Platform (15 page)
Authors: Michel Houellebecq
Tags: #Social life and customs, #1986-, #20th century, #Sex tourism, #Fiction, #Literary, #Social conditions, #France, #France - Social life and customs - 20th century, #Psychological, #Fiction - General, #Humorous fiction, #Thailand, #Erotica, #General, #Thailand - Social conditions - 1986
6
It is apparent from our research that consumers have three major expectations:
the desire to be safe, the desire for affection, and the desire for beauty.
— BERNARD GUILBAUD
On June 30, the reservations figures from the travel agencies arrived. They were excellent. Eldorador Discovery was a success. It had immediately achieved better results than Eldorador Standard—which continued to slide. Valérie decided to take a week's holiday. We went to her parents' at Saint-Quay-Portrieux. I felt rather old to be playing the role of the fiancé brought to meet the parents; after all, I was thirteen years older than she was, and this was the first time I had ever been in such a situation. The train stopped at Saint-Brieuc, where her father was waiting for us at the station. He kissed his daughter warmly and hugged her to him for a long time; you could see that he missed her. "You've lost a bit of weight," he told her. Then he turned to me and offered me his hand, without really looking at me. I think he was intimidated too —he knew I worked for the Ministry of Culture, while he was just a farmer. Her mother was much more talkative, grilling me at length about my life, my work, my hobbies. In any event, it wasn't so difficult. Valérie stayed at my side; from time to time she answered for me, and we would exchange looks. I couldn't imagine how I might behave in a situation like this if one day I had children. I couldn't really imagine much about the future.
The evening meal was a real feast: lobster, saddle of lamb, several cheeses, a strawberry pie, and coffee. For my part, I was tempted to see this as evidence of acceptance, although obviously I knew that the menu had been planned in advance. Valérie handled the bulk of the conversation, mostly talking about her new job—about which I knew just about everything. I let my gaze wander over the curtain material, the ornaments, the family photos in their frames. I was in the midst of a real
family,
and it was at once touching and a little frightening.
family,
and it was at once touching and a little frightening.
Valérie insisted on sleeping in the room she had had as a teenager. "You'd be better off in the guest room," her mother insisted. "The two of you will be pressed for space.'' It was true that the bed was a little narrow, but I was very moved, as I pushed Valerie's panties down and stroked her pussy, to think that this was where she slept when she was only thirteen or fourteen. Wasted years, I thought. I knelt at the foot of the bed, took off her pants completely, and turned her toward me. Her vagina closed over the tip of my penis. I pretended to penetrate her, going in a couple of centimeters and pulling back in quick, short thrusts, squeezing her breasts between my hands. She came with a muffled cry, then burst out laughing. "My parents," she whispered, "they're not asleep yet." I penetrated her again, harder this time so that I could come. She watched me, her eyes shining, and placed a hand over my mouth just as I came inside her with a hoarse moan.
Later, I studied the furniture in the room curiously. On a shelf, just above the Bibliotheque Rose series, there were several little exercise books, carefully bound. "Oh, those," she said. "I used to do them when I was about ten, twelve. Have a look if you like. They're Famous Five stories."
"How do you mean?"
"Unpublished Famous Five stories. I used to write them myself, using the same characters."
I took them down: there was
Five in Outer Space
,
Five on a Canadian Adventure
.
I suddenly had an image of a little girl full of imagination, a rather lonely girl, whom I would never know.
Five in Outer Space
,
Five on a Canadian Adventure
.
I suddenly had an image of a little girl full of imagination, a rather lonely girl, whom I would never know.
In the days that followed, we didn't do much beyond going to the beach. The weather was beautiful, though the water was too cold to swim in for long. Valérie lay in the sun for hours at a time. She was recovering gradually: the last three months had been the hardest of her working life. One evening, three days after our arrival, I talked to her about it. It was at the Oceanic Bar, where we'd just ordered cocktails.
"You won't have so much work now, I suppose, now that you've launched the package?"
"For the time being, no." She smiled cynically. "But we'll have to come up with something else pretty quickly."
"Why? Why not just stop at that?"
"Because that's how the game goes. If Jean-Yves were here he'd tell you that that's the capitalist principle: if you don't move forward, you're dead. If you at least have acquired a decisive competitive advantage, you can bank on it for a couple of years; but we're not there yet. The principle of Eldorador Discovery is good —it's clever, canny if you like, but it's not really innovative, it's just a good mix of other concepts. The competition will see that it works and before you know it, they'll be doing the same thing. It's not that difficult to do; the hard part was setting it up in so little time. But I'm sure that Nouvelles Frontières, for example, would be able to offer a similar package by next summer. If we want to keep our advantage, we have to innovate again."
"And it never ends?"
"I don't think so, Michel. I'm well paid, I work in an industry I understand. I accept the rules of the game."
I must have looked gloomy; she put her hand on my neck. "Let's go and eat," she said. "My parents will be waiting for us."
We went back to Paris on Sunday evening. Valérie and Jean-Yves had a meeting with Éric Leguen on Monday morning. He made a point of personally expressing the group's satisfaction with the first results of their recovery plan. As a bonus, the board of directors had unanimously decided to allocate shares to each of them, exceptional for executives who had been with the company less than a year.
That evening, the three of us had dinner in a Moroccan restaurant on the Rue des Ecoles. Jean-Yves was unshaven; his head was nodding and he looked a little puffy. "I think he's started drinking," Valérie said to me in the taxi. "He had a dreadful holiday with his wife and kids on the lie de Re. They were supposed to be there for two weeks, but he left after a week. He told me he couldn't bear his wife's friends anymore."
It was true he didn't look at all well. He didn't touch his tagine and continually poured himself more wine. "We've made it!" he said sarcastically. "Here we go! We're getting into serious money now!" He shook his head, drained his wineglass. "Sorry," he said pitifully, "sorry, I shouldn't talk like that." He placed his hands, trembling slightly, on the table, and waited. Slowly he stopped trembling. Then he looked Valérie straight in the eye.
"You know what happened to Marylise?"
"Marylise Le Francois? No, I haven't seen her. Is she sick?"
"Not sick, no. She spent three days in the hospital on tranquilizers, but she's not sick. Actually, she was attacked, raped on the train to Paris, on her way home from work last Wednesday."
Marylise returned to work the following Monday. It was obvious she had been badly shaken. Her movements were slow, almost mechanical. She told her story easily, too easily, it didn't seem natural: her voice was neutral, her face expressionless, rigid, it was as if she were reciting her police statement. Leaving work at 10:15 p.m., she had decided to take the 10:21 p.m. train, thinking it would be quicker than waiting for a taxi. The carriage was three-quarters empty. Four guys came up to her and immediately started insulting her. As far as she could tell, they were West Indian. She tried to talk to them, make pleasantries. For her trouble she got a couple of slaps that knocked her half-unconscious. At that point, they jumped her, two of them holding her down on the floor. Violently, brutally, they penetrated her every orifice. Every time she tried to make a sound, she was punched or slapped. It had gone on for a long time, the train had stopped at several stations; passengers got off, warily changed carriages. As the guys took turns raping her, they continued to taunt and insult her, calling her a slut and a douche bag. By the end there was no one in the car. They ended up in a circle around her, spitting and pissing on her, then they shoved her with their feet, until she was half-hidden under one of the seats, then they calmly got off the train at the Gare de Lyon. Two minutes later, the first passengers to board called the police, who arrived almost immediately. The superintendent wasn't really surprised. According to him, she'd been relatively lucky. Quite often, after they had used the girl, these guys would end up shoving a piece of wood studded with nails into her vagina or her anus. The line was classed as "dangerous."
An internal memo reminded employees of the usual safety measures, repeating that taxis were at their disposal should they need to work late and that the fares would be entirely covered by the company. The number of security guards patrolling the grounds and the parking lot was increased.
That evening, since her car was being repaired, Jean-Yves drove Valérie home. As he was stepping out of his office, he looked out over the chaotic landscape of houses, shopping centers, high-rises, and highway interchanges. Far away, on the horizon, a layer of pollution lent the sunset strange tints of mauve and green. "It's strange," he said to her. "Here we are inside the company like well-fed beasts of burden. And outside are the predators, the savage world. I was in Sao Paulo once, now there's where evolution has really been pushed to its limits. It's not even a city anymore, it's a sort of urban territory that extends as far as the eye can see, with its favelas, its huge office blocks, its luxury housing surrounded by guards armed to the teeth. It has a population of more than twenty million, many of whom are born, live, and die without ever stepping outside the limits of its terrain. The streets are dangerous there: even in a car, you could easily be held up at gunpoint at a traffic light, or you might wind up being tailed by a gang. The most advanced gangs have machine guns and rocket launchers. Businessmen and rich people use helicopters to get around almost all the time, and there are helipads pretty much everywhere, on the roofs of banks and apartment buildings. At ground level the street is left to the poor—and the gangs."
As he turned onto the highway heading south, he added in a low voice: "I've been having doubts lately. More and more now, I have doubts about the sort of world we're creating."
A couple of days later, they returned to the subject. After he had parked on the Avenue de Choisy, Jean-Yves lit a cigarette. He was silent for a moment, then he turned to Valérie. "I feel really terrible about Marylise. The doctors said she could go back to work, and it's true that in a sense, she's back to normal, she's not having panic attacks. But she never takes the initiative, it's as if she's paralyzed. Every time there's a decision to be made, she comes and asks me, and if I'm not there, she's capable of waiting for hours without lifting a finger. For a marketing manager, it's not good enough. It can't go on like this."
"You're not going to fire her?"
Jean-Yves stubbed out his cigarette and stared out of the car for a long time. He gripped the steering wheel. He seemed to be more and more tense, unsettled; Valérie noticed that even his suit was sometimes stained nowadays.
"I don't know," he whispered at last, with difficulty. "I've never had to do anything like this. I couldn't fire her, that would be really shitty. But I'll have to find her another job where she has fewer decisions to make, fewer dealings with people. To make matters worse, ever since it happened, she's become more and more racist in her reactions. It's understandable, it's not hard to understand, but in the tourist industry it's just not acceptable. In our advertising, our catalogues, all our marketing material, we portray the locals as warm, welcoming, friendly people. That's the way it is: it really is a professional obligation."
The following day, Jean-Yves broached the subject with Leguen, who had fewer qualms, and, a week later, Marylise was transferred to the accounts department to replace an employee who had just retired.
Another marketing manager needed to be found for Eldorador. Jean-Yves and Valérie handled the job interviews together. After they had seen about ten candidates, they had lunch in the company cafeteria to discuss the appointment.
"I'd be quite tempted to go with Noureddine," said Valérie. "He's incredibly talented, and he's already worked on quite a variety of projects."
"Yes, he is the best of the bunch; but I wonder if he might be a bit overqualified for the job. I can't really see him doing marketing for a travel company, I see him in something more prestigious, more
arty
.*
He'll get bored here, he won't stay. Our target market really is middle-of-the-road. And his parents being
beurs
,
that could cause problems. To appeal to people, we have to use a lot of cliches about Arab countries: the hospitality, the mint tea, the festivals, the Bedouin . . . I've found that kind of thing doesn't really go clown too well with Arabs here; in fact, a lot of them don't really like Arab countries."
arty
.*
He'll get bored here, he won't stay. Our target market really is middle-of-the-road. And his parents being
beurs
,
that could cause problems. To appeal to people, we have to use a lot of cliches about Arab countries: the hospitality, the mint tea, the festivals, the Bedouin . . . I've found that kind of thing doesn't really go clown too well with Arabs here; in fact, a lot of them don't really like Arab countries."
"That's racial discrimination," Valérie said, teasingly.
"Don't be stupid!" Jean-Yves was getting angry. Since he had come back from holiday, he was clearly overstressed, and he was beginning to lose his sense of humor. "Everyone does it!" he said, too loudly, earning them sidelong glances from the neighboring tables. "People's origins are part of their personalities, you have to take them into consideration, it's obvious. For example, I'd happily take a Moroccan or Tunisian immigrant—even one much more recent than Noureddine—to handle the negotiations with local suppliers. They have a foot in both camps, which is a real advantage, since the people they deal with are always the outsiders. On top of that, they come across as someone who's made it in France, so the guys respect them immediately and don't think they're going to be ripped off. The best negotiators I've ever had have always been people of dual origin. But here, for this job, I'd be more tempted to take Brigit."
"The Danish girl?"
"Yes. Purely as a designer; she's also very talented. She's really antiracist —I think she lives with a Jamaican guy—she's a bit stupidly enthusiastic about anything exotic, on principle. She has no intention of having children just yet. All in all, I think she's the right fit."
There was perhaps another reason, too, Valérie realized some days later when she surprised Brigit putting her hand on Jean-Yves's shoulder. "Yeah, you're right,'' he admitted as they had coffee by the vending machine. "My rap sheet is getting worse, now I'm getting into sexual harassment. Look, it's only happened once or twice, and it won't go any further than that—in any case, she's got a boyfriend.'' Valérie looked at him quickly. He needed a haircut—he was really letting himself go. "I wasn't blaming you," she said. Intellectually, he hadn't slipped at all — he was still capable of flawless assessments of situations and people, had an excellent eye for a financial setup —but he seemed increasingly like a man who was unhappy, adrift.
They began to assess the customer-satisfaction surveys. A large number had been filled in, thanks to a prize draw in which the first fifty won a week's holiday. At first glance, the reasons for their dissatisfaction with Eldorador Standard were difficult to establish. The customers were satisfied with the accommodations and the location, satisfied with the food, satisfied with the activities and the sports offered; that said, fewer and fewer of them were returning customers.
By chance, Valérie happened on an article in
Tourisme Hebdo
analyzing consumers' new values. The author claimed to use the Holbrook and Hirschman model, which focuses on the emotion the consumer feels when faced with a product or service. But the conclusions drawn were nothing new. The "new consumers" were described as being less predictable, more eclectic, more sophisticated, more concerned with humanitarian issues. They no longer consumed to "seem," but to "be":
more serenity
.
They had balanced diets, were careful about their health. They were slightly fearful of others and of the future. They demanded the right to be unfaithful out of curiosity, in the name of eclecticism. They favored things that were solid, durable, authentic. They had ethical leanings:
more solidarity
,
etc. She had read all these things a hundred times: behavioral psychologists and sociologists transplanted the same words from one article to another, one magazine to another. In any case, they had already taken all these factors into account. The Eldorador villages were built of traditional materials, following the architectural traditions of the host country. The self-service menus were balanced, with ample room given over to selections of fresh vegetables, fruit, the Cretan diet. Among the activities on offer were yoga, relaxation therapy, and Tai Chi. Aurore had signed the ethical tourism charter, gave regularly to the World Wildlife Fund. None of these things seemed sufficient to halt the decline.
Tourisme Hebdo
analyzing consumers' new values. The author claimed to use the Holbrook and Hirschman model, which focuses on the emotion the consumer feels when faced with a product or service. But the conclusions drawn were nothing new. The "new consumers" were described as being less predictable, more eclectic, more sophisticated, more concerned with humanitarian issues. They no longer consumed to "seem," but to "be":
more serenity
.
They had balanced diets, were careful about their health. They were slightly fearful of others and of the future. They demanded the right to be unfaithful out of curiosity, in the name of eclecticism. They favored things that were solid, durable, authentic. They had ethical leanings:
more solidarity
,
etc. She had read all these things a hundred times: behavioral psychologists and sociologists transplanted the same words from one article to another, one magazine to another. In any case, they had already taken all these factors into account. The Eldorador villages were built of traditional materials, following the architectural traditions of the host country. The self-service menus were balanced, with ample room given over to selections of fresh vegetables, fruit, the Cretan diet. Among the activities on offer were yoga, relaxation therapy, and Tai Chi. Aurore had signed the ethical tourism charter, gave regularly to the World Wildlife Fund. None of these things seemed sufficient to halt the decline.
"I think people are just lying," said Jean-Yves, having reread the summary of the customer surveys a second time. "They say they're satisfied, they tick the box marked 'Good' every time, but in reality they've been bored stiff for the whole holiday and they feel too guilty to admit it. I'm going to end up selling off all the resorts we can't convert to the Discovery formula and really go for it on the activity holidays: add four-by-fours, hot-air balloon trips, traditional feasts in the desert, trips in dugout canoes, scuba diving, white-water rafting, the works..."
"We're not the only ones in the market."
"No," he agreed, disheartened.
"We should try spending a week at one of the clubs, incognito, not for any particular reason, just to see what the atmosphere is like."
"Yeah." Jean-Yves sat up in his armchair, took a sheaf of listings. He flicked quickly through the pages. "Djerba and Monastir are a disaster, but I think we're going to drop Tunisia altogether anyway. It's already too built-up, and the competition are prepared to drop their prices to ludicrous levels. Given our positioning, we could never follow them."
"Have you got any offers to buy?"
"Oddly enough, yes. Neckermann is interested. They want to get into Eastern Europe: Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland .. . the very bottom of the market, but the Costa Brava is already saturated. They're interested in our Agadir resort as well, and it's a reasonable offer. I'm quite tempted to sell to them; even with southern Morocco, Agadir isn't taking off—I think people will always prefer Marrakech."
"But Marrakech is awful."
"I know. The strange thing is that Sharm-el-Sheikh isn't doing all that well. It's got a lot going for it: the most beautiful coral reefs in the world, trips to the Sinai desert. .."
"Yeah, but it's in Egypt."
"And?"
"I don't think people have forgotten the terrorist attack in Luxor in 1997. After all, there were fifty-eight dead. The only way you're going to sell Sharm-el-Sheikh is to take out the word 'Egypt.' "
"What do you want to put in its place?"
"I don't know, 'The Red Sea' maybe?"
"OK, 'The Red Sea' it is." He made a note and went back to leafing through the figures. "Africa is doing well —that's strange. Cuba conies rather low. But Cuban music, that whole Latin vibe is hip, isn't it? The Dominican Republic is always full, for example." He read the description of the Cuban resort: "The Guardalavaca hotel is almost new, it's competitively priced. Not too sporty, not too family-oriented. 'Live the magic of Cuban nights to the wild rhythms of salsa . . .' Numbers are down 15 percent. Maybe we could go and have a look at the place: either there or Egypt."
"Wherever you want, Jean-Yves," she answered wearily. "In any case, it will do you good to get away without your wife."
August had settled over Paris. The days were hot, almost stifling, but the good weather didn't last—after a day or two a storm would come, and the air would suddenly become cool. Then the sun would come Out, with the mercury in the thermometer, and the pollution index would begin to rise again. To tell the truth, it was of limited interest to me. I had given up on peep shows since I met Valérie, and I had also given up, many years ago, on the "urban adventure." Paris had never been a moveable feast for me, and I could think of no reason why it should become one. Still, ten or twelve years ago, when I was starting out in the Ministry of Culture, I used to go out to the clubs and bars that were "don't-misses"; all I remember there was a slight but persistent feeling of unease. I had nothing to say, I felt completely incapable of carrying on a conversation with anyone at all, and I didn't know how to dance, either. It was in such circumstances that I started to become an alcoholic. Alcohol didn't let me down, never once in my life—it has been a constant support to me. After about ten gin and tonics, I occasionally—pretty rarely; all in all, it must have happened four or five times —managed to find the requisite energy to ask a girl to share my bed. The results, in general, were pretty disappointing: I couldn't get it up, and I usually fell asleep after a couple of minutes. Later, I discovered the existence of Viagra. Elevated blood-alcohol levels limited its effectiveness a lot, but if you boosted the dosage, you could still get somewhere. The game, in any case, wasn't worth the effort. In fact, before Valérie, I had never met a single girl who could come close to a Thai prostitute. It's possible that when I was very young, I managed to feel something when I was with sixteen or seventeen-year-olds. But the situation I moved in was a complete disaster. The girls weren't remotely interested in sex, only in seduction—and even then it was a kind of elitist, trashy, bizarre seduction that was not the least bit erotic. In bed, they were simply incapable of the least thing. Either that, or they needed fantasies, a whole lot of fastidious, kitschy scenarios, the mere mention of which was enough to make me sick. They liked to talk about sex, that much was true, in fact it was their only real topic of conversation; but they didn't have the slightest sensual innocence. As a matter of fact, the men weren't much better. In any case, the French have a penchant for talking about sex at every possible opportunity without ever doing anything about it; but it was seriously starting to depress me.
Anything can happen in life, especially nothing. But this time at least something had happened in my life: I had found a lover and she made me happy. Our August was very quiet. Espitalier, Leguen, and most of the other senior executives at Aurore had gone away on vacation. Valérie and Jean-Yves had decided not to make any important decisions before the Cuba trip at the beginning of September. It was a break, a period of calm. Jean-Yves was a bit better. "He finally decided to go see a whore," I learned from Valérie. "He should have done it long ago. He's drinking less now, he's calmer."
"All the same, from what I remember, hookers aren't so great."
"Yeah, but this is different, these girls work via the Internet. They're pretty young, some of them are still students. They don't take many clients, they pick and choose, and they are not doing it just for the money. At least lie told me it's pretty good. If you want we can try it sometime. A bisexual girl for the two of us: I know men are turned on by all that and, actually, I like girls too."
We didn't do it that summer, but the simple fact that she had suggested it was tremendously exciting. I was lucky. She knew the different things that kept male desire alive—well, not completely, that was impossible, but let's say enough to make love from time to time, while waiting for everything to come to an end. In fact, being aware of such things is nothing; it's easy, pathetically so. But she enjoyed doing these things, she took pleasure in them, she enjoyed seeing the desire rising in my eyes. Often, in a restaurant, when she came back from the restroom, she would place the panties she had just taken off on the table. Then she liked to slip a hand between my legs to make the most of my erection. Sometimes she would open my fly and jerk me off right there, hidden by the tablecloth. In the mornings, too, when she woke me with fellatio and handed me a cup of coffee before taking me into her mouth again, I would feel a dizzying rush of gratitude and gentleness. She knew how to stop just before I came, she could have kept me on the brink for hours. I lived inside a game, a game that was tender and exciting, the only game left to adults; I moved through a universe of gentle desires and limitless moments of pleasure.
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