Platform (23 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
Part Three: Pattaya Beach
1
It was the first time for a long while that I had woken up alone. The hospital in Krabi was a small, bright building. The doctor came to see me midmorning. He was French, a member of Médecins du Monde; they had arrived on the scene the day after the attack. He was a man of about thirty, a little stooped, with a worried expression. He told me that I had been asleep for three days. "Actually, you weren't really asleep," he went on. "Sometimes you appeared to be awake. We spoke to you several times, but this is the first time we've managed to make contact." Make contact, I thought. He told me, too, that the death toll from the attack had been horrifying. At the moment, the dead numbered 117, making it the most murderous attack ever to take place in Asia. A number of the injured were still in extremely critical condition, considered too weak to be moved; Lionel was among them. Both of his legs had been severed, and a piece of metal had lodged in the pit of his stomach; his chances of survival were remote. Others who had been seriously injured had been transported to Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok. Jean-Yves had only been slightly hurt. A bullet had fractured his humerus, and it had been possible to treat him immediately. Me, I was absolutely fine, not even a scratch. "As for your friend . . . " the doctor said, "her body has already been repatriated to France. I spoke to her parents on the phone. She will be buried in Brittany."
He fell silent. He was probably waiting for me to say something. He watched me out of the corner of his eye; he seemed increasingly worried.
Toward noon, a nurse arrived with a tray, taking it away an hour later. She told me I really should start to eat again, that it was vital.
Jean-Yves came to see me sometime in the afternoon. He too looked at me strangely, a little sidelong. He talked mostly about Lionel, who was dying now, it was only a matter of hours. He had asked for Kim a lot. Miraculously, she was unhurt, but seemed to have got over it rather quickly: as he was taking a stroll in Krabi the previous evening, Jean-Yves had seen her on the arm of an Englishman. He had said nothing about this to Lionel, who didn't seem to harbor any illusions anyway; he said that he just felt fortunate to have met her at all. "It's strange," Jean-Yves said to me. "He seems happy."
As he was leaving my room, I realized that I hadn't said a word; I had had no idea what to say to him. I knew perfectly well that something was wrong, but it was a vague feeling, difficult to put into words. It seemed to me that the best thing to do was keep quiet until the people around me realized their mistake; it was just a bad patch I had to get through.
Before he left, Jean-Yves had looked up at me, then shook his head, discouraged. It appears —at least this is what they told me immediately afterwards —that I talked a lot, all the time, in fact, whenever I was left alone in the room; as soon as someone came in, I fell silent.
A few days later they transported us to Bumrungrad Hospital in an air ambulance. I didn't really understand the reasons for the transfer. In fact, I think it was mostly so the police would have an opportunity to question us. Lionel had died the night before. Crossing the corridor, I saw his body wrapped in a shroud.
The Thai police were accompanied by an embassy attache who acted as an interpreter. Unfortunately, I had little to tell them. What seemed to most obsess them was whether the attackers had been of Arab or Asian origin. I could well understand their preoccupation —it was important to know whether an international terrorist network had established a foothold in Thailand or whether they were dealing with Malay separatists —but all that I could do was repeat that everything had happened so quickly that I had seen only shadows. As far as I knew, the men could have been of Malay appearance.
Then I had a visit from some Americans, who I think were from the CIA. They spoke brutally, in an unpleasant tone —I felt as though I was a suspect myself. They hadn't thought it necessary to bring an interpreter, so I couldn't understand most of their questions. At the end, they showed me a series of photographs, purportedly of international terrorists; I did not recognize any of these men.
From time to time, Jean-Yves came to see me in my room, sat at the foot of the bed. I was aware of his presence in that I felt a little more tense. One morning, three days after we arrived, he handed me a small sheaf of papers: they were photocopies of newspaper articles. "The board of Aurore faxed them to me yesterday,'' he said. "They made no comment."
The first article, taken from the
Nouvel Observateur
,
was headlined "A Very Special Club"; it was two pages long, very detailed, and illustrated with a photograph taken from the German advertising campaign. The journalist accused the Aurore group in no uncertain terms of promoting sex tourism in third world countries, and added that, under the circumstances, the reaction of the Muslims was understandable. Jean-Claude Guillebaud dedicated his editorial to the same subject. Interviewed by telephone, Jean-Luc Espitalier had declared, "The Aurore group, a signatory of the world charter for ethical tourism, in no way sanctions such activities; those responsible will be disciplined." The dossier continued with a vehement but poorly documented article by Isabelle Alonso, from the
Journal de dimanche
,
entitled "The Return of Slavery." François Giroud picked up the theme in his weekly diary: "Faced," he wrote, "with the hundreds of thousands of women who have been sullied, humiliated, and reduced to slavery throughout the world —it is regrettable to have to say this—what do the deaths of a few of the well-heeled matter?" The terrorist attack in Krabi had naturally given the story considerable impact.
Liberation
ran a front-page story in which it published photos of the repatriated survivors, taken when they landed at Roissy, with the headline "Not So Innocent Victims." In his editorial, Gérard Dupuy singled out the Thai government for its lenient attitude to prostitution and drugs, as well as for its frequent breaches of democracy. As for
Paris-Match
,
under the headline "Carnage at Krabi" came a full account of the "night of horror." They had managed to procure photos, which, it has to be said, were of pretty poor quality black-and-white photocopies sent by fax. They could have been photos of just about anything, you could barely make out the bodies. In the same issue, they published the confessions of a sex tourist —someone who actually had had nothing to do with the events, a freelance writer who operated mostly in the Philippines. Jacques Chirac had immediately made a statement in which, though he expressed his revulsion for the attack, he condemned the "unacceptable behavior of some of our fellow citizens abroad." Speaking in the wake of the events, Lionel Jospin reiterated that a law existed to crack down on sex tourism, even when practiced by consenting adults. The articles that followed, in
Le Figaro
and
Le Monde
,
wondered what means should be used to fight this plague, and what position the international community should adopt.
Nouvel Observateur
,
was headlined "A Very Special Club"; it was two pages long, very detailed, and illustrated with a photograph taken from the German advertising campaign. The journalist accused the Aurore group in no uncertain terms of promoting sex tourism in third world countries, and added that, under the circumstances, the reaction of the Muslims was understandable. Jean-Claude Guillebaud dedicated his editorial to the same subject. Interviewed by telephone, Jean-Luc Espitalier had declared, "The Aurore group, a signatory of the world charter for ethical tourism, in no way sanctions such activities; those responsible will be disciplined." The dossier continued with a vehement but poorly documented article by Isabelle Alonso, from the
Journal de dimanche
,
entitled "The Return of Slavery." François Giroud picked up the theme in his weekly diary: "Faced," he wrote, "with the hundreds of thousands of women who have been sullied, humiliated, and reduced to slavery throughout the world —it is regrettable to have to say this—what do the deaths of a few of the well-heeled matter?" The terrorist attack in Krabi had naturally given the story considerable impact.
Liberation
ran a front-page story in which it published photos of the repatriated survivors, taken when they landed at Roissy, with the headline "Not So Innocent Victims." In his editorial, Gérard Dupuy singled out the Thai government for its lenient attitude to prostitution and drugs, as well as for its frequent breaches of democracy. As for
Paris-Match
,
under the headline "Carnage at Krabi" came a full account of the "night of horror." They had managed to procure photos, which, it has to be said, were of pretty poor quality black-and-white photocopies sent by fax. They could have been photos of just about anything, you could barely make out the bodies. In the same issue, they published the confessions of a sex tourist —someone who actually had had nothing to do with the events, a freelance writer who operated mostly in the Philippines. Jacques Chirac had immediately made a statement in which, though he expressed his revulsion for the attack, he condemned the "unacceptable behavior of some of our fellow citizens abroad." Speaking in the wake of the events, Lionel Jospin reiterated that a law existed to crack down on sex tourism, even when practiced by consenting adults. The articles that followed, in
Le Figaro
and
Le Monde
,
wondered what means should be used to fight this plague, and what position the international community should adopt.
In the days that followed, Jean-Yves tried to get in touch with Gottfried Rembke by telephone, succeeding only eventually. The head of TUI was sorry, truly sorry, but there was nothing he could do. In any case, as a tourist destination, Thailand was out of the question for several decades. Above and beyond that, the articles in the French press had had certain repercussions in Germany. It's true that opinion there was more divided, but the majority of the public nonetheless condemned sex tourism. Under the circumstances, he preferred to withdraw from the project.
2
I no more understood the reasons for my return to Paris than I had the reasons for my transfer to Bangkok. I was little liked by the hospital staff; they probably found me too inert: even in the hospital, even on your deathbed, you are forced to play the part. Medical personnel like patients to put up a certain amount of resistance, to show a willfulness which they can do their utmost to break, for the good of the patient, naturally. I manifested nothing of the sort. You could roll me onto my side ready for an injection and come back three hours later; I would still be in exactly the same position. The night before my departure, I banged roughly into one of the doors in the hospital corridor as I was trying to find the bathroom. In the morning, my face was covered in blood, there was a gash above my eyebrow, and I had to be cleaned up and have a dressing put on. It hadn't occurred to me to call a nurse; in fact, I hadn't felt a thing.
The flight was a neutral period of time. I'd lost even the habit of smoking. By the baggage carousel, I shook Jean-Yves's hand, then took a taxi to the Avenue de Choisy.
I immediately noticed that something wasn't right, that it would never be right. I didn't unpack. I walked around the apartment, a plastic bag in one hand, picking up all the photos of Valérie I could find. Most of them had been taken at her parents' in Brittany, on the beach or in the garden. There were also a few erotic photos that I had taken in the flat—I liked to watch her masturbate, I found her movements beautiful.
I sat on the sofa and dialed a number that I had been given to use in case of emergencies, twenty-four hours a day. It was a sort of crisis unit that had been set up especially to care for the survivors of the attack. It was based in a wing of the Sainte-Anne Hospital.
Most of the people who had asked to go there really were in a sad state: despite massive doses of tranquilizers, they had nightmares every night, with screams, worried shouts, tears every time. When I met them in the corridors I was struck by their distressed, panic-stricken faces; they seemed to be literally eaten up by fear. And that fear, I thought, would end only with their lives.
For my part, more than anything, I felt terribly weary. In general, I only got up to drink a cup of instant coffee or nibble a few crackers; meals were not compulsory, nor were the therapeutic activities. Even so, I underwent a series of tests, and three days after my arrival I had an interview with a psychiatrist. The tests had revealed "extremely weakened reactivity." I was not in pain, but I did, in fact, feel weakened; I felt weaker than it was possible to feel. He asked me what I intended to do. I replied, "Wait." I showed myself to be reasonably optimistic. I told him that all this sadness would come to an end, that I would find happiness again, but that I had to wait a while. He didn't seem really convinced. He was a man of about fifty, with a plump, cheerful face, absolutely clean-shaven.
After a week, they transferred me to a new psychiatric hospital, this time for a lengthy stay. I had to stay there for a little over three months. To my great surprise, I met the same psychiatrist there. It was hardly surprising, he told me, as this was where his practice was based. Helping crisis victims was only a temporary assignment, something of a specialty in his case, in fact—he had already served on a committee set up after the bombing of the Saint-Michel railway station.
He didn't really talk like a typical psychiatrist, or at least I found him bearable. I remember he talked to me about "freeing oneself from attachments": it sounded like some Buddhist bullshit. Freeing what? I was nothing more than an attachment. Inclined to the transitory by nature, I had become attached to a transitory thing, as was my nature— none of this demanded any particular comment. Had I been inclined toward the eternal by nature, I went on, in order to fuel the conversation, I would have become attached to things eternal. Apparently his technique worked well with survivors haunted by fears of mutilation and death. "These sufferings do not belong to you, they are not truly yours; they are merely passing phantoms in your mind," he told people, and in the end, they believed him.
I don't know at what point I began to become aware of it—in any case, it was only episodic—but there were still long periods (in fact there still are) when Valérie was categorically not dead. In the beginning, I could consciously prolong these without the slightest effort. I remember the first time I found it difficult, when I truly felt the weight of reality; it was just after a visit from Jean-Yves. It was a fraught moment; there were memories that I found difficult to deny. I didn't ask him to come back.
Marie-Jeanne's visit, on the other hand, did me good. She didn't say much, she talked a bit about the atmosphere at work. I told her straight off that I wouldn't be coming back, because I was going to move to Krabi. She acquiesced without comment. "Don't worry," I told her, "everything will be fine." She looked at me with mute compassion. Strangely, I actually think that she believed me.
The visit from Valerie's parents was probably the most painful. The psychiatrist must have told them that I was going through a "period of denial." As a result, Valerie's mother cried almost the whole time; her father didn't seem very comfortable either. They had also come to iron out some practical details, to bring me a suitcase containing my personal belongings. They imagined I wouldn't want to keep the apartment in the 13th arrondissement. "Of course not," I said. "Of course, we'll deal with that later." At that point Valerie's mother began to cry again.
Life goes by effortlessly in an institution, where, for the most part, human needs are satisfied. I had rediscovered
Questions pour un champion
,
and it was the only show I watched. I no longer took any interest in the news. A lot of the other residents spent the entire day in front of the television. I wasn't all that into it, really. Everything moved too quickly onscreen. I believed that, if I could remain calm, avoid thinking as much as possible, matters would sort themselves out in the end.
Questions pour un champion
,
and it was the only show I watched. I no longer took any interest in the news. A lot of the other residents spent the entire day in front of the television. I wasn't all that into it, really. Everything moved too quickly onscreen. I believed that, if I could remain calm, avoid thinking as much as possible, matters would sort themselves out in the end.
One morning in April, I found out that matters had, in effect, sorted themselves out and that I would soon be able to leave. This seemed to me more of a complication: I would have to find a hotel room, re-create a neutral environment. At least I had money, that was something at least. "You have to look on the bright side," I said to one of the nurses. She seemed surprised, perhaps because this was the first time I had ever spoken to her.
There is no specific treatment for denial, the psychiatrist explained to me at our last interview. It is not really a disorder of mood, but a problem of perception. He had kept me in the hospital all this time chiefly because he was worried about the possible risk of a suicide attempt — they are quite common in cases of sudden, brutal realizations; but now I was out of danger. I see, I said. I see.
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