slightly illegal. Although I doubt whether I’ll feel that fear in my gut when the aeroplane slows down and comes to a halt. The European police don’t actually stop and search planes mid-flight, do they?’
The dog, apparently clueless on this subject, did not reply.
In the darkness of the hold, the power of the Indian’s senses had increased tenfold, just as they had when he was trapped inside the wardrobe during the journey on the truck to England. To his great displeasure, one of those heightened senses was his sense of smell. The filthy animal stench made his nostrils quiver, but he then realised that it was not coming from the cage in front of him. He was the one who stank. Although he was not resistant to tiredness, hunger or thirst, our fakir was highly resistant to showers. Sometimes he would go several weeks without taking one. While it was true that, for the last two days, washing himself had been impossible, he could easily have done so on any of the five days preceding his trip. But he had not even wiped his face clean. The last time he had felt water on his head, it had been rainwater. And it doesn’t rain very often in the Tharthar Desert!
Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, had meditated under the bodhi tree for seven weeks. Had he taken showers?
As he had time, and as no one was going to disturb him here, Ajatashatru crouched on the metal floor of the hold in the lotus position, facing the dog’s glistening eyes, and began to meditate on his new life – the life of a good, generous and honest man which awaited him at his next port of call. He had given the dog some ensaïmada, but that in itself was not enough to constitute a complete change. So, who could he help? And how?
THE FAKIR HAD often wanted to write.
He did not lack for ideas. He had a very active imagination, and his eventful life probably helped too. In any case, that unbounded imagination had served him well
when it came to inventing magic tricks that made the unreal real and the impossible possible.
He had never set his stories down on paper, though. Perhaps the act of writing was more complicated than he thought, as he had always put off attempting it.
But maybe that time was now at hand? Maybe the honest and lucrative activity he was seeking in order to kick-start his new life was that of a writer? Not a public writer . . . No, he could not imagine himself sitting on the pavement, a typewriter strapped to his chest, waiting for a passer-by to commission him to write a love letter. No, he was more ambitious than that. He wanted to write best-sellers. Well, it was a more reasonable expectation than dancing the foxtrot or being a jockey. And if it didn’t work out, he could always sell Eiffel Towers in Paris.
‘What do you think, my friend? Should I try to become a writer?’
The dog barked three times.
Ajatashatru took that as meaning: ‘I think that’s a great idea, mate. Go for it!’
On the cover there would be an old-fashioned yellow car with the word TAXI painted on the side, speeding through the streets of New Delhi. There would be two people. The driver: a big, bearded man with unkempt hair. And a young man on crutches, running in front of the taxi, and running very fast in spite of his handicap.
Ajatashatru smiled in the darkness.
The mad taxi driver was clearly a fictionalised version of the Parisian gypsy with his ice cooler, while he himself was the cripple crossing the street.
The title would be something like God Takes a Taxi. Now that he had the cover and the title, the fakir was ready to begin his novel. Wasn’t that the usual procedure?
So he took off his shirt, picked up his wooden Ikea pencil and, there in the darkness, began writing on the fabric the story that was being born in his mind.
CHAPTER ONE
He did not understand why it was forbidden to travel on an aeroplane with a fork when it was perfectly possible to kill someone with a pen. He did not understand why it was forbidden to travel with a knife in one’s hand luggage when all the passengers in business class were given one – a metal one, too – so they could eat their in-flight meals with distinction. In fact, he did not understand any of these security measures when it was so easy to kill someone with one’s bare hands. If this logic were pursued, shouldn’t everyone have their hands – those dangerous weapons – amputated before boarding the plane? Either that, or they should be made to travel in the plane’s baggage hold, like the animals, a safe distance from the cockpit.
The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir who got Trapped in an Ikea Wardrobe Page 8
