chapter thirty-four
BUT dreams are only dreams, and I did not go to Montmartre. I did not guide Gloria through the labyrinth of small streets. We did not walk down the Champs-Elysées, and no butter croissants were waiting for us on our arrival.
Customs officers who were controlling commercial trucks on the highway near Sarreguemines, in Moselle, discovered me on December 13, 1997, among a cargo of pigs.
As far as I know, they were looking for drugs or smuggled goods. But I was the only contraband they found when they opened the cargo door of the trailer. I was sleeping, my head resting on the gear. I had managed to drift off despite the frightful smell of excrement.
I had had nothing to drink since the service station. My throat was on fire, my lips were dry. The truck driver could not believe his eyes when he saw me and swore loudly in Spanish.
The customs officers pulled me out of the trailer by the collar of my sweater. I wasn’t quite awake, so I didn’t have time to think and grab the gear.
I landed on French soil and looked for Gloria.
She was not there.
I rushed toward the driver, begging him to tell me where she was, but he didn’t understand anything I said, and I smelled so bad that he kept walking away from me, holding his nose. Then the customs officers pushed him into a car.
“Gloria! Gloria!” I shouted. There was no answer. Only the sounds of traffic on the highway and the wind.
The customs officers dragged me to a van. I fought them as I kept shouting “Gloria,” so they handcuffed me. That’s how it is when you confront the authorities.
They forced me to climb into the van, and I suddenly thought of the small weasel and of Hoop Earring’s warning, but it was too late. I had fallen into a trap set for humans. The door of the van closed on me, and we left the highway. Where was Gloria? Where could she be? I panicked. My head was empty and the steel of the handcuffs was cutting into my skin. I collapsed and cried, “Helpmehelpme!”
Later, between two hiccups, I explained:
“Mynameisblaisefortuneandiamacitizenofthefrenchrepublicitsthepureand
simpletruth.”
I repeated that twice, three times, like a prayer, like a song, but it was as useless as shouting in the desert. The officers sighed. They seemed upset.
I put my head on my knees.
Gloria had disappeared. Maybe she had fallen out of the truck? Maybe she was hiding? Maybe something horrible had happened while I slept with the pigs? I did not know what to think.
I was almost twelve years old, the gear was in the smelly truck, and I was without Gloria in the country of human rights and the poet Charles Baudelaire.
Never in my life had I been so scared.