Platform (5 page)

While we were visiting the Temple of Dawn, I made a mental note to buy some more Viagra when I found a chemist that was open. On the way back, I found out that Valerie 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 fervour, 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 any more. 'Oh, yes, lovely . . .' she replied all the same; she wasn't demanding, she really was a nice girl. Even so, as soon as the coach arrived at the hotel, I ran straight to the bar.

Three cocktails later, I was beginning to regret my behaviour. I went out and walked round 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. Valerie 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 masters 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 round 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 coloured 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 stylised Eiffel Tower in the far distance - not quite the same concept as the fitness centres of Mercure hotels. I went in and ordered a bourbon at the bar. Behind a glass screen, a dozen girls turned towards 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 programme on the television or deep in conversation with her neighbour. 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 Oon, 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 realised at once that I wasn't going to regret my choice. Oon moved very nicely, very lithely; she'd used just enough soap. At one point, she at length caressed my buttocks with her breasts; it was a personal initiative, not all the girls did that. Her well-soaped pussy grazed 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, Oon, 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 on stage. 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 patronised the place 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 khat!' 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 dress with gold piping, but it didn't make her the least bit more appealing. Her plump, shrewd face was turned towards me, unblinkingly. I noticed that she'd washed her hair. She wasn't ugly, you might even say she was pretty — I had fancied Lebanese women like 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, she became snotty. 'Oh no, I don't really like that sort of thing . . .' she went on, curving her arm like an actress playing 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 letter-writer on occasion, St Jerome also knew how to display the virtues of Christian patience when circumstances called for it; that 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 Josette and Rene's level, people she thought of, in her heart of hearts, as white trash; I realised, rather uncomfortably, that she was looking for an ally. True, the tour would soon head deep inland, 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: Josiane, still motionless, was staring at Robert, who was walking briskly towards the massage parlour.

Babette and Lea were standing next to the trays of vegetables. I nodded in minimal acknowledgement 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. Lea was wearing a Rage Against the Machine tee-shirt and a pair of tight denim shorts, Babette something unstructured in which different coloured stripes of silk alternated with transparent fabric. They were chattering enthusiastically, talking about different hotels in New York. Marrying one of those girls, I thought, that 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 on 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. It was just the right time for a cockroach to make an appearance in my life; couldn't have been better. It scuttled quickly across the porcelain, the little bugger; 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 Oon, in spite of her marvellously elastic vagina? We were already doomed. Cockroaches copulate gracelessly, 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 about cockroaches.

Before getting undressed, I once more paid homage to Oon 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 Lea could never have been Thai prostitutes, I thought, they weren't worthy of it. Valerie, maybe; that girl had something, she managed to be both maternal and a bit of a slut, potentially at least, I mean; for the moment she was just a nice friendly, serious girl. Intelligent, too. I definitely liked Valerie. I masturbated gently so I could read in peace, producing just a couple of drips.

If it was intended in principle to prepare you for a trip to Thailand, in practice the Guide du Routard had strong reservations about, and as early as the preface, felt duty-bound to denounce, sexual 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 was to go by the sarcastic little phrases scattered throughout the book, in the style of: 'Ah, my friends, if you had been there back in the hippy 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 had 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 bestseller, 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, good-looking 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, 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 gruelling scenes. It was a suspense thriller, well, there was a little suspense: as early as Chapter Two, it was obvious that the guys running the firm were bastards, and there was no way the hero was going to die at the end; nor his wife for that matter. But, in the meantime, to prove he wasn't joking, the author was going to sacrifice a couple of sympathetic minor characters; all that was left was to find out which ones. That 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.

Chapter 6

Valerie had spent the early years of her life in Tremeven, a hamlet a few kilometres north of Guingamp. In the '70s and early '80s, the government and local councils had nurtured an ambition to create a massive production centre for pork products in Brittany, capable of rivalling those of Britain or Denmark. Encouraged to adopt intensive farming methods, the young farmers - including Valerie's father - became heavily indebted to the Credit Agricole. In 1984, pork prices began to collapse; Valerie was eleven years old. She was a well-behaved girl, a bit lonely, a good student; she was about to enter her second year at the secondary school in Guingamp. Her older brother, also a good student, had just passed his bac; he had enrolled in preparatory classes in agronomy at the lycee in Rennes.

Valerie remembered Christmas 1984; her father had spent the day with the accountant from the National Farmers' Union. He was silent for much of Christmas dinner. During dessert, after two glasses of champagne, he spoke to his son. 'I can hardly recommend that you take over the farm,' he said. 'For twenty years now I've been getting up at dawn and finishing the day at eight or nine o'clock; your mother and I, we've barely had a holiday. I'd be as well off selling the place now, with all the machinery and the farm buildings, and investing the money in tourist property: I could spend the rest of my days working on my tan.'

In the years that followed, pork prices continued to plummet. There were farmers' protests, marked by a desperate violence; tons of slurry were dumped on the Esplanade des Invalides, a number of pigs were gutted in front of the Palais Bourbon. At the end of 1986, the government announced emergency relief followed by a recovery plan for pig-breeders. In April 1987, Valerie's father sold his farm - for a little more than four million francs. With the money from the sale, he bought a large apartment in Saint-Quay-Portrieux, where he planned to live, and three studio flats in Torremolinos. He had a million francs left over which he invested in unit trusts and was even able - it was his childhood dream - to buy a small yacht. Sadly, and with some disgust, he signed the farm bill of sale. The new owner was a young guy, about twenty-three, single, from Lannion, just out of agricultural college; he still believed in the plans to revive the industry. Valerie's father was forty-eight, his wife, forty-seven; they had dedicated the best years of their lives to a hopeless task. They lived in a country where, compared to speculative investment, investment in production brought little return; he understood that now. In their first year, the rents from the studio flats brought in more money than all his years of work. He took up crosswords, took the yacht out into the bay, sometimes fishing. His wife found it easier to adapt to their new life and was a great support to him; she started to want to read again, to go to the cinema, to go out.