The hangar at the Narita Airport freight zone was in a great frenzy when Jean-Christophe de G. and Marie pulled up in their limousine a few minutes later. Blue and white sirens spun in the night outside unit F, and dozens of firemen thronged the hangar’s entrance. Police officers in reflector vests had cordoned off the area with red glow-in-the-dark cones. Jean-Christophe de G. and Marie glimpsed an ambulance speeding off with the injured Japanese man. Marie was silent in the limousine, she was looking at Jean-Christophe de G. seated next to her in the dimness. She’d just seen a new side to his personality. She was struck by the way in which he’d taken charge of the situation, how he’d taken matters into his own hands and given orders to everyone, herself included, this had impressed her greatly (because no one gives orders to Marie — at best, they encourage her, at worst, offer a suggestion).
After getting out of the limousine they found no one to escort them, not a single member of the airport staff there to take them to their plane. The Lufthansa station manager had stayed with the horse and asked via his walkie-talkie for the travel stall to be sent to where they’d caught Zahir and to proceed with the boarding there. After a moment, an airport vehicle with all its lights off, resembling a sort of spectral shuttle, pulled up in front of the hangar to take them to the plane. They loaded the bags in the shuttle, transferring Marie’s suitcases from the trunk of the limousine to the black rubber floor of the minibus. They were moving back and forth between the vehicles in the rain, carrying bags and suitcases, which they piled haphazardly inside. The shuttle started on its way, and they stood still in the half-light amid the sprawling disorder of Marie’s bags piled on the floor. The rain poured outside, and the runways could be discerned in the night through the wet windows, some fading completely into the darkness, others strung with rows of blue and white lights spaced at regular intervals. They passed a small, dimly lit road and continued straight ahead in the night. The shuttle drove on a few more minutes in the dark and then came to a stop, the automatic doors opened violently onto the windy night, and they quickly unloaded their bags. No sooner had the last bag been placed on the ground than the driver, eyes raised in the rearview mirror, slammed the automatic doors of the minibus, and the shuttle left in the night, leaving them alone on the tarmac.
Rising before them, immense, swollen, and out of proportion, was the imposing mass of a Boeing 747 Lufthansa cargo plane. There was no way to board the plane, no steps or ladder, all the exits were closed, prohibited, the front left door as well as those of the baggage hold in back. Water streamed down the white lacquered body of the plane as the rain continued to pour. Intimidated by the formidable dimensions of the machine towering before them — almost thirty feet high with a wingspan of at least two hundred feet, its two vast wings casting black shadows under their imperial reach — they stood in awe on the tarmac. The steady hum of a set of air conditioners mixed with the deafening roar of an auxiliary engine running in the tail cone. The plane seemed ready to leave its parking area, the various attachments and rubber pipes serving to fuel the plane and load the freight had been removed, a few service vehicles remained on the tarmac around the plane, scissor lifts at rest, diesel generators, stair trucks, and tiny maintenance vehicles, the whole ensemble like a swarm of miniscule symbionts tending to an immobile giant. A dim light shone on the flight deck, behind the narrow convex windshield of the cockpit, a thin slit at the top of the plane’s nose. Perhaps the pilots were looking over the route and studying their maps, waiting for instructions from the control tower in the half-light of the cockpit. Marie took a step forward and began shouting and waving her arms in the night. She was at the foot of the plane and was waving her arms like a ramp agent directing the plane on the tarmac, a tiny figure making huge gestures in the rain, trying to get the pilots’ attention, gesturing with increasing enthusiasm, caught in the joy and pleasure of the moment, unperturbed by all the inconvenience, even feeling overwhelmingly happy to be there in the rain, stuck outside on the tarmac with all her bags, Marie’s twenty-three bags, her large pearl-gray valise, her small dove-colored wheeled suitcase from Muji, her raffia purse with zippers at both ends, a large duffle bag fastened with a string laced through a row of eyelets, a computer case, a vanity case, not to mention more recent purchases, elegant cream-colored bags of glazed paper soaking in the rain, and three huge travel bags ready to explode (none of which were closed properly, Marie never closed anything, clothes spilled out, small objects thrown in at the last minute spewed over the sides, a toilette case sat lopsided atop a pile of clothes, with the toilette case itself open, from which a blush brush escaped as well as an open toothpaste container), and, taken by whim, by a sense of lightness, of insouciance, of fancy, Marie began running around her bags on the tarmac, discovering a stunning likeness of form and a subtle coherence of color as she looked at the sprawling heap of her bags at her feet: a camaïeu of beige, ecru, and leather, with dove and sand-colored touches throughout (she’d find elegance in a shipwreck, Marie).
Jean-Christophe de G. had stepped away to make a call, he paced slowly in the rain in his elegant dark jacket, one hand in his pocket and the other holding his phone to his ear, glancing up at the flight deck to try to catch the crew’s attention, but in a less conspicuous way than Marie’s, he was trying to place himself clearly in their field of vision. His was no more successful than Marie’s and he returned to wait by her side. Lufthansa’s station manager arrived shortly thereafter, getting out of his car and rushing over to them in the rain in his big black slicker to offer his apologies, confused that no one was there to assist them with boarding, undoubtedly a communication problem with the crew. Many Japanese ramp agents in gray jumpsuits had emerged from various technical vehicles and were busying themselves around the airplane’s freight-loading zone. The horse’s travel stall had been placed on a scissor lift, and several technicians scrambled about in the rain around the metal caisson, working by light of flashlights and electric lanterns. Lufthansa’s station manager supervised this process as he talked to one of the Japanese men in a blazer who had joined him. Marie was observing the scene from a distance when, slowly, a door opened at the front of the plane. One of the pilots appeared above the abyss, his silhouette outlined in the doorframe. As soon as steps were placed below the door Jean-Christophe de G. and Marie began loading their bags onto the plane. They’d loaded their last bags and were heading up the stairs when, at their side, they saw the horse’s travel stall floating weightlessly in the air, with the living thoroughbred inside, slowly rising in the night up to the fuselage of the Boeing 747 cargo plane. Reaching the cargo hold, the lift, after a brutal jolt, shook the stall violently, was pushed horizontally into the dark opening of the hold, and then the stall disappeared into the bowels of the plane.