Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Michel Houellebecq
Title Page
Epigraph
Part One: Thai Tropic
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Part Two: Competitive Advantage
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Part Three: Pattaya Beach
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Copyright
Poet and novelist Michel Houellebecq is the author of two previous novels, Whatever (Extension du domaine de la lutte) and the international bestseller Atomised (Les Particules élémentaires), winner of the Prix Novembre and the 2002 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. He lives in Ireland.
Michel is a civil-servant at the Ministry of Culture. When his father is murdered, Michel takes a leave of absence to go on a package tour to Thailand. Infuriated by the shallow hypocrisy and mediocrity of his fellow travellers, only the awkward Valerie attracts his attention. Too bashful to pursue her, Michel prefers the uncomplicated pleasures of Thai massage parlours and sex with local women.
Back in Paris, he calls Valerie and they plunge into a passionate affair, which strays into S&M, partner-swapping and sex in public. Michel quits his job, and tries to help Valerie and her boss, Jean-Yves, in their ailing travel business, by offering travel packages based on sex tourism in the third world. When their project comes to fruition and the three return to Thailand, Michel discovers that sex is neither the most consuming nor the most dangerous of human passions…
Whatever
Atomised
Plus sa vie est infâme, plus l’homme y tient; elle est alors une protestation, une vengeance de tous les instants.
(The more contemptible his life, the more a man clings to it; it thus becomes a protest, a retribution for every moment.)
FATHER DIED LAST year. I don’t subscribe to the theory by which we only become truly adult when our parents die; we never become truly adult.
As I stood before the old man’s coffin, unpleasant thoughts came to me. He had made the most of life, the old bastard; he was a clever cunt. ‘You had kids, you fucker …’ I said spiritedly, ‘you shoved your fat cock in my mother’s cunt.’ Well, I was a bit tense, I have to admit; it’s not every day you have a death in the family. I’d refused to see the corpse. I’m forty, I’ve already had plenty of opportunity to see corpses; nowadays, I prefer to avoid them. It was this that had always dissuaded me from getting a pet.
I’m not married, either. I’ve had the opportunity several times, but I never took it. That said, I really love women. It’s always been a bit of a regret, for me, being single. It’s particularly awkward on holiday. People are suspicious of single men on holiday, after they get to a certain age: they assume that they’re selfish, and probably a bit pervy; I can’t say they’re wrong.
After the funeral, I went back to the house where my father lived out his last years. The body had been discovered a week earlier. A little dust had already settled around the furniture and in the corners of the rooms; I noticed a cobweb on the window frame. So time, entropy, all that stuff, was slowly taking the place over. The freezer was empty. The kitchen cupboards mostly contained single-serving Weight Watchers meals-in-a-bag, tins of flavoured protein and energy bars. I wandered through the rooms nibbling a magnesium-enriched biscuit. In the boiler room, I rode the exercise bike for a while. My father was over seventy and in much better physical shape than I was. He did an hour of rigorous exercise every day, lengths of the pool twice a week. At weekends, he played tennis and went cycling with people his age; I’d met some of them at the funeral. ‘He coached the lot of us! …’ a gynaecologist exclaimed. ‘He was ten years older than us, and on a two kilometre hill, he’d be a whole minute ahead.’ Father, father, I said to myself, how great was your vanity! To the left of my field of vision I could make out a weightlifting bench, barbells. I quickly visualised a moron in shorts – his face wrinkled, but otherwise very like mine – building up his pectorals with hopeless vigour. Father, I said to myself, Father, you have built your house upon sand. I was still pedalling but I was starting to feel breathless, my thighs ached a little, though I was only on level one. Thinking back to the ceremony, I was aware that I had made an excellent general impression. I’m always clean-shaven, my shoulders are narrow and when I developed a bald spot at about the age of thirty, I decided to cut my hair very short. I usually wear a grey suit and sober ties, and I don’t look particularly cheerful. With my short hair, my lightweight glasses and my sullen expression, my head bowed a little to listen to a Christian funeral-hymn medley, I felt perfectly at ease with the situation – much more at ease than I would have done at a wedding, for example. Funerals, clearly, were my thing. I stopped pedalling, coughed gently. Night was falling quickly over the surrounding meadows. Near the concrete structure which housed the boiler, you could make out a brownish stain which had been poorly cleaned. It was there that my father had been discovered, his skull shattered, wearing shorts and an ‘I love New York’ sweatshirt. He had been dead for three days, according to the coroner. There was the possibility, very remote, that what happened was an accident, he could have slipped in a puddle of oil or something. That said, the floor of the room was completely dry; and the skull had been broken in several places, some of the brain had even spilled on to the floor; in all probability, what we were dealing with was murder. Captain Chaumont of the Cherbourg police was supposed to come over to see me that evening.
Back in the living room, I turned on the television, a 32-inch Sony widescreen with surround sound and an integrated DVD player. There was an episode of Xena: Warrior Princess on TF1, one of my favourite series: two very muscular women wearing metallic bras and miniskirts made of animal hide were challenging each other with their sabres. ‘Your reign has gone on too long, Tagrathâ!’ cried the brunette, ‘I am Xena, warrior of the Western Plains!’ There was a knock at the door; I turned the sound down.
Outside, it was dark. The wind gently shook the branches dripping with rain. A girl of about twenty-five, she looked north-African, was standing in the doorway. ‘I’m Aïcha,’ she said, ‘I cleaned for Monsieur Renault twice a week. I’ve just come to get my things.’
‘Well …’ I said, ‘… well.’ I made a vague gesture, something intended to be welcoming. She came in, glanced quickly at the television screen: the two warriors were now wrestling right next to a volcano; I suppose the spectacle had its stimulating side, for certain lesbians. ‘I don’t want to disturb you,’ said Aïcha, ‘I’ll only be five minutes.’
‘You’re not disturbing me,’ I said, ‘in fact, nothing disturbs me.’ She nodded her head as though she understood, her eyes lingered on my face; she was probably gauging my physical resemblance to my father, possibly inferring a degree of moral resemblance. After studying me for a few moments, she turned and climbed the stairs that lead to the bedrooms. ‘Take your time,’ I said, my voice barely audible. ‘Take all the time you need …’ She didn’t answer, didn’t pause in her ascent; she had probably not even heard me. I sat down on the sofa again, exhausted by the confrontation. I should have offered to take her coat; that’s what you usually do, offer to take someone’s coat. I realised that the room was terribly cold – a damp, penetrating cold, the cold of a cellar. I didn’t know how to light the boiler, I had no wish to try, now my father was dead. I had intended to leave straight away. I turned over to FR3 just in time to catch the last part of Questions pour un champion. At the moment when Nadège from Val-Fourré told Julien Lepers that she was going to risk her title for the third time, Aïcha appeared on the stairs, a small travel bag on her shoulder. I turned off the television and walked quickly towards her. ‘I’ve always admired Julien Lepers.’ I told her, ‘Even if he doesn’t know the actual town or village the contestant is from, he always manages to say something about the département or the region; he always knows a bit about the climate and the local beauty spots. Above all, he understands life: the contestants are human beings to him, he understands their problems and their joys. Nothing of what constitutes human reality for the contestants is entirely strange or intimidating to him. Whoever the contestant is, he manages to get them to talk about their work, their family, their hobbies – everything, in fact, that in their eyes goes to make up a life. The contestants are often members of a brass band or a choral society, they’re involved in organising the local fête, or they devote themselves to some charitable cause. Their children are often there in the studio. You generally get the impression from the programme that these people are happy, and you feel better, happier yourself. Don’t you think?’
She looked at me unsmilingly; her hair in a chignon, she wore little makeup, her clothes were pretty drab – a serious girl. She hesitated for a moment before saying in a low voice which was a little hoarse with shyness: ‘I was very fond of your father.’ I couldn’t think of anything to say; it struck me as bizarre, but just about possible. The old man must have had stories to tell: he’d travelled in Colombia, Kenya or I don’t know where; he’d had the opportunity to watch rhinoceros through binoculars. Every time we met, he limited himself to making ironic comments about the fact that I was a civil servant, about the job security that went with it. ‘Got yourself a cushy little number, there …’ he would say, making no attempt to hide his scorn; families are always a bit difficult. ‘I’m studying nursing,’ Aïcha went on, ‘but since I stopped living with my parents I have to work as a cleaner.’ I racked my brains to think of an appropriate response: should I enquire as to how expensive rents were in Cherbourg? I finally opted for a ‘I see …’, into which I tried to introduce a certain worldly wisdom. This seemed to satisfy her and she walked to the door. I pressed my face to the glass to watch her Volkswagen Polo do a U-turn in the muddy track. FR3 was showing some rustic made-for-TV movie set in the nineteenth century, starring Tchéky Karyo as a farm labourer. Between piano lessons, the daughter of the landowner – he was played by Jean-Pierre Marielle – accorded the handsome peasant certain liberties. Their clinches took place in a stable; I dozed off just as Tchéky Karyo was energetically ripping off her organza knickers. The last thing I remember was a close-up of a small group of pigs.
I was woken by pain and by the cold; I had probably fallen asleep in an awkward position, my cervical vertebrae felt paralysed. I was coughing heavily as I stood up, my breath filling the glacial air of the room with vapour. Bizarrely, the television was showing Très Pêche, a fishing programme on TF1; I had obviously woken up, or at least reached a sufficient level of consciousness to work the remote control; I had no memory of doing so. Tonight’s programme was devoted to silurids – huge fish with no scales which had become more common in French rivers as a result of global warming; they were particularly fond of the areas around nuclear power plants. The report was intended to shed light on the truth behind a number of myths: it was true that adult silurids could grow to as much as three or four metres; in the Drôme, specimens larger than five metres had been reported; there was nothing particularly improbable about this. However there was no question of the animals ever behaving carnivorously, or attacking bathers. The public suspicion of silurids seemed, to some extent, to have rubbed off on the men who fished for them; the small group of silurid anglers was not well liked by the larger family of anglers. They felt they suffered as a result and wanted to take advantage of this programme to improve their negative image. It was true they could hardly suggest gastronomy as their motive: the flesh of the silurid was completely inedible. But it was an excellent catch, intelligent and at the same time requiring sportsmanship; it was not unlike pike fishing, and deserved a wider following. I paced around the room a little, unable to get warm; I couldn’t bear the idea of sleeping in my father’s bed. In the end I went upstairs and brought down pillows and blankets, settled myself as best I could on the sofa. I switched off just after the credits of ‘The Silurid Demystified’. The night was opaque, the silence also.
ALL THINGS COME to an end, including the night. I was dragged from my saurian lethargy by the clear, resonant voice of Captain Chaumont. He apologised, he hadn’t had time to come by the previous evening. I offered him coffee. While the water was boiling, he set up his laptop on the kitchen table and hooked up a printer. This way he could have me re-read and sign my statement before he left; I made a murmur of approval. The police force was so completely snowed under with administrative work that it did not have enough time to dedicate to its real task: investigation. That at least was what I had concluded from various television documentaries. He agreed, warmly this time. This interview was getting off to a good start, in an atmosphere of mutual trust. ‘Windows’ started up with a cheerful little sound.
The death of my father occurred in the evening or the night of November 14th. I was working that day; I was working on the 15th, too. Obviously, I could have taken my car and killed my father, having driven there and back overnight. What was I doing on the evening or the night of November 14th? Nothing, as far as I knew, nothing significant. At least, I had no memory of anything, though it was less than a week before. I had neither a regular sexual partner nor any real close friends: in which case, how can you be expected to remember? The days go by, and that’s it. I gave Chaumont an apologetic look; I would have liked to help him out, or at least point him in the right direction. ‘I’ll have a look in my diary …’ I said. I wasn’t expecting anything of this; but curiously, there was a mobile number written in the space for the 14th beneath a name – ‘Coralie’. Who was Coralie? The diary was completely useless.
‘My brain is a mess …’ I said with a disappointed smile. ‘But, I don’t know, maybe I was at a private view.’
‘A private view?’ He waited patiently, his fingers hovering some inches above the keyboard.
‘Yes, I work for the Ministry of Culture. I plan the financing for exhibitions, or sometimes shows.’
‘Shows?’
‘Shows … contemporary dance …’ I felt completely desperate, overcome with shame.
‘Generally speaking, then, you work on cultural events?’
‘Yes, that’s it … You could put it like that.’ He looked at me with a compassion tinged with seriousness. He had an awareness of the existence of a cultural sector, a vague but definite awareness. He must have had to meet people from all walks of life in his profession; no area of society could be completely alien to him. Police work is a human science.
The rest of the interview proceeded more or less normally; I had watched a few made-for-TV movies, so I was prepared for this kind of conversation. Did I know any enemies my father might have? No, but no friends either, to be honest. In any case, my father wasn’t important enough to have enemies. Who stood to gain by his death? Well, me. When did I last visit him? August, probably. There’s never much to do in the office in August, and my colleagues have to go on holiday because they have children. I stay in Paris, I play solitaire on the computer and around the 15th I take a long weekend off; that was the extent of my visits to my father. On that subject, did I have a good relationship with my father? Yes and no. Mostly no, but I came to see him once or twice a year; that in itself wasn’t too bad.
He nodded. I could feel my statement was coming to an end; I would have liked to say more. I felt overcome by a feeling of irrational, abnormal pity for Chaumont. He was already loading paper into his printer. ‘My father was very sporty!’ I said brusquely. He looked up at me enquiringly. ‘I don’t know …’ I said, spreading my hands in despair, ‘I just wanted to say that he was very athletic.’ He shrugged disappointedly and pressed ‘Print’.
After I’d signed my statement, I walked Captain Chaumont to the door. I was aware that I had been a disappointing witness, I told him. ‘All witnesses are disappointing …’ he said. I considered this aphorism for a while. Before us stretched the endless monotony of the fields. Chaumont climbed into his Peugeot 305; he would keep me informed of any developments in the investigation. In the public sector, the death of a parent or grandparent entitles one to three days’ leave. As a result, I could very easily have taken my time going home, bought some local camembert; but I immediately took the motorway for Paris.
I spent the last day of my compassionate leave in various travel agencies. I liked holiday brochures, their abstraction, their way of condensing the places of the world into a limited sequence of possible pleasures and fares; I was particularly fond of the star-ratings system, which indicated the intensity of the pleasure one was entitled to hope for. I wasn’t happy, but I valued happiness and continued to aspire to it. According to the Marshall model, the buyer is a rational individual seeking to maximise his satisfaction while taking price into consideration; Veblen’s model, on the other hand, analyses the effect of peer pressure on the buying process (depending on whether the buyer wishes to be identified with a defined group or to set himself apart from it). Copeland demonstrates that the buying process varies, depending on the category of product/service (impulse purchase, considered purchase, specialised purchase); but the Baudrillard and Becker model posits that a purchase necessarily implies a series of signals. Overall, I felt myself closer to the Marshall model.
Back at the office I told Marie-Jeanne that I needed a holiday. Marie-Jeanne is my colleague; together we work on exhibition proposals, together we work for the benefit of the contemporary arts. She is a woman of thirty-five, with lank blond hair, her eyes are a very light blue; I know nothing about her personal life. Within the office hierarchy, she has a position slightly senior to mine; but this is something which she ignores – she likes to emphasise teamwork within the office. Every time we receive a visit from a really important person – a delegate from the Department of Plastic Arts or someone from the Ministry – she insists on this notion of teamwork. ‘And this is the most important man in the office! …’ she exclaims, walking into my office; ‘He’s the one who juggles the figures and the financial statements … I would be completely lost without him.’ And then she laughs; the important visitors laugh in turn, or at least smile good-naturedly. I smile too, insofar as I can. I try to imagine myself as a juggler; but in reality it’s quite enough to master simple arithmetic. Although strictly speaking Marie-Jeanne does nothing, her work is, in fact, the most complicated job: she has to keep abreast of movements, networks, trends; having assumed a level of cultural responsibility, she constantly runs the risk of being thought reactionary, even obscurantist; it is an accusation from which she must defend herself and the institution. She is also in regular contact with artists, gallery owners and the editors of obscure reviews, obscure, at least, to me; these telephone calls keep her happy, because her passion for contemporary art is real. As far as I’m concerned, I’m not actively hostile to it: I am not an advocate of craft, nor of a return to figurative painting; I maintain the disinterested attitude appropriate to an accounts manager. Questions of aesthetics and politics are not my thing; it’s not up to me to invent or adopt new attitudes, new affinities with the world – I gave up all that at the same time I developed a stoop and my face started to tend towards melancholy. I’ve attended many exhibitions, private views, many performances that remain unforgettable. My conclusion, henceforth, is that art cannot change lives. At least not mine.
I had informed Marie-Jeanne of my bereavement; she greeted me sympathetically, she even put her hand on my shoulder. My request to take some time off seemed completely natural to her. ‘You need to take stock, Michel,’ she reckoned, ‘you need to turn inward.’ I tried to visualise the movement she was suggesting and I concluded that she was probably right. ‘Cécilia will put the provisional budget to bed,’ she went on; ‘I’ll talk to her about it.’ What precisely was she alluding to, and who was this Cécilia? Glancing around me, I noticed the design for a poster and I remembered. Cécilia was a fat, redhead who was always gorging herself on Cadburys and who’d been in the department for two months: a temp, work experience maybe, someone pretty insignificant at any rate. And it was true that before my father’s death I had been working on a provisional budget for the exhibition, ‘Hands Up, You Rascals!’, due to open in Bourg-la-Reine in January. It consisted of photographs of police brutality taken with a telephoto lens in Yvelines; but we weren’t talking documentary here, more a process of the theatricalisation of space, full of nods to various cop shows featuring the Los Angeles Police Department. The artist had favoured a ‘fun’ approach rather than the social critique you’d expect. An interesting project, all in all, not too expensive nor too complicated; even a moron like Cécilia was capable of finalising the provisional budget.
Usually, when I left the office, I’d take in a peepshow. It set me back fifty francs, maybe seventy if I was slow to ejaculate. Watching pussy in motion cleared my head. The contradictory trends of contemporary video art, balancing the conservation of national heritage with support for living creativity … all of that quickly evaporated before the facile magic of a moving pussy. I gently emptied my testicles. At the same moment, Cécilia was stuffing herself with chocolate cake in a pâtisserie near the Ministry; our motives were much the same.
Very occasionally, I would take a private room at five hundred francs; that was if my dick wasn’t feeling too good, when it seemed to me to resemble a useless, demanding little appendage that smelled like cheese. Then I needed a girl to take it in her hands, to go into raptures, however faked, over its vigour, the richness of its semen. Be that as it may, I was always home before seven-thirty. I’d start with Questions pour un champion which I had set my video to record; then I would continue with the national news. The mad cow disease crisis was of little interest to me, mostly I survived on Mousline instant mash with cheese. Then the evening would continue. I wasn’t unhappy, I had 128 channels. At about two in the morning, I’d finish with Turkish musicals.
A number of days went by like this, relatively peacefully, before I received another phone call from Chaumont. Things had progressed significantly, they had found the alleged killer; actually, it was more than a allegation, for in fact the man had confessed. They were going to stage a re-enactment in a couple of days. Did I want to be present? Oh yes, I said, yes.
Marie-Jeanne congratulated me on this courageous decision. She talked about the grieving process, the mysteries of the father-son relationship. She used socially acceptable terms from a limited catalogue, what was more important, even surprising, was that I realized that she was fond of me, and it felt good. Women really do have a handle on affection, I thought as I boarded the Cherbourg train; even at work, they have a tendancy to establish emotional ties, finding it difficult to orient themselves, let alone thrive, in a universe completely stripped of such emotional ties, they find it difficult to thrive in such an atmosphere. This was a weakness of theirs, as the ‘psychology’ column of Marie-Claire continually reminded them: it would be better if they could clearly separate the professional from the emotional, but they simply could not do it, and the ‘true stories’ column of Marie-Claire confirmed with equal regularity. Somewhere near Rouen, I reviewed the essential facts of the case. Chaumont’s breakthrough was the discovery that Aïcha had been having ‘intimate relations’ with my father. How often, and how intimate? He didn’t know, and it had no significance to his continuing inquiry. One of Aïcha’s brothers had quickly confessed that he had come ‘to demand an explanation’ of the old man, things had got out of hand, and he had left him for dead on the concrete floor of the boiler room.
In principle, the re-enactment was to be presided over by the examining magistrate, a brusque, austere little man, dressed in flannel trousers and a dark polo-neck, his face permanently clenched in a rictus of irritation; but Chaumont quickly established himself as the real master of ceremonies. Briskly and cheerfully he greeted the participants, gave each a little word of welcome, and led them to their places: he seemed remarkably happy. This was his first murder case and he’d solved it in less than a week; in this whole banal, sordid story, he was the only true hero. Clearly overcome, a black band covering her face, Aïcha sat on a chair trying to look small. She barely looked up when I arrived, pointedly looking away from where her brother was standing. Her brother, flanked by two policemen, stared at the floor with an obstinate air. He looked just like a common little thug; I didn’t feel the slightest sympathy for him. Looking up, his eyes met mine; no doubt he knew who I was, He knew my role, he had undoubtedly been told: according to his brutal view of the world, I had a right to vengeance, I deserved an accounting for the blood of my father. Aware of the rapport establishing itself between us, I stared at him, not turning away; I allowed hatred to overwhelm me slowly, my breathing became easier, it was a powerful, pleasurable sensation. If I had had a gun, I would have shot him without a second thought. Killing that little shit not only seemed to me a morally neutral act, but something positive, beneficial. A policeman made some marks on the floor with a piece of chalk, and the re-enactment began. According to the accused, it was very simple: during the conversation, he had become angry and pushed my father roughly; the latter had fallen backwards, his skull had shattered on the floor; he panicked, he fled.
Of course he was lying, and Chaumont had no trouble establishing this. An examination of the victim’s skull clearly indicated a furious attack; there were multiple contusions, probably the result of a series of kicks. Furthermore, my father’s face had been scraped along the ground, almost sufficient to force the eye from its socket. ‘I don’t remember …’ said the accused man; ‘I lost it.’ Watching his nervous arms, his thin, horrible face, it wasn’t difficult to believe him: he hadn’t planned this, he was probably excited by the impact of the skull on the ground and the sight of first blood. His defence was lucid and credible, he would probably come across well in front of a jury: a two-or three-year suspended sentence, no more. Chaumont, pleased with the way the afternoon had gone, began to bring things to a conclusion. I got up from my chair and walked over to one of the picture windows. It was getting dark: a flock of sheep were bringing their day to a close. They too were stupid, possibly even more stupid than Aïcha’s brother; but violence had not been programmed into their genes. On the last night of their lives they would bleat in terror, their hoofs would scrabble desperately; there would be a gunshot, their lives would seep away and their flesh would be transformed into meat. We parted with a round of handshakes; Chaumont thanked me for coming.
I saw Aïcha the following day; on the advice of the estate agent, I had decided to have the house thoroughly cleaned before it was viewed. I gave her the keys, then she dropped me off at Cherbourg station. Winter was taking hold of the farmlands, clouds of mist hung over the hedges. We were uncomfortable being together. She had been familiar with my father’s genitals, which tended to create a certain misplaced intimacy. It was all rather surprising: she seemed like a serious girl, and my father was hardly a ladies’ man. He must have had certain traits, certain characteristics that I had failed to notice; in fact I was finding it difficult to remember his face. Men live alongside one another like cattle; it is a miracle if once in a while they manage to share a bottle of booze.
Aïcha’s Volkswagen stopped in front of the station; I was aware that it would be best to say a few words before we parted. ‘Well …’ I said. After a few seconds, she spoke to me in a subdued voice: ‘I’m going to leave the area. I’ve got a friend who can get me a job as a waitress in Paris; I can continue my studies there. In any case, my family think I’m a whore.’ I made a murmur of comprehension. ‘There are a lot more people in Paris …’ I finally ventured with difficulty; I’d racked my brains, but that was all I could think of to say about Paris. The acute poverty of my response did not seem to discourage her. ‘There’s no point expecting anything from my family,’ she went on with suppressed fury. ‘They’re not only poor, they’re bloody stupid. Two years ago, my father went on the pilgrimage to Mecca; since then, you can’t get a word out of him. My brothers are worse: they encourage each other’s stupidity. They get blind drunk on pastis and all the while they strut around like the guardians of the one true faith, and they treat me like a slut because I prefer to go out and work rather than marry some stupid bastard like them.’
‘It’s true, Muslims on the whole aren’t up to much …’ I said with embarrassment. I picked up my travel bag, opened the door. ‘I think you’ll do alright …’ I muttered without conviction. At that moment I had a vision of migratory flows crisscrossing Europe like blood vessels; Muslims appeared as clots that were only slowly reabsorbed. Aïcha eyed me sceptically. Cold air rushed into the car. Intellectually, I could manage to feel a certain attraction to Muslim vaginas. I managed a little forced smile. She smiled in turn, a little more sincerely than I had. I shook her hand for a long time. I could feel the warmth of her fingers. I carried on shaking her hand until I could feel the gentle pulse of her blood at the hollow of her wrist. A few feet from the car, I turned around to give a little wave. We had made a connection in spite of everything; in the end, in spite of everything, something had happened.
Settling into my seat on board the intercity, it occurred to me that I should have given her money. Actually, it was better that I hadn’t, it would probably have been misinterpreted. Strangely, it was at that moment that I realised for the first time that I was going to be a rich man; well, relatively rich. The money in my father’s accounts had already been transferred. For the rest, I had left the sale of the car to a local garage and of the house to an estate agent; everything had been arranged as simply as possible. The value of these assets would be determined by the market. Of course there was some room for negotiation: ten per cent one way or the other, no more. The taxes that were due were no mystery either: a quick look through the carefully thought-out little brochures available from the Tax Office would be enough.
My father had probably thought of disinheriting me several times; in the end, he must have given up on the idea, considering it too complicated, too much paperwork for an uncertain result (it is not easy to disinherit your children, the law offers you very limited possibilities: not only do the little shits ruin your life, afterwards they get to profit from everything you’ve managed to save, despite your worst efforts). He probably thought that there was no point – after all, what the fuck did it matter to him what happened after he was dead? That’s how he looked at it, in my opinion. In any case, the old bastard was dead, and I was about to sell the house in which he had spent his last years; I was also going to sell the Toyota Land Cruiser which he had used for hauling cases of Evian from the Casino Géant in Cherbourg. I live near the Jardin des Plantes, what would I want with a Toyota Land Cruiser? I could have used it to ferry ricotta ravioli from the market at Mouffetard, that’s about it.
In cases of direct inheritance, death duties are not very high – even if the emotional ties aren’t very strong. After tax, I could probably expect about three million francs. To me, that represented about fifteen times my annual salary. It also represented what an unskilled worker in western Europe could expect for a lifetime of work; it wasn’t so bad. You could make a start with that, you could try.
In a few weeks I would surely get a letter from my bank. The train approached Bayeux. I could already imagine the course of the conversation. The clerk at my branch would have noticed a substantial credit balance on my account, which he would very much like to discuss with me – who does not need a financial adviser at one time or another in his life? A little wary, I would want to steer him towards safe options; he would greet this reaction – such a common one – with a slight smile. Most novice investors, as financial advisers well know, favour security over earnings; they often laugh about it among themselves. I should not misunderstand him: when it came to managing their capital, even some elderly and otherwsie worldly people behave like complete novices. For his part, he would try to steer me in the direction of a slightly different approach – while, of course, giving me time to consider my options. Why not, in effect, put two-thirds of my holdings into investments where there would be no surprises but a low return? And why not place the remaining third in investments that were a little more adventurous, but which had the potential for significant growth? After a few days’ consideration, I knew, I would defer to his judgement. He would feel reassured by my support, would put together the papers with a flash of enthusiasm, and our handshake at the moment we parted company would be warm.
I was living in a country distinguished by placid socialism, where ownership of material possessions was guaranteed by strict legislation, where the banking system was surrounded by powerful state guarantees. Unless I were to venture beyond what was lawful, I ran no risk of embezzlement or fraudulent bankruptcy. All in all, I needn’t worry any more. In fact, I never really had: after serious but hardly distinguished studies, I had quickly found a career in the public sector. This was in the mid-eighties, at the beginning of the modernisation of socialism, at the time when the illustrious Jack Lang was distributing wealth and glory to the cultural institutions of the State; my starting salary was very reasonable. And then I had grown older, standing untroubled on the sidelines through successive policy changes. I was courteous, well-mannered, well-liked by colleagues and superiors; my temperament, however, was less than warm and I had failed to make any real friends. Night was falling quickly over Lisieux. Why, in my work, had I never shown a passion comparable to Marie-Jeanne’s? Why had I never shown any real passion in my life in general?
Several more weeks went by without bringing me an answer; then, on the morning of December 23rd, I took a taxi to Roissy airport.
AND NOW, THERE I was on my own like an idiot, a few feet from the Nouvelles Frontières desk. It was a Saturday morning during the Christmas holidays; Roissy was heaving, as usual. The minute they have a couple of days of freedom, the inhabitants of western Europe dash off to the other side of the world, they go halfway round the world in a plane, they behave – literally – like escaped convicts. I don’t blame them, I was preparing to do just the same.
My dreams are run-of-the-mill. Like all of the inhabitants of western Europe, I want to travel. There are problems with that, of course: the language barrier, poorly organised public transport, the risk of being robbed or conned. To put it more bluntly, what I really want, basically, is to be a tourist. We dream what dreams we can afford; and my dream is to go on an endless series of ‘Romantic Getaways’, ‘Colourful Expeditions’ and ‘Pleasures à la Carte’ – to use the titles of the three Nouvelles Frontières brochures.
I immediately decided to go on a package tour, but I hesitated quite a bit between ‘Rum and Salsa’ (ref: CUB CO 033, 16 days/14 nights, 11,250FF based on two sharing, single supplement 1,350FF) and ‘Thai Tropic’ (ref THA CA 006, 15 days/13 nights, 9,950FF based on two sharing, single supplement 1,175FF). Actually, I was more attracted by Thailand; but the advantage of Cuba is that it’s one of the last Communist countries, though probably not for much longer – it has a sort of ‘endangered régime’ appeal, a sort of political exoticism, to put it in a nutshell. In the end, I chose Thailand. I have to admit that the copy in the brochure was very well done, sure to tempt the average punter:
A package tour with a dash of adventure, which will take you from the bamboo forests of the River Kwai to the island of Ko Samui, winding up, after crossing the spectacular isthmus of Kra, at Ko Phi Phi, off the coast of Phuket. A cool trip to the tropics.
At 8.30 a.m. on the dot, Jacques Maillot slams the door of his house on the Boulevard Blanqui in the 13th arrondissement, straddles his moped and begins a journey across the capital from east to west. Direction: the head office of Nouvelles Frontières on the Boulevard de Grenelle. Every other day, he stops at four or five of the company’s agencies: ‘I bring them the latest brochures, I pick up the post and generally take the temperature,’ explains the boss, full of beans, always sporting an extraordinary multicoloured tie. It’s a crack of the whip for the agents: ‘On the days after my visit, there’s a tremendous boost in sales at those agencies …’ he explains with a smile. Visibly under his spell, the journalist from Capital goes on to marvel: who could have predicted in 1967 that a small business set up by a handful of student protestors would take off like this? Certainly not the thousands of demonstrators who, in May 1968, marched past the Nouvelles Frontières office on the Place Denfert-Rochereau in Paris. ‘We were in just the right place, right in front of the cameras …’ remembers Jacques Maillot, a former boy scout and left-wing Catholic by way of the National Students Union. It was the first piece of publicity for the company, which took its name from John F. Kennedy’s speech about America’s ‘new frontiers’.
A passionate liberal, Jacques Maillot successfully fought the Air France monopoly, making air transport more accessible to all. His company’s odyssey, which in thirty years had made it the number one travel agency in France, has fascinated the business press. Like FNAC, like Club Med, Nouvelles Frontières – born at the dawn of the leisure society – might stand as a symbol of the new face of modern capitalism. In the year 2000, for the first time, the tourist industry became – in terms of turnover – the biggest economic activity in the world. Though it required only a moderate level of physical fitness, ‘Thai Tropic’ was listed under ‘adventure tours’: a range of accommodation options (simple, standard, deluxe); group numbers limited to twenty to ensure a better group dynamic. I saw two really cute black girls with rucksacks arriving, I dared to hope that they’d opted for the same tour: then I looked away and went to collect my travel documents. The flight was scheduled to last a little more than eleven hours.
Taking a plane today, regardless of the airline, regardless of the destination, amounts to being treated like shit for the duration of the flight. Crammed into a ridiculously tiny space from which it’s impossible to move without disturbing an entire row of fellow passengers, you are greeted from the outset with a series of embargos announced by stewardesses sporting fake smiles. Once on board, their first move is to get hold of your personal belongings so they can put them in overhead lockers – to which you will not have access under any circumstances until the plane lands. Then, for the duration of the flight, they do their utmost to find ways to bully you, all the while making it impossible for you to move about, or more generally to move at all, with the exception of a certain number of permitted activities: enjoying fizzy drinks, watching American videos, buying duty-free products. The unremitting sense of danger, fuelled by mental images of plane crashes, the enforced immobility in a cramped space, provokes a feeling of stress so powerful that a number of passengers have reportedly died of heart attacks while on long-haul flights. The crew do their level best to maximise this stress by preventing you from combating it by habitual means. Deprived of cigarettes, reading matter and, as happens more and more frequently, sometimes even deprived of alcohol. Thank God the bitches don’t do body searches yet; as an experienced passenger, I had been able to stock up on some necessities for survival: a few 21-mg Nicorette patches, sleeping pills, a flask of Southern Comfort. I fell into a thick sleep as we were flying over the former East Germany.
I was awoken by a weight on my shoulder, and warm breath. I sat my neighbour upright in his seat without undue manhandling; he groaned softly, but didn’t open his eyes. He was a big guy, about thirty, with light brown hair in a bowl cut; he didn’t look too unpleasant, nor too clever. In fact, he was rather endearing, wrapped up in the soft blue blanket supplied by the airline, his big manual labourer’s hands resting on his knees. I picked up the paperback which had fallen at his feet: a shitty Anglo-Saxon bestseller by one Frederick Forsyth. I had read something by this halfwit, full of heavy-handed eulogies to Margaret Thatcher and ludicrous depictions of the USSR as the evil empire. I’d wondered how he managed after the fall of the Berlin Wall. I leafed through his new opus: apparently, this time, the roles of the bad guys were played by Serb nationalists; here was a man who kept up to date with current affairs. As for his beloved hero, the tedious Jason Monk, he had gone back into service with the CIA, which had formed an alliance of convenience with the Chechen mafia. Well! I thought, replacing the book on my neighbour’s knees, what a charming sense of morality bestselling British authors have. The page was marked with a piece of paper folded in three, which I recognised as the Nouvelles Frontières itinerary: I had, apparently, just met my first tour companion. A fine fellow, I was sure, certainly a lot less egocentric and neurotic than I was. I glanced at the video screen, which was showing the flight path: we had probably passed Chechnya, whether or not we had flown over it; the exterior temperature was -53°C, altitude 10,143 metres, local time 00.27. Another screen replaced the first: we were flying directly over Afghanistan. Through the window, you could see nothing but pitch black of course. In any case the Taliban were probably all in bed stewing in their own filth. ‘Goodnight, Talibans, good night … sweet dreams …’ I whispered before swallowing a second sleeping pill.
THE PLANE LANDED at Don Muang airport at about 5 a.m. I woke with some difficulty. The man on my left had already stood up and was waiting impatiently in the queue to disembark. I quickly lost sight of him in the corridor leading to the arrivals hall. My legs were like cotton wool, my mouth felt furry; my ears were filled with a violent drone.
No sooner had I stepped through the automatic doors than the heat enveloped me like a mouth. It must have been at least 35°C. The heat in Bangkok has something particular about it, in that it is somehow greasy, probably on account of the pollution; after any long period outdoors, you’re always surprised to find that you’re not covered with a fine film of industrial residue. It took me about thirty seconds to adjust my breathing. I was trying not to fall too far behind the guide, a Thai woman whom I hadn’t taken much notice of, except that she seemed reserved and well-educated – but a lot of Thai women give that impression. My backpack was cutting into my shoulders; it was a Lowe Pro Himalaya Trekking, the most expensive one I could find at Vieux Campeur; it was guaranteed for life. It was an impressive object, steel grey with snap clasps, special Velcro fastenings – the company had a patent pending – and zips that would work at temperatures of -65°C. Its contents were sadly pretty limited: some shorts and tee-shirts, swimming trunks, special shoes which allowed you to walk on coral (125FF at Vieux Campeur), a wash bag containing medicines considered essential by the Guide du Routard, a JVC HRD-9600 MS video camera with batteries and spare tapes, and two American bestsellers that I’d bought pretty much at random at the airport.
The Nouvelles Frontières coach was parked about a hundred metres further on. Inside the powerful vehicle – a 64-seat Mercedes M-800 – the air-conditioning was turned up full; it felt like stepping into a freezer. I settled myself in the middle of the coach, on the left by a window. I could vaguely make out a dozen other passengers, amongst them my neighbour from the plane. No one came to sit beside me. I had clearly missed my first opportunity to integrate into the group; I was also well on my way to catching a nasty cold.
It wasn’t light yet, but on the six-lane motorway which led to downtown Bangkok, the traffic was already heavy. We drove past buildings alternately of glass and steel with, occasionally, a massive concrete structure reminiscent of Soviet architecture: the head offices of banks, chain hotels, electronics companies – for the most part Japanese. Past the junction at Chatuchak, the motorway rose above a series of ring roads circling the heart of the city. Between the floodlit buildings, we began to be able to distinguish groups of small, slate-roofed houses in the middle of wasteland. Neon-lit stalls offered soup and rice; you could see the tinplate pots steaming. The coach slowed slightly to take the New Phetchaburi Road exit. There was a moment when we saw an interchange of the most phantasmagoric shape, its asphalt spirals seemingly suspended in the heavens, lit by banks of airport floodlights; then, after following a long curve, the coach joined the motorway again.
The Bangkok Palace Hotel is part of a chain along the lines of Mercure, sharing similar values as to catering and quality of service; this much I discovered from a brochure I picked up in the lobby while waiting for the situation to unfold. It was just after six in the morning – midnight in Paris I thought, for no reason – but activities were already well under way, the breakfast room had just opened. I sat down on a bench; I was dazed, my ears were still buzzing violently and my stomach was beginning to hurt. From the way they were waiting, I was able to identify some of the group members. There were two girls of about twenty-five, pretty much bimbos – not bad-looking, all things considered – who cast a contemptuous eye over everyone. On the other hand, a couple of retirees – he could have been called spirited, she looked a bit more miserable – were looking around in wonderment at the interior décor of the hotel, a lot of gilding, mirrors and chandeliers. In the first hours in the life of a group, one generally observes only phatic sociability, characterised by the use of standard phrases and by limited emotional connection. According to Edmunds and White1, the establishment of micro-groups can only be detected after the first excursion, sometimes after the first communal meal.
khlongs