An unpublished novel by Patrice Montagu-Williams
L’intrigue.
1996: against the backdrop of a sulphurous oil contract with the Burmese military junta, manipulation of the media and NGOs by various secret services, Martin Decoud, agent of the DGSE, the General Directorate of External Security, is sent on a mission to Bangkok.
Convinced that, as Ernest Hemingway said, “A man can be destroyed, but not defeated,” the farang, the foreigner, will return to Thailand, nearly twenty-five years later, to try to rebuild a existence that life has shattered and to find the “Noble Path” of the Buddhists which leads to nirvana.
Reminder of the previous episode:Ban Mai Nai Soi camp is attacked and Jessie, taken hostage, is assassinated. Martin then decides to return to France by taking little Nina with him …
Episode 15: South East Asia, DGSE version
Martin has installed Nina near the window and when the Boeing 747-400 begins its descent towards Charles-De-Gaulle, he gently wakes her up and points to the Eiffel Tower, on the right of the aircraft. He explains to the little girl that they will visit her as soon as they land. They will climb to the top and, from there, she will be able to see Paris, the city where, now, she will live.
Nina remains silent. Her head is spinning and she doesn’t know where she is. When this man, this farang, who says he is her Ph̀x, her daddy, made her enter the belly of this great white bird, bigger than Garuda himself, she thought she was going to find her Mæ̀, his mother, who had ascended to heaven.
She hardly spoke
Since leaving the camp, she has hardly spoken. She tries to record everything. When you are a refugee, the first thing you learn, as soon as you know how to walk, is to look all around and remember nothing because danger is everywhere.
Shortly after take off, the tall blonde farang who wore a white blouse and navy blue skirt brought her a glass of orange juice with cereals soaked in cold milk. She had never tasted this before. It was good. After that, she slept the rest of the trip, her thumb in her mouth.
The storyteller
On his return to France, Martin was transferred to the Strategy Department. This administrative post, where he was responsible for analyzing and synthesizing intelligence from Southeast Asia, gave him time to take care of Nina. Every morning, he left her at the municipal crèche, rue de l’Abreuvoir. In the evening, before putting her to bed, he read her the stories of Babar, whose last title, Babar and the Lost City, had appeared last year. He had not chosen this character of king of
random elephants: the animal was part of the child’s imagination and these tales enabled him to start teaching him French. She loved them all: Babar, Céleste, his wife, as well as their four children: Pom, Flore, Alexandre and Isabelle. But the one Nina preferred was Zéphir, a monkey, Babar’s oldest friend. And, of course, she hated Rataxes, the king of the rhinos, the enemy of the Great Chief.
Martin said to himself that he was a bit for Nina what Stevenson was for the natives of the Samoan Islands who had nicknamed the Scotsman Tusitala, “the storyteller”.
Friends of the Butte
And then, one day, he decided to solemnly present the little girl to his friends in La Butte.
They met at La Mascotte. When it was created in 1889, the café occupied the entire ground floor of a two-story hotel. It was more or less a brothel then called Le Pompéia where Piaf and his pianist lived in the 1930s.
That evening, they were all present: the regulars, of course, but also Max, a tall thin man who dyed his hair blue Yves Klein, his master, a plastic artist who hardly ever left his home, however, where he spent his days and nights making collages. Michou also wanted to be there. He was accompanied for the occasion by Missguinguette, one of the stars of his show, and Sebastião Salgado, the famous Franco-Brazilian photographer, a lover of Montmartre.
– We needed a star to photograph Nina, you understand, he explained to his friend.
Later, Martin had the black and white photo, signed by the master, framed. As he placed it on the Pleyel half-tail which occupied an entire corner of the living room, he remembered Giacometti’s saying that, in a fire, between a Rembrandt and a cat, he would save the cat. Him, in a fire, it is this photo that he would save.
Find here all the episodes of “The Way of the Farang”:
Find here episode 1 of “The Way of the Farang”
Find here episode 2 of “The Way of the Farang”
Find here episode 3 of “The Way of the Farang”
Find here episode 4 of “The Way of the Farang”
Find here episode 5 of “The Way of the Farang”
Find here episode 6 of “The Way of the Farang”
Find here episode 7 of “The Way of the Farang”
Find here episode 8 of “The Way of the Farang”
Find here episode 9 of “The Way of the Farang”
Find here episode 10 of “The Way of the Farang”
Find here episode 11 of “The Way of the Farang”
Find here episode 12 of “The Way of the Farang”
Find here episode 13 of “The Way of the Farang”
Find here episode 14 of “The Way of the Farang”
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