How to Travel Incognito

Travel reads are TRICKY.

Well, they're tricky to me.

I don't want to take anything too heavy, figuratively or literally, because I'm generally overwhelmed by flight numbers and liquids allowed in my carry on.  But I have this terrible self-consciousness about fellow travelers looking at my light read and writing me off as a bimbo bumpkin....isn't that awful?  I mean...who CARES, right?!  

Don't answer that.

For Bonaire, I chose Bemelmans. 

He's the author of the children's book(s) Madeleine. (Oh, my favorite! "In an old house in Paris that was covered in vines lived 12 little girls in two straight lines....")  What most people don't know, however, is that he wrote amazingly good travel and food books.  I would never have known this except that about 10 years ago, the Garfield County Library was doing a discard on books and my friend the librarian who knew of my French obsession set a Bemelmans book aside for me.  It was entitled Bemelmans: My Life in Art, and originally I simply looked through it, studying the funny line drawings that seemed to be done by a sophisticated 10 year old. Eventually, though, I couldn't help but read a page here or there....and then another....and then the dry wit and shrewd observations of human nature dragged me into his writing.  I was smitten with Bemelmans, beyond Madeleine; beyond Paris, for that matter! 

Knowing of the nine hour layover in Newark, I briefly considered hopping a train into New York City to visit Bemelmans Bar where this remarkable man illustrated the walls during a visit there. (Don't tell my mom.)

I didn't. 

No one would go with me and NYC alone seemed a little TOO adventurous in the middle of the night. 

Even when faced with nine hours of layover in Newark as the alternative.

So I searched Bemelmans titles.

How in the world could I resist How to Travel Incognito?!?

Brilliant!

And it truly was. 

As we were winging our way over South Dakota, Canada, and Lake Erie, I was reading about Monsieur Le Comte de St Cucuface who is a French aristocrat fallen on tough times post-WWII, making his way by shmoozing high class morons at parties, reselling cigarette cases, and playing the snooty game in which image is everything and can take the place of actual factual money.  Bemelmans encountered him on a train, later becoming an intrigued sidekick and acquiring the persona of Prince of Bavaria in the process.  

Somewhere over the Great Lakes, the story ventured into air travel with a Maharajah, a luckless stewardess, homicidal inflatable life raft, umbrella-with-a-hidden-knife, and eventual gain for Comte Cucuface.  I was laughing to myself, almost to tears, and HAD to share this excerpt. Perhaps it was extreme weariness, perhaps it was the somber quiet of the airplane cabin in which everyone but me was asleep, but it truly was one of the funniest things I'd read in a long time!  

Ivan had the misfortune of looking my way just then, and I said, "There's something I have to read out loud."

Eh....okay....the only escape was the lavatory and he didn't think quickly enough for that. 

And so it began:

"The plane left Paris on schedule and stopped for refueling in Ireland.

The stewardess was busy in her pantry dishing up curry upon plastic plates when the even rhythm of the motors suddenly changed.  A signal light flashed on, announcing: "No Smoking. Fasten Your Seatbelts!"

The stewardess left the pantry and went forward to the pilot's compartment. When she returned, her face was calm. With her reassuring air-hostess smile, she went from chair to chair and repeated that all would be all right, if the passengers would remain calm.  The plane had developed engine trouble, she explained.  The pilot was returning to Ireland and hoped to make it without mishap.  But there did exist the possiblity of an emergency landing at sea.  

A few minutes later there was another signal from the pilot and the hostess went forward again.  She returned with the co-pilot and very efficiently they took from a wall locker a deflated yellow raft, capable of supporting the passengers as well as the crew.  When unrolled in the aisle, the raft reached the length of the cabin.  It was the most modern, self-inflating type of raft obtainable. 

The stewardess, who had been recently transferred from an overland route to the transatlantic service, had not yet become familiar with the lifesaving apparatus and in her haste pulled the wrong cord, the on which caused the raft to inflate.  In less than a minute, this instrument of safety had become a menace.  At first it looked like a small yellow pig, then it was the size of a seal and a second later it grew into a whale. It bagan to move forward.  The pilot was pinned against the controls, the co-pilot and the stewardess were gently lifted and pressed against the ceiling.

Puffing and hissing, the raft continued to inflate. The monstrous bag moved slowly toward the tail of the plane, in relentless pursuit of the passengers who had fled from their seats.

The Maharajah and the Maharanee kissed their children, embraced each other and bowed to the members of their staff.  In the night mare of these last moments there seemed no longer anything to do but meet the end with dignity.  The bodies of the distinguished passengers were now being mauled and flattened, without the slightest regard for protocol; arms, legs and faces were pressed together like the truffles and meat in a pate maison."

TEARS of laughter, rolling down my face as I attempted to read this quietly aloud to poor entrapped Ivan (who must have felt a bit like one of the entrapped passengers in the story).  

You'll have to get a copy of Incognito to find out how it all works out, but let me just say that from that moment on, whenever the very calm air stewards and stewardesses were demonstrating the yellow inflatable life vests on subsequent flights, it was all I could do not to start snickering at the remembrance of this passage.  

Next trip you take, be it plane or train, bus or car, I enthusiastically recommend How to Travel Incognito by Ludwig Bemelmans. It's light, intelligent, and you'll sound very smart saying "LOOD-vig BEM-ell-MAHNS" when someone asks you who the author is.