It looks like luck cannot be multiplied, only divided.
If I had to be at the airport before 5h30 PM, I imagined it would be good enough to leave home at 3h PM. Two hours to get there in the middle of the afternoon sounds good enough. It was not. Never have I seen more traffic going that way at such a time. Never, ever. When I saw the first sign saying "Airport" it was 4h40. And the sign said "10 Km".
That was one of the four signs I saw in a long time. So rare they were that I was led to make a wrong turn - and, the irony, as I travelled at the wrong road, I saw a sign about fifty meters ahead, on the right road, pointing to the airport. Why in the name of one hundred thousand gods was it not fifty meters before?
Signs became even rarer after that, as I crossed at high speed desperately hoping for a way back. I found one, about five kilometers ahead. Fortunately it led straight to the entrance I was looking for - perhaps if I had taken the right road I would have arrived at the wrong end of the airport. I doubt it, but I prefer to think so. And so furiously I was driving that I made it to the parking lot at 4h55.
It is a good thing our GRU is not as big as De Gaulle or that thing in Brussels that goes on for two miles - because, naturally, I went to the wrong of the two wings. I wonder if it is usual for people to be running around madly in airports, because no one seemed to pay much attention to me - or I was not paying much attention to them. All I wanted was a sign pointing me to the international check-in counters. Air France specifically. And so I found one, and so I ran even more madly. 5h05 it was when I saw the long line with luggage bearing the French company's logo. Hope! At last! And it was still time.
No, it was not. I looked and looked and looked again and again and again, but did not see the one I was looking for. The clerk explained to the elderly Europeans with too much money in their hands that, once the check-in was complete, they would go to the first gate on the right. "Thanks!", I said to the lady, who probably did not understand it at all. Two guards stood by that door. People carrying luggage would show them their tickets and be allowed inside.
I remembered "Love Actually" at that moment, and a few other movies. "Make a run for it?", I thought. No use, the door was too small, and I was not sure where I had to go, they would catch me and drag me out and into some questioning room before I could regret it. Ah, the cell phone! It might be on, aye. I tried. Once, twice, seven times. Nothing.
"I can't enter if I'm not going to travel? Not even not carrying any luggage and no passport and no nothing? Isn't it obvious that, if I do somehow board that plane, they will send me back the moment I touch European ground? I just want to say goodbye!"
So close. So terribly close. So infinitesimally close! But, apparently, a few minutes too late.
That was unfair. I did not deserve that. We did not. I tried my best, I did all I could, I ran like never before both on the road and in the airport. In vain. No fair, no fair at all.
Now I write this, in the second greatest sadness I can remember facing, while a big Air France plane begins to cross the Atlantic, filled with elderly Europeans who receive in euros and were spending in reals while on their vacations here - and among them someone holding Saramago's Cave, probably worried about switching planes, and thrilled about the four weeks ahead.
I just wanted to say goodbye...
Posted by Etienne at December 12, 2003 09:18 PM