Lanzarote by Michel Houellebecq

Author:Michel Houellebecq
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2013-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

7

AS I EXPECTED, they enthusiastically agreed; but they had ideas of their own about how the day would be spent. They wanted to go to the nudist beach at Papagayo. You have to take the Germans as you find them, I said to Rudi the following morning, but if you go along with their little idiosyncrasies, you’re generally rewarded, for the most part they’re decent girls. Still, I insisted we make a short detour to the beach at El Golfo where a huge jagged rock rises out of the sea, a whole lot of strange colours – anyway, it’s very beautiful. In the event, everyone agreed and Rudi, who was much more cheerful now, took at least thirty photos. We had lunch in a bar at Playa Blanca: tapas and white wine. By now a little enthusiastic, Pam took us into her confidence. Yes, they were lesbian, but not exclusively lesbian. Heh heh! I thought. Then she wanted to know if we were queers. ‘Eh … no,’ I said. Rudi was having difficulty finishing his octopus. He stabbed the last piece with a toothpick, looked up and answered absent-mindedly: ‘No, no, me neither … Not as far as I’m aware.’

After our stop at Playa Blanca, we drove along the coast road for about ten minutes, then we turned left towards the Punta de Papagayo. Everything was fine for the first couple of kilometres, then the road suddenly deteriorated before turning into a dirt track. I stopped the car and suggested that Rudi take the wheel. We had a 4x4, but I’ve always hated four-wheel drives, off-road driving and that kind of thing. I’ve never been fascinated by anti-skid mechanisms or anti-lock brakes. Give me a motorway and a good Mercedes and I’m a happy man. The first thing that occurs to me when I have the misfortune to take the wheel of a four-wheel drive, is to heave the fucking thing into a ravine and continue on foot.

The track wound slowly, in wide meanders, up the steep hill. It was a difficult climb, we couldn’t get the car above five kilometres an hour and clouds of ochre dust swirled around us. I glanced over my shoulder: Pam and Barbara didn’t seem in the least bit bothered by the route, they bobbed gently on their plastic seats.

At the summit, there was a surprise waiting for us. A small booth, like a customs post, with a sign above it reading ‘PROTECTED AREA’, blocked the path. ‘Here we go,’ I thought. To go any further, we had to pay an entrance fee of 1,000 pesetas, in exchange for which we received a little brochure warning that this was a world ecological reserve and listing a number of prohibitions. I read in disbelief that there was a fine of 20,000 pesetas and up to six months’ imprisonment just for picking up a pebble. As for plants, don’t even think about it; in any case, there weren’t any plants. In fact, the landscape didn’t seem

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.