The Elementary Particles (13 page)

9

Unusually, Bruno drove back along country roads. He stopped just before Parthenay. He knew he needed to think, but what exactly did he need to think about? He was parked on a peaceful, boring stretch of countryside by a canal where the water was so still it looked motionless. Water plants sprouted or rotted, it was difficult to say which. The silence was broken by a faint trilling sound—insects, probably. As he stretched out on the grassy bank, he noticed a gentle current; the canal was flowing slowly to the south. He could not see a single frog.

Just before he started university in October 1975, Bruno moved into the studio his father had bought for him. He felt a whole new life was beginning for him. He was quickly disappointed. There were girls, of course, in fact rather a lot of girls enrolled in liberal arts at Censier, but they all seemed to be taken; or if they weren’t, they weren’t prepared to be taken by him. In an attempt to make friends he went to every lecture, every tutorial, and quickly became a good student. He watched the girls in the cafeteria, listened to them chatting about going out, meeting friends, inviting each other to parties. He started to eat. His diet quickly settled into a nutritious trip down the boulevard Saint-Michel. He would start with a hot dog from the stand on the corner of the rue Gay-Lussac; farther down, he would have a slice of pizza or a kebab. At McDonald’s on the boulevard Saint-Germain, he’d devour several cheeseburgers washed down with coke and a banana milk shake before staggering down the rue de la Harpe to finish off with some Tunisian pastries. On his way home he would stop in front of the Cinéma Latin, which showed porn double features. Sometimes he would stand for half an hour pretending to look at the bus timetable in the always vain hope of seeing a woman or a couple go inside. More often than not, he would end up buying a ticket. He always felt better once he was inside; the usherette was the soul of discretion. The men sat far apart, always leaving several seats between them. He would quietly jerk off watching
Naughty Nurses, The Hitchhiker Always Comes Twice, Teacher Spreads Her Legs, The Wild Bunch,
whatever was on. He had to be careful as he left: the cinema was right on the boulevard Saint-Michel, and he could easily bump into a girl from college. Usually he waited for someone else to leave and walked just behind him; it seemed less humiliating that he might have gone to a porn movie with a friend. He usually got back around midnight and read for a while: Chateaubriand or Rousseau. He decided to change his life once or twice a week, to take some radical new direction. This is how it went: first he would take off his clothes and look at himself in the mirror. He had to go to the limit of self-abasement, to face up to the humiliating sight of his fat belly, his flabby cheeks and his sagging buttocks. Then he would turn out the lights and, feet together, arms folded across his chest, he would drop his head forward, the better to go into himself. Then he would breathe slowly, deeply, expanding his revolting belly as far as he could before exhaling slowly, mentally saying a number as he did so. It was essential not to let his concentration waver; every number was important, but the most significant were four, eight and, of course, sixteen, the last one. He would exhale with all his might as he reached the final number; when he raised his head he would be a radically new man, finally ready to live, to swim with the tide of existence. He would no longer feel guilty or ashamed; he would eat normally and behave normally around girls. “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

This little ritual had no effect whatever on his self-esteem, but could occasionally control his overeating; sometimes he would manage to get through two days before backsliding. He put the failure down to lack of concentration, though soon afterward he would begin to believe again. He was still young.

One evening he ran into Annick as he came out of the Tunisian bakery. He hadn’t seen her since their brief meeting in the summer of ’74. She was uglier now, practically obese. She wore thick, square glasses with heavy black frames that made her brown eyes seem smaller and accentuated the sickly pallor of her skin. They had coffee together, both of them distinctly uneasy. She was also studying literature, at the Sorbonne; she had a studio apartment nearby, with a view of the boulevard Saint-Michel. She gave him her telephone number when they parted.

In the weeks that followed he went to see her several times. She was too ashamed of her body to get undressed, though she did offer to give him a blow-job the first night. She didn’t say it had anything to do with her body, rather that it was because she wasn’t on the pill. “Really, I prefer it . . .” She stayed in every night, never went out. She drank herbal tea, tried dieting, yet nothing seemed to work. Several times Bruno tried to take off her trousers, but she just curled up and pushed him away fiercely, without a word. He gave up and took out his penis. She would suck him off quickly, a little brutally, and he would come in her mouth. Sometimes they talked about their studies, but not often; he usually left quickly. True, she wasn’t very pretty and he would have been embarrassed to be seen with her on the street, in a restaurant or a movie line. He’d stuff himself with Tunisian pastries until he felt sick and then go to see her, get a blow-job and leave. It was probably best that way.

It was a mild night, the night Annick died. Though the end of March, already it felt like a spring evening. In the patisserie Bruno bought an almond turnover, then walked down along the banks of the Seine. The commentary from the loudspeakers of a
bateau-mouche
filled the air, echoing off the walls of Notre-Dame. He chewed his way through the sticky, honey-covered pastry, only to feel more disgusted with himself than ever. He thought perhaps he should try it right here, in the center of Paris, in the middle of everyone and everything. He closed his eyes, brought his feet together and folded his arms across his chest. Slowly, carefully, with complete concentration, he began to count. When he reached the magic sixteen he opened his eyes, lifted his head. The
bateau-mouche
had disappeared, the riverbank was deserted, the air as mild as before.

Two policemen were trying to disperse a small crowd gathered outside Annick’s building. Bruno went a little closer. The girl’s body lay smashed and strangely twisted on the sidewalk. Her shattered arms seemed to form two strange limbs around her head. Her face, or what was left of it, lay in a pool of blood. She obviously had brought her hands up to her face in a last, desperate reflex to protect herself from the impact. “Jumped from the seventh floor,” said a nearby woman, with odd satisfaction, “killed stone dead.” At that moment an ambulance arrived and two men got out carrying a stretcher. As they lifted her body he saw her shattered skull and turned away. The ambulance drove off in a howl of sirens. So ended Bruno’s first love.

The summer of ’76 was probably the worst time of his life. He had just turned twenty. The heat was stifling, with not a breath of cool air even at night; the summer of ’76 would be remembered for this. Girls wore short, flimsy dresses which stuck to their bodies with sweat. He walked around all day, his eyes popping out with lust. At night he would get up and go walking through Paris, stopping at café terraces, hanging around outside nightclubs. He didn’t know how to dance. He had a permanent hard-on. He felt as though what was between his legs was a piece of oozing, putrefying meat devoured by worms. Several times he tried to talk to girls in the street, only to be humiliated. At night he would stare at himself in the mirror. He noticed that his hair, plastered to his head with sweat, was already beginning to recede. The folds of his stomach were obvious even through his shirt. He started visiting sex shops and peep shows, which served only to aggravate his suffering. For the first time he turned to prostitutes.

A subtle but definitive change had occurred in Western society during 1974 and 1975, Bruno thought to himself. He was still lying on the grassy bank by the canal; he had rolled up his linen jacket to use it as a pillow. He tore out a clump of coarse, damp grass. During those years when he was desperately trying to fit in, Western society had tipped toward something dark and dangerous. In the summer of 1976 it was already apparent that all of it would end badly. Physical violence, the most perfect manifestation of individuation, was about to reappear.

10

JULIAN AND ALDOUS

When it is necessary to modify or renew fundamental doctrine, the generations sacrificed to the era during which the transformation takes place remain essentially alienated from that transformation, and often become directly hostile to it.

A
UGUSTE
C
OMTE,

—Un Appel aux conservateurs

Toward noon, Bruno got back into his car and drove into Parthenay. He decided to take the expressway after all. He stopped at a phone booth and called his brother, who answered immediately. He was on his way back to Paris and wondered if he could see him that evening. He wouldn’t be free the following evening—he was seeing his son—but he was tonight. It was important.

Michel was impassive. “If you want . . .” he said after a long pause. Like most people, he found he loathed what the sociologists and commentators liked to call the “atomization of society.” Also like most, he thought it was important to stay in touch with one’s family, even if it meant a certain amount of hassle. For years he had made himself spend every Christmas with his aunt Marie-Thérèse at her house in Raincy, where she was living out her declining years with her husband. His uncle was practically deaf; a kindhearted man, he had voted Communist all his life and refused to go to midnight mass, which always started an argument. Michel listened as the old man talked about emancipating the workingman and sipped gentian tea
;
from time to time, he would yell something banal in response. Then the others arrived. Michel was fond of his cousin Brigitte; he wanted her to be happy, but the fact that her husband was a bastard made that rather unlikely. He was a sales rep with Bayer and cheated on his wife whenever he had the opportunity; as he was a handsome man and traveled a lot, he had quite a lot of opportunities. Every year, Brigitte’s face grew a little more guant.

Michel stopped making his annual visit in 1990, though there was still Bruno. Family relationships last for years, sometimes decades—much longer, in fact, than any other kind of relationship; then, finally, they too gutter out.

When Bruno arrived at about nine o’clock, he had already had a couple of drinks and was eager to talk philosophy. “I’ve always been struck by how accurate Huxley was in
Brave New World,
” he began before he’d even sat down. “It’s phenomenal when you think he wrote it in 1932. Everything that’s happened since simply brings Western society closer to the social model he described. Control of reproduction is more precise and eventually will be completely disassociated from sex altogether, and procreation will take place in tightly guarded laboratories where perfect genetic conditions are ensured. Once that happens, any sense of family, of father-son bonds, will disappear. Pharmaceutical companies will break down the distinction between youth and age. In Huxley’s world, a sixty-year-old man is as healthy as a man of twenty, looks as young and has the same desires. When we get to the point that life can’t be prolonged any further, we’ll be killed off by voluntary euthanasia; quick, discreet, emotionless. The society Huxley describes in
Brave New World
is happy; tragedy and extremes of human emotion have disappeared. Sexual liberation is total—nothing stands in the way of instant gratification. Oh, there are little moments of depression, of sadness or doubt, but they’re easily dealt with using advances in antidepressants and tranquilizers. ‘One cubic centimeter cures ten gloomy sentiments.’ This is exactly the sort of world we’re trying to create, the world we want to live in.

“Oh, I know, I know,” Bruno went on, waving his hand as if to dismiss an objection Michel had not voiced. “Everyone says
Brave New World
is supposed to be a totalitarian nightmare, a vicious indictment of society, but that’s hypocritical bullshit.
Brave New World
is our idea of heaven: genetic manipulation, sexual liberation, the war against aging, the leisure society. This is precisely the world that we have tried—and so far failed—to create. The only thing in the book that rankles a little with our idea of equal opportunities—or meritocracy—is the idea of dividing society into castes where each performs tasks according to their genetic makeup. But that’s also the only point on which Huxley proved a false prophet. Advances in automation and robotics have made the whole idea pointless.

“Oh, Huxley was a terrible writer, I admit. His writing is pretentious and clumsy, his characters are bland ciphers, but he had one vital premonition: he understood that for centuries the evolution of human society had been linked to scientific and technological progress and would continue to be more and more so. He may have lacked style or finesse or psychological insight, but that’s insignificant compared with the accuracy of the original concept. Huxley was the first writer to realize that biology would take over from physics as the driving force of society—long before other sci-fi writers.”

Bruno stopped and noticed that his brother seemed worried and gaunt. He was clearly tired and had been paying little attention. In fact, he hadn’t bothered to go shopping for days. Poverty was usually less oppressive in the summer months, though there were more beggars than ever outside Monoprix this year. What would it be like when war came, Michel wondered as he watched the slow tread of the beggars from his bay window. When would war break out, and what would that mean to the back-to-school rush? Bruno poured himself another glass of wine; he was getting hungry, and was surprised when his brother spoke in a weary voice:

“Huxley came from a large family of English biologists. His grandfather was a friend of Darwin’s. He wrote a lot in defense of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. His father and his brother Julian were also famous biologists. They were pragmatic, skeptical intellectuals in the English liberal mold—a tradition based more on observation and on experimental methods than was the French Enlightenment. As a boy, Huxley had the opportunity to meet many economists, judges and, particularly, scientists who were regular visitors to his father’s house. He was certainly the only writer of his generation who understood the impact biology would have. It would all have happened much faster if it hadn’t been for the war. Nazi ideology completely discredited eugenics and the idea of improving the race; it was decades before anyone thought about it again.”

Michel went over to the bookshelf and took down
What Dare I Think?
and handed it to Bruno. “It was written by Julian Huxley, Aldous’s older brother, and published in 1931, a year before
Brave New World
. All of the ideas his brother used in the novel—genetic manipulation and improving the species, including the human species—are suggested here. All of them are presented as unequivocally desirable goals that society should strive for.”

Michel sat down again and wiped his forehead. “In 1946, just after the war, Julian Huxley was appointed director-general of UNESCO, which had just been founded. Aldous Huxley had just published
Brave New World Revisited,
in which he tried to portray the first novel as a social satire. Years later, Aldous would become a pillar of the hippie experiment. He had always been in favor of complete sexual liberation, and he was a pioneer in the use of psychedelic drugs. The founding members of Esalen met him and were taken with his ideas. Then the New Age came along and recycled all the ideas of Esalen. Aldous Huxley is probably one of the most influential thinkers of the century.”

They went to a Chinese restaurant on the corner, which offered a set meal for two at 270 francs. Michel had not been out of his apartment in three days. “I haven’t eaten today,” he said, slightly surprised; he was still carrying the book.

“In 1962,” he went on as he stirred his sticky rice, “Huxley published his last book,
Island
. It’s set on a utopian tropical island—probably based on Sri Lanka, given the scenery and the vegetation. On the island a civilization has developed which has completely bypassed the great commercial currents of the twentieth century. The civilization is technologically advanced, but still respectful of nature. The natives are pacifists, and completely immune to family neuroses and Judeo-Christian inhibitions. Nudism is accepted as normal, sensuality and sexuality are freely practiced. The book was second-rate, but it was easy to read and it had a enormous effect on hippies and, through them, on New Agers. If you look at it closely, the harmonious society in
Island
has a lot in common with
Brave New World
. Huxley was probably senile by that time. He didn’t seem to notice the similarities himself. The society in
Island
is as close to
Brave New World
as hippie liberalism is to bourgeois liberalism—or rather to its Swedish social-democratic variant.”

He paused, dipped a shrimp into the chili sauce and then put down his chopsticks. “Like his brother, Aldous was an optimist . . .” he said with something like disgust. “The metaphysical mutation that gave rise to materialism and modern science in turn spawned two great trends: rationalism and individualism. Huxley’s mistake was in having poorly evaluated the balance of power between these two. Specifically, he underestimated the growth of individualism brought about by an increased consciousness of death. Individualism gives rise to freedom, the sense of self, the need to distinguish oneself and to be superior to others. A rational society like the one he describes in
Brave New World
can defuse the struggle. Economic rivalry—a metaphor for mastery over space—has no more reason to exist in a society of plenty, where the economy is strictly regulated. Sexual rivalry—a metaphor for mastery over time through reproduction—has no more reason to exist in a society where the connection between sex and procreation has been broken. But Huxley forgets about individualism. He doesn’t understand that sex, even stripped of its link with reproduction, still exists—not as a pleasure principle, but as a form of narcissistic differentiation. The same is true of the desire for wealth. Why has the Swedish model of social democracy never triumphed over liberalism? Why has it never been applied to sexual satisfaction? Because the metaphysical mutation brought about by modern science leads to individuation, vanity, malice and desire. Any philosopher, not just Buddhist or Christian, but any philosopher worthy of the name, knows that, in itself, desire—unlike pleasure—is a source of suffering, pain and hatred. The utopian solution—from Plato to Huxley by way of Fourier—is to do away with desire and the suffering it causes by satisfying it immediately. The opposite is true of the sex-and-advertising society we live in, where desire is marshaled and blown up out of all proportion, while satisfaction is maintained in the private sphere. For society to function, for competition to continue, people have to want more and more, until desire fills their lives and finally devours them.” He wiped his forehead, exhausted. He hadn’t touched his food.

“There are some correctives,” Bruno said softly, “some humanist touches which help people forget about death. In
Brave New World,
it’s tranquilizers and antidepressants; in
Island
it’s hallucinogens, meditation and some vague Hindu mysticism. In our own society, people try to use a mixture of both.”

“Julian Huxley gives over the second part of
What Dare I Think?
to discussing religion,” retorted Michel, clearly contemptuous. “He’s well aware that science and materialism have completely undermined traditional spirituality, but he also realizes that society cannot survive without religion. He spends about a hundred pages trying to set out the principles of a religion which could dovetail with science. The results aren’t terribly convincing, and certainly society hasn’t followed the route he suggested. In fact, any attempt at fusing science and religion is doomed by the knowledge of physical mortality, so cruelty and egotism cannot fail to spread. In compensation,” he concluded bizarrely, “the same is true of love.”