The Elementary Particles (20 page)

19

In the midst of the suicide of the West, it was clear they had no chance. They continued to see each other, however, once or twice a week. Annabelle visited her gynecologist and went back on the pill. Michel proved able to penetrate her, but what he liked most was simply sleeping next to her, feeling her living flesh. One night he dreamed of a carnival in Rouen, on the right bank of the Seine. There was a Ferris wheel, almost empty, turning slowly against a livid sky, dominating a landscape of decrepit freighters and metallic structures eaten away by rust. He walked past the sideshows, the colors alternately dim and garish; a glacial wind whipped rain against his face. As he came to the exit, he was attacked by a number of razor-wielding youths in leather. They laid into him for some minutes and then let him go on. His eyes were bleeding; he knew that he would be blind, and his right hand was almost severed. In spite of the blood and pain, still he knew that Annabelle would stand by him, shielding him forever with her love.

For All Saints’ Day weekend they went to Soulac and stayed in a summer house belonging to Annabelle’s brother. The morning after they arrived, they walked down to the beach together. He was tired and sat on a bench while Annabelle walked on. In the distance the sea roared and heaved, a gray and silver flux. As they broke against the sandbanks on the horizon, the waves threw spray against the sun in a dazzling, beautiful haze. Annabelle’s silhouette, barely visible in her pale jacket, walked along the water’s edge. Circling around the plastic furniture of the Café de la Plage, an old Alsatian was also hard to make out, half erased by a mist of air, water and sunlight.

For dinner she grilled a sea bass; the society in which they lived accorded them a surplus above and beyond their basic nutrional needs, so they could live a little, but in fact they no longer really wanted to. He felt compassion for her, for the boundless reserve of love simmering inside her, which the world had wasted; it was perhaps the only human emotion which could still touch him. As to the rest, a glacial reticence had taken over his body. He simply could no longer love.

Back in Paris they had happy moments together, like stills from a perfume ad (dashing hand in hand down the steps of Montmartre; or suddenly revealed in motionless embrace on the Pont des Arts by the lights of a
bateau-mouche
as it turned). There were the Sunday afternoon half-arguments, too, the moments of silence when bodies curl up beneath the sheets on the long shores of silence and apathy where life founders. Annabelle’s studio was so dark they had to turn on the lights at four in the afternoon. They sometimes were sad, but mostly they were serious. Both of them knew that this would be their last human relationship, and this feeling lacerated every moment they spent together. They had a great respect and a profound sympathy for each other, and there were days when, caught up in some sudden magic, they knew moments of fresh air and glorious, bracing sunshine. For the most part, however, they could feel a gray shadow moving over them, on the earth that supported them, and in everything they could glimpse the end.

20

Bruno and Christiane had also returned to Paris, as it was inconceivable not to. On the day they went back to work, he stopped and thought about the unknown doctor who had given them this singular gift, two weeks of unmerited sick leave; then he set off again toward his office on the rue de Grenelle. As he got to his floor, he realized he looked tanned and healthy—which was ridiculous—but he didn’t really care. His colleagues, the thought-provoking seminars, the social development of the adolescent, multiculturalism . . . none of it had the slightest importance for him anymore. Christiane sucked his cock and looked after him when he was ill; Christiane was important. At that moment, he knew he would never see his son again.

Christiane’s son, Patrice, had left her apartment a complete mess: pizza ground into the carpet, empty Coke cans, cigarette butts strewn about, and there were scorchmarks on the floor. She hesitated for a moment, thought about checking into a hotel, but then decided to clean up, to make the place her own again. Noyon was a dirty, dull and dangerous town: she got into the habit of going to Paris every weekend. Most Saturdays, they would go to a club for couples—the 2+2, Chris et Manu, the Chandelles. Their first night at Chris et Manu left a vivid impression on Bruno. Along the dance floor, a number of rooms were bathed in a strange purple glow; beds were set up side by side. All around them couples were fucking, stroking and licking each other. Most of the women were naked, though some wore a blouse or a T-shirt, or had simply hiked up their skirts. In the largest room there were about twenty couples. No one spoke, there was only the steady hum of the air-conditioning and the panting of women as they approached orgasm. He sat on one of the beds next to a tall dark-haired woman with heavy breasts who was being tongued by a man of about fifty who was still wearing a shirt and tie. Christiane opened his trousers and began to jerk him off, glancing around her as she did so. A man came up to them and slipped his hand under her skirt. She unhooked it and let it slip to the floor; she was wearing nothing underneath. The man knelt and began to stroke her as she continued to masturbate Bruno. Beside him on the bed, the dark-haired woman started to moan louder, and he cupped her breasts. He was hard as a rock. Christiane leaned over and began to tease the ridge of his penis and the frenum with the tip of her tongue. Another couple came over and sat beside them; the woman, a redhead of about twenty, was wearing a black fake-leather miniskirt. She watched as Christiane licked his cock; Christiane smiled at her and pulled up her T-shirt to show off her breasts. The other woman hiked up her skirt, revealing her cunt; her lush pubic hair, too, was red. Christiane took her hand and guided it to Bruno’s penis. The woman began to jerk him off while Christiane continued to lick the glans. In a matter of seconds he shuddered with a spasm of pleasure and came all over her face. He sat up quickly and took her in his arms. “I’m sorry,” he said, “really sorry.” She kissed him, pulling him close to her, and he could smell the sperm on her cheeks. “It doesn’t matter,” she said gently, “it really doesn’t.” A little later she said, “Do you want to go?” He nodded sadly, his excitement completely dissipated. They dressed quickly and left immediately.

In the weeks that followed he learned to control himself a little better. It was the beginning of a good time for them, a happy time. His life had meaning now, though it was limited to the weekends he spent with Christiane. In the health section of FNAC he found a book by an American sexologist on how to postpone ejaculation using a series of gradual exercises. Essentially they helped develop the pubococcygeal muscle, a small arc-shaped muscle at the base of the testicles. By violently contracting the muscle and inhaling deeply just before orgasm, it was possible to avoid ejaculating. Bruno began the exercises; it was a goal, something worth working toward. Every time they went out he was astonished to see men, sometimes much older than he, penetrate several women one after another, to see them masturbated or sucked for hours on end without ever losing their erections. He was also embarrassed to discover that most had pricks much bigger than his. Christiane told him time and again it didn’t matter, that it made no difference to her. He believed her—he could see that she was in love with him—but couldn’t help feeling that many of the women they met in clubs were somewhat disappointed when they saw his cock. No one ever commented; their courtesy was exemplary, and the atmosphere always friendly and polite, but their looks couldn’t lie and slowly he realized that from a sexual viewpoint, too, he just didn’t make the grade. Yet there were moments of dazzling, unbelievable pleasure in which he would almost swoon or cry out with complete gratification, but these had less to do with his potency than with his genital sensitivity. On the other hand, Christiane told him he was very tactile, and it was true; he knew it was rare for him not to bring a woman to orgasm.

In mid-December, he noticed Christiane was losing weight and that there were red marks on her face. She was still having problems with her back, she told him, and had increased her medication; the weight loss and the red spots were just side effects of the drugs. She quickly changed the subject, and he thought she seemed embarrassed. He felt uneasy about the whole thing. She certainly was capable of lying to protect him: she was too gentle, too good-natured. On Saturday nights she usually cooked, and they had a nice meal together before going out. She wore skirts slit up the side and small see-through tops or garter belts and sometimes a body suit open at the crotch. Her pussy was soft, exciting and instantly wet. They were wonderful nights of the sort he scarcely had dreamed of before. Sometimes, when she let herself be fucked by several people, Christiane’s heartbeat became irregular. Her heart would begin to beat a little too fast, and she would suddenly start to sweat. At such times Bruno was afraid. They would stop, then; she would press herself against him, kiss him and stroke his neck and his hair.

21

Of course, even here there was no escape. The men and women who frequented clubs for couples quickly abandoned their search for pleasure (which required time, finesse and sensitivity) in favor of prodigal sexual abandon—rather insincere in its nature and, in fact, lifted directly from the gang-bang scenes in the fashionable porn movies shown on Canal+. In homage to Marx’s “tendency for the general rate of profit to decline,” the cryptic law at the heart of his system, it would be tempting to propose a corresponding “tendency for the general rate of pleasure to decline” for the libertine system in which Bruno and Christiane found themselves, but that would be simplistic and inaccurate. As secondary cultural and anthropological phenomena, pleasure and desire explain almost nothing about sexuality itself; far from being determining factors, they are in fact themselves sociologically determined. In the context of a monogamous system based on romance and love, they can be attained only through the intermediary of the loved one. In the liberal system which Bruno and Christiane had joined, the sexual model proposed by the dominant culture (advertising, magazines, social and public health organizations) was governed by the principle of
adventure:
in such a system, pleasure and desire occur as a result of a process of
seduction,
which emphasizes novelty, passion and individual creativity (all qualities also required of employees in their professional capacities). The diminishing importance of intellectual and moral criteria of seduction in favor of purely physical criteria led regulars of such clubs, little by little, to a slightly different system, which can be considered the fantasy of the dominant culture: the
Sadean
system. In this fantasy world, cocks are invariably enormous and rock hard, breasts enhanced, cunts wet and shaven. Female regulars, often readers of
Connexion
and
Hot Video,
go out with the sole aim of being impaled on as many pricks as possible. For them, the logical next step would be S&M clubs. Orgasm is a matter of custom, as Pascal would undoubtedly have said if he had been interested in such things.

With his five-inch cock and his inability to maintain an erection between orgasms (he had never really been able to sustain one for any length of time, except perhaps as a teenager, and the time between ejaculations had grown considerably since then: he wasn’t getting any younger), Bruno wasn’t really in his element in such places. He was happy, however, to have more cunts and mouths open to him than he had ever dreamed possible; he felt indebted to Christiane for that. The gentlest moments were those when she caressed another woman; they were invariably delighted by the deftness of her tongue and the agility of her fingers in finding and stimulating their clitorises; their stimulation of him, however, was usually disappointing. Gaping from multiple penetrations and brutal fingering (often using several fingers, or indeed the whole hand), their cunts had all the sensitivity of blocks of lard. Imitating the frenetic rhythm of porn actresses, they brutally jerked his cock in a ridiculous piston motion, as though it were a piece of dead meat (the ubiquity of techno in the clubs, rather than more sensual rhythms, probably contributed to the excessively mechanical nature of their technique). He came quickly, with no real pleasure, and after that the evening was over as far as he was concerned. They usually stayed for another half hour or hour; Christiane would let herself be fucked by several men while trying—usually in vain—to get him hard again. When they woke, they would make love again and images of the previous night would flood back, softened by his half-sleep; these were moments of extraordinary tenderness.

The ideal scenario would have been to invite a number of chosen couples to spend the evening at their apartment and chat pleasantly while fondling one another. Bruno felt sure that this was the way forward; he knew, too, that he should go back to the exercises recommended by the American sexologist. His relationship with Christiane, which had brought him more joy than anything in his life, was deep and serious. That, at least, is what he told himself sometimes, as he watched her dress or putter around in the kitchen. But more often, during the week, when she was away from him, he had a premonition that it was a bad farce, one last sordid joke life was playing on him. Unhappiness isn’t at its most acute point until a realistic chance of happiness, sufficiently close, has been envisioned.

The accident happened one night in February at Chris et Manu. Bruno was lying on a mattress in the main room, his head raised on several cushions, holding Christiane’s hand as she gave him a blow-job. She was kneeling over him, legs apart, offering herself to any man who might pass. They slipped on condoms and took her from behind. Five men had already fucked her without Christiane even glancing back at them; eyes half-closed, dreamlike, she let her tongue play on Bruno’s penis, exploring every centimeter of its length. Suddenly she gave a single short cry. The man behind her, a well-built guy with curly hair, continued conscientiously to pump her hard and fast, his eyes glazed and distant. “Stop! Stop!” said Bruno; he thought he’d screamed, but his voice didn’t seem to carry, and only a feeble croak had escaped his lips. He got up and brutally pushed the guy away. The man stood, stunned, his cock rigid, his arms hanging loose. Christiane had fallen onto her side, her face contorted in a rictus of pain. “Can you move?” he asked her. She shook her head. He ran to the bar and asked to use the telephone. The ambulance arrived ten minutes later. Everyone in the club had dressed, and in complete silence they watched the paramedics lift Christiane onto a stretcher. Bruno rode with her in the ambulance to the Hôtel-Dieu nearby. For hours he waited in the linoleum-tiled corridor until the duty nurse came to speak to him: she was asleep now; she was out of danger.

On Sunday they took a bone marrow sample. Bruno came back at six. It was dark already, and a chill, fine rain was falling over the Seine. Christiane was sitting up in bed, her back supported on a pile of pillows. She smiled when she saw him. The diagnosis was simple: the necrosis in the vertebrae of her coccyx was so advanced that nothing could be done. She had known for several months that it could happen at any moment; her medication had slowed its progress, but could not stop it. It would get no worse, and there were no complications to fear, but she would be permanently paralyzed from the waist down.

When she was discharged ten days later, Bruno was with her. Things were different now; life in general is a series of long stretches of dazed monotony, and for the most part remarkably miserable. Then, suddenly, things take a decisive turn. Christiane would never have to work again; she was entitled to a disability pension, even to free home care. She wheeled herself toward him, still a little awkward—you had to get the hang of it, and her forearms were not yet strong enough. He kissed her on both cheeks, then on the lips. “Now you can come to Paris and move in with me,” he said. She looked up at him but he could not hold her gaze. “Are you sure?” she asked softly. “Are you sure that’s what you want?” He didn’t answer, or at least he hesitated. There was silence for thirty seconds, then she added: “You don’t have to. You’ve still got your life ahead of you, you don’t have to spend it looking after a cripple.”

Contemporary consciousness is no longer equipped to deal with our mortality. Never in any other time, or any other civilization, have people thought so much or so contantly about aging. Each individual has a simple view of the future: a time will come when the sum of pleasures that life has left to offer is outweighed by the sum of pain (one can actually feel the meter ticking, and it ticks always in the same direction). This weighing up of pleasure and pain, which everyone is forced to make sooner or later, leads logically, at a certain age, to suicide. On this subject, it’s amusing to note that two highly respected
fin-de-siècle
intellectuals, Gilles Deleuze and Guy Debord, both committed suicide for no reason other than that they could not bear the idea of their own physical decline. Their suicides provoked neither surprise nor comment; generally, the suicide of elderly people—by far the most commonplace—seems to us perfectly rational. It is perhaps also useful to cite public reaction to the prospect of a terrorist attack as symptomatic: the overwhelming majority of people would prefer to be killed outright rather than tortured, maimed or even disfigured. In part, this is because they are somewhat tired of life; but the principal reason is that nothing—not even death—seems worse than the prospect of living in a broken body.

He turned off at La-Chapelle-en-Serval. The easiest thing would be to plow the car into a tree as he drove through the forest of Compiègne. He had hesitated a couple of seconds too long; poor Christiane. Then he had hesitated a couple of days too long before calling her; he knew she was alone in her low-income apartment with her son, he could picture her there in her wheelchair, not far from the phone. There was nothing forcing him to look after a cripple, that’s what she’d said, and he knew that she hadn’t died hating him. Her broken wheelchair had been found at the bottom of the stairs near the mailbox. Her face was swollen and her neck broken. Bruno’s name was on a form in the box marked “in the event of an accident, please contact . . .” She had died on the way to the hospital.

The funeral complex was just outside Noyon, on the road to Chauny; you turn off just after Baboeuf. In a white prefab shed, two employees in overalls were waiting for him. It was stuffy and overheated with radiators everywhere, like a classroom in a technical school. The bay windows opened onto a series of low-rise modern buildings in a semiresidential zone. The coffin, still open, lay on a trestle table. Bruno approached it, saw Christiane’s corpse and felt himself fall backward; his head hit the ground hard. The men helped him up carefully. “Cry! Go on, let it all out!” the older man urged him. He shook his head; he knew he couldn’t bring himself to. Christiane’s body would never again breathe or move or speak, her body would never again love. Nothing now was possible for Christiane, and it was all his fault. This time all the cards had been dealt, all the hands played, the last one face-up on the table, and he had lost. He had no more been capable of love than his parents before him. He floated in a strange state of sensory detachment, as though he were floating several centimeters off the ground. He watched as they placed the lid on the coffin and closed it tight with an electric screwdriver. He followed them to the “wall of silence,” a gray concrete wall three meters high with funerary trays set into it, about half of which were empty. The older man checked his instruction sheet and went to compartment 632; behind him, his colleague rolled the coffin on a hand truck. It was cold and damp, beginning to rain. Compartment 632 was halfway up the wall about a meter and half off the ground. In a quick, efficient motion that lasted only seconds, the workers lifted the coffin and slid it into the hole. Using a pneumatic gun they sealed the compartment with quick-drying cement, then the elder of the two asked Bruno to sign the register. If he wanted, the man said as he left, he could stay and collect his thoughts.

Bruno drove back along the expressway, arriving at the
périphérique
at about eleven. He had taken the day off; it hadn’t occurred to him that the ceremony would be so brief. He took the Porte de Châtillon exit and found a place to park on the rue Albert-Sorel just opposite his ex-wife’s apartment. He did not have to wait long. Ten minutes later, his son turned the corner of the avenue Ernest-Reyer, his satchel on his back. He seemed worried, and was talking to himself as he walked. What could he be thinking about? Anne had told him that Victor was a solitary boy; he would come home at lunchtime and heat up something she’d left out for him rather than eat with his classmates at school. Had he missed Bruno? Probably, though he had never said anything. Children suffer the world that adults create for them and try their best to adapt to it; in time, usually, they will replicate it. Victor reached the door, keyed in the security code; he was only a couple of meters from the car, but he hadn’t noticed his father. Bruno sat up in his seat and put his hand on the handle. The door to the building closed behind the boy; Bruno remained motionless for a few seconds, then sat back heavily in his seat. What could he possibly say to his son, what message did he have to give? Nothing. There was nothing. He knew his life was over, but he didn’t understand the ending. Everything was dark, indistinct and painful.

He started the car and took the expressway south. Just past the exit for Antony, he turned off toward Vauhallan. The psychiatric clinic run by the Ministry of Education was just outside Verrières-le-Buisson, near the forest of Verrières; he remembered the park well. He parked on rue Victor-Considérant, walked the short distance to the gates. He recognized the duty nurse. He said: “I’ve come back.”