From time to time, Jean-Yves came to see me in my room, sat at the foot of the bed. I was aware of his presence in that I felt a little more tense. One morning, three days after we arrived, he handed me a small sheaf of papers: they were photocopies of newspaper articles. "The board of Aurore faxed them to me yesterday,'' he said. "They made no comment." The first article, taken from the Nouvel Observateur, was headlined "A Very Special Club"; it was two pages long, very detailed, and illustrated with a photograph taken from the German advertising campaign. The journalist accused the Aurore group in no uncertain terms of promoting sex tourism in third world countries, and added that, under the circumstances, the reaction of the Muslims was understandable. Jean-Claude Guillebaud dedicated his editorial to the same subject. Interviewed by telephone, Jean-Luc Espitalier had declared, "The Aurore group, a signatory of the world charter for ethical tourism, in no way sanctions such activities; those responsible will be disciplined." The dossier continued with a vehement but poorly documented article by Isabelle Alonso, from the Journal de dimanche, entitled "The Return of Slavery." François Giroud picked up the theme in his weekly diary: "Faced," he wrote, "with the hundreds of thousands of women who have been sullied, humiliated, and reduced to slavery throughout the world —it is regrettable to have to say this—what do the deaths of a few of the well-heeled matter?" The terrorist attack in Krabi had naturally given the story considerable impact. Liberation ran a front-page story in which it published photos of the repatriated survivors, taken when they landed at Roissy, with the headline "Not So Innocent Victims." In his editorial, Gérard Dupuy singled out the Thai government for its lenient attitude to prostitution and drugs, as well as for its frequent breaches of democracy. As for Paris-Match, under the headline "Carnage at Krabi" came a full account of the "night of horror." They had managed to procure photos, which, it has to be said, were of pretty poor quality black-and-white photocopies sent by fax. They could have been photos of just about anything, you could barely make out the bodies. In the same issue, they published the confessions of a sex tourist —someone who actually had had nothing to do with the events, a freelance writer who operated mostly in the Philippines. Jacques Chirac had immediately made a statement in which, though he expressed his revulsion for the attack, he condemned the "unacceptable behavior of some of our fellow citizens abroad." Speaking in the wake of the events, Lionel Jospin reiterated that a law existed to crack down on sex tourism, even when practiced by consenting adults. The articles that followed, in Le Figaro and Le Monde, wondered what means should be used to fight this plague, and what position the international community should adopt. In the days that followed, Jean-Yves tried to get in touch with Gottfried Rembke by telephone, succeeding only eventually. The head of TUI was sorry, truly sorry, but there was nothing he could do. In any case, as a tourist destination, Thailand was out of the question for several decades. Above and beyond that, the articles in the French press had had certain repercussions in Germany. It's true that opinion there was more divided, but the majority of the public nonetheless condemned sex tourism. Under the circumstances, he preferred to withdraw from the project.
2
I no more understood the reasons for my return to Paris than I had the reasons for my transfer to Bangkok. I was little liked by the hospital staff; they probably found me too inert: even in the hospital, even on your deathbed, you are forced to play the part. Medical personnel like patients to put up a certain amount of resistance, to show a willfulness which they can do their utmost to break, for the good of the patient, naturally. I manifested nothing of the sort. You could roll me onto my side ready for an injection and come back three hours later; I would still be in exactly the same position. The night before my departure, I banged roughly into one of the doors in the hospital corridor as I was trying to find the bathroom. In the morning, my face was covered in blood, there was a gash above my eyebrow, and I had to be cleaned up and have a dressing put on. It hadn't occurred to me to call a nurse; in fact, I hadn't felt a thing. The flight was a neutral period of time. I'd lost even the habit of smoking. By the baggage carousel, I shook Jean-Yves's hand, then took a taxi to the Avenue de Choisy. I immediately noticed that something wasn't right, that it would never be right. I didn't unpack. I walked around the apartment, a plastic bag in one hand, picking up all the photos of Valérie I could find. Most of them had been taken at her parents' in Brittany, on the beach or in the garden. There were also a few erotic photos that I had taken in the flat—I liked to watch her masturbate, I found her movements beautiful. I sat on the sofa and dialed a number that I had been given to use in case of emergencies, twenty-four hours a day. It was a sort of crisis unit that had been set up especially to care for the survivors of the attack. It was based in a wing of the Sainte-Anne Hospital.
Most of the people who had asked to go there really were in a sad state: despite massive doses of tranquilizers, they had nightmares every night, with screams, worried shouts, tears every time. When I met them in the corridors I was struck by their distressed, panic-stricken faces; they seemed to be literally eaten up by fear. And that fear, I thought, would end only with their lives. For my part, more than anything, I felt terribly weary. In general, I only got up to drink a cup of instant coffee or nibble a few crackers; meals were not compulsory, nor were the therapeutic activities. Even so, I underwent a series of tests, and three days after my arrival I had an interview with a psychiatrist. The tests had revealed "extremely weakened reactivity." I was not in pain, but I did, in fact, feel weakened; I felt weaker than it was possible to feel. He asked me what I intended to do. I replied, "Wait." I showed myself to be reasonably optimistic. I told him that all this sadness would come to an end, that I would find happiness again, but that I had to wait a while. He didn't seem really convinced. He was a man of about fifty, with a plump, cheerful face, absolutely clean-shaven.
After a week, they transferred me to a new psychiatric hospital, this time for a lengthy stay. I had to stay there for a little over three months. To my great surprise, I met the same psychiatrist there. It was hardly surprising, he told me, as this was where his practice was based. Helping crisis victims was only a temporary assignment, something of a specialty in his case, in fact—he had already served on a committee set up after the bombing of the Saint-Michel railway station. He didn't really talk like a typical psychiatrist, or at least I found him bearable. I remember he talked to me about "freeing oneself from attachments": it sounded like some Buddhist bullshit. Freeing what? I was nothing more than an attachment. Inclined to the transitory by nature, I had become attached to a transitory thing, as was my nature— none of this demanded any particular comment. Had I been inclined toward the eternal by nature, I went on, in order to fuel the conversation, I would have become attached to things eternal. Apparently his technique worked well with survivors haunted by fears of mutilation and death. "These sufferings do not belong to you, they are not truly yours; they are merely passing phantoms in your mind," he told people, and in the end, they believed him. I don't know at what point I began to become aware of it—in any case, it was only episodic—but there were still long periods (in fact there still are) when Valérie was categorically not dead. In the beginning, I could consciously prolong these without the slightest effort. I remember the first time I found it difficult, when I truly felt the weight of reality; it was just after a visit from Jean-Yves. It was a fraught moment; there were memories that I found difficult to deny. I didn't ask him to come back. Marie-Jeanne's visit, on the other hand, did me good. She didn't say much, she talked a bit about the atmosphere at work. I told her straight off that I wouldn't be coming back, because I was going to move to Krabi. She acquiesced without comment. "Don't worry," I told her, "everything will be fine." She looked at me with mute compassion. Strangely, I actually think that she believed me. The visit from Valerie's parents was probably the most painful. The psychiatrist must have told them that I was going through a "period of denial." As a result, Valerie's mother cried a
lmost the whole time; her father didn't seem very comfortable either. They had also come to iron out some practical details, to bring me a suitcase containing my personal belongings. They imagined I wouldn't want to keep the apartment in the 13th arrondissement. "Of course not," I said. "Of course, we'll deal with that later." At that point Valerie's mother began to cry again.
Life goes by effortlessly in an institution, where, for the most part, human needs are satisfied. I had rediscovered Questions pour un champion, and it was the only show I watched. I no longer took any interest in the news. A lot of the other residents spent the entire day in front of the television. I wasn't all that into it, really. Everything moved too quickly onscreen. I believed that, if I could remain calm, avoid thinking as much as possible, matters would sort themselves out in the end. One morning in April, I found out that matters had, in effect, sorted themselves out and that I would soon be able to leave. This seemed to me more of a complication: I would have to find a hotel room, re-create a neutral environment. At least I had money, that was something at least. "You have to look on the bright side," I said to one of the nurses. She seemed surprised, perhaps because this was the first time I had ever spoken to her. There is no specific treatment for denial, the psychiatrist explained to me at our last interview. It is not really a disorder of mood, but a problem of perception. He had kept me in the hospital all this time chiefly because he was worried about the possible risk of a suicide attempt — they are quite common in cases of sudden, brutal realizations; but now I was out of danger. I see, I said. I see.
3
A week after being discharged from the hospital, I took a flight back to Bangkok. I had no particular plans. If we had an ideal nature, we could satisfy ourselves with the movements of the sun. The seasons were too distinct in Paris, they were a source of agitation, of insecurity. In Bangkok, the sun rose at six o'clock and set at six o'clock: in the intervening time, it followed an unchanging course. There was, apparently, a rainy season, but I had never witnessed it. The bustle of the city existed, but I couldn't clearly grasp the rationale behind it, it was more a sort of "state of nature." Undoubtedly all of these people had a destiny, a life, inasmuch as their incomes permitted; but for all I knew, they could just as easily have been a pack of lemmings. I took a room at the Amari Boulevard. Most of the guests in the hotel were Japanese businessmen. This was where we had stayed, Valérie, Jean-Yves, and I, on our last visit; it wasn't really a good idea. Two days later. I moved to the Grace Hotel. It was only about ten meters down the road, but the atmosphere was noticeably different. It was probably the last place in Bangkok where you could still meet Arab sex tourists. They hugged the walls, staying holed up in the hotel, which had a discothèque and its own massage parlor. You spotted them in the surrounding alleys where there were stalls selling kebabs and long distance call centers; but, further afield, nothing. I realized that without intending to, I had moved closer to the Bumrungrad Hospital.
It is certainly possible to remain alive animated simply by a desire for vengeance; many people have lived that way. Islam had wrecked my life, and Islam was certainly something that I could hate. In the days that followed, I devoted myself to trying to feel hatred for Muslims. I became quite good at it, and I started to follow the international news again. Every time I heard that a Palestinian terrorist, or a Palestinian child or a pregnant Palestinian woman, had been gunned down in the Gaza Strip, I felt a quiver of enthusiasm at the thought of one less Muslim in the world. Yes, it was possible to live like this. One evening, in the hotel coffee shop* a Jordanian banker struck up a conversation with me. Amiably enough, he insisted on buying me a beer; perhaps his enforced seclusion in the hotel was beginning to get to him. "I understand how people feel, you know; you can't hold it against them," he told me. "It has to be said, we were asking for it. This isn't a Muslim country, there's no reason to spend hundreds of millions building mosques. To say nothing of the bomb attack, of course." Seeing that I was listening to him attentively, he ordered another beer and became bolder. The problem with Muslims, he told me, was that the paradise promised by the Prophet already existed here on earth. There were places on earth where young, available, lascivious girls danced for the pleasure of men, where one could become drunk on nectar and listen to celestial music; there were about twenty of them within five hundred meters of our hotel. These places were easily accessible. To gain admission, there was absolutely no need to fulfill the seven duties of a Muslim, nor to engage in holy war; all you had to do was pay a couple of dollars. It wasn't even necessary to travel to realize such things—all you needed was satellite TV. For him, there was no doubt, the Muslim way was doomed: capitalism would triumph. Already, young Arabs dreamed of nothing but consumer products and sex. They might try to pretend otherwise, but secretly, they wanted to be part of the American system. The violence of some of them was no more than a sign of impotent jealousy, and thankfully, more and more of them were turning their backs on Islam. lie himself had been unlucky. He was an old man now, and he had been forced to build his whole life on a religion he despised. I was in much the same boat—there would come a day when the world was delivered from Islam; but for me, it would come too late. I no longer really had a life. I had had a life, for a few months —that in itself was something, not everyone could say as much. The absence of the will to live is, alas, not sufficient to make one want to die. I saw him again the next day, just before lie left for Amman; it would be a year before he could come back. On the whole, I was glad that he was leaving, as I sensed that otherwise he would have wanted to talk to me again, and the prospect gave me a bit of a headache. I found it very difficult now to tolerate intellectual debate. I no longer had any desire to understand the world, or even to know it. Our brief conversation, however, had made a profound impression on me. In fact, he had convinced me from the outset that Islam was doomed. As soon as you thought about it, it seemed obvious. This simple thought was sufficient to dispel my hatred. Once again I ceased to have any interest in the news.
4
Bangkok was still too much like a normal city, there were too many businessmen, too many foreigners on package tours. Two weeks later, I caught a bus for Pattaya. It had been bound to end this way, I thought as I boarded the vehicle. But then I realized that I was wrong, nothing in this story had been determined. I could easily have spent the rest of my life with Valérie in Thailand, in Brittany, or indeed anywhere at all. Growing old is no joke; but growing old alone is worse than anything. As soon as I put down my luggage on the dusty floor of the bus station, I knew I had arrived at the end of my journey. A scrawny old junkie with long gray hair, a large lizard perched on his shoulder, was begging outside the turnstiles. I gave him a hundred baht before drinking a beer at the Heidelberg Hof directly opposite. A few potbellied, mustached German pederasts minced around in their flowered shirts. Near them, three Russian teenage girls, who had attained the pinnacle of sluttishness, gyrated as they listened to their ghetto blaster.* They writhed and rolled about on their chairs, the sleazy little cocksuckers. In a few minutes' walk through the streets of the town, I encountered an impressive variety of human specimens: rappers in baseball caps, Dutch dropouts, cyberpunks with red hair, Austrian dykes with piercings. Pattaya is the end of the road, it is a sort of cesspool, the ultimate sewer where the sundry waste of western neurosis winds up. Whether you're gay, straight, or both, Pattaya is the last-chance saloon, the one beyond which you might as well give up on desire. The hotels are distinguished, naturally, by different levels of comfort and price, but also by the nationality of their clientele. There are two large communities, the Germans and the Americans (among whom probably some Australians and possibly even some New Zealanders conceal themselves). You also get quite a lot of Russians, recognizable because they dress like rednecks and behave like gangsters. There is even an establishment intended for the French, called Ma Maison. The hotel has only a dozen rooms, but the restaurant is very popular. I spent a week there before I realized that I was not part
icularly attached to andouillettes or cuisses de grenouille; that I could live without following French sports games via satellite, and without leafing daily through the arts pages of Le Monde. In any case, I needed to find long-term accommodation. A standard tourist visa in Thailand only lasts for one month, but to get an extension, all you have to do is cross the border. A lot of the travel agencies in Pattaya offer a day trip to the Cambodian border. After a three-hour trek in a minibus, you line up for an hour or two at customs, have lunch in a self-service restaurant on Cambodian soil (lunch is included in the price, as are tips for customs officials), then you start on your return journey. Most residents have been doing this every month for years. It's much easier than trying to get a long-term visa. You don't come to Pattaya to start your life over, but to end it in tolerable conditions. Or, if you want to put it less brutally, to take a rest, a long rest—one that may prove permanent. These were the terms used by a homosexual of about fifty I met in an Irish pub on Soi 14. He had spent the greater part of his career as a designer working for the popular press and had managed to put some money aside. Ten years earlier, he had noticed that things were going badly for him. He still went out to clubs, the same clubs as always, but more and more often he came home empty-handed. Of course, he could always pay, but if it had to come to that, he would rather pay Asians. He apologized for this remark, hoping I would not infer any racist connotation. No, no, of course, I understood. It's less humiliating to pay for someone who looks nothing like anyone you were able to seduce in the past, who brings back no memories. If sex has to be paid for, it is best that, in a certain sense, it is undifferentiated. As everyone knows, one of the first things you feel in the presence of another race is that inability to differentiate, that feeling that, physically, everyone looks more or less alike. The effect wears off after a few months, and it's a pity, because it bears out a reality: human beings do, in fact, look very much alike. Of course, we can distinguish between males and females, we can also, if we choose, distinguish between different age categories, but any more advanced distinction comes close to pedantry, probably a result of boredom. A creature that is bored elaborates distinctions and hierarchies. According to Hutchinson and Rawlins, the development of systems of hierarchical dominance within animal societies does not correspond to any practical necessity, or to any selective advantage; it simply constitutes a means of combating the crushing boredom of life out in the open. So, the ex-designer was quietly living out the last years of his queer life treating himself to pretty, slender, muscular, dark-skinned boys. Once a year, he went back to France to visit his family and a few friends. His sex life was less frenetic than I might imagine, he told me —he went out once or twice a week, no more. He had been settled here in Pattaya for six years now, and the profusion of varied, exciting, and inexpensive sexual opportunities brought out a paradoxical calming of his desire. Every time he went out, he was certain of being able to fuck and suck magnificent young boys who, for their part, would jerk him off sensitively and expertly in return. Confident of this fact, he spent more time getting ready to go out, and he enjoyed these encounters in moderation. I realized then that he imagined I was in the throes of the erotic frenzy of my first weeks here, that he saw in me a heterosexual counterpart to his own case. I refrained from correcting him. He proved to be friendly, insisted on buying the beers, gave me a number of addresses for longterm accommodation. He had enjoyed talking to a Frenchman. Most of the homosexual residents were English. He was on good terms with them, but from time to time, he wanted to speak his own language. He had no real contact with the little French community that gathered at Ma Maison —mostly a crowd of straight, ex-colonial, ex-army thugs. If I was going to live in Pattaya, maybe we could go out together some night, no strings attached, obviously; he gave me his cell-phone number. I wrote it down, though I knew that I would never call him. He was pleasant, friendly, interesting if you like: but I simply wasn't interested in human relationships anymore.