The Elementary Particles (12 page)

7

CONVERSATION IN A TRAILER

Christiane’s trailer was about fifty meters from his tent. She turned the lights on, took out a bottle of Bushmills and poured two glasses. Slim, shorter than Bruno, she probably had been quite pretty once, but her delicate features had faded a little and her skin was blotchy. Only her silky, black hair remained perfect. Her eyes were blue and a little sad. She was probably about forty.

“I just get that way sometimes, I just get it on with everyone,” she said. “The only rule is that if they want to fuck, they wear a condom.”

She moistened her lips and sipped the whiskey. Bruno watched her. She had thrown on a gray sweatshirt but nothing else. The curve of her mons was beautiful even if her labia sagged a little.

“I’d like to make you come, too,” he said.

“There’s no rush,” she said. “Finish your drink. You can sleep here if you like, there’s plenty of room.” She nodded at the double bed.

They talked about trailer rentals. Christiane couldn’t sleep in a tent, she had back problems. “It’s pretty bad,” she said. “Most guys prefer a blow-job,” she said. “They’re not really into fucking, they find it difficult to keep it up. But take some guy’s cock in your mouth and he’s like a little kid again. I think feminism has hit them harder than they like to admit.”

“There are worse things than feminism,” Bruno said soberly. He knocked back half of the whiskey before deciding to continue. “Have you known the Lieu long?”

“Pretty much since the beginning. I stopped coming while I was married. Now I come two or three weeks a year. When it started up, it was very alternative, very New Left; now it’s more New Age. It hasn’t really changed much. They were into oriental mysticism here in the seventies; now it’s more about Jacuzzis and massage. It’s a nice place—but it’s a bit sad. There’s a lot less violence here than in the outside world. The whole spiritual thing makes the pickup lines seem less brutal. A lot of women suffer here, though. Men who grow old alone have it easier than older women. They drink cheap booze and fall asleep, their breath stinks, then they wake up and start all over again; they tend to die young. Women take tranquilizers, go to yoga classes, see a shrink; they live a lot longer and suffer a lot more. They try to trade on their looks, even when they know their bodies are sad and ugly. They get hurt but they do it anyway, because they can’t give up the need to be loved. That’s one delusion they’ll keep to the bitter end. Once she’s past a certain age, a woman might get to rub up against some cocks, but she has no chance of being loved. That’s men for you.”

“Christiane,” Bruno said gently, “I think you’re being a bit harsh . . . I mean, I’m here now and I want to give you pleasure.”

“I believe you. I have a feeling you’re a nice man. Selfish, but nice.”

She took off her sweatshirt and lay across the bed. She placed a pillow under her buttocks and spread her legs. Bruno started by licking around her cunt for a while before tonguing her clitoris in short, quick strokes. Christiane exhaled with a deep moan. “Put your finger in,” she said. Bruno did as she asked, turning himself so he could caress her breasts as his tongue continued to flicker over her pussy. He could feel her nipples harden; he looked up. “Don’t stop, please,” she said. He laid his head on her thigh and stroked her clitoris with his index finger. Her labia minor began to swell. A sudden burst of joy overwhelmed him and he began to lick her eagerly. Christiane let out a little whimper. For an instant he saw his mother’s thin, crumpled vagina again and then the image dissolved. He fingered her clitoris faster as his tongue lapped her labia affectionately. Her belly began to redden and her breath came in short gasps. She was wet now and deliciously salty. Bruno paused for a moment and then slipped a finger into her anus and another into her vagina as the tip of his tongue fluttered quickly over her clitoris. Her body shuddered and jolted as she came. He stayed there, face pressed against her moist vulva, then reached his hand toward her and felt her fingers intertwine with his. “Thanks,” she said. Then she got up, put on her sweatshirt and filled their glasses again.

“It was really good—in the Jacuzzi just now,” Bruno said. “We didn’t say a word, and when I felt your lips on my cock I still hadn’t really seen your face. There was something pure about it—no seduction.”

“It all depends on Krause’s corpuscles,” Christiane said, smiling. “Sorry—I’m a biology professor.” She took a gulp of Bushmills. “The shaft of the clitoris and the glans and ridge of the penis are covered in Krause’s corpuscles, rich in nerve endings. When touched, they cause a powerful flow of endorphins in the brain. The penis and the clitoris have about the same number of Krause’s corpuscles—sexual equality goes that far, but there’s more to it than that, as you know. I was very much in love with my husband. When I stroked his penis or licked it, I worshiped it; I loved to feel him inside me. I was proud that I could make him hard. I kept a photograph of his erect cock in my wallet, it was like a sacred image to me. My greatest joy was to give him pleasure. Then he left me for someone younger. Just now, I could tell you didn’t really like my pussy—it already looks a bit like an old woman’s cunt. Increased collagen bonding and the breakdown of elastin during mitosis in older people means that human tissue gradually loses its suppleness and firmness. When I was twenty I had a beautiful pussy, now I know the lips are sagging a little.”

Bruno drained his glass; he couldn’t think of anything to say to her. Shortly afterward, they lay down. He put his arm around Christiane’s waist and they fell asleep.

8

Bruno was the first to wake. High up in the trees a bird sang. The covers had slipped off Christiane during the night. Her buttocks were still beautiful, round and very inviting. He remembered a line from
The Little Mermaid
. He had it at home, on a scratched 45 with the Frères Jacques singing “La Chanson des Matelots.” She had endured many trials, given up her voice, her home, her beautiful mermaid’s tail; all in the hope that she might become a woman and win the love of a prince. In the dead of night, a storm cast her onto a beach and here she drank the magic elixir. A pain ripped through her, so terrible that she felt as though she had been cut in two. She slipped into unconsciousness. At this point, a sequence of chord changes seemed to open up a different world. A woman’s voice, the storyteller, said the words which had so marked Bruno as a child:
When she awoke, the sun was shining and the prince stood before her.

Then he thought about the conversation he’d had with Christiane the night before; he thought he might grow to love her sagging but soft labia. He had a hard-on, as he did every morning, as did almost every man. In the half-light of dawn, Christiane’s face seemed very pale surrounded by the thick, disheveled mass of her black hair. Her eyes opened slightly as he entered her. She seemed a little surprised, but she parted her legs. He began to move inside her, though he could feel himself soften as he did. He felt a terrible sadness, mixed with worry and shame. “Do you want me to use a condom?” he asked. “Yeah, please,” she said, “they’re in that bag of toiletries over there.” He tore open the packet—they were Durex Technica. Of course by the time he got the rubber on he had completely lost his hard-on. “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry,” he said.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said gently, “come back to bed.” Clearly AIDS had been a blessing for men of his generation. Sometimes by the time the condom was out of the packet, they were completely flaccid. “I never really got used to them . . .” This little ritual over, and their manhood safe, in principle, they could go back to bed, snuggle up against their woman and fall asleep in peace.

After breakfast they walked down past the pyramid. The pond was deserted. They lay down in the sunny meadow. Christiane slipped off his shorts and began to masturbate him. She fondled him gently, delicately. Later, when at her instigation they joined the wife-swapping set, Bruno came to realize that this was a rare quality. Most of the women in the group jerked men off crudely; they had no technique. They gripped the cock too tightly and shook it frantically, probably trying to imitate something they’d seen in a porn film. It might have been spectacular on screen, but on the receiving end it was mediocre and sometimes painful. Christiane, on the other hand, was subtle, wet her fingers regularly, flickered over the most sensitive areas. A woman wearing an Indian tunic passed them and sat at the edge of the water. Bruno inhaled deeply and held back, not wanting to come yet. Christiane smiled at him; the sun was beginning to get warm. He realized that his second week at the Lieu would be very gentle. Perhaps they would even see each other afterward; they might grow old together. From time to time she would offer him a little physical pleasure, and together they could live out their declining libidos. They would go on like that for some years and then it would be over; they would be old, and the comedy of sexual manners finished for good.

While Christiane was taking a shower, Bruno studied the beauty care product (“daily protection for young-looking skin, now in microcapsules”) he had bought at Leclerc the day before. The packaging made much of the “new” concept of “microcapsules,” but the directions, which were more comprehensive, outlined three principal effects: protection against the sun’s harmful rays, all-day moisturizing action and the elimination of free radicals. His reading was interrupted by the arrival of Catherine, the reinvented feminist turned Egyptian tarot reader. She had just come from a workshop on personal development and was itching to talk about it. “Success Through Dance” was about finding your vocation through a succession of symbolic games intended to liberate the “hero within” each student. By the end of the first day, it was apparent that Catherine’s personality had aspects of the witch, but also of the lioness, which usually pointed to a career in sales management.

“Hmm . . .” said Bruno.

Just then Christiane came out, a towel around her waist. Catherine trailed off, visibly irritated. She beat a rapid retreat on the pretext that she had a workshop on “Zen and Argentine Tango.”

“I thought you were doing ‘Tantric Accounting,’ ” Christiane shouted as she disappeared around the corner.

“Do you know her?”

“Oh, yeah—I’ve known the bitch for twenty years, pretty much since this place opened.”

She shook her hair and wrapped the towel into a turban. They walked back up together. Bruno had the sudden desire to take her hand. He did.

“Never could stand feminists . . .” Christiane continued when they were halfway up the hill. “Stupid bitches always going on about washing dishes and the division of labor; they could never shut up about the dishes. Oh, sometimes they’d talk about cooking or vacuuming, but their favorite topic was washing dishes. In a few short years, they managed to turn every man they knew into an impotent, whining neurotic. Once they’d done that, it was always the same story—they started going on about how there were no real men anymore. They usually ended up ditching their boyfriends for a quick fuck with some macho Latin idiot. I’ve always been struck by the way intelligent women go for delinquents, brutes and assholes. Anyway, they fuck their way through two or three, maybe more if they’re really pretty, and wind up with a kid. Then they start making jam from
Marie Claire
recipe cards. It’s always the same story, I’ve seen it happen dozens of times.”

“That’s all in the past now,” said Bruno in a conciliatory tone.

They spent the afternoon by the pool. On the opposite side, the teenage girls were jumping up and down fighting over to a Walkman. “Cute, aren’t they?” said Christiane. “The blonde one, the one with the small breasts, is really pretty . . .” Then she lay down on the bath towel. “Pass me the suntan lotion.”

Christiane didn’t attend any of the workshops. In fact, she was rather condescending about what she referred to as “that crazy shit.” “Maybe I’m being a bit hard,” she added, “but I know what the veterans of ’68 are like when they hit forty. I’m practically one myself. They have cobwebs in their cunts and they grow old alone. Talk to them for five minutes and you’ll see they don’t believe any of this bullshit about chakras and crystal healing and light vibrations. They force themselves to believe it, and sometimes they do for an hour or two. They feel the presence of the Angel or the flower blossoming within but then the workshop’s over and they’re still ugly, aging and alone. So they have crying fits—they do a lot of crying here, have you noticed? Especially after the Zen workshops. They don’t have much choice, really—most of them have money problems too. A lot of them have been in therapy and they’re completely broke. Mantras and tarot may be stupid, but they’re a lot cheaper than therapy.”

“Or the dentist,” Bruno said obscurely. He laid his head between her open thighs and knew he would fall asleep there.

When it got dark they went back to the Jacuzzi; he asked her not to let him come. Back in the trailer, they made love. “Don’t bother,” Christiane said when he reached for the condoms. When he entered her, he could tell she was happy. One of the most surprising things about physical love is the sense of intimacy it creates the instant there’s any trace of mutual affection. Suddenly—even if you met the night before—you can confide things to your lover that you would never tell another living soul. And so, that night, Bruno told Christiane things he’d told no one—not even Michel, much less his therapist. He talked to her about his childhood, his grandmother’s death, how he was bullied at boarding school. He told her about his adolescence, about masturbating on the train with a girl only a few meters away; he told her about the summers he spent at his father’s house. Christiane stroked his hair and listened.

They spent the week together, and the evening before Bruno left they had dinner at a seafood restaurant in Saint-Georges-de-Didonne. The air was warm and still; the candles lighting their table barely flickered. The restaurant overlooked the estuary of the Gironde. In the distance they could just make out the headland at Grave. “When I look at moonlight on the water,” said Bruno, “it’s clear to me we have nothing—absolutely nothing—to do with this world.”

“Do you really have to leave?”

“Yeah. I have to spend a couple of weeks with my son. I should’ve left last week, but now I really have to go. His mother’s already booked her vacation—she’s flying out the day after tomorrow.”

“How old is your son?”

“Thirteen.”

Christiane sipped her Muscadet and thought. She was wearing a long dress and had put on makeup. She looked like a girl. Her breasts were just discernible through the lace blouse of the dress; the reflected candles blazed small flames in her eyes. “I think I might be a little bit in love . . .” she said. Bruno waited, hardly daring to breathe, perfectly motionless. “I live with my son in Noyon,” she went on. “Things were okay until he was thirteen. I suppose he missed his father, I don’t know . . . Do kids really need a father? One thing I do know, his father didn’t need him. Oh, he took him to the cinema or to McDonald’s a couple of times in the beginning, though he always brought him back early. After a while he came around less and less often. Then he moved down south to be with his new girlfriend, and he stopped visiting altogether. After that, I brought him up on my own. Maybe I let him get away with too much. About two years ago he started going out a lot, hanging around with a bad crowd. Noyon can be pretty violent—you’d be surprised. There’re a lot of blacks and Arabs, the National Front got forty percent of the vote in the last election. I live in a condominium in the suburbs. I’ve had my mailbox broken into, I can’t leave anything in the basement. I often get scared. Sometimes I hear gunshots. When I get back from school I basically barricade myself in the apartment and I never go out at night. Sometimes I go on the Minitel and check out the sex sites, that’s about it. My son gets in late—sometimes he doesn’t come home at all. I don’t dare say anything. I’m terrified he’ll hit me.”

“Are you far from Paris?”

She smiled. “No. Noyon is out in the Oise—it’s not even eighty kilometers.” She stopped and smiled again, her face for a moment filled with gentleness and hope. “I used to love life,” she went on. “I loved life. I was sensitive, affectionate, and I always loved making love. Then something went wrong. I’m not really sure what, but something went wrong with my life.”

Bruno had already folded up his tent and packed his things into the car; he spent the last night in her trailer. In the morning, he tried to make love to Christiane but he couldn’t; he was too nervous, too agitated. “Come all over me,” she said. She smeared his come over her face and breasts. “Stop by and see me,” she said as he was going out the door. He promised he would. It was Saturday, the first of August.