Just past Payab Ferry Pier, the boat turned right into the Khlong Samsen and we entered a completely different world. Life had changed very little here since the nineteenth century. Rows of teak houses on stilts lined the canal; laundry dried under awnings. Some of the women came to their windows to watch us pass, others stopped in the middle of their washing. Children splashed and bathed between the stilts, waving at us excitedly. There was vegetation everywhere. Our pirogue cut a path through masses of water lilies and lotuses, and teeming, intense life sprang up all around. Every free patch of earth, air, or water seemed to be immediately filled with butterflies, lizards, carp. We were, Sôn told us, in the middle of the dry season; even so, the air was completely, unrelentingly humid. Sitting beside me, Valérie seemed to be enveloped by a great sense of peace. She exchanged little waves with the old men who sat smoking their pipes on the balconies, the children bathing, the women at their washing. The ecologists from the Jura seemed at peace too, and even the naturopaths seemed reasonably calm. Around us. there were only faint sounds and smiles. Valérie turned to me. I almost felt like taking her hand, though for no particular reason I didn't. The boat stopped moving entirely, and we were rapt in the momentary eternity of a blissful afternoon. Even Babette and Léa had shut up. They were a bit spaced out, to use the expression Léa later employed on the jetty. While we were visiting the Temple of Dawn, I made a mental note to buy some more Viagra when I found an open pharmacy. On the way back, I found out that Valérie was Breton and that her parents had owned a farm in Tregorrois. I didn't really know what to say, myself. She seemed intelligent. I liked her soft voice, her meek Catholic fervor, the movement of her lips when she spoke; her mouth was obviously pretty hot, just ready to swallow the spunk of a true friend. "It's been lovely, this afternoon," I said finally in desperation. I had become too remote from people, I had lived alone too long, I didn't know how to go about it anymore. "Oh, yes, lovely," she replied all the same. She wasn't demanding, she really was a nice girl. Even so, as soon as the bus arrived at the hotel, I ran straight to the bar.
Three cocktails later, I was beginning to regret my behavior. I went out and walked around the lobby. It was 7 p.m.; no one from the group was around. For about four hundred baht, those who wished could have dinner and a show of "traditional Thai dance"; those interested were to assemble at 8 p.m. Valérie would definitely be there. For my part, I had already had a vague experience of traditional Thai dance, on a trip with Kuoni three years previously: "Classic Thailand, from the Rose of the North' to the 'City of Angels.' " Not bad, really, but a bit expensive and terrifyingly cultural —everyone involved had at least a master's degree. The thirty-two positions of the Buddha in Ratanakosin statuary, Thai-Burmese style, Thai-Khmer, Thai-Thai, they didn't miss a thing. I had come back exhausted and I'd constantly felt ridiculous without a Guide Bleu. Right now, I was beginning to feel a serious need to fuck. I was wandering around the lobby, with a sense of mounting indecision, when I spotted a sign saying "Health Club." indicating the floor below. The entrance was lit by neon and a long rope of colored lights. On the white background of an electric sign, three bikini-clad sirens, their breasts a little larger than life, proffered champagne flutes to prospective customers; there was a heavily stylized Eiffel Tower in the far distance. Not quite the same concept as the "fitness centers" of the Mercure hotels. I went in and ordered a bourbon at the bar. Behind a glass screen, a dozen girls turned toward me. Some smiled alluringly, others didn't. I was the only customer. Despite the fact that the place was small, the girls wore numbered tags. I quickly chose number 7, firstly because she was cute, also because she wasn't engrossed in the program on the television or deep in conversation with her neighbor. Indeed, when her name was called, she stood up with evident satisfaction. I offered her a Coke at the bar, then we went to one of the rooms. Her name was Oôn, at least that was what I heard, and she was from the north somewhere, a little village near Chiang Mai. She was nineteen. After we had taken a bath together, I lay down on the foam-covered mattress: I realized at once that I wasn't going to regret my choice. Oôn moved very nicely, very lithely; she'd used just enough soap. At one point, she caressed my buttocks at length with her breasts, which was a personal initiative: not all the girls did that. Her well-soaped pussygrazed my calf like a small hard brush. I was somewhat surprised to find I got hard almost immediately; when she turned me over and started to stroke my penis with her feet, I thought for a minute that I wouldn't be able to hold back. But with a supreme effort, tensing the abductor muscles in my thighs, I managed. When she climbed on top of me on the bed, I thought I would be able to hold out for a long time yet; but I was quickly disillusioned. She might have been very young, but she knew what to do with her pussy. She started very gently with little contractions on the glans. then she slipped down an inch or so, squeezing a little harder. "Oh no, Oôn, no! . ..." I cried. She burst out laughing, pleased with her power, then continued to slide down gently, contracting the walls of her vagina with long, slow compressions; all the while looking me in the eyes in obvious amusement. I came well before she got to the base of my penis. Afterwards we chatted a bit, entwined on the bed. She didn't seem to be in any hurry to get back out onstage. She didn't have many clients, she told me. The hotel was aimed at groups of terminal cases, ordinary people, who were pretty much blase. There were a lot of French people, but they didn't really seem to like body massage.* Those who patronized the Health Club were nice enough, but they were mostly Germans and Australians. A few Japanese too, but she didn't like them — they were weird, they always wanted to hit you or tie you up, or else they just sat there masturbating, staring at your shoes; it was pointless. And what did she think about me? Not bad, but she would have liked it if I'd been able to hold out a little longer. "Much need," she said in English, gently shaking my sated penis between her fingers. Otherwise, she thought I seemed like a nice man. "You look quiet," she said. There she was somewhat mistaken, but I suppose it was true that she'd done a good job of calming me. I gave her three thousand baht, which, as far as I remembered, was a good price. From her reaction I could tell that, yes, it was a good price. "Krop khun khât!" she said with a big smile, bringing her hands together in front of her forehead. Then she took my hand and accompanied me to the exit. At the door, we kissed each other on the cheeks several times. As I climbed the stairs, I ran into Josiane, who was apparently hesitating about whether to go downstairs. She had changed into an evening dress, a black shift with gold piping, but it didn't make her the least bit more appealing. Her plump, shrewd face was turned toward me, unblinkingly. I noticed that she'd washed her hair. She wasn't ugly, you might even say she was pretty—I had been attracted to Lebanese women similar to her—but her basic expression was unmistakably nasty. I could easily imagine her trotting out tired political positions; she hadn't a flicker of compassion that I could make out. I had nothing to say to her either. I lowered my head. A little embarrassed, maybe, she spoke: "Anything interesting downstairs?" I found her so infuriating that I nearly said "A bar full of hookers," but in the end I lied, it was easier. "No, no, I don't know, some kind of beauty salon ..." "You didn't go to the dinner and show," the bitch remarked. "Neither did you," I snapped back. This time her response was slower in coming, and she became snotty. "Oh no, I don't really like that sort of thing," she went on, curving her arm like an actress doing Racine. "It's all a bit touristy." What did she mean by that? Everything is touristy. Once again, I stopped myself from putting my fist through her fucking face. Standing in the middle of the stairway, she was in my way; I had to show patience. A passionate epistle writer on occasion, St. Jérôme also knew how to display the virtues of "Christian patience" when circumstances called for it; this is why he is considered to be a great saint and a Doctor of the Church. This "traditional Thai dance" show was, according to her. just about perfect for people like Josette and René, people she thought of, in her heart of hearts, as white trash; I realized, rather uncomfortably, that she was looking for a
n ally in me. True, the tour would soon head deep inland, and we would be divided into two tables at meals—it was time to take sides. "Well," I said, after a long silence. At that moment, like a miracle, Robert appeared above us. He was trying to get downstairs. I smoothly stepped aside, climbing a couple of steps. Just before rushing off to the restaurant, I turned back, to glimpse that Josiane. still motionless, was staring at Robert, who was walking briskly toward the massage parlor. Babette and Léa were standing next to some trays of vegetables. I nodded in minimal acknowledgment before serving myself some water spinach. Obviously they too had decided that the "traditional Thai dance" was tacky. As I went back to my table, I noticed the tarts were sitting a couple of feet away. Léa was wearing a Rage Against the Machine T-shirt and a pair of tight denim shorts, Babette something unstructured in which different-colored stripes of silk alternated with transparent fabric. They were chattering enthusiastically, talking about different hotels in New York. Marrying one of those chicks, I thought, would be radically hideous. Did I still have time to change tables? No, it would have been a bit obvious. I took a chair opposite so that at least I could sit with my back to them. I bolted my meal and went back up to my room. A cockroach appeared just as I was about to get into the bath. There couldn't have been a better time for a cockroach to make an appearance in my life. It scuttled quickly across the porcelain, the little shit. I looked around for a slipper, but actually I knew my chances of squashing him were small. What was the point in trying? And what good was Oôn, in spite of her marvelously elastic vagina? We were already doomed. Cockroaches copulate gracelessly and with no apparent pleasure, but they also do it repeatedly and their genetic mutations are rapid and efficient. There is absolutely nothing we can do to save ourselves from the roaches. Before getting undressed, I once more paid homage to Oôn and to all Thai prostitutes. They didn't have an easy job, those girls. They probably didn't come across a good guy all that often, someone with an okay physique who was honestly looking for nothing more than mutual orgasm. Not to mention the Japanese —I shivered at the thought, and grabbed my Guide du Routard. Babette and Léa could never have been Thai prostitutes, I thought, they weren't worthy of it. Valérie, maybe; that girl had something, she managed to.be both maternal and a bit of a slut—potentially at least, I mean, though for the moment she was just a nice, friendly, serious girl. Intelligent, too. I definitely liked Valérie. I masturbated gently so that I could read in peace, producing just a couple of drips. If it was intended in theory to prepare you for a trip to Thailand, in practice the Guide du Routard had strong reservations, and felt dutybound as early as the preface to denounce sex tourism, that "repulsive slavery." All in all, these backpacking routards were bellyaching bastards whose goal was to spoil every little pleasure on offer to tourists, whom they despised. In fact, they seemed to like themselves more than anything else, if one were to go by the sarcastic little phrases scattered throughout the book, along the lines of "Ah, my friends, if you had been there back in the hippie days!" The most excruciating thing was probably their stern, dogmatic, peremptory tone, quivering with repressed indignation: "We're far from prudish, but Pattaya we don't like. Enough is enough." A bit further on, they laid into "potbellied Westerners" who strolled around with little Thai girls; it made them "literally puke." Humanitarian Protestant cunts, that's what they were, they and the "cool bunch of mates who helped to make this book possible," their nasty little faces smugly plastered all over the back cover. I flung the book hard across the room, missing the Sony television by a whisker, and wearily picked up The Firm, by John Grisham. It was an American best-seller, one of the "best," meaning one of those that had sold the most copies. The hero was a young lawyer with a bright future, a talented, goodlooking boy who worked eighty hours a week. Not only was this shit so obviously a proto-screenplay it was obscene, but you had the feeling the author had already given some thought to the casting, since the part had obviously been written for Tom Cruise. The hero's wife wasn't bad either, even if she didn't work eighty hours a week, but in this case, Nicole Kidman wouldn't fit, it wasn't a part for someone with curly hair —more like someone with a blow-dry. Thank God the lovebirds didn't have any children, which meant we were spared a number of grueling scenes. It was a suspense thriller—well, there was a little suspense: as early as chapter 2, it was obvious that the guys running the firm were bastards, and there was no way the hero, or his wife for that matter, Was going to die at the end. But, in the meantime, to prove he wasn't joking, the author was going to sacrifice a couple of sympathetic minor characters. Finding out which ones might make it worth a read. Maybe it would be the hero's father. His business was going through a bad patch, he was having trouble adjusting to the new matrix management; I had a feeling that this would be his last Thanksgiving*