Platform (4 page)

The Nouvelles Frontieres 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 decor 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.

I started, on the point of passing out, lit a cigarette to rally my forces. The sleeping pills really were too strong, they were making me ill, but the ones I used to take couldn't get me to sleep any more; there was no obvious solution. The OAPs were slowly circling round each other. I got the feeling that the man was a bit full of himself; as he was waiting for someone specific with whom to exchange a smile, he turned an incipient smile on the world. They had to have been a couple of small shopkeepers in a previous life, that was the only explanation. Gradually, the members of the group made their way to the guide as their names were called, took their keys and went up to their rooms — in a word, they dispersed. It was possible, the guide announced in a resonant voice, for us to take breakfast now if we wished; otherwise we could relax in our rooms; it was entirely up to us. Whatever we decided, we were to meet back in the lobby for the trip along the khlongs at 2 p.m.

' Sightseeing Tours: A Sociological Approach, Annals of Tourism Research, vol. 23, pp. 213-27 (1998) The window in my room looked directly out onto the motorway. It was six-thirty. The traffic was very heavy, but the double glazing let in only a faint rumble. The street lights were off, the sun hadn't yet begun to reflect on the steel and glass; at this time of the day, the city was grey. I ordered a double espresso from room service, which I knocked back with a couple of Efferalgan, a Doliprane and a double dose of Oscillococcinium; then I lay down and tried to close my eyes.

Shapes moved slowly in a confined space; they made a low buzzing sound - like machines on a building site, or giant insects. In the background, a man armed with a small scimitar carefully checked the sharpness of the blade; he was wearing a turban and baggy white trousers. Suddenly, the air became red and muggy, almost liquid; from the drops of condensation forming before my eyes I became conscious that a pane of glass separated me from the scene. The man was on the ground now, immobilised by some invisible force. The machines from the building site had surrounded him; there were a couple of JCBs and a small bulldozer with caterpillar tracks. The JCBs lifted their hydraulic arms and brought their buckets down together on the man, immediately slicing his body into seven or eight pieces; his head, however, still seemed animated by a demonic life-force, an evil smile continued to crease his bearded face. The-bulldozer in its turn advanced on the man, his head exploded like an egg; a spurt of brain and ground bone was splashed against the glass, a few inches from my face.

Chapter 5

Essentially, tourism, as a search for meaning, with the lucid sociability it favours, the images it generates, is a graduated encoded and untraumatising apprehension system of the external, of otherness.

Rachid Amirou

I woke up at about noon, the air-conditioning was making a low buzzing sound; my headache was a little better. Lying across the king-size bed, I was aware of the mechanics of the tour, the issues at stake. The group, as yet amorphous, would transform itself into a vibrant community; as of this afternoon I would have to start positioning myself, for now I had to choose a pair of shorts for the trip along the khlongs. I opted for a longish pair in blue denim, not too tight, which I complemented with a Radiohead tee-shirt; then I stuffed some odds and ends into a knapsack. In the bathroom mirror, I contemplated myself disgustedly; my anxious bureaucratic face clashed horribly with what I was wearing; I looked exactly like what I was: a forty-something civil servant on holiday, trying to pretend he's young; it was pretty demoralising. I walked over to the window, opened the curtains wide. From the twenty-seventh floor, the view was extraordinary. The imposing mass of the Marriott Hotel rose up on the left like a chalk cliff, striated by horizontal black lines: rows of windows half-hidden behind balconies. The sun, at its zenith, harshly emphasised planes and ridges. Directly ahead, reflections multiplied themselves into infinity on a complex structure of cones and pyramids of bluish glass. On the horizon, the colossal concrete cubes of the Grand Plaza President were stacked on top of one another like the levels of a step pyramid. On the right, above the green, shimmering space of Lumphini Park, you could make out, like an ochre citadel, the angular towers of the Dusit Thani. The sky was a pure blue. Slowly I drank a Singha Gold while meditating on the notion of irreparability.

Downstairs, the guide was doing a sort of roll-call, so she could hand out breakfast vouchers. That's how I discovered the two bimbos were called Babette and Lea. Babette had curly blond hair - well, not naturally curly, it had probably been waved; she had beautiful breasts, the slut, clearly visible under her see-through top - an ethnic print from Trois Suisses, most likely. Her trousers, in the same fabric, were just as see-through; you could easily make out the white lace of her panties. Lea, very dark, was skinnier; she made up for this with the pretty curve of her bum, nicely accentuated by her black cycling shorts, and with a thrusting bust, the tips of which were squeezed into a bright yellow bustier. A tiny diamond adorned her slender navel. I stared attentively at the two sluts so that I could forget them forever.

The distribution of the vouchers continued. The guide, Son, called each of the group members by their first names; it made me sick. We were adults, for fuck's sake. I felt a ray of hope when she referred to the OAPs as 'Monsieur et Madame Lobligeois'; but immediately she added with a delighted smile 'Josette and Rene'. It seemed unbelievable, but true nevertheless. 'My name is Rene,' confirmed the old man, addressing himself to no one in particular. 'Tough . . .' I muttered. His wife shot him a look as if to say: 'Shut up, Rene, you're annoying everyone.' I suddenly realised that he reminded me of the character Monsieur Plus in the Bahlsen biscuit ads. It might have been him, too. I directed this question to his wife: had they, in the past, ever worked as extras? Absolutely not, she informed me, they had run a charcuterie. Yeah, that would probably fit too. So, this cheery jolly little fellow was a former pork-butcher (in Clamart, his wife explained); a modest establishment devoted to feeding the proletariat had been the previous theatre for his antics and quips.

Then there were two other couples, less distinctive, who seemed to be connected in some obscure way. Had they already been on holiday together? Had they met each other over breakfast? At this point in the tour, anything was possible. The first couple was also the more unappealing. The man looked a bit like a young Antoine Waechter, if you can imagine such a thing, but his hair was darker and he had a neatly trimmed beard; actually, he didn't so much look like Antoine Waechter as like Robin Hood, though he looked Swiss, or to be more precise, he had something of the Jura about him. All in all, he didn't look much like anything, but he seemed a real jerk. Not to mention his wife, wearing dungarees, serious, a good milker. It was inconceivable that these people had not yet reproduced, I thought; they'd probably left the child with their parents in Lon-le-Saulnier. The second couple, a little older, seemed rather less serene. Skinny and nervous, with a moustache, the man introduced himself to me as a naturopath, and, faced with my ignorance, went on to explain that he practised healing using plants or other natural means wherever possible. His wife, thin and curt, worked in social services, reintegrating, I don't know, first offenders or something in Alsace; they looked like they hadn't fucked for thirty years. The man seemed inclined to tell me about the benefits of natural medicines; but still dazed from this first encounter, I went and sat on a bench nearby. From where I sat, I could barely make out the last three members of the group, who were half hidden by the pork-butcher couple. There was some fifty-year-old thug called Robert, with a particularly harsh expression; a woman, of the same age, with curly black hair framing a face that was nasty, world-weary and flabby, whose name was Josiane; and another woman, a bit younger, almost unnoticeable, of about twenty-seven who followed Josiane with a sort of canine docility and whose name was Valerie. Anyway, I'll get back to them; I'll have far too much time to get back to them, I thought glumly as I walked towards the coach. I noticed that Son was still staring at her list of passengers. Her face was tense, words formed on her lips involuntarily; it was clear she was anxious, almost distraught. Counting, it appeared there were thirteen people in the group; and Thais are frequently superstitious, even more so than the Chinese: the numbering of storeys in a building or houses in a street often goes straight from twelve to fourteen, simply to avoid mentioning the number thirteen. I took a seat on the left-hand side about halfway down the coach. People establish points of reference pretty quickly on this kind of group outing: in order to feel relaxed, they need to find a place and stick to it, maybe leave some personal odds and ends around, actively inhabiting the space in some way.

To my great surprise, I saw Valerie take a seat beside me, even though the coach was about three-quarters empty. Two rows behind, Babette and Lea exchanged a couple of scornful words. They'd better calm down, those sluts. I discreetly fixed my attention on the young woman: she had long black hair, a nondescript face, a face that could be described as unexceptional: not pretty, not ugly, strictly speaking. After brief but intense consideration, I managed awkwardly: 'Not too hot?' 'No, no, here in the coach is fine,' she replied quickly, without smiling, relieved simply that I had started a conversation. Though what I'd said was remarkably stupid: actually, it was freezing in the bus. 'Have you been to Thailand before?' she went on by way of conversation. 'Yes, once.' She froze in a waiting posture, ready to listen to an interesting anecdote. Was I about to recount my previous trip to her? Maybe not right away. 'It was good . . .' I said eventually, adopting a friendly tone to compensate for the banality of what I was saying. She nodded in satisfaction. It was then that I realised that this young woman was in no way submissive to Josiane: she was just submissive in general, and maybe just ready to look for a new master; maybe she'd already had enough of Josiane - who, sitting two rows in front of us, was furiously leafing through the Guide du Routard, throwing dirty looks in our direction. Romance, romance.

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; washing 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; they waved at us excitedly. There was vegetation everywhere: our pirogue cut a path through masses of water-lilies and lotuses; 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, Son told us, in the middle of the dry season; even so the air was completely, unrelentingly humid.

Valerie was sitting beside me; she 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; even the naturopaths seemed reasonably calm. Around us, only faint sounds and smiles. Valerie turned to me. I almost felt like taking her hand; for no particular reason, I didn't. The boat stopped moving entirely: we were rapt in the momentary eternity of a blissful afternoon; even Babette and Lea had shut up. They were a bit spaced out, to use the expression Lea later employed on the jetty.