Platform (32 page)

'Don't make fun of him . . .' Valerie protested. 'I think I finally understand what you see in him,' she said turning to me; 'He's an endearing boy. Anyway, I'm sure he's having a fabulous holiday.'

It was getting dark; lights winked on in the villages around the bay. A last ray of sun lit up the golden roof of the pagoda. Since Valerie had informed him of her decision, Jean-Yves hadn't broached the subject again. He waited until the end of the meal to do so; he ordered a bottle of wine.

'I'm going to miss you . . .' he said. 'It won't be the same. We've been working together for more than five years. We've worked well together, we've never had a serious row. Without you, I would never have made it.'

Valerie didn't say anything. There was nothing to say; broadly speaking, it was true.

'Now,' he said thoughtfully, 'we'll be able to extend the formula. One of the most obvious countries is Brazil. I've also been thinking about Kenya again: the ideal thing to do would be to open another club, further inland, for the safaris, and leave the beach club as an 'Aphrodite' resort. One of the other immediate possibilities is Vietnam.'

'You're not afraid of the competition?' I asked.

'There's no risk there. The American chains wouldn't dare get involved in something like this. What I was a bit afraid of was the reaction of the French press; but for the moment, there's been nothing. It has to be said that most of our customers are foreign, from Germany and Italy -they're more relaxed about this sort of thing.'

'You're going to be the biggest pimp in the world

'Not a pimp,' he protested. 'We don't take a penny from what the girls earn; we just let them work, that's all.'

'Anyhow, there's no connection,' interrupted Valerie; 'they're not really part of the hotel staff.'

'Well, yes . . .' Jean-Yves said hesitantly. 'Here they're not connected; but I've heard that in the Dominican Republic the waitresses are only too happy to go upstairs.'

'They're doing it of their own free will.'

'Oh, yes, that's the least you can say.'

'Well. . .' Valerie extended a conciliating gesture to the world, 'don't let the hypocrites grind you down. You're there, you provide the framework, using the Aurore know-how, and that's all.'

The waiter brought lemongrass soup. At the neighbouring tables were German and Italian men accompanied by Thai girls, some German couples - accompanied or otherwise. Everyone quietly living together, with no apparent problem, in a general atmosphere of pleasure; this resort manager job promised to be pretty easy.

'So, you're really going to stay here . . .'Jean-Yves said again; clearly he was having trouble believing it. 'It's surprising; I mean, in a way, I understand, but . . . what's surprising is that you're giving up the chance of making more money.'

'More money to do what?' said Valerie emphatically. 'Buy Prada handbags? Spend a weekend in Budapest? Eat white truffles in season? I've earned a lot of money, I can't even remember where it's gone: yes, I've probably spent it on stupid things like that. Do you know where your money goes?'

'Well. . .' He thought. 'Actually, up to now, I think it's mostly Audrey who's spent it.'

'Audrey's a stupid bitch,' she retorted, mercilessly. 'Thank God you're getting divorced. It's the most intelligent decision you've ever made.'

'It's true, deep down she is very stupid . . .' he replied, unembarrassed. He smiled, hesitated a moment: 'You really are a strange girl, Valerie.'

'It's not me who's strange, it's the world around me. Do you really want to buy yourself a Ferrari cabriolet? A holiday home in Deauville, which will only get burgled anyway? To work ninety hours a week until you're sixty? To pay half of everything you earn in tax to finance military operations in Kosovo, or recovery plans for the inner cities? We're happy here; we have everything we need in life. The only thing the Western world has to offer is designer products. If you believe in designer products, then you can stay in the West; otherwise, in Thailand you can get excellent fakes.'

'It's your position that's strange; you've worked for years at the centre of Western civilisation, without ever believing in its values.'

'I'm a predator,' she replied calmly, 'a sweet little predator - my needs are not very great; but if I've worked all my life, it's only been for the cash; now, I'm going to start living. What I don't understand is other people: what's stopping you, for example, from coming to live here? You could easily marry a Thai girl: they're pretty, gentle, good in bed; some of them even speak a bit of French.'

'Well, um . . .' He hesitated again. 'Up until now, I've enjoyed having a different girl every night.'

'You'll grow out of it. In any case, there's nothing stopping you visiting massage parlours after you're married; that's what they're there for.'

'I know. I think . . . Fundamentally, I think I've always had trouble making the important decisions in my life.' A little embarrassed by this admission, he turned to me: 'What about you, Michel, what are you going to do here?'

The response closest to the truth was probably something like 'Nothing'; but it's always difficult to explain that kind of thing to an active person. 'The cooking . . .' replied Valerie on my behalf. I turned to her, surprised. 'Yes, yes,' she insisted, 'I've noticed that from time to time you have vague creative aspirations in that area. It's just as well, I don't like cooking; I'm sure that here you'll be able to make a start.'

I tasted a spoonful of my curried chicken with green peppers; as it happened, I could imagine doing something similar with mangoes. Jean-Yves nodded thoughtfully. I looked at Valerie: she was a good predator, more intelligent and more tenacious than I was; and she had chosen me to share her lair. It is possible to suppose that societies are dependent, if not on a common goal, then at least on a consensus - sometimes described in western democracies as a weak consensus, by certain leader-writers whose political positions are very entrenched. As someone of pretty weak temperament myself, I had done nothing to change that consensus; the idea of a common goal seemed less clear. According to Immanuel Kant, human dignity consists in not accepting to be subject to laws except inasmuch as one can simultaneously consider oneself a legislator; never had such a bizarre fantasy crossed my mind. Not only did I not vote, but I had never considered elections as anything more than excellent television shows - in which, to tell the truth, my favourite actors were the political scientists: Jerome Jaffre in particular delighted me. Being a political leader seemed to me a difficult, technical, wearing task; I was quite happy to delegate whatever powers I had. In my youth, I had encountered militants, who considered it necessary to force society to evolve in this or that direction; I had never felt any sympathy or any respect for them. Gradually, I had even learned to distrust them: the way they got involved in popular causes, the way they treated society as though it was something they played an active role in, seemed suspicious. What did I, for my part, have to reproach the West for? Not much - but I wasn't especially attached to it (and I was finding it more and more difficult to understand how one could feel attached to an idea, a country, anything in fact other than an individual). Life was expensive in the West, it was cold there; the prostitution was of poor quality. It was difficult to smoke in public places, almost impossible to buy medicines and drugs; you worked hard, there were cars, and noise, and the security in public places was very badly implemented. All in all, it had numerous drawbacks. I suddenly realised to my embarrassment that I considered the society I lived in more or less as a natural environment - like a savannah, or a jungle — whose laws I had to adapt to. The notion that I was in any way in solidarity with this environment had never occurred to me; it was like an atrophy in me, an emptiness. It was far from certain that society could continue to survive for long with individuals like me; but I could survive with a woman, become attached to her, try to make her happy. Just as I turned to give Valerie another grateful look, I heard a sort of click to my right. Then I noticed an engine noise coming from the sea, which cut out immediately. At the front of the terrace, a tall blonde woman stood up, screaming. Then came the first burst of. gunfire, a brief crackle. She turned towards us, bringing her hands up to her face: a bullet had hit her in the eye, the socket was now no more than a bloody hole; then she collapsed without a sound. Then I saw our assailants, three men wearing turbans, moving swiftly in our direction, machine-guns in hand. A second round of gunfire broke out, a little longer; the noise of crockery and broken glass mingled with screams of pain. For several seconds, we must have been completely paralysed; few people thought to take_ shelter under the tables. At my side, Jean-Yves gave a brief yelp, he had just been hit in the arm. Then I saw Valerie slide gently from her chair and collapse on the ground. I rushed to her and put my arms around her. From that point on, I saw nothing. The bursts of machine-gun fire followed one after another in a silence disturbed only by the sound of exploding glasses; it seemed to me to go on for ever. The smell of gunpowder was very intense. Then everything was silent again. I noticed that my left arm was covered in blood; Valerie must have been hit in the chest or the throat. The streetlamp beside us had been blown out and I could barely see a thing. Lying about a metre from me, Jean-Yves tried to get up and groaned. Just then, from the direction of the leisure complex, came an enormous explosion which ripped through the entire area and echoed around the bay for a long time. At first I thought my eardrums had burst, but some seconds later, in the midst of my daze, I became aware of a concert of dreadful screams, the genuine screams of the damned.

The emergency services arrived ten minutes later; they had come from Krabi. They went first to the leisure complex. The bomb had exploded in the middle of Crazy Lips, the largest of the bars, at peak time; it had been hidden in a sports bag left near the dance floor. It was a very powerful homemade dynamite device triggered by an alarm clock; the bag had been stuffed with bolts and nails. Under the force of the blast, the thin brick walls separating the bar from the other establishments had been blown out; a number of the metal girders which held up the whole building had buckled from the force of the blast, the roof was threatening to collapse. Faced with the extent of the catastrophe, the first thing the rescue workers did was to call for back-up. In front of the entrance to the bar a dancer crawled along the ground, still wearing her white bikini, her arms severed at the elbows. Nearby, a German tourist sitting in the midst of the rubble held his intestines as they spilled from his belly; his wife lay near him, her chest gaping, her breasts half

torn off. Inside the bar a blackish smoke hung in the air; the ground was slippery, covered with blood seeping from human bodies and mutilated organs. A number of the dying, their arms or legs severed, tried to crawl towards the exit, leaving behind them a bloody trail. Bolts and nails had gouged out eyes, ripped off hands, torn faces to shreds. Some of the bodies had literally exploded from within, their limbs and viscera strewing the ground for several metres.

When the rescue workers reached the terrace, I was still holding Valerie in my arms; her body was warm. Two metres in front of me, a woman lay on the ground, her bloody face peppered with shards of glass. Others remained in their seats, mouths wide open, frozen in death. I screamed at the rescue workers: two nurses came over immediately, gently took Valerie and placed her on a stretcher. I tried to stand up, but fell backwards; my head hit the ground. It was then that I heard, very distinctly, someone say in French: 'She's dead.'

Part Three Pattaya Beach

Chapter 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 in mid-morning. He was French, a member of Medecins 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 of the attack had been horrifying: at the moment, the dead numbered one hundred and seventeen; it was the most murderous attack ever to take place in Asia. A number of the injured were still in a extremely critical condition, considered too weak to be moved; Lionel was among them. Both of his legs had been severed, 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; it had been possible to treat him on the spot. 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.

Towards noon, a nurse arrived with a tray; she took 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; he 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 harbour any illusions anyway; at least he had been fortunate enough to have met her. 'It's strange . . .' Jean-Yves said to me, 'he seems happy.'