Platform (10 page)

She surprised me looking at her breasts and smiled quickly. 'Michel . . .' she said after a moment's silence. I jumped 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 straight away . . .' she said gently, 'I've got a book for you,' she went on, taking it from her bag. I was surprised to recognise the yellow cover of the 'Masque' series, and a tide 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; I smiled. We picked up our things, we 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 holiday camps. You can see them, nervously, on the periphery of the recreational activities. Most often, they turn and leave; sometimes they launch into them, and participate. I left Valerie by the restaurant tables.

In every Sherlock Holmes story you immediately recognise the characteristics of the character; but, as well as that, the author never fails to introduce some new peculiarity (the cocaine, the violin, the existence of 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 casting new areas of shadow, and in the end developed a character who was truly fascinating: 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, put too much emphasis on the pleasure of recognition. In her initial descriptions of Poirot she had a tendency to limit herself to a couple of stock phrases, restricted her character's most obvious traits (his mania for symmetry, his patent-leather boots, the care he:' lavishes on his mustachios); in the more mediocre other books, you even get the impression that the phrases had been copied directly from one novel to another.

That said,
The Hollow
was interesting for other reasons. Not simply for the ambitious character of Henrietta, the' sculptor, in whom Agatha Christie tried to portray not1 only the agony of creation (the scene where she destroys a statue just after labouring to finish it because she sensation that it is lacking something), but that suffering which is particular to being an artist; that inability to be truly happy or unhappy, to truly feel hatred, despair, ecstasy or love; the sort of aesthetic filter which separates, without the possibility of remission, the artist from the world. The author had put much of herself into her character, and her sincerity was obvious. Unfortunately, the artist, separated in a way from the world, sensing things only in a vague, ambiguous, and consequently less intense manner, became as a result a less interesting character.

Fundamentally conservative, and hostile to any idea of the social redistribution of wealth, Agatha Christie adopted very clear-cut ideological positions throughout her career as a writer. In practise, 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 which apply to ordinary 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 bibliophiles. Three times he proposes marriage to Henrietta, without success. Henrietta is John mistress, she admires his strength, his radiant personality but John is married. His murder shatters the delicate balance of unfulfilled desire between the character Edward finally realises that Henrietta will never want hi that he can never measure up to John; but nor can bring himself closer to Midge, and his life seems to completely ruined. It is at this point that The Hollow becomes a strange, poignant book; these are deep water with powerful undercurrents. In the scene in which Midge saves Edward from committing suicide, and in which he proposes to her, Agatha Christie achieved 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; I got up 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 Lanta; Babette and Lea would probably go, with a good many other guests. Giving up on life is the easiest thing to do, putting one's own life to one side. 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.

Chapter 10

A narrow strip of mountainous land separating 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, in the far south of Burma, it measures barely twenty-two kilometres across; after that it progressively widens to become the Malay Peninsula.

Of the hundreds of islands which 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 per cent of the country's annual tourist revenue. The largest of these is Phuket, where resorts were developed in the middle of the 80s, mostly with Chinese and French capital (South-East Asia quickly became one of the key areas of expansion for the Aurore group). It is probably 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 we'd get here in the end,' they go on, 'to this "pearl of the Indian Ocean" . . . 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 putting a spanner in the works, we'll come clean: we don't like Phuket any more! Patong, the most famous of the beaches, has been covered 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 chalets, they've had a JCB face lift to make way for hotels destined for lonely pot-bellied Europeans.'

We were due to spend two nights at Patong Beach; I settled myself confidently on the coach, perfectly prepared to adopt my role as a lonely pot-bellied 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?' lamented 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; others must be unhappy too; I chucked my Guide du Routard into the bin at the service station. Western masochism, I thought. A mile or so later, I realised that I now didn't have anything 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, my heartbeat had accelerated, the outside world suddenly seemed a whole lot closer. On the other side of the aisle, Valerie had reclined her seat; she seemed to be daydreaming or sleeping, her face was turned toward the window. I tried to follow her example. Outside the landscape unfolded, made up of diverse vegetation. In desperation, I borrowed Rene's Michelin Guide; I thus learned that rubber plantations and latex played a key role in the economy of the region: Thailand is the third largest rubber producer in the world. That muddle of vegetation, then, served to make condoms and tyres; human ingenuity was truly remarkable. Mankind can be criticised from a variety of standpoints, but that' one thing you can't take away from him: we' unquestionably dealing with an ingenious mammal.

Since the evening at the River Kwai, the seating at table had become definitive. Valerie had joined what she call the 'yob camp'. Josiane had thrown her lot in with the naturopaths, with whom she shared certain values — such as techniques for promoting calm. At breakfast, I was able to observe from a distance a veritable calm competition between Albert and Josiane, under the watchful eyes of the ecologists - who, living in their godforsaken hole in Franche-Comte, obviously had access to fewer techniques. Babette and Lea, though they were from the Ile-de-France, didn't have much to say for themselves other than an occasional: 'That's cool . . .' calm was still a medium-term goal for them. All in all, they had a well balanced table, equipped with a natural leader of each sex, capable of fostering team spirit. On our side, things had a bit more trouble gelling. Josette and Rene regularly provided a commentary on the menu; they had become very familiar with the local food, 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; that wasn't going to get us very far, and I was usually impatient for the dessert to arrive.

I gave Rene his Michelin Guide back; 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 rat-arsed; shame won out in the end. The entrance to the Beach Resortel was decorated with a banner which read: Welcome to the Firemen of chazay. 'Now that's funny,' said Josette, 'Chazay - that's where your sister lives . . .' Rene 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 thing was, she was right. I threw myself on to the king-size bed and took a long swig of alcohol; and 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 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 their 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 sufficiently relieved that I was able to wait until breakfast time. At the next table there was a group of gigantic black Americans that could easily have been mistaken for a basketball team. Further along there was a table of Hong Kong Chinese - recognisable 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 pernickety 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 - they behave 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 realised that everything the civilised world had produced in the way of tourists was gathered here on the two-kilometre stretch of the seafront. Before I had walked,, thirty metres, 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 a typical, average tourist: I rented a sun-lounger with a fitted mattress, a parasol; I consumed a number of bottles of Sprite; I went for a dip, in moderation. The waves were gentle. I went back to the hotel at about five o'clock, averagely 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 search 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.