The Elementary Particles (21 page)

22

SAORGE—TERMINUS

Advertising is so focused on attracting the youth market that it has often blundered into campaigns in which age is treated with condescension, caricature and ridicule. To compensate for the inability of such a society to listen, it is necessary to ensure that every member of every sales force become an “ambassador” to the elderly.

—C
ORINNE
M
ÉGY
,

Le Vrai Visage des seniors

Perhaps it was always going to end like this; perhaps there was no other solution. Perhaps it was necessary to unravel everything that had become tangled, complete everything that had been started. And so Djerzinski had to come to this place: Saorge, latitude 44° north, longitude 7°30’ east, at an altitude of just over 500 meters. At Nice he checked into the Windsor, a midrange hotel with a foul ambience, one of whose rooms had been decorated by the mediocre artist Philippe Perrin. The following morning he took the famously picturesque Nice–Tende train. The train wound its way through Nice’s northern suburbs of housing projects full of Arabs, billboards for Minitel sex sites and a sixty percent National Front majority. After Peillon-Saint-Thècle station the train entered a tunnel, and when it emerged into the brilliant sunshine Djerzinski could see the fantastical silhouette of the town of Peillon perched high in the hills. This was what was called the
niçois
back country; people came from as far as Chicago and Denver to contemplate the beauty of the hinterland of Nice. Then the train rushed through the gorges of the Roya, and Djerzinski disembarked at Fanton-Saorge. He had no luggage; it was the end of May. He walked for half an hour or so. About halfway, he had to go through a tunnel; there was no traffic whatsoever.

According to the
Guide du Routard
he’d bought at Orly airport, the village of Saorge, dominating the whole valley from a vertiginous slope, its tall houses built into the terraced hillside, had “something Tibetan about it”; you could put it that way. In any case, it was here that his mother—Janine, rechristened Jane—had chosen to die, after spending five years in Goa on the west coast of the Indian subcontinent.

“Well, she chose to come here,” Bruno corrected him, “but I’m sure she didn’t choose to die. Apparently the old whore converted to Islam, to Sufi mysticism or some such bullshit. She moved into an abandoned house outside the village with a crowd of hippies. You’d think hippies had disappeared by now, given how little you hear about them in the magazines and papers, but actually there’s more of them than ever; what with high unemployment, their numbers have increased considerably; you could even say the place is swarming with them. I did my own little survey . . .” he lowered his voice—“and the thing is, now they call themselves ‘neo-rurals,’ but actually they don’t do a goddamn thing. They just collect their unemployment and some idiotic subsidy supposed to promote hill farming.” He nodded his head with a knowing air, drained his glass and ordered another. He had arranged to meet Michel at Chez Gilou, the only café in the village. With its dirty postcards, framed pictures of trout and a poster for “Saorge Boules” (with its steering committee of no less than fourteen members), it evoked an olde-world hunting/ fishing/nature/historic atmosphere completely at odds with the neo-Woodstock scene Bruno vilified. Out of his pocket he carefully took a pamphlet entitled
Solidarity with the Brigasque Sheep!
“I wrote it last night,” he said conspiratorially. “I was talking to some of the breeders yesterday. They’re struggling to make ends meet. They’re really angry—their sheep have been decimated. It’s all because of the eco-movement and the National Park at Mercantour. They’ve reintroduced wolves into the wild, hordes of wolves, and they eat the lambs!” His voice became strangulated and suddenly broke into sobs. In his letter to Michel, Bruno had mentioned that he had moved back to the psychiatric clinic at Verrières-le-Buisson “probably for good.” Obviously they had let him out for the occasion.

“So our mother is dying,” Michel interrupted, anxious to get to the point.

“Absolutely! It’s the same at Cap d’Agde—apparently they’ve closed the dunes to the public. The decision was taken by the Society for the Protection of the Coast, which is completely run by the eco-warriors. People weren’t doing any harm, they were just having a nice orgy, but apparently they were disturbing the terns. Terns are a type of sparrow. Well, fuck the terns!” Bruno shouted. “They’re trying to stop us fucking, and now they want to stop us eating sheep’s cheese, the fucking Nazis. The Socialists are in on it too. They hate sheep because sheep are conservative, whereas everyone knows wolves are left-wing—which is kind of strange, because wolves look like German shepherds and they’re clearly on the extreme right. Who’re you gonna trust?” He shook his head solemnly. “What hotel are you staying at in Nice?” he asked suddenly.

“The Windsor.”

“The Windsor? Why?” Bruno was agitated again. “When did you start staying in high-class hotels? Who do you think you are? Personally”—he stressed each sentence, with increasing energy—“I always stay at a Mercure hotel! Did you at least bother to check it out? Did you know that the Hôtel Mercure at Baie des Anges has attractive seasonal rates? Off-peak, the room costs only three hundred and thirty francs—the price of a two-star hotel—with all the comfort of three-star service, a view over the Promenade des Anglais and twenty-four-hour room service!”

Bruno was practically screaming now. Despite his customer’s somewhat eccentric behavior, the manager of Chez Gilou (was his name Gilou? It was likely) was listening carefully. Men are always interested in finance and value for money, it’s one of their characteristic traits.

. . .

“Oh, here’s Twat!” said Bruno sharply, his tone completely changed as he nodded to a young man who had just come into the café. About twenty-two, dressed in fatigues and a Greenpeace T-shirt, he had a dark complexion and wore his black hair in dreadlocks. In short, he was doing the Rasta thing. “Hi, Twat,” Bruno said cheerfully. “This is my brother. On your way to see the old bitch?” The boy nodded without saying anything; for some reason or other he had decided not to let Bruno get to him.

The road led out of the village and gently sloped up the mountainside toward Italy. Over the first hill they found themselves in a large valley flanked by forest; the border could not have been more than ten kilometers away. To the east it was possible to make out snow-capped peaks. The deserted landscape seemed serene and abundant. “The doctor came around,” explained the Rasta-Hippie. “She can’t be moved. Anyway, there’s nothing more they can do for her. It’s nature’s way,” he said gravely.

“Did you hear that?” yelled Bruno. “Did you hear that clown? Going on about
nature
—that’s all they talk about. Now that she’s sick, they can’t wait for her to snuff it, like she’s an animal in its hole. That’s my mother you’re talking about, Twat!” he said haughtily. “Look at his get-up!” he went on. “The rest of them are the same—worse, probably. They’re total jerk-offs.”

“It’s pretty around here . . .” Michel said absently.

The house was large and squat beside a spring, built of rough-hewn stone with a slate roof. Before going in Michel took out his Canon Prima Mini (retractable zoom lens, 38–105 mm, 1,290 FF at FNAC). He turned around completely and focused on a long shot before pressing the button, then he joined the others.

Apart from Rasta-Hippie and Bruno, the only people in the front room were an indeterminate, probably Dutch creature with blondish hair, knitting a poncho by the fireplace, and an old hippie with long gray hair, a gray beard and an intelligent goatlike face. “She’s in here . . .” said Rasta-Hippie, pulling back a piece of fabric nailed to the wall and ushering them into the next room.

Certainly Michel was curious to see the dark-haired figure huddled at the end of its bed, watching as they came in. After all, this was only the second time he’d ever seen his mother, and everything led him to believe that it would be the last. The first thing that struck him was her extreme thinness, which made her cheekbones prominent and her arms look twisted. Her skin was dark, earth-colored, and she was breathing with difficulty; clearly not long for this world; but over her nose, which seemed hooked, her huge, pale eyes shone in the dim light. Cautiously, he walked toward the stretched-out form. “Don’t worry,” said Bruno. “She can’t talk anymore.” She might not have been able to talk, but she was certainly still alert. Did she recognize him? Probably not. Maybe she was confusing him with his father, it was possible; Michel knew he looked a lot like his father had at his age. There are people who have a profound effect on one’s life, who leave their mark for better or worse; for Janine, now Jane, there was life
before
Michel’s father and life
after
. Before she met him, she was just a degenerate little rich girl; afterward she was to become something else, something much more disastrous. In fact, “meet” was the wrong word; they hadn’t met, as such, simply had run into each other, procreated and gone their separate ways. She had never succeeded in understanding the enigma that was Marc Djerzinski; she had never even come close. Did she think of him now, in the final hours of her calamitous life? It wasn’t impossible.

Bruno collapsed heavily into a chair beside her bed. “You’re just an old whore,” he said in a pedantic tone. “You deserve to croak.” Michel sat opposite him at the head of the bed and lit a cigarette. “Do you want to be cremated?” Bruno went on jovially. “Well, when the time comes, I’ll make sure they incinerate you. I’ll put what’s left of you in a little pot and every morning when I get up, I’ll piss on your ashes.” He nodded contentedly; Jane let out a throaty howl. Just then Rasta-Hippie reappeared. “Would you like something to drink?” he offered coldly. “Of course, my good man!” Bruno shouted. “What kind of question is that? Go open a bottle, Twat!” The young man went out and came back with a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. Bruno poured himself a large glass and knocked it back quickly. “You’ll have to forgive him, he’s upset,” said Michel in a barely audible voice. “That’s right,” said his half brother, “you just leave us to our misery, Twat.” He emptied the glass, clicked his tongue and poured himself another. “They better keep out of my way, the fuckers . . .” he said. “She’s left everything to them and they fucking know that the children are absolutely entitled to their inheritance. If we wanted to contest the will, we’d win hands down.” Michel said nothing, not wanting to discuss the subject. There was a marked silence. In the next room, no one said a word either; they could hear the weak but raucous breathing of the dying.

“She just wanted to stay young, that’s all . . .” said Michel, his voice tired and forgiving. “She wanted to be with young people—though certainly not her kids, who just reminded her that she was part of an older generation. It’s not so difficult to understand. I want to go now. Do you think she’ll die soon?”

Bruno shrugged his shoulders. Michel got up and went into the other room; Gray-Hippie was on his own now, peeling organic carrots. He tried to talk to him, to find out what the doctor had actually said, but the old fool could come up with only vague details that were completely off the subject. “She was a radiant woman,” he said emphatically, carrot in hand. “We think she’s ready for death, having reached a sufficiently advanced level of spiritual awareness.” What the fuck did that mean? There was no point in getting into it. It was obvious the old guy wasn’t actually saying anything, just making noises with his mouth. Michel impatiently turned on his heel and went back to Bruno. “Fucking hippies . . .” he said as he sat down again. “They’re still convinced that religion is some sort of individual experience based on meditation, spiritual exploration and all that. They don’t understand that, on the contrary, it’s a purely social activity about rites and rituals, ceremonies and rules. According to Auguste Comte, the sole purpose of religion is to bring humanity to a state of perfect unity.”

“Auguste Comte yourself!” interrupted Bruno angrily. “As soon as people stop believing in life after death, religion is impossible. If society is impossible without religion, which is what you’re saying, then society isn’t possible either. You’re just like those sociologists who go on about how the youth culture is just some passing fad from the fifties that had its finest hour in the eighties, and so on. Actually, man has always been terrified by death—he’s never been able to face the idea of his own disappearance, or even physical decline, without horror. Of all worldly goods, youth is clearly the most precious, and today we don’t believe in anything but worldly goods. ‘If Christ did not rise from the dead,’ says Saint Paul bluntly, ‘then our faith is vain.’ Christ didn’t rise from the dead, he lost his fight with death. I even wrote a utopian script on the theme of the New Jerusalem. The film takes place on an island entirely populated by naked women and small dogs. Men have been wiped out by some biological disaster, along with nearly every species of animal. Time has stood still, the weather is constant and mild, trees bear fruit all year long. The women are eternally young and nubile, and the little dogs forever lively and happy. The women swim and stroke each other while the little dogs frolic and play around them. The dogs come in all shapes and sizes: poodles, fox terriers, Shih-Tzus, King Charles spaniels, Yorkshire terriers, Westies, beagles. The only big dog is a clever, gentle Labrador who acts as a counselor to the others. The only sign that men have ever existed is a video of speeches by Édouard Balladur, which has a soothing effect on the dogs and some of the women. There’s also a video of
The Animal Kingdom
, presented by Claude Darget; no one ever watches it, but it is there as a testimony to the barbarism of previous eras.”

“So they let you . . . write,” Michel said quietly. He was not surprised. Most psychiatrists were particularly interested in their patients’ scribblings. Not that they ascribe particular therapeutic value to them, but it’s something to do and anything is better than slashing your wrists with a razor.