Michel Houellebecq - Lanzarote

'The world is medium-sized.'

Mid-way through the afternoon on 14 December 1999, I realised that my New Year was probably going to be a disasteras usual. I turned right on to the Avenue Felix-Faur and walked into the first travel agency I found. The assistant was busy with a customer. She was a brunette wearing some sort of ethnic top; she had had her left nostril pierced; her hair had been hennaed. Feigning a casual air, I began picking up brochures from the displays.

'Can I help you?' I heard after a moment.

No, she couldn't help me; no one could help me. All I wanted was to go home, scratch my balls and leaf through the holiday club brochures; but she had initiated a conversation, I didn't see how I could get out of it.

'I'd like to go away in January...' I said with a smile which I imagined to be disarming.

'Do you want to head for the sun?' she shot back at a hundred miles an hour.

'My means are limited,' I continued, modestly.

The transaction between tourist and tour operatorat least from the impression I've formed from reading a number of the trade magazinestends to transcend the framework of everyday commercial relationsunless such a transaction, dealing as it does with travel, that most dreamlike of commodities, can be said to reveal the true naturemysterious, profoundly human, almost mysticalof all commercial transactions. Imagine yourself for a moment, dear reader, in the role of the tourist. What does it entail? You must listen attentively to the proposals made to you by the professional opposite you. She (usually it is she) has at her disposalsuch is her joba broad knowledge of the leisure and cultural opportunities on offer at each of the destinations listed in the brochure; she has a general idea of the clientele, the sports facilities, the opportunities for meeting new people; your happiness - at least your prospect of happiness - during those weeks depends to a degree on her. Her rolefar from the stereotypical notion of proposing a 'standard' holiday package, and regardless of the brevity of the encounteris to discover your expectations, your desires, perhaps even your secret hopes.

'We've got Tunisia. A classic destination and very affordable in January...' she began, to get into gear. 'We have southern Morocco, too. It's very beautiful off-season.' Off-season? Southern Morocco is beautiful all year round. I knew southern Morocco well, probably a lot better than this stupid bitch. It might very well be beautiful, but it isn't really my thing, that was what I needed to get through her thick skull.

'I don't like Arab countries,' I interrupted. 'At least...' Thinking about it, I remembered a Lebanese woman I'd met at a swingers club: really hot, nice pussy, big tits too. What's more, a colleague at work had told me about a Nouvelles Frontires hotel in Hammamet, where groups of Algerian women go to enjoy themselves with no men about to spy on them; he had fond memories of the place. Arab countries might well be worth the effort after all, if we could just liberate them from their absurd religion.

'It's not Arab countries I don't like, it's Muslim countries,' I went on. 'I don't suppose you have any non-Muslim Arab countries, do you?' It would be a tough question on Questions pour un champion: A non-Muslim Arab country... you have forty seconds. Her mouth gaped slightly.

'How about Senegal?' she went on, breaking the silence. Senegal. Why not? I'd heard that white men still had great prestige in West Africa. All you had to do to take a girl back to your chalet was show up at a disco; not even a whore, either, she'd do it for the pleasure. Obviously, they welcomed gifts, maybe little gold jewellery; but what woman doesn't appreciate gifts? I couldn't work out why I was thinking about such things; in any case, I didn't feel up to fucking.

'I don't feel up to fucking,' I said. The girl looked up, surprised; it was true that I'd skipped a couple of steps in my train of thought. She went back to shuffling through her brochures. 'Prices for Senegal start at six thousand francs, though...' she said. I shook my head sadly. She went to consult another file; they're not brutes, these girls, they're sensitive to financial concerns. Outside on the pavement, passers-by trudged through snow turning slowly into slush.

She came back and sat opposite me and in a frank - and markedly different - tone asked me: 'Have you thought about the Canaries?' Faced with my silence, she explained, with a professional smile: 'People rarely think of the Canaries... It's an archipelago off the African coast, warmed by the Gulf Stream; the weather is mild all year round. I've seen people bathing there in January...' She gave me some time to digest this information before continuing: 'We have a special offer for Bougainville Playa. One week, all-inclusive, 3,290 francs; departures from Paris on the 9th, 16th and 23rd of January. Superior four-star hotel. All rooms with en-suite bathroom, hairdryer, air conditioning, telephone, TV, mini-bar, room safe, balcony with pool view (or sea view for a supplement), 1000m2 swimming pool, Jacuzzi, sauna, hammam, fitness centre, three tennis courts, two squash courts, miniature golf, table tennis. Traditional dance shows, excursions from the hotel (details available on site). Travel/cancellation insuranceall-inclusive.

'Where is it?' I couldn't help but ask.

'Lanzarote.'

New Year's Eve was a disaster; I tried to hook up to the Internet but I screwed up. I had just moved house; I think I should have reinstalled the card modem or something like that. My fruitless tinkering quickly bored me, I fell asleep at about eleven. A postmodern New Year's Eve.

I had opted for the 9 January departure. At the Relais H in Orlyrecently named the RelayI bought a number of magazines. Passion Glisse offered its usual selection of content. Paris-Match dedicated several pages to an article about Bernard Henri-Lvy's book on Jean-Paul Sarte. Le Nouvel Observateur had features on teenage sexuality and Prvert's centenary. As for Libration, it revisited the Shoah, the duty of memory, the painful exhumation of Sweden's Nazi past. It had hardly been worth changing centuries, I thought. In fact we hadn't changed centuries; not, at least, according to a linguist in an issue of a se discute that I'd read the night before; the new century (and incidentally millennium) would not begin until 1 January 2001. From a pedantic point of view he was probably right; but he was obviously just saying it to piss of Delarue. Whether or not the usage was correct, the year 2000 started with a 2, as anyone could see.

The flight over France and Spain went well; I slept almost the whole way. When I woke, the plane was over Portugal, exposing an arid topography. Then it veered towards the ocean. I made another attempt to interest myself in the contents of my magazines. The sun was setting over the Atlantic; I thought about a TV programme I'd seen the night before. In the studio, a porn star contemplated the change of millennium with serenity; to her, men would always be men, what more was there to say? A historian, on the other hand, argued that the concept of the century had a certain relevance, albeit in a metaphorical sense; thus, according to him, the nineteenth century had not actually ended until 1914. A left-wing geneticist hit the roof: it was incredible, indecent, that in the year 2000 so many human beings on the planet were dying of starvation. A right-wing academic commented that ironically that while he deplored war and famine as much as the next man, it seemed to him futile to try to change the destiny of mankind unless one could alter the intrinsic nature of man himself; he was, therefore, implicitly in agreement with the porn star, with whom he developed a certain rapport during the programme. But, ill-formed of recent progress in the field of molecular biology, he had no idea that such modification (which he hoped for only inasmuch as he was certain that it was impossible) would very shortly be feasible. For his part, the left-wing geneticist was aware of these developments; but being a fervent supporter of political protest and democracy, he dismissed such ideas in horror. The debate, in short, simply brought together another bunch of idiots. I slept until the plane landed. From the look of things, I thought to myself, we weren't likely to see the end of the twentieth century for some time.