The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who Got Trapped in an Ikea Wardrobe by Romain Puértolas Read Free Book Online Page B

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.

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 toward 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 confirmedto him that he was still alive, at least for the moment, 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 purchasercoming 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.
    During his performances back home in his village, Ajatashatru went weeks without eating, sitting in the lotus position inside the trunk of a banyan fig tree, just as Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, had done two and a half thousand years earlier. He allowed himself the luxury of eating only once a day, at noon, and then he would eat only the rusty bolts and nails brought to him by the people of the village as offerings. In May 2005, a fifteen-year-old boy by the name of Ram Bahadur Bomjam had stolen his thunder, with the teenager’s worshippers claiming that he had meditated for six months without eating or drinking. So, the eyes of the world’s media had turned toward the impostor, abandoning Ajatashatru in his little tree.
    In reality, our fakir loved food and could never have gone more than a single day withouteating. As soon as the sun set each evening, his followers came and unrolled the canvas that hung in front of the fig tree, and he ate the food brought to him by his cousin and longtime accomplice Nysatkharee (pronounced
Nice-hot-curry
). As for the screws and bolts, they were made of coal. So, while they were not exactly delicious or digestible, they were a lot easier to swallow than actual