Holiday in a Coma & Love Lasts Three Years: two novels by Frédéric Beigbeder

‘To get hammered.’

‘Why?’

‘Because … I feel like having a good time tonight and if I have to sit here listening to your jokes, there’s not much chance of that.’

‘Why?’

‘Why do I want to have a good time? Because you’re a long time dead, that’s why!’

The first candidate for the Triple Why experiment passes with the jury’s congratulations. But in order to scientifically establish a theorem, it must be repeatable and verifiable. And so Marc turns to Irène Kazatchok.

‘I work too hard,’ she says.

‘Why?’ Marc asks, all smiles.

‘Well … to make money.’

‘Why?’

‘Get out of here! Because we all have to eat, that’s why.’

‘Why?’

‘Gimme a break. Because otherwise you die, my boy.’

It goes without saying that Marc Marronnier is jubilant. His experiment is utterly pointless, but he enjoys rigorously testing the futile theories he dreams up to kill time. The only drawback is that now he’s riled Irène, leaving the field open for Fab. Never mind: the advance of science is surely worth a few setbacks.

*

‘Hey, Marc, the tall man over there with the walking-stick, that’s not Boris Yeltsin, is it?’ asks Loulou.

‘Looks like him. We’re being invaded by Eastern Europeans, what can you do …’

‘Shhh. Here he comes.’

Boris Yeltsin has clearly been working on his nouveau capitalist look. He is particularly overdressed (in rented tails) and he thrusts out his hand two seconds too early, like Yasser Arafat with Yitzhak Rabin. He has not yet worked out that at society events, unlike standoffs in Hollywood westerns, it’s best to draw last. His spongy hand hovers in the void. Overcome with compassion, Marc takes the hand and kisses it.

‘We welcome great Russia to our Luna Park,’ he cries.

‘You’ll see, soon we shall be as rrrrrich as you, we shall rrrrise above the rrrrabble by selling our nuclearrr weapons to your enemies [Boris rolls his ‘r’s with application]. One day, we shall wearrrr Mickey Mouse costumes of finest orrrrgandie.’

‘Good, good! Party on!’

‘Do you know,’ Loulou murmurs in a confiding tone, ‘I have a friend who is so racist and so anti-communist that she has always refused to drink Black Russians.’

‘Ha, ha,’ Boris laughs. ‘Now, perrrhaps she will change herrr mind!’

‘I adore your cane,’ says Irène. ‘It’s marvellous, really.’

‘Fo’ shizzle, man,’ chimes in Fab. ‘The stick is shabby.’

‘Hey, wow,’ yells Marc, ‘it’s not just my table, it’s a global village!’

‘Look, I have amassed thirrrteen pearrrls,’ brags Boris, brandishing a small purse full of small nacreous spheres.

‘Why?’ asks Marc, with something in mind.

‘As a souvenirrrr of this soirrrrée!’

‘Why?’

‘So that I can tell the storrry to my grrrandchildren!’

‘Why?’

‘So they will have something to rrrremember me by when I pass away …’ intones the Russian President gravely.

Marc’s inner glee can be read in the gleam in his eyes. Pythagoras, Euclid, Fermat – watch out! The Nobel Prize for Mathematics can’t be far off.

The service isn’t slack. Already they’re bringing on the main course: rack of lamb with Smarties. Marc gets up to go for a piss. Just before he leaves the table, he leans over to Loulou and whispers in her ear:

‘I swear, when you really need to take a piss, well, it’s almost as good as shooting your load. So there!’

Marc knew the party would be a success when he saw the mob at the ladies’ toilets, touching up their make-up or snorting coke (which amounts to the same thing since cocaine is simply brain cosmetics). On a Post-it, he writes: ‘The twenty-first century will take place in the ladies’ toilets or not at all.’

10.00 P.M. (#ud27d4736-7f82-5863-adb5-1e6ecc2c0e86)

I sense that I shall only feel truly sad after having dined.

Paul Morand Tendres Stocks

On his way back to his table, Marc runs into Clio, Joss Dumoulin’s girlfriend, who is having trouble negotiating the stairs. Her legs are ten yards long with a pair of wedge-heel flip-flops at one end. Her almost perfect body is violently shoehorned into a latex dress.

‘Mademoiselle, may I offer you a glass of lemonade?’ Marc asks, offering his elbow so that she can support her weight.

‘Sorry?’

‘Well, now, little girl,’ Marc changes tack, ‘you’re very late, you deserve to be punished!’

‘Oh, yes please!’ the girl replies, with a flutter of her gargantuan fake eyelashes. ‘I’m a naughty girl!’

She clutches his arm as she talks.

‘As punishment, you shall sit at my table.’

‘But … I have to see Joss …’

‘The sentence is irreversible!’ bawls Marc.