‘Not at all, Mademoiselle.’ He smiled sadly. ‘It’s just that I’m a bit. A bit …You’ll have to forgive me,’ he finished abruptly.
As usual when we got back at the hotel, Rudi wanted to go straight to bed, but Pam insisted that the four of us have dinner together; she knew a restaurant to the north of the island.
The potatoes in Lanzarote are small and wrinkled and their flesh is very flavoursome. The cooking method – particular to the island – involves placing them at the bottom of small earthenware pots, into which a little highly salted water is poured. As the water evaporates, it coats the potatoes in a salt crust, sealing in all the flavour.
Pam and Barbara lived near Frankfurt. Barbara worked at a hairdresser’s. I didn’t quite understand what Pam did, but it was something in the financial sector, and much of the work could be done over the Internet.
‘I don’t think of myself as lesbian,’ said Pam. ‘Barbara and I are together, that’s all.’
‘Are you faithful?’
She blushed a little. ‘Yes … now, yes, we’re faithful to each other. Except from time to time with a man, but that’s different, it doesn’t mean anything.’
I glanced at Barbara, who was eating her potatoes with relish. Sitting opposite her, Rudi wasn’t really eating at all, he was just picking at his food; he wasn’t taking part in the conversation either, it was beginning to depress me, I couldn’t think what to do with him. Barbara looked up at him and smiled. ‘You should eat. It’s very good,’ she said. Obediently, he speared a potato with his fork.
They were intending to settle in Spain, Pam told me, as soon as it became possible for her to do all her work over the Internet. Not in Lanzarote, probably in Majorca or on the Costa Brava.
‘There are problems with Germans in Majorca,’ I said.
‘I know …’ she said. ‘It’ll blow over. In any case, we’re all part of Europe. The Germans don’t want to stay in Germany any more, it’s cold and horrible and they think there are too many Turks. As soon as they have a bit of money, they head south; there’s no stopping them.’
‘Turkey will probably be part of Europe soon,’ I commented, ‘then the Germans can settle there.’
She smiled broadly. ‘They might well just do that … Germans are weird. I’m very fond of them, even if they are my compatriots. In Majorca, we have a lot of German friends and Spanish friends. You could come and visit if you’d like.’
Then she explained that she and Barbara wanted to have children. Barbara would probably be the one to give birth as she was keen to give up her job. They weren’t thinking of using artificial means for the conception; it would be easier simply to ask a male friend, they knew a few men who would be happy to impregnate Barbara.
‘That doesn’t surprise me …’ I said.
‘Would you be interested?’ she asked me, bluntly.
I was speechless; I felt terribly embarrassed. Because yes, though the thought had never crossed my mind until now, I was interested. She patted my hand gently. ‘We’ll talk about it later … We’ll talk to Barbara about it.’
To defuse this momentary embarrassment, we talked about Spanish women; we agreed that they were worth fucking. Not only do they enjoy sex, but they often have large breasts and in general they’re nice girls, uncomplicated and very modest, unlike Italian women – who are so preoccupied with how beautiful they are that they become unfuckable, in spite of their otherwise excellent qualifications. This safe conversation took us up to dessert – a cinnamon crème brûlée; then we ordered a bottle of Pernod. Despite my repeated glances in his direction, I hadn’t managed to get Rudi involved in the conversation; he sat silent, almost stupefied, in his chair. In desperation, I said: ‘What about the Belgians? What can we say about the Belgians?’
He looked at me almost in terror, as though I had opened up an abyss in front of him.
‘Belgians are an extremely scatological, deeply perverse people, happy to wallow in their own humiliation,’ he began rhetorically. ‘As I said the first time we spoke: I believe Belgium is a country which should never have existed. I remember seeing a poster in a centre for alternative culture with the simple slogan: “Bomb Belgium”; I couldn’t have agreed more. When I married a Moroccan, it was to escape the Belgians.
‘Then she left me …’ he went on, his voice different now. ‘She went back to her stupid fucking Islam, she took my daughters away and I’ll never see them again.’
Barbara looked at him with such compassion that I saw a tear well in Rudi’s eye. She didn’t understand a word, all she understood was his tone of voice; but that was enough for her to realise that this was a man at the end of his tether.
What else was there to say? Nothing, obviously. I poured Rudi another Pernod.
On the way back, we didn’t say much. In the lobby of the hotel, Pam and Barbara kissed Rudi several times on each cheek to wish him good night. I shook his hand, made a vague attempt to pat him on the shoulder. It has to be said, men aren’t very good at this kind of thing.
I felt a bit of an idiot with my condoms as I headed towards the German girls’ room; I was feeling a bit low. Pam explained the situation to Barbara, who interrupted her and launched into a long tirade in German. ‘She says you’re wrong, this is precisely the right time for us to make love, it will do all three of us good …’ said Pam placing her hand on my cock. She unbuttoned my trousers and pushed down them to the floor. Barbara undressed completely, knelt in front of me and took me in her mouth. It was extraordinary: she closed her lips round the tip of my penis and slowly, centimetre by centimetre, took it into her throat; then she began to move her tongue. After two minutes, I felt that I couldn’t hold back any longer. ‘Now!’ I said in a loud voice. Barbara understood immediately, fell back on the bed and parted her thighs. I slipped on a condom and entered her. Pam, who was sitting beside us, played with herself as she watched us. I pushed into Barbara deeply, slowly at first, then more quickly; Pam stroked Barbara’s breasts. She was enjoying this and was clearly completely relaxed, but she was still a long way from orgasm when Pam made her move. Placing her hand on her friend’s pussy, she began to rub Barbara’s clitoris in short quick strokes with her index and middle fingers. I stopped moving. The walls of Barbara’s cunt contracted around my prick in rhythm with her breathing. Mischievously, Pam took my balls in her other hand and began to squeeze them gently as she speeded up her movements. She did all this with such skill that Barbara and I came at exactly the same time, I with a short, passionate cry, she with a long, hoarse growl.
I put my arms around Pam and planted little kisses on her neck and shoulders while Barbara began to lick her. She came a little later in a series of little high-pitched squeals. I was exhausted and headed over to the spare bed – a child’s bed, actually – while Pam and Barbara continued to embrace and lick each other on the double bed. I was naked and happy. I knew I was going to get a good night’s sleep.
8
THE FOLLOWING DAY we had nothing planned and had made no arrangements to meet; even so, by eleven o’clock, I was beginning to worry that there was no sign of Rudi. I went and knocked on his door, but there was no answer. I asked at reception where a clerk told me that he had left early that morning and had taken all his things; he didn’t know where he’d gone. Yes, he had definitely checked out.
I was in the process of relaying the news to Pam and Barbara who were sunning themselves by the pool, when the receptionist came up to me with an envelope. Rudi had left a message. I went up to my room to read it. The letter was several pages long, written in black ink in tiny, neat, precise handwriting.
Dear Sir,
In the first place, I would like to thank you for having treated me like a human being these last few days. This may seem unremarkable to you; to me, it is not. You probably don’t know what it’s like to be a cop; you don’t realise the extent to which we are a society apart, inward-looking, with our own rituals, regarded with contempt and suspicion by the populace at large. D
oubtless you know even less about how it feels to be Belgian. You cannot imagine the violence – real or latent – the mistrust and the fear we are faced with in the most simple everyday encounters. For example, try asking for directions from a passer-by on the street in Brussels; the results will surprise you. In Belgium, we no longer constitute what is commonly called a society; we no longer have anything in common but humiliation and fear. I realise that this tendency is common to all European countries; but for a variety of reasons (which a historian would no doubt be well placed to explain), this process of deterioration is already alarmingly serious in Belgium.
Secondly, I would like to say again that your behaviour with your German friends did not shock me in the slightest. My wife and I, in the last two years of our marriage, regularly frequented what are generally referred to as clubs for ‘non conformist’ couples. She enjoyed this, as did I. Even so, as the months passed – I don’t know why exactly – things began to go awry. What had, at the beginning, been a joyous party with no taboos, gradually turned into a joyless exercise in depravity, there was something very cold and very narcissistic about it. We were unable to get out in time. In the end, we even endured humiliating situations where we allowed ourselves to be passive spectators to displays by absolute sexual monsters, encounters in which we could no longer participate, given our age. It is perhaps this which pushed my wife – an intelligent, sensitive and deeply cultured woman – towards the monstrous and reactionary solutions of Islam. I do not know whether this catastrophe was inevitable; but when I think back on it – and I have thought of little else for five years – I cannot see how I could have prevented it.
Sexuality is a powerful force, so powerful that any relationship which does not embrace it is necessarily incomplete. There is a body barrier just as there is a language barrier. Being men, you and I, our relations were reduced to a limited exchange, and I can absolutely understand your intentions in initiating an encounter with Pam and Barbara; I understand it, and I thank you for it. But for me, it is, sadly, a little late. The worst thing about depression is that it makes it impossible even to contemplate the sexual act, even though it might be the only thing which would assuage the terrible feeling of anguish that comes with depression. You cannot imagine how difficult it was simply for me to decide to take this holiday.
I know that what follows will upset you, and that you will feel in part responsible. But that is not so, and I would like to repeat that you did everything in your power to bring me back to a ‘normal’ life. To put it briefly, I have decided to join the Azraelian sect. I should mention that I had already been in touch with members of the sect in Belgium; but I didn’t know that Lanzarote was an important centre. In a way, it was that which helped me decide to take the plunge. I know that to Westerners, joining a ‘sect’, and the renunciation of a certain sort of individual freedom which that entails, is always thought of as a dramatic personal failing. I would like to try to explain to you why, in this case, I think the accusation unjustified.
What can we expect from life? This is a question which seems to me impossible to evade. Every religion, in its own way, attempts to answer this question, and the nonreligious pose the question in almost precisely the same terms.
The answer given by the Azraelians is radically new in that it proposes that everyone, from this very moment, can enjoy physical immortality. What happens is this: a skin sample is taken from each new member; this sample is kept at a very low temperature. The sect is in constant contact with the biotechnology companies that are most advanced in the field of human cloning. According to leading specialists, the project will be achievable in a matter of years.
Let us take this a little further. Azrael offers the immortality of thoughts and memories – by transferring the contents of memory to an intermediary medium, which in due course will be transferred into the brain of the clone. This suggestion, it is true, sounds like science fiction inasmuch as, at the moment, we have no idea how such a thing might be implemented.
Be that as it may, it seems strange to refer to an organisation as a ‘sect’ when it offers such innovative and technologically radical answers to questions which conventional religions have dealt with more irrationally and metaphorically. The weak point of their doctrine is, obviously, that it depends on the existence of the Anakim, the extraterrestrials which supposedly created life on earth hundreds of millions of years ago. But, aside from the fact that this is by no means an absurd hypothesis, it should be noted that, for one reason or another, human societies have always had great difficulty in organising themselves without reference to a higher principle.
From a financial perspective, the accusation that the Azraelians are a ‘sect’ doesn’t hold either. Each new member gives 20 per cent of his income to the community – no more, no less. Naturally, if he decides to leave his home in order to join a collective, the contribution can be greater than that. For my part, this is what I have decided to do. My house is no longer of any interest to me, I have not felt at home there since my wife and my daughters left. In any case, the area has become a dangerous one, where every day I am humiliated because of my position as a police officer. So I am going to sell it and join the Azraelian community in Belgium.
All this may seem very sudden, and I will not pretend that it is a decision based on mature reflection, taken after a considerable period spent weighing up the pros and cons. But what I would like you to understand is that, with my life the way it is, I don’t really have anything to lose.
As I close this long letter, it remains for me to thank you for your patience and your humanity, and to wish all the best in life to you and your family.
Yours affectionately,
Rudi.
9
I PUT DOWN the letter, devastated. So they were going to get their hands on the money from the sale of his house. A lifetime of saving and borrowing, and now this. On the other hand, perhaps they were sincere. That’s the problem with sects, until the scandal breaks, you can never be sure of anything.
I summarised the contents of the letter for Pam and Barbara. By mutual consent, we decided not to take a trip that day. I went back to the hire company to return the car, then spent the rest of the day by the pool with them. Pam had finished the Marie Desplechin, which she hadn’t really liked. I suggested she read a book by Emmanuel Carrère, L’Adversaire; obviously, I only had the French edition with me, but if she came across something difficult, I could always explain it to her. For myself, I couldn’t bring myself to read; I lay on a sunlounger and watched the clouds as they flitted across the sky. My head felt pretty much empty, and it seemed to me better that way.
That night, the three of us slept, arms wrapped around each other, on the double bed, though nothing sexual happened. As though we simply needed to protect ourselves; as though we could feel some dark presence, some evil subterranean force moving about the island. On the other hand, perhaps Azrael was a good prophet, perhaps his ideas would lead to the betterment of the human condition. One thing was certain, in any event: what had happened to Rudi could have happened to any one of us; no one was safe any more. No social status, no relationship could any longer be considered certain. We were living in a time in which any Advent, any Armageddon was possible.
The following morning, Pam and Barbara came with me to the airport. None of us had mentioned the subject of Barbara having a baby; but as we were saying our goodbyes by the walk-through metal detector, I felt, as she hugged me to her, a singular emotion. Pam waved to me, I walked down the corridor towards the departure lounge.
As the plane took off, I took one last look at this landscape dotted with volcanoes which glowed deep red in the dawn light. Were they comforting, or, conversely, threatening? I couldn’t say. But whatever they were, they represented the possibility of regeneration, of a new beginning. A regeneration by fire. The plane was climbing now. Then it turned on a wing towards the ocean.
It was cold in Paris, everything was as disagreeable as ever. What was
the point? We know what life is like, the ins and outs of it. I would just have to readapt to the endless winter; and to the twentieth century which, seemed similarly reluctant to end. Deep down, I understood the choice Rudi had made. That said, he was wrong about one thing: it’s perfectly possible to live without expecting anything of life; in fact, it’s the most common way. In general, people stay at home, they’re happy that their phone never rings; and when it does, they let the answering machine pick up. No news is good news. In general, that’s what people are like; I am too.
Even when there is nothing left to expect from life, there is still something to fear. I’d noticed that there were more and more dealers in my area. I decided to move again, closer to the Assemblée Nationale; I told people it was so that I could be closer to work, but actually it was so that I could live in a heavily policed area. I really couldn’t see the point of getting myself stabbed by some fucker in need of a fix.
The months passed. Pam and Barbara wrote me a number of postcards and I wrote back; but we didn’t quite get round to meeting up again. From time to time, I would happen on an article about the Azraelians and cut it out. Actually, such articles was pretty rare; it’s a very inconspicuous sect. The longest article, which appeared in Le Nouvel Observateur on 23 March, included a photo of a dozen men wearing white robes and embroidered stoles. In the middle stood Philippe Leboeuf, alias Azrael. With touching pride, they were gathered round a small polystyrene model of the future ‘city to welcome extraterrestrials’. Rudi wasn’t in the photo. The project was going ahead, according to the article; they had come to some agreement with the local authorities to build it in Lanzarote; construction was set to begin in the coming months.
On 18 June, 2000, a conference aimed at promoting the cause of human cloning was held in Montreal. On the platform, united for the first time, the prophet Azrael and the American geneticist Richard Seed announced the creation of a joint facility, free of all religious ties – Dr Seed still claimed to be a Christian and a Methodist. It subsequently transpired that a group of investors from the Valiant Venture Limited Corporation had already amassed several million dollars for the construction of the laboratory. The writer, Maurice G. Dantec, who was present, described the event to a local paper in glowing terms; this was the first serious intellectual backing for the cause. Immediately, a heated debate began in ‘Rebonds’, the letters page of Libération, until the school holidays put an end to it.
Lanzarote Page 4