NOWHERE-NOW HERE, HECTOR CASTELLS TRAVEL JOURNAL – CAPSULE XI

WOULD YOU GET INSIDE THE TRUNK, PLEASE?

Trunkonometry

I’m still here, perhaps not exactly willingly, but here nonetheless, locked in a tiny nowhere, the one place you would prefer not to find yourself in: someone else’s trunk.

Do you remember any movie scene where someone asks someone else to get inside the boot of a car? How many? Somehow, I can’t make it past Reservoir Dogs. It is a claustrophobic dead-end.

Despite the breath-taking circumstances, my perfect foetal position, the true caring of my driver, Mae, who has just spared me Angelina’s last bullet with a sudden and fatal sword blow, and the fact that I’m still unscathed after escaping a Tarantino-like killing-spree, makes me a very privileged locked-in-the-trunk- kind of person.

The Idiot

A few months before getting locked in this claustrophobic unit, I found someone interested in subletting my apartment during the three months I was planning to spend in Japan. It was a double imperial bedroom house with an extensive balcony overlooking the ocean, a big garden and an infinity pool: a-loner-must-paradise.

After a number of contestants, a man who looked in his late forties and claimed to be 27 years old became the sole candidate matching my time frame.

He said that his name was XS, which felt kind of cosy.

Then I saw his profile picture: an avatar replicating his chubby, bearded self. I remember wondering what kind of person would use an AI to portray them. It felt wrong, although not enough to beat my subletting desperation.

I just asked THE question:

I’m a businessman, a writer and a martial artist: Muay Thai is my life, he said solemnly, and then stroked his massive belly.

One Q NO I

It only takes a good question to spot a phony. But somehow, I couldn’t shut down my perverse curiosity. So I asked what was his favourite book.

The Alchemist, he said.

That was enough to stop me from asking the business question.

I didn’t want to worry about his next lie; I just needed him to pay 3 months in advance. He showed me a PDF of the transaction. It was legit.

I embraced wistful thinking instead of following my instinct. He was just a clueless young liar with a wrong profile photo: what could possibly go wrong? It was my best shot at fulfilling my Nippon dream. I was a fucking genius.

Dark Room

I can’t write this in hindsight yet, so while I’m still at it, I decide to focus on my breathing rather than bragging about my well being compared to the passengers of Tarantino’s trunks that I remember.

The key is to inhale deeply and exhale slowly, and even though the situation is hairier than Tolstoy’s beard, so far I’m defying the tiniest tenement standards of Japanese living with breath-taking success.

After a sequence of solid inhalations, a rush of movies floods up my memory: Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Death Proof and even Inglorious Bastards trunk scenes.

I’m lucky enough to be in a Tarantino’s free boot. The car belongs to a person I trust, even though we never spoke before. She is Mae, the Nippon Zen Master kendo Sensei, and my life saviour, who right now is speeding according to the situation.

Sportive Smokes

The day XS came to check my residence he said he loved it, and only asked two questions: How strong is the Internet connection? And: Can I have a cigarette?

He lit it swiftly, and kept talking about his love for Muay Thai, a narrative slightly overshadowed by the size of his waist and permanent cough.

57 makes Twelve

I explained that I had named the 57 plants living with me, and showed him the post-its I had stuck on their pots for him to identify each. He seemed ecstatic: Oh my God: can I borrow the idea?

He actually asked that particular question twice, the second time after I mentioned that I love talking to my plants and that I particularly enjoy playing music for them depending on my mood or the weather, which are usually the same thing: happy when it rains and fucking anguished over 30 degrees Celsius.

He seemed alternatively mesmerised and disgusted by my words. He knew nothing about cinema, people, lights, Japan, politics, nature or vegetables, but he was okay at pretending to be polite. And yes, I was desperate, but not enough to kill my darling plants.

Kill their Darlings

My love for them was alien to him, and yet, he pretended to agree: “Can I borrow the idea?” He asked again.

Never trust people who ask you to borrow anything unnecessary on the day you meet them —more than once is a massive red flag.

I was sentencing to death my 57 beloved plants for the sake of my Nippon dream. I had no choice. I spoke:

Actually, you know what? I’m going to leave the plants with my dear friend Nora.

I can’t conceal how a two-syllable word can crook the face of a man.

My face also crumbled.

NO-RA.

The effect of the word on both of us was literally electrifying: we knew we were failing to remember something we both had once known.

We were opposites and we were the same. I felt like vomiting.

FF/HH

Fast-forward two months and half an hour, and I fail to vomit the trunk when Mae starts talking:

We are clear. How do you feel?

I feel like I could inhale a cloud.

She immediately pulls in, gets out, and opens the boot: her face shines darkly against a stunning mountain range. We are in the ditch of a countryside road. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping and she quietly scans the horizon, bows in style, extends her wonderful and tough hand, helps me out and says: WE ARE SAFE.

The landscape could belong to Mars or the northern Hills of Mongolia, and I can’t help but imagine a future where she is forever saying “WE ARE SAFE,” until my obsessive re-enactment of everything shapes a rocky planet called INESCAPABLE SOLID LOVE.

She looks at me and knows.

Solidiquity

I know this face, believe me. I’m a professional. Don’t idealise what just happened. And remember: I didn’t save you: you did it yourself. I’m just the transporter.”

“I’m just the transporter.”

This is must be idealised love: Mae blooming in late October.

Stop smiling like an idiot: you are not free yet.

I smile. She smiles. We are Smile.

The landscape is beyond: I take the whole thing in, and inhale the cloud hanging at the edge of the celestial globe.

The wind is blowing her dark hair; a wild tuft gently strokes my left cheekbone. It feels like heaven and maternity; love and freedom. I get closer: she smells like green apples, her lips like strawberry dew.

I close my eyes.

HH

Open them, for Christ sake! It is the first time they have missed a target. You must be proud… And sure, consider yourself lucky to be alive: they are HH’s, so all the more rare, extraordinary.

HH’s?

We called them the Human Halves. They are replacing half of their human features with AI technology.

So Angelina, Lisbet, her mum and brother… You are saying that they were all HH’s?

It appears so.

And how did they find me?

The Idiot that took over your house gave us away. Did you not see it coming?

Hara-kiri

Fuck me. I knew something was off. I wanted to say another name, but somehow Nora’s came to mind —and the rest is the deafening silence of my shame.

I have just opened Pandora’s box again. The implant in my temple, the Interpol, Carl Murder, Alex, Khaled and all echoes of a recent past that I promised myself not to forget.

LOVE WIHTOUT LOVE

All fictions end up catching up with reality.

Mae lights up cigarette number two. She is staring at me. There might be no love in the air, but there is belonging and loyalty. All the virtues that I have just crushed.

I don’t know what to do except giving up my life.

I have failed you; I have put you all in danger by giving you away to the Idiot. I have no choice: it must be hara-kiri, right? That’s how you do it, isn’t it?

Mae smiles again. There’s enough truth in her eyes to light up the ocean depths and ignite its volcanoes and fishy paradoxes from below.

And yet she exhales and says:

Well, this is a junction of your own making, and it is a crucial one. Hara-kiri is out of the question. You were trying to do the right thing. And more importantly: you still can do it. So what do you want: revenge or travel writing?

I ask Mae to move quietly to the left. Then I see it: Mount Fuji floating behind us as Saturn encircled by a ring of snow.

I can deal with FUJI’s two syllables and your one, Mae…

What about NO-RA?

She is ruthless. I’m not ready to face that, I can figure a way around it though. And then I wish that Mae is feeling what I’m feeling. She doesn’t though.

“So you choose travel writing over finding the truth?”

“How do you know that there is no finding the truth in travel writing?”

It not only takes one question.