The sun was beginning to get hot. I noticed that Babette and Léa had arrived on the beach; they had settled themselves about ten meters away from me. Today, they were topless and dressed simply, identically, in white thongs. Apparently they'd met some boys, but I didn't think they were going to sleep with them. The guys weren't bad, reasonably muscular, but not that great either—all in all, pretty average. I got up and gathered my things. Babette had put her copy of Elle next to her towel. I glanced toward the sea. They were swimming and laughing with the boys. I stooped quickly and stuffed the magazine into my bag, then moved further along the beach. The sea was calm; the view stretched out to the east. Cambodia was probably on the other side, or maybe Vietnam. There was a yacht, midway to the horizon. There must be millionaires who spend their time sailing back and forth across the oceans of the world, a life at once monotonous and romantic. Valérie approached, walking along the water's edge, amusing herself by taking a sidestep now and then to avoid a stronger wave. I quickly propped myself up on my elbows, becoming painfully conscious that she had a magnificent body and was very attractive in her rather sensible two-piece swimsuit. Her breasts filled out the bikini top perfectly. I gave a little wave, thinking that she hadn't seen me, but in fact she was already looking in my direction. It's not easy to one-up a woman. "You're reading Elle?" she asked, a little surprised, quietly ironic. "Well...," I said. "May I?" she sat down beside me. Easily, with the familiarity of a regular reader, she skimmed through the magazine: a quick look at the fashion pages, another at the front pages. "Elle reads," "Elle goes out" .. . "Did you go to another massage parlor last night?" she asked, with a sidelong glance. "Um, no, I couldn't find one." She nodded briefly and went back to reading the cover story: "Are You Programmed to Love Him Forever?" "Is it any good?" I asked after a silence. "I haven't got a lover," she replied soberly. This girl completely unsettled me. "I don't really understand this magazine," she continued without a pause. "All it talks about is fashion and 'new trends': what you should see, what you should read, the causes you should campaign for, new topics of conversation . . . The readers couldn't possibly wear the same clothes as the models, and why on earth would they be interested in new trends? They're mostly older women." "You think so?" "I'm sure of it. My mother reads it." "Maybe the writers simply write about the things they're interested in, not what interests their readers." "Economically, that shouldn't be viable. Normally things are done to satisfy the customer's tastes." "Maybe it does satisfy the customer's tastes." She pondered. "Maybe," she replied hesitantly. "You think when you're sixty you won't be interested in new trends anymore?" I insisted. "I certainly hope not," she said sincerely. I lit a cigarette. "If I'm going to stay, I'll have to put on sunscreen," I said in a melancholy voice. "We're going for a swim! You can put on sunscreen after." In a flash she was on her feet and pulling me toward the shore. She was a good swimmer. Personally, I can't say that I know how to swim. I can float on my back for a bit, but I get tired quickly. "You get tired too fast," she said. "It's because you smoke too much. You should play some sports. I'm going to sort you out." She twisted my bicep. Oh no, I thought, no. She eventually calmed clown and went back to sunning herself after she'd vigorously dried her hair. She was pretty like that, with her long black hair all tousled. She didn't take off her top, which was a pity; I would have really liked her to take off her top. I would have liked to see her breasts, here, now. She caught me looking at her breasts and smiled quickly. "Michel,'' she said after a moment's silence. I flinched at the use of my first name. "Why do you feel so old?" she asked, looking me straight in the eyes. It was a good question; I choked a little. "You don't have to answer right away," she said gently. "I've got a book for you," she went on, taking it from her bag. I was surprised to recognize the yellow cover of the "Masque" series, and a title by Agatha Christie, The Hollow. "Agatha Christie?" I said, bewildered. "Read it anyway. I think you'll find it interesting." I nodded like an idiot. "Are you not coming to lunch?" she asked after a moment. "It's one o'clock already." "No . . . No, I don't think so." "You don't much like being in a group?" There was no point in answering, so I smiled. We picked up our things and left together. On the way, we met Lionel, who was wandering around like a lost soul. He gave us a friendly wave, but already it seemed as if he wasn't having so much fun. It isn't for nothing that single men are so rare at resorts. You'll find them, nervous, on the periphery of the recreational activities. Most often, they turn and leave. Sometimes they launch into them, and participate. I left Valérie in front of the restaurant tables. In every Sherlock Holmes story you immediately recognize a number of basic characteristics of the hero. However, each story also never fails to introduce some new peculiarity (the cocaine, the violin, the existence of his older brother, Mycroft, the taste for Italian opera, certain services rendered long ago to the crowned heads of Europe, the first case Sherlock Holmes ever solved when he was still an adolescent). Each new detail that is revealed casts new areas of shadow, creating a truly fascinating character. Thus, Conan Doyle succeeded in creating a perfect mixture of the pleasure of discovery and the pleasure of recognition. I always felt that Agatha Christie, on the other hand, placed too much emphasis on the pleasure of recognition. In her initial descriptions of Poirot, she has a tendency to limit herself to a couple of stock phrases, restricting description to her character's most obvious traits (his mania for symmetry, his patent-leather boots, the care he lavishes on his mustaches). In the more mediocre books, you get the impression that the phrases have been copied directly from one novel to another. That said, The Hollow was different, and this was largely due to the ambitious character of Henrietta, the sculptor, in whom Agatha Christie tried to portray not only the agony of creation (the scene where she destroys a statue just after laboring to finish it because she senses that it is lacking something), but that suffering that is particular to being an artist, an inability to be truly happy or unhappy, to truly feel hatred, despair, ecstasy, or love —the sort of aesthetic filter that separates, mercilessly, the artist from the world. The author had put much of herself into her character, and her candor was evident. Unfortunately, this isolation causes the artist to experience her surroundings in only a vague, ambiguous, and consequently less intense manner, making her a less interesting character. Fundamentally conservative, and hostile to any idea of the social redistribution of wealth, Agatha Christie promulgated many deep-seated ideological positions throughout her career as a writer. In practice, this radical theoretical engagement nonetheless made it possible for her to be frequently cruel in her descriptions of the English aristocracy, whose privileges she so staunchly defended. Lady Angkatell is a burlesque character, only barely credible and often almost terrifying. The author is clearly fascinated with her creation, who has clearly forgotten, even those rules that apply to all human beings. She must have enjoyed writing sentences like "But then one doesn't exactly introduce people —not when somebody had just been killed" —but her sympathies did not lie with Lady Angkatell. On the other hand, she paints a warm portrait of Midge, forced to work as a salesgirl during the week, and who spends her weekends among people who haven't the faintest idea of what work really is. Spirited, lively. Midge loves Edward hopelessly. Edward, for his part, thinks himself a failure. He hasn't succeeded at anything in his life, not even at becoming a writer: he writes short stories of disenchanted irony for obscure journals read only by confirmed bibliophiles. Three times he proposes marriage to Henrietta, without success. Henrietta is John's mistress, and she admires his strength and his radiant personality, but John is married. His murder shatters the delicate balance of unfulfilled desire between the characters. Edward finally realizes that Henrietta will never want him, and that he can never measure up to John. Nor can he bring himself closer to Midge; thus, his life seems to be completely ruined. It is at this point that The Hollow becomes a strange, poignant book, as these are deep waters, with powerful under-currents. In the scene in which Midge saves Edward from committing suicide, and in which
he proposes to her, Agatha Christie achieves something beautiful, a sort of Dickensian sense of wonder.
Her arms closed round him firmly. He smiled at her, murmuring:
"You're so warm. Midge—you're so warm."
Yes, she thought, that was what despair was. A cold thing, a thing of infinite coldness and loneliness. She'd never understood until now that despair was a cold thing. She had always thought of it as something hot and passionate, something violent, a hot-blooded desperation. But that was not so. This was despair—this utter outer darkness of coldness and loneliness. And the sin of despair, that priests talked of, was a cold sin, the sin of cutting oneself off from all warm and living human contacts.
I finished reading at about nine o'clock and walked to the window. The sea was calm, myriads of luminous specks danced on the surface. A delicate halo surrounded the circular face of the moon. I knew there was a full-moon rave party* tonight at Ko Pha-Nghan. Babette and Léa would probably go, with a good many other guests. Giving up on life, putting one's own life to one side, is the easiest thing a person can do. As preparations for the evening continued, as taxis pulled up at the hotel, as everyone began to bustle in the corridors, I felt nothing more than a sad sense of relief.
10
The narrow strip of mountainous land that separates the Gulf of Thailand from the Andaman Sea, the Isthmus of Kra, is divided to the north by the border between Thailand and Burma. At Ranong, near the far south of Burma, it measures barely twenty-two kilometers across. After that, it progressively widens to become the Malay Peninsula. Of the hundreds of islands that speckle the Andaman Sea, only a few are inhabited, and not one of the islands on the Burmese side is open to tourists. On the Thai side, on the other hand, the islands of Phang Nga Bay bring in 43 percent of the country's annual tourist revenue. The largest of these is Phuket, where resorts were developed in the middle of the eighties, mostly with Chinese and French capital (Southeast Asia quickly became one of the key areas of expansion for the Aurore group). It is without question in the chapter on Phuket that the Guide du Routard reaches the pinnacle of its loathing, its vulgar elitism and aggressive masochism. "For some," they announce first off, "Phuket is an island on the way up; for us, it is already on the way down." "It was inevitable that the 'pearl of the Indian Ocean' would come to this," they go on. "Only a few years ago we were still singing the praises of Phuket: the sun, the unspoiled beaches, the relaxed rhythms of life. At the risk of throwing a wrench in the works, we'll come clean: we don't like Phuket anymore! Patong, the most famous of the beaches, has been covered over in concrete. Everywhere the clientele has become predominantly male, hostess bars are springing up everywhere and the only smiles are the ones you can buy. As for the backpacker cottages, they've had a backhoe-assisted face-lift to make way for hotels aimed at lonely, potbellied Europeans." We were due to spend two nights at Patong Beach. I settled myself confidently on the bus, perfectly prepared to take on my role as a lonely, potbellied European. The end of the trip was the highlight of the tour: three days at our leisure in Ko Phi Phi, a destination usually thought of as paradise itself. "What to say about Ko Phi Phi?" laments the travel guide. "It's as if you asked us about a lost love . . . We want to say something wonderful about it, but there's a lump in our throat." For the manipulative masochist. it is not enough that he is unhappy: everyone else must be unhappy too. I tossed my Guide du Routard into the trashcan at the gas station. Western masochism, I thought. A mile or so later, I realized that now I really had nothing left to read. I was going to have to tackle the last part of the tour without a scrap of printed matter to hide behind. I glanced around me. As my heartbeat accelerated, the outside world suddenly seemed a whole lot closer. On the other side of the aisle, Valérie had reclined her seat. She seemed to be daydreaming or sleeping, her face turned toward the window. I tried to follow her example. Outside the landscape unfolded, teeming with diverse vegetation. In desperation, I borrowed Rene's Michelin Guide, whence I learned that rubber plantations and latex played a key role in the economy of the region, Thailand being the third largest rubber producer in the world. That muddle of vegetation, then, served to make condoms and tires. Human ingenuity was truly remarkable. Mankind can be criticized from a variety of standpoints, but that's one thing you can't take away from him: we're unquestionably dealing with an ingenious mammal.
Since the evening at the River Kwai. the division of tables had become definitive. Valérie had joined what she called the "asshole camp." Josiane had thrown her lot in with the naturopaths, with whom she shared values such as techniques for promoting tranquillity. At breakfast, I was lucky enough to witness from a distance a veritable tranquillity contest between Albert and Josiane, under the fascinated eyes of the ecologists —who, living in their godforsaken hole in Franche-Comte, obviously had access to fewer techniques. Babette and Léa, notwithstanding the fact that they were from the Île-de-France, didn't have much to say for themselves other than an occasional "That's cool." Tranquillity was still an intermediate goal for them. All in all, they had a well-balanced table, equipped with a natural leader of each sex, one that was capable of fostering team spirit. On our side, things had a bit more trouble jelling. Josette and René regularly provided a commentary on the menu. They had become very familiar with the local food, and Josette even intended to take home some recipes. From time to time they carped about the people at the other table, whom they considered to be "pretentious" and "poseurs." Aware that that attitude wasn't going to get us very far, I was usually impatient for the dessert to arrive. I gave René back his Michelin Guide. Phuket was still a four-hour drive away. At the restaurant bar, I bought a bottle of Mekong. I spent the next four hours fighting back the feeling of shame that was stopping me from taking it out of my bag and quietly getting hammered. Shame finally won out. The entrance to the Beach Resortel was decorated with a banner that read "Welcome Firemen of Chazay." "Now that's funny," said Josette. "Chazay —that's where your sister lives." René couldn't remember. "It is, it is," she insisted. Before I got my room key, I just had time to hear her say, "So, that crossing the Isthmus of Kra thing was just a day wasted"; and the worst part was, she was right. I threw myself onto the king-size* bed and took a long swig of alcohol, then another. I woke up with an appalling headache and spent quite a while throwing up into the toilet bowl. It was five in the morning; too late for the hostess bars, too early for breakfast. In the drawer of the bedside table there was a Bible and a copy of the teachings of the Buddha, both in English. "Because of their ignorance," I read, "people are always thinking wrong thoughts and always losing the right viewpoint and, clinging to their egos, they take wrong actions. As a result, they become attached to a delusive existence." I wasn't really sure that I understood, but the last sentence perfectly described my current state. I was so comforted by this that I was able to wait to eat until breakfast time. At the next table there was a group of gigantic black Americans who could easily have been mistaken for a basketball team. Further along there was a table of Hong Kong Chinese—recognizable by their filthy manners, which are difficult for westerners to stomach, and which threw the Thai waiters into a state of panic, barely eased by the fact that they were used to it. Unlike the Thais, who behave in all circumstances with a finicky, even persnickety propriety, the Chinese eat rapaciously, laughing loudly, their mouths open, spraying bits of food everywhere, spitting on the ground, and blowing their noses between their fingers —behaving quite literally like pigs. To make matters worse, that's an awful lot of pigs.
After a few minutes' walking the streets of Patong Beach, I realized that everything the civilized world had produced in the way of tourists was gathered here on the two-kilometer stretch of the seafront. Before I had walked thirty meters, I'd encountered Japanese, Italians, Germans, Americans, not to mention a couple of Scandinavians and some rich South Americans. "We're all the same, we all head for the sun," as the girl in the travel agency had told me. I behaved like the perfect average tourist: I rented a sun lounge
r with a fitted mattress and a parasol; I consumed a number of Sprites; I went for a quick, cautious dip. The waves were gentle. I went back to the hotel at about five o'clock, only average satisfied with my free day but intent nonetheless on carrying on. I was attached to a delusive existence.* I still had the hostess bars to come, but before heading to the relevant district, I idled outside the restaurants. In front of Royal Savoy Seafood, I noticed a couple of Americans gazing at a lobster with exaggerated concentration. "Two mammals in front of a crustacean," I thought. A waiter came to join them, all smiles, probably praising the freshness of the produce. "That makes three," I continued mechanically. The crowd flowed incessantly, single men, families, couples; it all conveyed an impression of innocence. Sometimes, when they've had more than a bit to drink, German senior citizens get together in groups and intone slow, infinitely sad songs. Tonight, this occurred much to the amusement of the Thai waiters, who gathered around them making appreciative little cries. Falling in step behind three fifty-something chaps who were vigorously trading shouts of "Ach" and "Ja." I found myself, all of a sudden, in the street of the hostess bars. Young girls in short skirts billed and cooed, competing with each other to try to persuade me to go the Blue Nights, the Naughty Girl, the Classroom, the Marilyn, the Venus... I finally opted for the Naughty Girl. The place was still pretty empty: about ten or so westerners, each sitting alone at his table —young, twenty-fiveto thirty-year-olds, mostly English and American. On the dance floor, a dozen girls swayed gently to some sort of retro disco beat. Some of them wore white bikinis, others had taken their tops off and were wearing only G-strings. They were all about twenty, they all had golden brown skin, supple, exciting bodies. An elderly German was sitting in front of a Carlsberg at the table on my left: big belly, white beard, glasses, he looked like nothing so much as a retired university professor. He stared at the bodies moving before his eyes, completely hypnotized; he was so still that for a moment I thought he was dead. Several smoke machines started up, and the music changed, replaced by something slow and Polynesian. The girls left the stage to be replaced by a dozen others wearing garlands of flowers around their chests and waists. Slowly, they turned around, the garlands occasionally revealing a breast or the top of the buttocks. The old German still stared fixedly at the stage. At one point he took off his glasses to wipe them — his eyes were moist. He was in paradise. Strictly speaking, the girls didn't solicit, but you could invite one of them to have a drink with you, talk a little, and in due course pay the establishment a "bar fee" of five hundred baht to take the girl to your hotel, after negotiating the price. For a whole night, I think the price was about four or five thousand baht. This was about a month's salary for an unskilled Thai worker, but Phuket is an expensive resort. The elderly German signaled discreetly to one of the girls who was waiting, still wearing a white G-string, to go back onstage. She came over immediately and settled herself casually between his thighs. Her curved, youthful breasts were at the same level as the old man's face; he was flushed with pleasure. I heard her call him "Papa." I paid for my tequila sour and left, a little embarrassed; I had the feeling I'd witnessed one of the old man's last pleasures. It was too moving, too intimate.