I went there at his invitation-by air, to my acute dismay. You'll find no creature more earthbound than I. I'm so naturally averse to flying I usually give up on any trip that can't be made by road, rail, or sea-but the area around the island happened to be so dangerous the only way in was by plane or helicopter. For Laurencais, and for his legend, I made an exception. The money that pours into his hands drives him to undertake a certain number of secretly necessary things almost no one else on earth could see to completion. A hunch about these things is essential to understanding the great eccentric billionaires… For a billionaire (I believe the word falls short), Laurencais was unique in this respect: he wasn't satisfied with owning the most expensive things or mingling with the most famous people. He loved surrounding himself with what was least known as well, objects and people alike. I found his invitation flattering. I am a writer-a French writer, to boot-two qualities worth less than nothing these days. I was astounded that a Laurencais (despite the sound of his surname, a Venezuelan) wished to make my acquaintance.
Laurencais' island is beautiful, in its way-thanks to him. It was once a picturesque rock, an actual desert isle: pretty mountains, but no shelter, no beach, no fresh water, and as a result, stunted vegetation. Laurencais' money changed everything. Planes brought in soil for gardens and meadows now irrigated by processed seawater. For private use, Laurencais built a desalination plant that would've been enough for the average emirate.
On the island's most stunning side, where Laurencais had chosen to build his palace, a steep and sudden drop lay between the coast and the line of reefs barring the seaward approach. The tycoon could have flattened the coast with dynamite and brought in all the sand he wanted, but nothing in the world would have kept the ocean from licking the shore clean. Never mind, then-Laurencais had a second shoreline, set back from the first, designed, dug, and shaped to his liking. Beside an artificial lagoon, a landscaped beach secured the master of the house and his guests all the charms the site supposedly refused them. The sand was so fine each grain seemed handpicked. Nearby, the birds that sang above their heads were, like the trees where they dwelled, chosen from a catalogue. So were the people… but I'll get back to that.
I mentioned a palace; don't go picturing alabaster columns, marble staircases, and golden roofs. In Laurencais' jaded gaze, luxury-the spirit of luxury-had left materials behind to seek refuge in form. He wasn't completely indifferent to materials, of course: for the most part his palace was made of solid mahogany and pristinely white, freshly cast concrete. Yet with this bias in mind, the architect Benito Guardicci (yes, a relative of the famous artisan glassmaker) was able to work wonders. The residence he created for Laurencais was beautiful without being reminiscent of any other. Its beauty was for those who lived there. As the days went by, you became aware of the balance, the harmony emanating from the rectangular structures amid the rocks and the greenery. At first, they seemed scattered haphazardly about the lagoon, itself irregularly shaped. You had to stay there a while to realize that Guardicci had conceived it all with a rich man in mind, for Laurencais and his select guests, in accordance with the truth of the setting: a world without neighbors, prying eyes, or unwanted onlookers.
I didn't quite know why I'd been invited. For my talent, they'd said, my works. I wanted to believe it. Nevertheless, everyone else in my batch enjoyed actual international fame, except me. I won't name names. A golden voice, a sex symbol, a director, a guitar hero; two champions, one in boxing and the other in tennis; a Nobel laureate in medicine; a painter only slightly less well-known than Leonardo or Vermeer; a physicist, all torso, whom the media that year claimed was Einstein reincarnated-there were ten of us all told. Needless to say, none of these people traveled without an entourage: lovers, mistresses, confidants, nannies, secretaries, trainers, doctors, and fortunetellers… With diplomacy and a firm smile, Laurencais' butler had managed to spread the crowd of underlings out in the estate's many annexes. I was the only one who'd come alone. Which meant that I was scared stiff at first among egos all bloated to varying degrees. Most knew nothing about me and mistook me for a bartender. I cleared this up three or four times before everything got sorted out. Since Laurencais vouched for me, granting me a status like their own, be it in ever so narrow and obscure a field as French literature, the celebrities all followed suit. They lowered their guard and showed themselves for what they really were: creatures superspecialized in their chosen fields and by the same token off-true, even crippled, at once pitiful and admirable, so many products of a limited shelf life. Take the guitarist. He was from a working-class background. A hard worker, he honed riffs on his lucky Telecaster eight hours a day while smoking joints his roadie-dealer rolled. He allowed himself a line in the evening the way people had a drink after the daily grind. We became friendly, and he didn't forget to offer me a sniff from his little box. I held up my glass of scotch. He shook his head in sorrow.
"That stuff's poison!"
I also liked the porn star, an oversensitive young woman, plaintive beneath her statuesque exterior. But she had a sense of humor about herself, her line of work, and her smutty fame.
"God;" she'd moan, "I grew up wearing little white socks and blue dresses and crying at Bambi, had my first kiss at nineteen, and now I'm the biggest slut on the planet. What's wrong with me? Few! A rash! Get my doctor quick, he's around here somewhere. Tell him I'm dying!"
I didn't hit it off with everyone. The golden voice really annoyed me, and no primate deserved to be compared to the boxing champ. I found the Moldo-Wallachian director, whom I believed and still believe to be a great artist, standoffish and incapable of camaraderie. At any rate, an unusual apparition soon made me forget my disappointment. We'd been there for two days when a young woman literally sprang from the lagoon. I happened to be watching Laurencais when she joined us. I thought I spied great relief in the eyes of our host. He introduced the newcomer to us as Ligeia. She greeted us with brusque timidity, surprising for such a beauty. For though I'd called the actress statuesque, Ligeia gave the word an altogether different, more impressive meaning. The actress-call her Cindy, or Christie-embodied an admittedly stunning but eminently consumable, even comestible kind of femininity. On first sight, everything about her woke in men a predatory instinct strongly tinged with almost cannibalistic overtones. But when you met her in the flesh, this initial impulse soon faded away because of the irony she employed at her own expense, and others' when needed. In real life, Cindy/Christie was only sexy for the first three minutes, before becoming endearing and sisterly.
Ligela was another matter. A fierce presence, an aura of sexuality heady as an odor that persisted after she walked away. For I never saw her stay in any one place for long: she was always passing through. In the same way, I never heard her start a conversation of her own initiative. She answered, with a single precise sentence requiring no clarification or additions, then fell silent, as though she'd discharged a tiresome duty. I had to admit it wasn't very pleasant. Her charm lay elsewhere. What we mean today by the word "charm" in no way describes what she exuded. You'd have to restore to the word the powerful associations it possessed in antiquity: a purely physical appeal so violent it was frightening. By day she lived in the water and wore only a G-string. By night, she donned a tunic, very simple and very short. The muscles of her arms, legs, and belly were free of the softness and tenderness of Cindy/Christie's. She looked like one of Arno Brecker's valkyries. Even while admiring her you thought to detect something not alienating but alien, something animal and disconcerting that confounded compliment. Who was she? Where had she been born? Who'd raised her? I tried to imagine her at the age of ten. It was one of my favorite games: picturing how the adults fate put on my path had looked as children. With Ligeia, no image came to mind; I found it impossible to conjure her up in any normal professional environment. She gave me the impression of being able to exist only the way I saw her-that is, more than half-naked in or near the water. Laurencais had left us in the dark as to their exact relationship. There was no evidence that she was his mistress. Two or three unassuming and very young things filled that role, behind the scenes. Was Ligeia his daughter, then? She didn't look like him at all. His niece? His ward? I wound up asking her. She was slow to answer.