Platform (35 page)
Authors: Michel Houellebecq
It's getting dark, the multicoloured fairy lights wink on at the entrances to the beer bars. The German OAPs settle in, placing their thick hands on the thighs of their young companions. More than any other people, they are acquainted with worry and shame, they feel the need for tender flesh, for soft, endlessly refreshing skin. More than any other people, they are acquainted with the desire for their own annihilation. It is rare to come across the vulgar, smug pragmatism of Anglo-Saxon sex tourists among them, that manner of endlessly comparing goods and prices. It is equally rare for them to exercise, to look after their bodies. In general, they eat too much, drink too much beer, get fat; most of them will die pretty soon. They are often friendly, they like to joke, to buy a round, to tell stories; but their company is soothing and sad.
I understand death now; I don't think it will do me much harm. I have known hatred, contempt, decay and other things; I have even known brief moments of love. Nothing of me will survive, and I do not deserve for anything of me to survive; I will have been a mediocre individual in every possible sense.
I imagine, I don't know why, that I will die in the middle of the night, and I still feel a little anxious at the thought of the suffering which will accompany the severing of all ties with the body. I find it difficult to envisage the cessation of life as completely painless and unconscious; naturally, I know that I'm wrong. Nonetheless, I have trouble convincing myself of that fact.
The locals will find me a few days later, quite quickly in fact; in this climate, corpses quickly start to stink. They won't know what to do with me, and will probably contact the French embassy. I'm far from being destitute, the case will be easy to deal with. There will certainly be quite a lot of money left in my account; I don't know who will inherit it - the state probably, or some distant relatives.
Unlike other Asian peoples, the Thais don't believe in ghosts, and have little interest in the fate of corpses; most of them are buried in communal graves. Since I will have left no specific instructions, that is what will become of me. A death certificate will be drawn up, a box will be ticked in a registry office, far from here, in France. A few street hawkers, accustomed to seeing me in the area, will shake their heads. My apartment will be rented out to another resident. I'll be forgotten. I'll quickly be forgotten.
Published by Vintage 2003
2468 10 97531
Copyright © Flammarion 2001 Translated from the French, Plateforme Translation copyright © Frank Wynne
Michel Houellebecq has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
First published in Great Britain in 2002 by William Heinemann
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Poet and novelist Michel Houellebecq is the author of two previous novels, Whatever (Extension du domaine de la lutte) and the international bestseller Atomised (Les Particules elementaires), winner of the Prix Novembre and the 2002 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. He lives in Ireland.
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