We got out of the vehicle. Before us stretched a vast plain encrusted with cracked brown mud, which looked unsanitary. Pools of stagnant water, which appeared almost black, were surrounded by tall grasses, withered and bleached. In the background, a huge factory of dark brick dominated the landscape, its twin chimney-stacks spewing out thick smoke. Rusted pipes ran from the factory and appeared to zigzag aimlessly through the middle of the plain. On the hard shoulder, a metal sign depicting Che Guevara exhorting the workers to the revolutionary development of the forces of production was itself beginning to rust. The air was pervaded by an appalling stench which seemed to rise from the mud itself rather than the pools of water.

'That's because you've remained sexual, animal. You're normal, in fact, you're not much like Westerners. Organised S&M with its rules could only exist among cultured, cerebral people for whom sex has lost all attraction. For everyone else, there's only one possible solution: pornography featuring professionals; and if you want to have real sex, third-world countries.'

[...] Saddled with two kids, it would be tougher for Audrey, the bitch. He consoled himself with the thought that it would be hard for him to do worse, and that, at the end of the day, she would be the one to suffer as a result of the divorce. She was already no longer as beautiful as when he had met her; she had style, she dressed fashionably, but knowing her body as he did, he knew she was already over the hill. On top of that, her career as a lawyer was far from being as brilliant as she made out; and he had a feeling that having custody of the children would not help matters. People drag their progeny around with them like a millstone, like some terrible weight which hinders their every move —and which, as often as not, effectively winds up killing them. He would have his revenge later: at the point, he thought, when it had become a matter of complete indifference to him. For some minutes more, parked near the bottom of the now deserted avenue, he practised feeling indifferent.

For my part, I had no objection to sex being subject to market forces. There were many ways of acquiring money, honest and dishonest, cerebral or, by contrast, brutally physical. It was possible to make money using one's intellect, talent, strength or courage, even one's beauty; it was also possible to acquire money through a banal stoke of luck. Most often, money was acquired through inheritance, as in my case; the problem of how it had been earned fell to the previous generation. Many very different people had acquired money on this earth: former top athletes, gangsters, artists, models, actors; a great number of entrepreneurs and talented financiers; a number of engineers, too, more rarely a few inventors. Money was sometimes acquired mechanically, by simple accumulation; or, on the other hand, by some audacious coup crowned with success. There was no great logic to it, but the possibilities were endless. By contrast, the criteria for sexual selection were unduly simple: they consisted merely of youth and physical beauty. These features had a price, certainly, but not an infinite price. The situation, of course, had been very different in earlier centuries, at a time when sex was essentially linked to reproduction. To maintain the genetic value of the species, humanity was compelled seriously to take into account criteria like health, strength, youth and physical prowess —of which beauty was merely a handy indicator. Nowadays, the order of things had changed: beauty had retained all of its value, but that value was now something marketable, narcissistic. If sex was really to come into the category of tradable commodities, the best solution was probably to involve money, that universal mediator which already made it possible to assure an exact equivalence between intelligence, talent and technical competence; which had already made it possible to assure a perfect standardisation of opinions, tastes and lifestyles. Unlike the aristocracy, the rich made no claim to being different in kind from the rest of the population; they simply claimed to be richer. Essentially abstract, money was a concept in which neither race, physical appearance, age, intelligence nor distinction played any part, nothing in fact, but money. My European ancestors had worked hard for several centuries; they had sought to dominate, then to transform the world, and, to a certain extent they had succeeded. They had done so out of economic self-interest, out of a taste for work, but also because they believed in the superiority of their civilisation: they had invented dreams, progress, Utopia, the future. Their sense of a mission to civilise had disappeared in the course of the twentieth century. Europeans, at least some of them, continued to work, and sometimes to work hard, but they did so for money, or from a neurotic attachment to their work; the innocent sense of their natural right to dominate the world and direct the path of history had disappeared. As a consequence of their accumulated efforts, Europe remained a wealthy continent; those qualities of intelligence and determination manifested by my ancestors I had manifestly lost. As a wealthy European, I could obtain food and the services of women more cheaply in other countries; as a decadent European, conscious of my approaching death, and given over entirely to selfishness, I could see no reason to deprive myself of such things. I was aware, however, that such a situation was barely tenable, that people like me were incapable of ensuring the survival of a society, perhaps more simply we were unworthy of life. Mutations would occur, were already occurring, but I found it difficult to feel truly concerned; my only genuine motivation was to get the hell out of this shithole as quickly as possible. November was cold, bleak; I hadn't been reading Auguste Comte that much recently. My great diversion when Valerie was out consisted of watching the movement of the clouds through the picture window. Immense flocks of starlings formed over Gentilly in the late afternoon, describing inclined planes and spirals in the sky; I was quite tempted to ascribe meaning to them, to interpret them as the heralds of an apocalypse.

He had finally decided to rent a studio flat and leave his wife; he would not get the keys until January 1st, but he was a lot better, I sensed he was already more relaxed. He was relatively young, handsome and extremely rich: all of these things do not necessarily make life easier, I realised, a little alarmed; but they help, at least, in awakening desire in others. I still could not understand his ambition, the furious energy he invested in making a success of his career. It wasn't for the money I don't think: he paid high taxes and didn't have expensive tastes. Neither was it out of commitment to the company, nor from a more general altruism: it was difficult to imagine the development of global tourism as a noble cause. His ambition existed in its own right, it couldn't be pinned down to one specific source: it was probably more like the desire to build something, rather than to a taste for power or a competitive nature - I had never heard him talk about the careers of his former friends at the HEC business school, and I don't think he gave them a second thought. All in all, it was a respectable motive, not unlike the one that explains the advance of human civilisation. The social reward bestowed on him was a large salary; under other regimes it might have taken the form of an aristocratic title, or of privileges like those accorded to the members of the nomenklatura; I didn't get the impression that it would have made much difference. In reality, Jean-Yves worked because he had a taste for work; it was something both mysterious and clear.

He looked at me, a little doubtful. It was true, though, the public sector fascinated the Thais. It's true that in Thailand civil servants are corrupt; not only do they have job security, they're rich too. You can have everything you want. 'Well, I hope you have a nice evening…' I said, making my way towards the bar. 'Thank you…' he said, blushing, I don't know what possessed me to play the man of the world at that moment; decidedly, I was getting old. I did have some doubts about the girl: Thai girls from the north are usually very beautiful, but sometimes they're a bit too conscious of the fact. They spend their time staring at themselves in the mirror, keenly aware that their beauty alone constitutes a crucial economic advantage; and as a result they become useless, capricious creatures. On the other hand, unlike some cool western chick, Kim was not in a position to realise that Lionel himself was a bore. The principal criteria for physical beauty are youth, absence of handicap and a general conformity to the norms of the species; they are quite clearly universal. The ancillary criteria —vaguer and more relative— were more difficult to appreciate for a young girl from a different culture. For Lionel, the exotic was a wise choice, possibly even the only choice. Anyway, I thought, I've done my best to help him.

'More money to do what?' said Valerie emphatically. 'Buy Prada handbags? Spend a weekend in Budapest? Eat white truffles in season? I've earned a lot of money, I can't even remember where it's gone: yes, I've probably spent it on stupid things like that. Do you know where your money goes?'

To the end, I will remain a child of Europe, of worry and of shame; I have no message of hope to deliver. For the West, I do not feel hatred; at most I feel a great contempt. I know only that every single one of us reeks of selfishness, masochism and death. We have created a system in which it has simply become impossible to live; and what's more, we continue to export it.