Authors: Michel Houellebecq

Tags: #Social life and customs, #1986-, #20th century, #Sex tourism, #Fiction, #Literary, #Social conditions, #France, #France - Social life and customs - 20th century, #Psychological, #Fiction - General, #Humorous fiction, #Thailand, #Erotica, #General, #Thailand - Social conditions - 1986

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All things come to an end, including the night. I was dragged from my saurian lethargy by the clear, resonant voice of Captain Chaumont. He apologized, he hadn't had time to come by the previous evening. I offered him coffee. While the water was boiling, he set up his laptop on the kitchen table and hooked up a printer. This way he could have me reread and sign my statement before he left: I made a murmur of approval. The police force was so completely snowed under with administrative work that it did not have enough time to dedicate to its real task, namely, investigation —or at least this was what I had concluded from various television documentaries. He agreed, warmly this time. This interview was getting off to a good start, in an atmosphere of mutual trust. Windows started up with a cheerful little sound.

The death of my father occurred in the evening or the night of November 14. I was working that day; I was working on the fifteenth, too. Obviously, I could have taken my car and killed my father, having driven there and back overnight. What was I doing on the evening or the night of November 14? Nothing, as far as I knew, nothing significant. At least, I had no memory of anything, though it was less than a week before, I had neither a regular sexual partner nor any real close friends, in which case how can you be expected to remember? The days go by, and that's it. I gave Chaumont an apologetic look. I would have liked to help him out, or at least point him in the right direction. "I'll have a look in my diary," I said. I wasn't expecting anything to come of this, but curiously, there was a cell-phone number written in the space for the fourteenth beneath the name Coralie. Who was Coralie? The diary was completely meaningless.

"My brain is a mess," I said with a disappointed smile. "But, I don't know, maybe I was at an opening."

"An opening?" He waited patiently, his fingers hovering some inches above the keyboard.

"Yes, I work for the Ministry of Culture. I plan the financing for exhibitions, or sometimes shows."

"Shows?"

"Shows . . . contemporary dance . . . " I felt completely desperate, overcome with shame.

"Generally speaking, then, you work on cultural events?"

"Yes, that's it. You could put it like that." He looked at me with a compassion tinged with seriousness. He had a vague but definite awareness of the existence of a cultural sector. He must have had to meet people from all walks of life in his profession; no area of society could be completely alien to him. Police work is a truly humanist calling.

The rest of the interview proceeded more or less normally; I had watched a few made-for-TV movies, so I was prepared for this kind of conversation. Did I know any enemies my father might have? No, but no friends either, to be honest. In any case, my father wasn't
important
enough to have enemies. Who stood to gain by his death? Well, me. When did I last visit him? August, probably. There's never much to do in the office in August, but my colleagues have to go on vacation because they have children. I stay in Paris, I play solitaire on the computer, and around the fifteenth I take a long weekend off; that was the extent of my visits to my father. On that subject, did I have a good relationship with my father? Yes and no. Mostly no, but I came to see him once or twice a year; that in itself wasn't too bad.

He nodded. I could feel my statement was coming to an end, though I wanted to have said more. I felt overcome by a feeling of irrational, abnormal pity for Chaumont. He was already loading paper into his printer. "My father was very athletic!" I said brusquely. He looked up at me inquiringly. "I don't know . . . ," I said, spreading my hands in despair, "I just wanted to say that he was very athletic." He shrugged disappointedly and pressed Print.

After I'd signed my statement, I walked Captain Chaumont to the door. I was aware that I had been a disappointing witness, I told him. "All witnesses are disappointing," he said. I pondered this aphorism for a while. Before us stretched the endless monotony of the fields. Chaumont climbed into his Peugeot 305; he would keep me informed of any developments in the investigation. In the public sector, the death of a parent or grandparent entitles one to three days' leave. As a result, I could very easily have taken my time going home, bought some local Camembert, but I immediately took the highway for Paris.

I spent the last day of my grace period in various travel agencies. I liked holiday brochures, their abstraction, their way of condensing the places of the world into a limited sequence of possible pleasures and fares. I was particularly fond of the star-rating system, which indicated the intensity of the pleasure one was entitled to hope for. I wasn't happy, but I valued happiness and continued to aspire to it. According to the Marshall model, the buyer is a rational individual seeking to maximize his satisfaction while taking price into consideration; Veblen's model, on the other hand, analyzes the effect of peer pressure on the buying process (depending on whether the buyer wishes to be identified with a defined group or to set himself apart from it). Copeland demonstrates that the buying process varies, depending on the category of product/ service (impulse purchase, considered purchase, specialized purchase); but the Baudrillard and Becker model posits that a purchase necessarily implies a series of signals. Overall, I felt myself closer to the Marshall model.

Back at the office I told Marie-Jeanne that I needed a holiday. Marie-Jeanne is my colleague. Together we work on exhibition proposals; together we work for the benefit of the contemporary arts. She is a woman of thirty five, with lank blonde hair, and her eyes are a very light blue. I know nothing about her personal life. Within the office hierarchy, she has a position slightly senior to mine; but this is something that she ignores, preferring instead to emphasize teamwork within the office. Every time we receive a visit from a really important person—a delegate from the Department of Plastic Arts or someone from the ministry—she insists on this notion of teamwork. "And this is the most important man in the office!" she exclaims, walking into my office. "He's the one who juggles the figures and the financial statements . . . I would be completely lost without him." And then she laughs; the important visitors laugh in turn, or at least smile good-naturedly. I smile too, insofar as I can. I try to imagine myself as a juggler; but in reality it's quite enough to master simple arithmetic. Although strictly speaking Marie-Jeanne does nothing, her work is, in fact, the most complicated job: she has to keep abreast of movements, networks, trends; having assumed a level of cultural responsibility, she constantly runs the risk of being thought reactionary, even obscurantist; it is an accusation from which she must defend herself and the institution. She is also in regular contact with artists, gallery owners, and the editors of obscure reviews —obscure, at least, to me. These telephone calls keep her happy, because her passion for contemporary art is real. As far as I'm concerned, I'm not actively hostile to it —I am not an advocate of
craft,
nor of a return to figurative painting. Rather, I maintain the disinterested attitude appropriate to an accounts manager. Questions of aesthetics and politics are not my thing. It's not up to me to invent or adopt new attitudes or new affinities with the world —I gave up all that at the same time I developed a stoop and my face started to tend toward melancholy. I've attended many exhibitions, openings, many performances that remain unforgettable. My conclusion, henceforth, is that art cannot change lives. At least not mine.

I had informed Marie-Jeanne of my bereavement; she greeted me sympathetically, she even put her hand on my shoulder. My request to take some time off seemed completely natural to her. "You need to take stock, Michel," she reckoned. "You need to turn inward." I tried to visualize the movement she was suggesting, and I concluded that she was probably right. "Cecilia will put the provisional budget to bed," she went on. "I'll talk to her about it." What precisely was she alluding to, and who was this Cecilia? Glancing around me, I noticed the design for a poster and I remembered. Cecilia was a fat redhead who was always gorging herself on chocolate bars and who'd been in the department for two months: a temp, an intern maybe, someone pretty insignificant at any rate. And it was true that before my father's death I had been working on a provisional budget for the exhibition "Hands Up, You Rascals!" due to open in Bourg-la-Reine in January. It consisted of photographs of police brutality taken with a telephoto lens in Yvelines; but we weren't talking documentary here, more a process of the theatricalization of space, replete with nods to various cop shows featuring the Los Angeles Police Department. The artist had favored a
fun
*
approach rather than the social critique you'd expect. An interesting project, all in all, not too expensive or too complicated. Even a moron like Cecilia was capable of finalizing the provisional budget.

Usually, when I left the office, I'd take in a peepshow. It set me back fifty francs, maybe seventy if I was slow to ejaculate. Watching pussy in motion cleared my head. The contradictory trends of contemporary video art, balancing the conservation of national heritage with support for living creativity . . . all of that quickly evaporated before the facile magic of a moving pussy. I gently emptied my testicles. At the same moment, Cecilia was stuffing herself with chocolate cake in a patisserie near the ministry; our motives were much the same.

Very occasionally, I took a private room at five hundred francs. This happened if my dick wasn't feeling too good, when it seemed to me to resemble a useless, demanding little appendage that smelled like cheese. Then I needed a girl to take it in her hands, to go into raptures, however faked, over its vigor, the richness of its semen. Be that as it may, I was always home before seven-thirty. I'd start with
Questions pour un champion,
which I had set my VCR to record. I would go on to the national news. The mad cow disease crisis was of little interest to me; mostly I survived on Mousline instant mashed potatoes with cheese. Then the evening would continue. I wasn't unhappy, I had 128 channels. At about two in the morning, I'd finish with Turkish musicals.

A number of days went by like this, relatively peacefully, before I received another phone call from Captain Chaumont. Things had progressed significantly—they had found the alleged killer. Actually, it was even more than an allegation, for in fact the man had confessed. They were going to stage a reenactment in a couple of days. Did I want to be present? Oh yes, I said, yes.

Marie-Jeanne congratulated me on this courageous decision. She talked about the grieving process, the mysteries of the father-son relationship. She used socially acceptable terms taken from a limited vocabulary; what was more important, even surprising, was that I realized that she was fond of me, and it felt good. Women really do have a handle on affection, I thought as I boarded the Cherbourg train. Even at work, they have a tendency to establish emotional ties, finding it difficult to orient themselves, let alone thrive, in a universe completely stripped of such ties. This was a weakness of theirs, as the "Advice" column of
Marie Claire
continually reminded them: it would be better if they could clearly separate the professional from the emotional, but they simply could not do it, and the "Confessions" column of
Marie Claire
confirmed this with equal regularity. Somewhere near Rouen, I reviewed the essential facts of the case. Chaumont's breakthrough was the discovery that Aïcha had been having "intimate relations" with my father. How often, and how intimate? He didn't know, and it had no significance to his continuing inquiry. One of Aïcha's brothers had quickly confessed that he had come "to demand an explanation" of the old man, things had gotten out of hand, and he had left him for dead on the concrete floor of the boiler room.

In principle, the reenactment was to be presided over by the examining magistrate, a brusque, austere little man, dressed in flannel trousers and a dark polo, his face permanently clenched in a rictus of irritation, but Chaumont quickly established himself as the real master of ceremonies. Briskly and cheerfully he greeted the participants, gave each a little word of welcome, and led them to their places. He seemed remarkably happy. This was his first murder case and he'd solved it in less than a week —in this whole banal, sordid story, he was the only true hero. Clearly overcome, a black band covering her face, Aïcha shrank into her chair. She barely looked up when I arrived and was pointedly looking away from where her brother was standing. Her brother, flanked by two policemen, fixed a sullen stare on the floor. He looked just like a common little thug; I didn't feel the slightest sympathy for him. Looking up, his eyes met mine, and no doubt he knew who I was. He knew my role; he had undoubtedly been told. According to his brutal view of the world, I had a right to vengeance, I deserved an accounting for the blood of my father. Aware of the rapport establishing itself between us, I stared at him, not turning away. I allowed hatred to overwhelm me slowly, and my breathing became easier. It was a powerful, pleasurable sensation. If I had had a gun, I would have shot him without a second thought. Killing that little shit not only seemed to me a morally neutral act, but something positive, beneficial. A policeman made some marks on the floor with a piece of chalk, and the reenactment began. According to the accused, it was very simple: during the conversation, he had become angry and pushed my father roughly; the latter had fallen backwards, his skull had shattered on the floor; in panic, he fled.

Of course he was lying, and Chaumont had no trouble establishing this. An examination of the victim's skull clearly indicated a furious attack. There were multiple contusions, probably the result of a series of kicks. Furthermore, my father's face had been scraped along the ground, almost sufficient to force the eye from its socket. "I don't remember," said the accused man. "I lost it." Watching his nervous arms, his thin, horrible face, I had no trouble believing him. He hadn't planned this, he was probably excited by the impact of the skull on the ground and the sight of first blood. His defense was lucid and credible, he would probably come across well in front of a jury—a twoor three-year suspended sentence, no more. Chaumont, pleased with the way the afternoon had gone, began to bring things to a conclusion. I got up from my chair and walked over to one of the picture windows. It was getting dark, and a flock of sheep were bringing their day to a close. They too were stupid, possibly even more stupid than Aïcha's brother, but violence had not been programmed into their genes. On the last night of their lives they would bleat in terror, their hoofs would scrabble desperately; there would be a gunshot, their lives would seep away, and their flesh would be transformed into meat. We parted with a round of handshakes, and Chaumont thanked me for coming.

I saw Aïcha the following day, since on the advice of the real estate agent, I had decided to have the house thoroughly cleaned before it was viewed. I gave her the keys, and then she dropped me off at Cherbourg station. Winter was taking hold of the farmlands; clouds of mist hung over the hedges. We were uncomfortable being together. She had been familiar with my father's genitals, which tended to create a certain misplaced intimacy. It was all rather surprising—she seemed like a serious girl, and my father was hardly a ladies' man. He must have had certain traits, certain characteristics that I had failed to notice. In fact, I was finding it difficult to remember his face. Men live alongside one another like cattle; it is a miracle if, once in a while, they manage to share a bottle of booze.

Aïcha's Volkswagen stopped in front of the station; I was aware that it would be best to say a few words before we parted. "Well . . . . " I said. After a few seconds, she said to me in a subdued voice, "I'm going to leave the area. I've got a friend who can get me a job as a waitress in Paris, and I can continue my studies there. In any case, my family thinks I'm a whore." I made a murmur of comprehension. "There are a lot more people in Paris," I finally ventured with difficulty. I'd racked my brains, but that was all I could think of to say about Paris. The acute poverty of my response did not seem to discourage her. "There's no point expecting anything from my family," she went on with suppressed fury. "They're not only poor, they're bloody stupid. Two years ago, my father went on the pilgrimage to Mecca; since then, you can't get a word out of him. My brothers are worse; they encourage each other's stupidity. They get blind drunk on pastis and all the while they strut around pretending to be the guardians of the one true faith, and they treat me like a slut because I prefer to go out and work rather than marry some stupid bastard like them."

"It's true, Muslims on the whole aren't worth much," I said with embarrassment. I picked up my travel bag, opened the door. "I think you'll do all right," I muttered without conviction. At that moment I had a vision of migratory flows crisscrossing Europe like blood vessels, in which Muslims appeared as clots that were only slowly reabsorbed. Aïcha eyed me skeptically. Cold air rushed into the car. On an intellectual level, I was suddenly capable of acknowledging the attractions of the Muslim vagina. I managed a little forced smile. She smiled in turn, a little more sincerely than I had. I shook her hand for a long time. I could feel the warmth of her fingers. I carried on shaking her hand until I could feel the gentle pulse of her blood at the hollow of her wrist. A few feet from the car, I turned around to give a little wave. We had made a connection in spite of everything; in the end, in spite of everything, something had happened.

Settling into my seat on board the intercity train, it occurred to me that I should have given her money. Actually, it was better that I hadn't, as it probably would have been misinterpreted. Strangely, it was at that moment that I realized for the first time that I was going to be a rich man. Well, relatively rich. The money in my father's accounts had already been transferred. For the rest, I had left the sale of the car to a local garage and of the house to a real estate agent. Everything had been arranged as simply as possible. The value of these assets would be determined by the market. Of course there was some room for negotiation, but this was 10 percent one way or the other, no more. The taxes that were due were no mystery either: a quick look through the carefully thought out little brochures available from the Tax Office would be enough.

My father had probably thought of disinheriting me several times. In the end, he must have given up on the idea, thinking it was too complicated and too much paperwork for an uncertain result (it is not easy to disinherit your children; the law offers you very limited possibilities, so not only do the little shits ruin your life, afterwards they get to profit from everything you've managed to save, despite your worst efforts). He probably thought that there was no point—after all, what the fuck did it matter to him what happened after he was dead? That's how he looked at it, in my opinion. In any case, the old bastard was dead, and I was about to sell the house in which he had spent his last years; I was also going to sell the Toyota Land Cruiser that he had used for hauling cases of Evian from the Casino Géant in Cherbourg. I live near the Jardin des Plantes; what would I want with
a
Toyota Land Cruiser? I could have used it to ferry ricotta ravioli from the market at Mouffetard, that's about it.

In cases of direct inheritance, death duties are not very high —even if the emotional ties aren't very strong. After tax, I could probably expect about three million francs. To me, that represented about fifteen times my annual salary. It also represented what an unskilled worker in Western Europe could expect for a lifetime of work. It wasn't so bad. You could make a start with that, or you could try.

In a few weeks I would surely get a letter from my bank. As the train approached Bayeux, I could already imagine the course of the conversation. The clerk at my branch would have noticed a substantial credit balance on my account, which he would very much like to discuss with me—who doesn't need a financial adviser at one time or another in his life? A little wary, I would want to steer him toward safe options; he would greet this reaction —such a common one —with a slight smile. Most novice investors, as financial advisers well know, favor security over earnings. Advisers often laugh about it among themselves. I should not misunderstand him: when it came to managing their capital, even some elderly and otherwise worldly people behave like complete novices. For his part, he would try to steer me in the direction of a slightly different approach —while, of course, giving me time to consider my options. Why not, in effect, put two-thirds of my holdings into investments where there would be no surprises but a low return? And why not place the remaining third in investments that were a little more adventurous, but which had the potential for significant growth? After a few days' consideration, I knew, I would defer to his judgment. He would feel reassured by my support, would put together the papers with a flash of enthusiasm, and our handshake at the moment we parted company would be warm.

I was living in a country distinguished by a placid socialism, where ownership of material possessions was guaranteed by strict legislation, where the banking system was surrounded by powerful state guarantees. Unless I were to venture beyond what was lawful, I ran no risk of embezzlement or fraudulent bankruptcy. All in all, I needn't worry anymore. In fact, I never really had. After serious but hardly distinguished studies, I had quickly found a career in the public sector. This was in the mideighties, at the beginning of the modernization of socialism, at the time when the illustrious Jack Lang was distributing wealth and glory to the cultural institutions of the State, so my starting salary was very reasonable. And then I had grown older, standing untroubled on the sidelines through successive policy changes. I was courteous, well-mannered, well-liked by colleagues and superiors. My temperament, however, was less than warm and I had failed to make any real friends. Night was falling quickly over Lisieux. Why, in my work, had I never shown a passion comparable to Marie-Jeanne's? Why had I never shown any real passion in my life in general?

Several more weeks went by without bringing me an answer. Then, on the morning of December 23, I took a taxi to Roissy airport.

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