High Life | 10 January 2013

Friends who were among the last to leave Palataki at New Year tell me there were stragglers waiting to be admitted, and this was as the sun was coming up on the first day of the year. My chalet, in other words, has become the last refuge of the desperate, or among those with twice as much serotonin in their blood who never give up. All I can remember is being on the top floor, and at my advanced age not using glasses, but drinking straight out of the vodka bottle. There is a portrait of my father by Dalì up there, and when in my cups I seem to become transfixed by it, a sort of Dorian Gray in reverse, my dad looking elegant and in control, me the exact opposite. Still, it was a hell of a party and both my children had a very good time with their friends. Which is obviously the only reason one still pays for them, the children, that is, because they have young friends.

Otherwise the news is not good. Glitz and the Russkies are coming to town, and the locals are bending over in order to accommodate them. Flattery is the main ingredient used by the money-hungry peasantry to induce the nouveaux riches to part with their ill-gotten moolah. It is the oldest trick in the Alps, when some people make themselves inferior to others, although I find it impossible to believe that anyone can fake being inferior to today’s new rich. A Hollywood screenwriter once wrote that the only interesting thing that can happen in a Swiss bedroom is suffocation by a feather pillow, but that was long ago, before the peasants woke up and got greedy. I have tried for years to tell the locals that if they give the nouveaux enough rope they will surely hang us, but it’s like speaking to the folk Plutarch was referring to when he said that the flatterer is born free but chooses to be a slave.