Tomas (15 page)

The Alien looks forward to some serious conversation. Perhaps he can interest everyone in the Emperor's discourse on greatness and failure. How often do people have a first-hand account of the words of France's favourite son? But he's disappointed: the only subjects of conversation are property prices and sex. As the evening goes on, and more bottles are opened, sex is discussed with ever greater urgency and animation. Perhaps his eyes are having difficulty adjusting to the earth's atmosphere – the Alien is convinced that he is seeing glimpses of swinging things and long-legged birds in the persons of his fellow diners.

Halfway through the evening, the host's children come
to say goodnight. The Alien is shocked. Humans, he's noted with pleasure, have round heads. Theirs are square, like a computer screen.

On his planet, children always eat dinner with their parents. ‘We've been talking,' the children say and the Alien understands that on earth custom requires children to converse separately.

‘Henry found a yellow pencil in the street today,' the girl says, ‘he put it on his page and he's had hours of chat. Where did it come from? Who does it belong to? Why is it yellow?'

The Alien's confused.

‘But that's not as good as Samantha,' Henry says, convulsing with laughter.

‘No, Henry,' his sister interjects.

‘She posted a picture of half a breast. You should see the traffic. A thousand hits.'

Their parents beam with pride and the Alien's confusion turns to bewilderment. Why do children prefer banalities to their parents' company? And why do adults allow it? Perhaps they're distracted by their new kitchen. As the evening wears on, the hostess detaches from the party to run her hand over the stainless steel hob and gaze lovingly at a pressure cooker.

‘So tell me,' says Tomas when the Alien returns to the hotel, ‘what discoveries did you make?'

‘Children interested in nonsense, they'll grow up,' the Alien says, ‘but adults and kitchens?'

‘Ah yes,' replies Tomas, ‘kitchen etiquette.' He pauses. ‘That gives me an idea.'

The Sermon on the Tower
…

The earthworks are monumental, the site like that of the pyramids built two thousand years ago by slaves under the lash. Here the builders are volunteers, directed by Tomas's battalion with loud hailers. They're not building a triangle up, but digging one down.

The pit being dug at the north-east corner of the Eiffel Tower is square at its rim, but the edges taper down to the base. Half a mile wide and one hundred metres deep, the pit's slanting edges are reinforced with steel girders.

While some go down, others go up. A giant crane, the size of the tower itself, has been erected on its south-east side. The head of the crane faces the top of the tower; its steel core is as strong and thick as its neighbour's. Two arms protrude halfway up, rooting it to the ground. Thus supported, it can lift a mountain.

In between, there is an army of steel cutters. Paris reverberates to the din of electric saws slicing through the base of the Eiffel Tower, which is surprisingly light. This will make the task easier.

The River Seine runs along the north-west face of the tower. An armada of tugs is assembled there to float with the river's current. These support a huge chain, the inspiration for which came from Tomas's soup dream. The chain stretches from the tugs across the Pont d'Iéna and up the tower's north-west side. The crane holds the chain as it is lassoed to the top of the tower.

The crane detaches the lasso and hoists another teflon
chain off the ground. This is attached halfway up the tower, pulled tight like a corset. After numerous technical calculations and metallurgical tests everything is ready.

Millions of people gather behind the safety barriers to watch the commander give the order. The crane deploys, the chain becomes taut. The crowds strain to catch a glimpse of the moment of lift off. But they are disappointed. This is an inch-by-inch process and they only see the tower airborne when it is already some way off the ground, rising into the air like a giant bird from Jurassic times.

When it is fifty metres off the ground, the commander signals to the captain of the armada. A hundred engines roar as the tugs move down the river to take up the slack on the lasso. Their normal fare is battleships and ocean liners: a steel tower is no problem.

The effect of the pull down the river is as the engineers calculated. The head of the tower tilts lower as its body is raised up. A few hours later the edifice is horizontal, the top positioned over the trianglular pit. The machines are turned off and a thousand ropes manoeuvre the tower to its final resting place. It is lowered into the pit upside down, concrete pours down a chute as wide as a motorway, and soon its top is entombed in a concrete sack.

Engineers and artisans scale the sides of the inverted tower, which is two thirds of its previous height. A platform is constructed across the upturned feet. On this is laid a lawn, bisected by two pathways that form a cross. A raised podium is built at the fulcrum.

Tomas stands on it with a microphone. Giant screens
attached to the sides of the inverted tower relay his image to the millions who have flocked to bear witness. From the Trocadero on the far side of the river to the Ecole Militaire in the south, even an ant would be unable to move. Moses on his mount, Tomas on his tower.

Banks of photographers stretch on endlessly. Reporters, beamed to their home audiences by satellite, speculate in a hundred languages as to what the first prophetic utterance of the new Messiah will be. A new set of commandments updated for modern times? Or, as the tower's inversion suggests, something more radical: a cataclysmic prophecy? Maybe he will just offer a universal message of love?

Tomas raises the microphone to his lips. Just for the hell of it, he's dressed in the flowing white robes of a priest from ancient times and is wielding Tereza's pig-beating staff for the occasion. He also sports a wispy moustache and small goatee beard, to complete the look. As he prepares to speak, his robes and hair billow in the breeze.

Two billion eyes watch Tomas calmly surveying the scene around him. He's in no hurry to begin. Only when he commands the total silence and attention of the world does he raises the microphone to his lips.

‘You know a lot, I bet, about kitchen etiquette,' Tomas says.

A hundred translators whir into action; a thousand commentaries begin.

‘Kitchens, like hospitals, are essential. The colours, the tiling, the trusty cooker, the fridge – maybe with an automatic ice dispenser. Then there are the accoutrements. Oh, the accoutrements! Pots and pans, ceramic mugs, giant salad bowls, the coffee machine, electric things. Tableware all matching, reassuringly expensive when bought. All symbols of your success.

‘You're secure with your giant white plates, on which you serve pasta at hastily arranged dinner parties. Just sprinkle some parmesan roughly on top – that's it, that's the way. Pass the giant salad bowl; pour the red wine into the large glasses. If you lived in a voiceless world, all you'd hear would be the clink of glasses. And the tink, tink, tink of cutlery on plates at the dinner-party ballet. Clink, clink, tink, clink. Clink, clink, tink, clink, clink all evening long.

‘Kitchens, you deserve your own ballet. The curtain opens on a stage of twenty kitchens, multicoloured, of differing design, the prima-donna kitchen all in white. A waltz begins. Swirl about; dance, beautiful kitchens, dance! Form a line, dance in rhythm, pass the prima-donna kitchen down the line. Now jump, dancing kitchens, leap – go on, leap! You're beautiful. Kick back your imaginary legs, unfurl your imaginary arms like flying swans who are to die in the final tragic scene.

‘How tragic it would be if you came home to find that shockingly, inexplicably, a vicious sledgehammer had done its work on your kitchen. Imagine your kitchen now. The fridge stoved in with a mighty gash, the cooker irretrievably disfigured, the comfortable table splintered and everything smashed. A thousand pieces of glass and crockery, the salad bowl giant no longer. Pots and pans twisted like deformed limbs. Most horrifying of all is the shit of your assailant amid the rubbish and the rubble. And nothing else in the house disturbed, just your kitchen mangled.'

The shining city in the sun
…

Tomasmania sweeps the world. Sweatshops turn into ovens, all producing Tomas T-shirts. Any hotel room within a hundred miles of Paris costs a week's wages. Campsites mushroom around the city. A craze for all things French ignites. In Beijing, people bicycle home with baguettes in their baskets. Snails become as expensive as caviar. Everywhere, men take mistresses. Buildings worldwide are inverted in tribute. The Sydney Opera House looks much the same upside down, as does the Bird's Nest Stadium. In London the Eye is ingeniously inverted in one rotation.

What of the sociological reaction? Anthropologists everywhere await the start of the season with measuring tapes and binoculars. Sure enough, collars have reduced in size; breasts are no longer trolleyed but carried neatly in baskets. Hiding in a bush, a researcher hears a waiter offering to bring fresh butter. ‘Please don't worry about that,' comes the reply. Hallelujah! ‘Producers' struggle to practise their magic art, for street corners everywhere are now covered with warnings: ‘A producer only wants one thing'; ‘Come on girls, don't believe it'; and the particularly successful ‘Men lie.' In a club, Tomas notices a man turning red, biting his knuckles in his efforts not to talk about money. He overhears another cancel a giant champagne bottle.

Tomas and Tereza have one of those magical nights: they drink just enough, dance for hours, make love and go to bed hungry and tired as dawn is breaking.

The second Messiah now needs somewhere to live, a calm, happy place whence he can propagate his message. Paris is gridlocked with followers and too grey. He wants the sun. Tomas decides to look south.

Just as the master jeweller creates the perfect mount for his stone, God created the perfect setting for Cannes. Of all the coastal resorts, Cannes is the finest. St Tropez to the west, the epicentre of trolleys and sun loungers, has its attractions, but like the rap singer's ring, it's too much. Monte Carlo to the east, home to eternal treasure keepers, is quaint but old-fashioned and as over-elaborate as a Victorian brooch. Nice in the middle has a fine historic centre but its long coastline is too much like the Queen's crown: beautiful to behold – but would you want to wear it?

Cannes is the perfect size and shape, nestling at the foot of some hills in the arc of a bay. Facing south, the seaview is framed by small mountains on the far side of the shore that snakes around the coast. Sunsets are spectacular. The seafront is less than a mile long: a dozen restaurants compete for custom and in rudeness along the beach. Behind this is the famous Croisette, a promenade lined with palm trees along which Cannois and visitors perambulate eternally.

Overlooking the Croisette are Cannes's fabulous turn-of-the-century hotels, seaside monsters like the one levitated by Tomas, all with ornate facades, balconies you can stand
on and watering holes where the animals gather at six. Between them, small side streets filled with purveyors of lingerie and bikinis lead back to Cannes's main shopping street, the Rue d'Antibes, a retail paradise for every taste and budget. At the western end is the Fountainville open-air market, the best in the south, where you can eat like a king for ten euros.

With such a cornucopia of wonders, not to mention the wonderful climate, it's no surprise that Cannes is Europe's most popular festival destination. From advertising to yachts, music to mobile phones, the city is continually being flooded with festival goers plying their trade. The most famous event is, of course, the annual gathering of beautiful people for the film festival. During this period of starlets and socialites, the city morphs into a single entity, as breasts, sun loungers, champagne bottles and oversized collars blend together to create a very particular soup.

The only disappointing aspect of the city is the Palais de Festival itself. This ugly concrete structure, host to one event after another, juts out into the bay at the western end of the city. While it is functional, it appears a sorry afterthought, given the magnificence of its surroundings. It's as if the burghers of the city had sat down one day and said, ‘We've got a great place here, let's turn it into a festival paradise. No need to bother with the convention hall. People will come anyway.' While Tomas understands the pragmatism of French municipal politics, the Palais de Festival is not acceptable for the second Messiah's court. He decides he needs something new.

In designing this, Tomas has an unfair advantage.
He has seen the future, and it's croissant-, beret- and garlic-shaped. The Freudian lobby argues for a baguette, another symbol of France, rampant. But in the end common sense and good taste prevail and the corporation of Cannes acquires another asset, a fabulous floating Onion.