Lanzarote Read online

  The climax of the excursion – as much in the topographical as in the emotional sense – was the stop at the Mirador de Timanfaya Watchtower. To fully appreciate the possibilities of the structure, we had been allocated two hours’ free time. This began with a brief talk, given by one of the site employees, intended to highlight the volcanic nature of the surroundings. Cutlets were inserted into a fissure in the rock; they came out grilled. There were gasps and applause. I discovered that the Germans were called Pam and Barbara, the Belgian, Rudi.

  Afterwards, there were a number of options. You could buy souvenirs, go to the restaurant and enjoy international cuisine. The more sportif could opt for a camel ride.

  I turned and saw Rudi near the herd of some twenty beasts. Unaware of the danger, his hands clasped behind his back like a curious child, he walked towards these monsters as they craned their long, lithe, serpentine necks crowned with small cruel heads towards him. Of all the animals in Creation, the camel is unquestionably one of the most aggressive and the most hostile. Few higher mammals – with the exception of certain apes – display such a marked viciousness. In Morocco, tourists attempting to stroke the animals’ heads have often had several fingers ripped off. ‘I say the lady to be careful,’ the camel driver will whine hypocritically. ‘Camel not nice …’; the fact still remains the fingers have been devoured.

  ‘You have to be careful with camels!’ I say cheerfully. ‘Actually, they’re dromedaries.’

  ‘The Dictionnaire Robert gives one-humped camel or Arabian camel,’ he remarked in a thoughtful tone, not moving an inch.

  Just then, the camel driver reappeared and viciously rapped the head of the nearest animal which moved back with a snort of rage.

  ‘Camel ride, mister?’

  ‘No, no, I just wanted a look,’ replied Rudi mysteriously.

  The two Germans approached in turn, smiling excitedly. I quite wanted to watch them climb up on the camels, but the next trip was in fifteen minutes. To kill time, I bought a volcano keyring at the souvenir shop. Later, when we arrived back at the hotel as twilight descended, I composed the following verse in homage to the hermetic French poets:

  Camel,

  Presence of camels,

  My minibus lost its way.

  ‘It was a beautiful day,’ I thought to myself as I investigated the contents of the minibar back in my room. ‘A beautiful day, really …’ Already it was Monday night. A week on this island would probably be bearable after all. Hardly fascinating, but bearable.

  1 See photos.

  2 However, I should remind the reader that the Guides du Routard (now, alas, also available in Spanish) originated in France, which, by dint of their ‘cool’ (eco-friendly, humanitarian) attitudes; their passions; their calls for ‘intelligent’ tourism and for an openness to the unfamiliar (understand before judging); their quasi-frenetic search for an ‘authenticity’ which is already dying out, have succeeded in redefining international standards of stupidity. I would like to reassure the reader that Lanzarote is not mentioned in the Guides du Routard.

  4

  ‘I speak calmly; I live calmly, I sell telephones in March, in April and September.’

  – Gruneberg and Jacobs,

  Spanish Through Word Association

  ON BEACH HOLIDAYS, as perhaps in life more generally, the only truly enjoyable time of day is breakfast. I helped myself to the buffet three times: chorizo, scrambled eggs … why stint yourself? In any case, sooner or later I would have to go to the pool. Some Germans had already spread out their beach towels to reserve the plastic sunloungers. At the next table, an enormous hooligan with a skinhead and a moustache was stuffing himself with cold meats. He was wearing black leather trousers and a Motorhead T-shirt. The woman who was with him was frankly indecent, with her big silicone-enhanced breasts spilling generously from her miniscule bikini top; triangles of pink latex that just about covered her nipples. Clouds flitted across the sky. The Lanzarote sky, I was to realise a little later, is continually traversed by clouds which drift to the East with never a shower; it is an island on which it doesn’t rain, so to speak, at all. The ideas which have left their mark on the West, whether from Judaea or from Greece, were born under an intangible sky of monotonous blue. It was different here; the sky constantly renewed itself in its very presence.

  The lobby of the Bougainville Playa was deserted at this early hour. I went out into the garden and wandered for a few minutes among the plants – which might very well have been bougainvilleas for all I cared. There was a parrot in a cage, staring out at the world with his round and angry eye. The beast was an impressive size – but I’d heard it said that parrots never stop growing and can live to be seventy or eighty years old; some specimens could reach a metre tall. Fortunately, a recent bacterial infection had just dealt with that problem. I passed the cage and had just turned on to a path bordered with flowering shrubs when right behind me I heard someone shout: ‘Poor bastard!’ I turned round: it was the parrot who was now cackling: ‘Poo’ Bast’d! Poo’Bast’d!’ with growing excitement. I detest birds and for the most part the feeling is mutual; well, if you could call the thing a bird. Even so, it was stupid of him to be such a smart-arse; I’d wrung many a neck for less.

  The path continued to wind its way between the flowering shrubs and ended in a small flight of steps at the beach. A Scandinavian man, balancing on the pebbled shore, was slowly performing t’ai chi movements. The water was grey, maybe green, but definitely not blue. The island may well be Spanish, but there was nothing Mediterranean about it, I would simply have to get used to that fact. I walked for a few hundred metres at the water’s edge. The ocean was chilly, quite choppy.

  Afterwards, I sat on a mound of pebbles. They were black and clearly the product of a volcanic eruption. But unlike the rocks at Timanfaya with their fractal edges, these were round. I held one between my fingers; it felt smooth, you couldn’t feel any edges. In three centuries, erosion had already done its work. I lay down, contemplating the conflict, so evident in Lanzarote, between two great forces: the volcano’s creation and the sea’s destruction. It was a pleasing meditation, in which nothing was at stake, to which no conclusion was possible; I continued in this vein for some twenty minutes.

  For a long time, I believed that going on holiday would allow me to learn the language of the country; though I was over forty, this illusion had not yet faded completely and shortly before my departure I had bought a copy of the Marabout Method to Easy Spanish. The principle of the ‘Linkword’ word association method was to actively visualise certain images. So, the word for shelf (estante), was illustrated thus: ‘Imagine a nest of ants sitting on the shelf’; a drawer (cajón): ‘Imagine a drawer full of car horns’; danger (peligro): ‘Imagine a pale, gross man charging at you: danger!’ If the Spanish was close to the French word, the phrase would include a torero, a ‘typical Spanish person’. So, the word cero (zero) was illustrated with the phrase ‘Imagine that toreros are all just zeros’.

  The authors’ biases might well explain some of the peculiar turns of phrase, but they couldn’t explain some of the examples in the translation exercises, such as: ‘My dogs are under the bank’ or ‘Your doctor wants more money, my dentist wants more cheese.’ Though absurdity is amusing for a while, after a certain age it begins to pall, and I must have fallen asleep. When I woke, the sun was at its height, the sky was cloudless; it was almost hot. Two ‘techno’ beach towels were spread out some metres away. I spotted Pam and Barbara near the shoreline, up to their waists in the water. They were enjoying themselves: playing piggyback and throwing each other into the water, then tenderly embracing, breast to breast; it was delightful. I wondered where on earth Rudi could be.

  The two Germans came back to dry themselves. Close up, Pam seemed slimmer, almost gamine with her short black hair; but Barbara’s animal placidity was extraordinary. She had beautiful breasts, I wondered if she’d had them done. I decided she probably had, they were a little too pert when she la
y down; but the overall result was very natural, she’d clearly happened on an excellent surgeon.

  We talked a little about suntan lotions, the difference between the advertised sun protection factor and the actual protection factor: was it really wise to trust Australian standards? Pam was reading a German translation of a book by Marie Desplechin which could have allowed the conversation to take a literary turn; but I didn’t really know what to say about Marie Desplechin, and in any case, Rudi’s absence was beginning to worry me. Barbara propped herself on her elbows to join the conversation. I couldn’t help looking at her breasts; I realised that I had a hard-on. Unfortunately, she didn’t speak a word of French. ‘You have nice breast,’ I said in an approximate English. She smiled broadly and said, ‘Thank you.’ She had long blonde hair, blue eyes and actually looked like a nice girl. I got to my feet, explaining: ‘I must look at Rudi. See you later …’; then we parted company, with a little wave.

  It was a little after 3 pm, people were finishing lunch. As I passed the noticeboard, I noticed that there was a new activity. In addition to the classics, the Cactus Garden visit and Timanfaya National Park, today the hotel was offering an excursion to Fuertaventura by hydroplane. Fuertaventura was the nearest island, it was low-lying and sandy, the landscape uninteresting; but there were immense beaches where it was possible to bathe safely; that, at least, was what I had concluded from the brochure I’d found in my hotel room. This, I suspected, might explain Rudi’s disappearance; I felt reassured, and I went up to my room to watch CNN. I like watching television with the sound turned down, it’s a bit like looking at an aquarium, a prelude to a siesta, but your interest is still piqued. On this occasion, however, I was having trouble identifying the war in progress. The clowns on screen mucking around with their sub-machine guns seemed too dark-skinned to be Chechens. I tried fiddling with the colour control, but they were still too dark. Maybe they were Tamils; there was something going on with the Tamils. Subtitles at the bottom of the screen reminded me that this was the year 2000; a fact that was truly astonishing. The transition from the military to the industrial age, predicted as early as 1830 by the founder of positivism, was long in coming to an end. Nevertheless, watching the all-pervading world news, the fact that humanity shared a common calendar and a common destiny was increasingly obvious. Even if it was not in itself significant, the new millennium might well act as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  An elephant crossed the screen, reinforcing the Tamil hypothesis, though actually they could be Burmese. In spite of everything, it seemed we were swiftly moving towards the concept of a world federation dominated by the United States, with English as its common language. Of course, the prospect of being governed by fucking idiots was somewhat disagreeable; but it wouldn’t be the first time after all. From all the evidence they had left of themselves, the Romans had clearly been a nation of idiots; a fact that hadn’t stopped them taking over Judaea and Greece. Then came the barbarians, etc. It was oppressive, this feeling of repetition; I switched over to MTV. MTV without sound is quite bearable; actually, it’s quite nice, all those trendy girls wiggling around in their skimpy tops. I ended up taking out my cock and jerking off to a rap video before sinking into sleep for a little more than two hours.

  5

  AT 6.30 PM, I went down to the bar to make the most of happy hour. Just as I had decided on a Matador Surprise, in walked Rudi. How could I possibly not invite him to join me? So I did.

  ‘Did you have a good day?’ I said casually. ‘I assumed you went on the excursion to Fuertaventura.’

  ‘That’s right.’ He shook his head indecisively before answering: ‘It was shit, complete shit. It was boring. And now I’ve been on every excursion the hotel offers.’

  ‘You’re staying a week?’

  ‘No, two weeks,’ he said in the voice of one condemned. He was certainly in a fine mess. I offered him a cocktail. While he studied the menu, I had plenty of time to study his face. He had a pallid complexion, despite the days he’d spent in the sun, and worry lines across his forehead. Short, black hair, greying a little, and a bushy moustache. He had a sad, slightly lost expression. I would have said he was around forty-five.

  We talked about the island and how beautiful it was. Three Matador Surprises later, I decided to move into more personal territory.

  ‘You’ve got a slight accent … I thought maybe you were Belgian.’

  ‘Not exactly.’ A surprising, almost childlike smile appeared. ‘I was born in Luxembourg. I’m sort of an immigrant myself …’ He spoke of Luxembourg as of a lost Eden, though it’s common knowledge that it’s a minuscule, mediocre country with no distinguishing characteristics – it’s not even a country, more an assortment of dummy companies scattered over parkland, nothing but PO boxes for companies with a taste for tax evasion.

  It turned out that Rudi was a police inspector and lived in Brussels. He talked bitterly about the city throughout the meal. Delinquency was rife; increasingly, gangs of youths attacked passers-by in the middle of shopping centres in broad daylight. It was better not to even think about what happened at night; for some time now women didn’t dare go out alone after dark. Islamic fundamentalism had become alarmingly common; like London, Brussels was now a haven for terrorists. In the streets and the squares, there were more and more women wearing veils. To make matters worse, the conflict between the Flemish and the Walloons had intensified; the Vlaams Blok were close to taking power. He talked of the European capital as of a city on the brink of civil war.

  From a personal standpoint, his life was hardly much better. He had married a Moroccan girl, but he and his wife had separated five years ago. She had returned to Morocco, taking their two children; he had not seen them since. All in all, Rudi’s life seemed to me to be close to being a total human catastrophe.

  Why had he come to Lanzarote? Indecision, he needed a holiday, a pushy travel agent: in short, the classic story.

  ‘In any case, the French despise the Belgians,’ he said in conclusion; ‘and the worst thing is, they’re right. Belgium is an absurd country in steep decline; it is a country which should never have existed.’

  ‘We could hire a car …’ I suggested to lighten the mood.

  He seemed surprised by my suggestion; I became more animated. The island had some spectacular sights; something we had realised on our excursion to Timanfaya. Admittedly, the inhabitants of Lanzarote didn’t seem to realise the fact; but in this they were no different from any other natives. In other ways, it was true, they were strange creatures. Small, shy and sad, they maintained an air of dignity and reserve; they did not correspond to the image of flamboyant Mediterranean peoples so beloved of some Nordic and Batavian tourists. Their sadness seemed to date from long ago; I had discovered in a book on Lanzarote by Fernando Arrabal that the prehistoric peoples of the island had never thought to take to the sea; all that lay, beyond the island’s coast, they believed, was uncertainty and error. Of course, they had seen fires rising from other islands, but they had never been curious to see whether these fires had been set by human beings, whether those human beings might be similar to them; avoiding all contact seemed to them the wisest course of action. The history of Lanzarote until recent times was, therefore, a history of complete isolation; and of that history, moreover, nothing remained except the fragmentary tales of a handful of Spanish priests who had gathered some stories before giving their blessing to the extermination of the local population. Such ignorance would later give rise to a number of myths about the origins of Atlantis.

  I realised that Rudi was not listening to me; he was finishing his wine, either sedated or pensive. It was true that I had wandered a little off the subject. The people of Lanzarote, I went on enthusiastically, are exactly like all other natives when it comes to beauty. Completely insensible to the splendour of his surroundings, the native generally sets about destroying it, to the anguish of the tourist, a sensitive creature in pursuit of happiness. Once the tourist has pointed out this be
auty, the native becomes capable of perceiving it, preserving it and systematising its exploitation in the form of excursions. In Lanzarote, however, this process was still in its early stages; it was hardly surprising, therefore, that the hotel offered only three excursions. In which case, why not rent a car? Why not discover these lunar (or Martian, depending on your travel agent) landscapes in comfort? No, the holiday was not over; in fact, it had only just begun.

  Rudi immediately agreed to the idea, with considerably more enthusiasm than I had anticipated. The following morning, we went to a car hire company and hired a Subaru for three days. Now, where to go? I had bought a map.

  6

  ‘THERE’S THE TEGUISE market …’ Rudi suggested shyly. ‘I have to bring something back for my nieces.’ I shot him a baleful glance. I could well imagine the sort of place, with its stalls and its arts-and-crafts shit. But what the hell, it was on the way to the Playa de Famara – by far the most beautiful beach on the island, according to the hotel brochures.

  The road to Teguise stretched ahead, impeccably straight, through a desert of alternately black, red and ochre rocks. The landscape was relieved only by the volcanoes in the distance; their hulking presence strangely reassuring. The road was deserted, we drove in silence. It was as though we were in some metaphysical western.