Lost Luggage (25 page)

“I've got a small bladder,” Gabriel replied unfazed, “and I drink too much beer. I don't know what the problem's called in French, but I'm sure you know what I mean.” A pause. “Bundó, you open, don't you?”

The first hand they played was a dummy run. Ibrahim won but the pot was negligible. The next four hands went to Gabriel and Bundó. The Frenchman gave them dirty looks, but then they let him win quite a good hand, and he relaxed. Gabriel didn't resort to his tricks until game eight. They'd been playing almost half an hour, and he realized he'd got back a ridiculously small amount. Between hands he was thinking about Sarah and keeping an eye on his watch. She'd soon be waiting for him in the infirmary. They'd better get a move on. Bundó dealt, and he got a couple of aces, hearts and diamonds. He had a hunch that the ace of clubs hadn't appeared. In the first draw, Monsieur Champion got rid of an ace of spades, suggesting that he held no other ace in his hand. With imperceptible sleight of hand, Gabriel produced the ace of clubs from his left sleeve. He bet high and so did the others. They showed their cards. Gabriel revealed his three aces, and it worked. The Frenchman cursed but didn't expose his cards. That was his right. Thenceforth, Gabriel kept winning without any need to revisit his shirtsleeve stash. He felt secure, and the cards were good. Luck always shuns the desperate. After a couple of hands, the ace of spades turned up again and he slipped it back inside his sleeve. From time to time, to avert suspicion, he gave the hand to Bundó or let the Frenchman win. Ibrahim was playing robotically. His mind was elsewhere. Hands were dealt, minutes went by, francs disguised as pesetas moved back to the truck drivers' side, and Gabriel picked up on something: Monsieur Champion's response was to bluff, one hand after another. He'd reached the point where he wasn't even studying the cards. It was as if he intuited that they were up to something and he was trying to bamboozle them by scrapping kings and queens at odd times. He was betting large amounts without rhyme or reason. It was crazy. Gabriel was watching his face, “Too many teeth,” he thought. “You've got too many teeth and they're too white.” Then the tic was revealed. Every time he was about to bluff, Monsieur Champion raised his upper lip, baring two rows of immaculate teeth in a strange stony-white sneer.

While Bundó was shuffling for the next round, Sarah appeared
in the cafeteria with her first-aid kit. The ferry wasn't being tossed around so much now, but, all the same, she went over to passengers who were looking green around the gills and offered them a seasickness pill. She administered one to the Shakespearian actor, who swallowed it after throwing a few lines at her. Gabriel admired Sarah from a distance. As she moved around the boat, as lithe and sure-footed as an adolescent, she seemed to have the gift of turning the nightmarish crossing into an adventure on the Channel. Looking around for new patients, Sarah's gaze met Gabriel's. They locked eyes for a moment and looked away, fearing a short circuit. Sarah stood in the middle of the room and shouted with all the lung power of a fishwife in the market, “Last pills! Last pills! They're running out! Free! No more seasickness! If you change your mind and want one later, you'll find me in the infirmary . . . Free! They are free!”

Apparently ignoring her shouting, the four players concentrated on the hand that had just been dealt. Bundó, however, was trying to remember where he'd seen that face before. Ibrahim calculated that, with one bottle of those pills, there'd be enough to calm Sans Merci. At the first bet, Monsieur Champion attempted another bluff and his teeth gleamed like foam on a turbulent sea. They bet again, and Gabriel put an end to his bluff with a mere pair of jacks. The situation was verging on ridiculous. It only took ten minutes and one round to leave the Frenchman and his groom completely cleaned out. Gabriel's mind wandered back to the infirmary to summon up Sarah making obscene gestures at him.

“I think we'll be in Dover soon,” he said. “Maybe we should call it a day, don't you think,
monsieur
?”

The look he got from the Frenchman would have done away with Captain Ahab himself.

The storm had changed the perception of time on board the ferry. The surging, rocking, lashing of waves, pounding of rain, seasickness, and boredom all came together in such a way that the minutes didn't tick by in an orderly fashion but in jolts. Some afflicted
passengers felt as if they were riding an aquatic rollercoaster. Our card players took shelter inside a bubble of smoke and gambling. Under the effects of LSD, Anna, Ludovic, and Raymond wandered around the boat at a snail's pace. It had taken them all of half an hour to cover the hundred meters separating the cafeteria from their objective. Their progress through a mesh of passageways and doors was an expedition into the wilderness. Anna saw grass springing up under her bare feet, green, velvety, and fresh. The walls and metal banisters were sprouting thick branches, tropical vines, and intricate ivy that hid the path. Ludovic, brandishing a machete in front of her, was opening up the way. Behind her, Raymond was protecting her from the wild animals that were following hot on their heels. They walked in single file, frequently stopping to listen to the cries of distant monkeys and the trilling of birds in the depths of the forest. Some of them were rehearsing Beatles songs, and she'd been captivated by this for quite a while until a unicorn popped up in the middle of the path and presented them with a small round secret. They swallowed it before anyone discovered it (Sarah, seeing them so pale and stunned-looking, had made them take one of her pills). Now, thanks to the information that the secret had lodged in their brains, they reached the entrance to the temple without any problems. Well, a snake had bitten off and gulped down one of Raymond's arms, but he still had five left.

At the doorway leading into the car deck there was a sign prohibiting anyone from opening it during the crossing. As Anna stared, the letters turned into a bas-relief representing the palm of a right hand. She placed her own on top of it to make sure they fitted and the door miraculously opened. The brothers applauded. Another country awaited them on the other side. As they went down the stairs, the sedge was withering, and the steps crumbled into sand dunes. They were overwhelmed by the salty smell of the sea and realized that this underworld was warmer. Clothes were such a nuisance by the time they got to the bottom that they stripped naked without the least self-consciousness. In the distance they could hear the pounding of waves breaking on the shore, and their bodies were demanding water. They scampered
uninhibitedly through parked cars and trucks, which appeared as huge rocks. Occasionally a sunbeam flashed in a rearview mirror, signaling that they were on the right track. Their feet sank into the sand. They took almost a quarter of an hour to negotiate the few parked vehicles and discover a blissful place tucked away in one corner. A crane-cum-coconut palm shaded them, and oil-coated crystalline water that had seeped in from the storm bathed their feet, leaving them with a phosphorescence of gasoline and coral. Anna understood that the experience was so unique that she moved silently over to the brothers, embraced them and set about fondling their genitals. The boys watched their instant erections turn into exotic fruit. Obeying a sign from her, all three knelt down and continued their caresses. The two brothers exchanged a look of conscious surprise transcending the effects of the drug, but the LSD lured them back into action. Anna lay on the ground and asked them to lick off the sand that was coating her body. Then, when Raymond and Ludovic had just got to work on the delightful task—one at each nipple—the horse's whinnying resounded through the car deck with the power of divine intervention.

“Be quiet. Silence!” Anna ordered. “This is Sans Merci calling us. It's the horse. We must free him at once.”

She stood up, and the two brothers reluctantly followed. All three were trembling with cold. Their skin was camouflaged in a film of oil and grease—a lovely bronze suntan, they thought. Anna asked the boys to lift her and hold her aloft so she could survey the horizon.

Monsieur Champion's jeep and the horsebox, long, high, and narrow, were parked less than ten meters away from the tropical oasis. The car deck attendant, who was slumbering in his cab, had given them a spot that wasn't too close to other vehicles so they could maneuvre better. Traces of hay and alfalfa were scattered on the ground around the horsebox because Ibrahim had fed Sans Merci just before going upstairs. The horse whinnied again, and Anna identified the prison where he was being held. The three of them approached and, with an adeptness that can only come from a state of hallucination, slid back the bolt.

Hearing the metallic sound, Sans Merci fidgeted apprehensively, stamping and whinnying. Anna started singing a lullaby to calm him. Meanwhile, the two brothers carefully opened the horsebox door and lowered the ramp. The vision of Sans Merci's rump with his plaited tail and svelte bandaged legs transfixed them with sheer religious wonderment. The jittery animal plopped out a stream of golden manure, and its warm stench enveloped them. Anna kept singing, Raymond wished he had his guitar, and Ludovic started clicking his tongue.

“Click, click, click, click.”

Hearing the sound, Sans Merci took a step backward, as he always did with Ibrahim, testing, trying to locate the ramp.

“Click, click, click, click.”

Another step. Raymond slapped his rump, and the horse gained confidence. A few more steps and he was out. Sans Merci, somewhat startled, whinnied again, and Raymond kept stroking his hind legs. The horse was calmer now. Anna went into the horsebox and found some rope to make a bridle. She gently slipped it on and the horse acquiesced.

“Click, click, click, click.”

Now they could see the whole animal, a real thoroughbred. The three young people felt humbled by its aristocratic presence. Then again, the effects of the LSD were starting to wear off.

“We only need to ride to the English coast, and then you'll be free, Sans Merci,” Anna crooned in his ear. Then, adapting to the horse's pace, they set off to find an exit into the fresh air so he could run free under the sky without having to pick his way through the jungle.

Upstairs, at that very moment, Gabriel was asking, “So maybe you'd like to bet the horse?” After his earlier suggestion that they should end the game, the Frenchman had responded with a scoffing snigger, looking daggers at him.

“I'm the one who's losing so I'm the one to decide when we'll finish,” he said, crumbling the tip of his cigar into an ashtray.

“But if you're almost broke and the English coast is in sight,” Bundó replied, “there's no way you'll get it back.”

“Deal and shut up,
nom de dieu
!”

They'd gone on to play two more hands, and Gabriel had wiped the floor with him in both. Cheating. The second time, Ibrahim had spotted him pulling an ace out of his sleeve but said nothing because he was longing to finish the game and go down to Sans Merci. Now there were no francs left to stake. Bundó had gathered up the cards and was stacking them neatly before returning them to their box.

“One last hand. All or nothing,” Monsieur Champion said. His desperation wasn't about money but self-esteem. There was no way he was going to lose again to those Spanish truck drivers.

It was then that Gabriel, cool as a cucumber, put the question to him, unaware that all hell was about to break loose: “You're broke. So maybe you'd like to bet the horse?”

The Frenchman shook his head, pondering it for four eternal seconds.

“Oui.”

“Non, non, non, jamais! Sur mon cadavre!”
Ibrahim screamed. He was beside himself. He wasn't seeing straight.

“Shut your trap, you,” Champion came back with withering scorn. “I'm the boss here.”

Ibrahim's reaction left them all astounded. Normally, cursing under his breath, he wouldn't have uttered a word, but this time his master had gone too far. He vaulted nimbly over the table and landed on top of the Frenchman. Groom and boss tumbled to the floor. Broken chairs cracked loudly. Cards fluttered like a host of feathers, and the coins that Bundó had not yet gathered up rolled around the floor. Ibrahim had totally lost it and now, perched on the Frenchman's chest, set about battering his face. They were childish slaps, more noisy than anything else, but Monsieur Champion had surrendered and took it, emitting a melodic mewling. One would have thought he liked it and that they were both well accustomed to it. Gabriel grabbed Ibrahim by the armpits and hauled him off his boss, who remained on the ground, covering his face
with his hands. Attracted to the battle cries, the passengers and some crew members had congregated in the cafeteria. The actor decided on another line and bellowed it out at the top of his voice.