Rana Dasgupta - Tokyo Cancelled

Buses and taxis bustled outside, headlights clipping the snow, and the man on the desk, phone cocked between shoulder and ear, hands busy on the keyboard, produced regular triumphant announcements: guesthouses and bed-and-breakfasts and undocumented hotels that the global visitors had missed. It was late: lights went off in the Duty Free stores and the snack bar closed. Someone summarily extinguished CNN’s airport news service, and grandiose light boxes advertising American Express and The Economist flickered, and became dull. Middle-aged women with headscarves and mops started to trace epic shiny corridors from one end of the floor to the other, shaking themselves free of detritus–plastic cups, newspapers, baggage tags–each time they turned around. An assortment of almost unnoticeable people–who were those people?–settled down in various shadowy corners to sleep on vinyl chairs.

Thirteen people were left, muted by fatigue, able only to stand and try to follow the curlicue meanderings of the phone conversation that contained their future. Full too? OK. And no dice with the Sunshine Hotel. Yes, I remember. What other options do we have? Really. Yes I know what time it is. No I think you’re right. You’re sure there’s nothing else? OK. Thank you so much. Thank you. I’ll see you later. He put down the phone slowly, tenderly.

Ladies and gentlemen I apologize for the time you’ve had to wait here, you’ve been very patient. Now I’m afraid that there doesn’t seem to be a single place left for you people to stay. We really have tried everywhere but as I said to you earlier it’s not a good time to be looking right now. I haven’t got anything left to suggest. I’d invite you all to spend the night at my place but unfortunately my wife and I have only a one-room apartment and I’m not sure that you’d be very comfortable there. So I think that–I’m really sorry about this–you’re going to just have to do the best you can right here. Now the good news is–I’ve just got the schedule confirmed–your flight is leaving at 09.55. The snowstorm has already subsided in Tokyo. Check-in time is 7.30. So it’s really just a few hours. I’m really sorry.

It wasn’t his fault. No point making a fuss. This place was depressing and dead but what could you do? He’d tried his best. Just a few hours, as he said. He picked up his jacket and left. Good night. Good night. Night.

The baggage carousels were still and silent, and in the half-light there stood security people with guns and military uniforms. The great windows of the building revealed nothing but blackened copies of the hall where they stood, with a huddle of thirteen in each one. They felt an inexplicable need to stay close, as if during the reconstitution of themselves around this new Situation a sort of kinship had emerged. They moved towards the chairs like atoms in a molecule, no closer but also no further away than their relationship dictated.

They sat. Wearied smiles were exchanged. An American woman spoke. I’m going to see what the little girls’ room has to offer. Another woman joined her. Everyone faced each other on rows of chairs, three sides of a square.–I was supposed to be on my way to Sydney by now. My brother’s wedding. Maybe I’ll still make it.–Everyone had a story.

(One man watched in fascination as, in the distance, an astounding, prehistoric kind of thing, a land mollusc, a half-evolved arthropod, all claws and wing cases, limped slowly from one side of the hall to the other. An insect, surely, but from here it looked the size of a rat. No one else seemed to notice.)

The two women returned with water bottles and packets of snack food. The guards got us these. It’s something, anyway. Toilets are OK if anyone was wondering.

You know this is the first night I have spent away from my wife in fifteen years of marriage. Can you imagine? (A Japanese man with his tie loosened.) Every night for fifteen years I have slept next to her. It feels strange to think of her lying alone on one side of the bed right now. Lop-sided. If she only knew I am spending the night with so many new friends–and so many pretty ladies!–boy what would she think! Oh-boy-oh-boy-oh-boy! The first night I ever spend away and here I am staying up through the whole night! This is wild.

I haven’t done this for years.

There was little to say, but an undeniable warmth. People passed round peanuts. A large middle-aged man with remarkable crevasses across his face accepted the last cigarette of the backpacker girl next to him and they smoked slowly, occasionally dropping ash into the empty Marlboro box she cupped in her hand. No one spoke. The guards dozed with rifles sticking up between their legs.

You know friends I don’t think we know each other well enough to sit in silence. Have to go through a lot before you can do that. But we shouldn’t ignore each other. Don’t you agree? Let me make a humble suggestion–maybe you don’t agree–but I was thinking just wondering to myself: Does anyone know any stories?

When I was a student we used to tell stories in the evenings. No money for anything else! I’d love to hear some stories again. It calms you down, you think of other worlds. And before long we’ll all be ready to check in for our flight. What do you say?

I don’t know any stories. I’m not very good at that kind of thing.

But everyone felt it was good there was talking.

Look sir you’re not going to tell me that! Everyone knows stories! I just told you I slept in the same bed as my wife every night for the last fifteen years in the same bedroom of the same flat in the same suburb of Tokyo–and look at all you different people! You just have to tell me how you travel to work every morning in the place where you live and for me it’s a fable! it’s a legend! Sorry I am tired and a little stressed and this is not how I usually talk but I think when you are together like this then stories are what is required.

Someone spoke: I have a story I can tell.

Simple, just like that.

NOT SO LONG ago, in one of those small, carefree lands that used to be so common but which now, alas, are hardly to be found, there was a prince whose name was Ibrahim.

One summer, the usual round of private parties and prostitutes became too tedious for Ibrahim and he decided to go on a voyage around the provinces of the kingdom, ‘to see how those villagers spend all their damned time’. So he packed clothes and American one-dollar bills (for letting fly from the windows of his jeep) and set off with his young courtier friends in a jostling pack of father-paid cars, whooping and racing.

Despite themselves, the young men fell silent when the ramshackle streets of the outskirts of the city finally gave way to open countryside. The smooth, proud highways built under the reign of Ibrahim’s grandfather began to loop up into the hills and, as the morning mists cleared, the city boys looked out on spectacular scenes of mountains and forests. For several hours they drove.

By early afternoon they had travelled a great distance without a single halt, and as they approached a small town Ibrahim pulled off the road and stopped. The scene was all polo shirts and designer jeans amid the slamming of car doors, the stretching of limbs, the pissing behind bushes–and the townsfolk quickly assembled to find out who these visitors were. ‘Certainly they are film stars come to make videos like on MTV,’ they said to each other as the band of young men strode onto the main square of the town, sun glaring from oversized belt buckles and Italian sunglasses. Goats and chickens whined and clucked their retreats, as if to clear the set.

On the minds of the young men was food; and very soon orders had been placed, chairs brought from front rooms and the local inn, and they were sitting sipping coconut juice in the shade of a wall. Around the square, the whole town stood and watched. Children stared, shop owners came out onto the streets to see what was going on–and a number of youths who were no younger or older than these visitors stood wondering who the heroes could be, and committing to memory every gesture, accoutrement, and comb-stroke.