Authors: Michel Houellebecq
He raised his hand discreetly, seeing that Jean-Yves was about to interrupt. 'Mind you,' he went on, 'our shareholders are not imbeciles. They are perfectly aware that in the current climate it would not be possible to bring a chain like Eldorador back to breakeven in the first year probably not even in two years. But come the third year they'll want to look very hard at the figures - and they won't be long in coming to their conclusions. At that point, even if you have a magnificent plan, even if the potential is vast, I won't be able to do anything.'
There was a long silence. Leguen sat motionless, he had lowered his head. Espitalier stroked his chin sceptically. 'I see . . .' Jean-Yves said at last. After a couple of seconds he added calmly: 'I'll give you my answer in three days.'
Chapter 3
I saw a lot of Valerie over the two months that followed. In fact, with the exception of a weekend she spent at her parents, I think I probably saw her every day. Jean-Yves had decided to accept the Aurore group's offer; she had decided to follow him. The first thing she said to me, I remember, was: Tm about to move into the 60 per cent tax bracket.' She was right: her salary was going from forty thousand francs a month to seventy-five thousand; after tax, the increase was less spectacular. She knew that she would have to put a lot of work in from the moment she took up her job at the group early in March. For the time being, at Nouvelles Frontieres, everything was fine: they had both tendered their resignations, they were gradually handing over the reins to their successors. I advised Valerie to save, to open a savings account or something; in fact, we didn't think about it much. Spring was late, but that was of no importance. Later, thinking about this happy time with Valerie, a time of which, paradoxically, I have so few memories, I would say that man is clearly not intended to be happy. To truly arrive at the practical possibility of happiness, man would have to transform himself- transform himself physically. What can one compare with God? In the first place, obviously, a woman's pussy; but also perhaps the steam in a hammam. Something, at any rate, in which spirit becomes possible, because the body is sated with contentment, with pleasure, and all anxiety is abolished. I now know for certain that the spirit is not born, that it needs to be brought forth, and it will be a difficult birth, something of which we now have only a vague and harmful idea. When I brought Valerie to orgasm, when I felt her body quiver under mine, I sometimes had the impression - fleeting but irresistible - of attaining a new level of consciousness, where every evil had been abolished. In those moments of suspension, almost of motionlessness, when the pleasure in her body mounted, I felt like a god on whom depended tranquillity and storms. It was the first joy - indisputable, perfect.
The second joy which Valerie brought me was the extraordinary gentleness, the natural goodness of her nature. Sometimes, when she had been working long hours — and over the months they would become longer and longer - I felt that she was tense, emotionally drained. Never once did she turn on me, never once did she get angry, never once did she lapse into the unpredictable hysterics which sometimes make the company of women so oppressive, so pathetic. 'I'm not ambitious, Michel. . .' she would tell me sometimes. 'I feel happy with you, I think you're the love of my life, and I don't ask for anything more than that. But that's not possible: I have to ask for more. I'm trapped in a system from which I get so little, which I know is futile; but I don't know how to get out. Just once, we should take time to think; but I don't know when we'll be able to take time to think.'
For my part, I was doing less and less work, at least I was doing my work only in the strictest possible sense. I was home in plenty of time to watch Questions pour un champion and shop for dinner; I spent every night at Valerie's place. Curiously, Marie-Jeanne didn't seem to hold my flagging professional attention against me. True, she enjoyed her work and was more than happy to take on her share of overtime. What she wanted more than anything, I think, was for me to be nice to her - and I was nice through all those weeks, I was gentle and peaceful. She had liked the coral necklace I had brought her from Thailand, she wore it every day now. As she worked on the files for the exhibitions she would sometimes look at me in a way that was strange and difficult to decipher. One morning in February - I remember it very well, it was my birthday - she said to me straight out: 'You've changed, Michel ... I don't know, you seem happy.'
She was right; I was happy, I remember that. Of course there are lots of things, a whole series of inevitable troubles, decline and death, of course. But remembering those months, I can bear witness: I know that happiness exists.
Jean-Yves, on the other hand, was not happy, that was obvious. I remember the three of us having dinner together in an Italian, or rather a Venetian, restaurant, something pretty trendy anyway. He knew that we would go home later and fuck, and we could fuck with love. I didn't really know what to say to him - everything there was to be said was too obvious, too blunt. His wife obviously didn't love him, she had probably never loved anyone; and she would never love anyone, that too was patently clear. He hadn't had much luck, that was all. Human relationships aren't nearly as complicated as people make out: they're often insoluble but only rarely complicated. Now, of course, he would have to get a divorce; it wouldn't be easy but it had to be done. What else could I possibly say? The subject was dealt with long before we finished the antipasti.
Afterwards they talked about their careers within the Aurore group: they already had some ideas, a number of possible objectives for the Eldorador takeover. They were intelligent, competent, much-admired in their industry; but they could not afford to make a mistake. To fail in this new position would not be the end of their careers: Jean-Yves was thirty-five, Valerie, twenty-eight; they would be given a second chance. But the industry would not forget that first blunder, they would have to start again at a significantly lower level. In the society we lived in, the most important consideration in any position was represented by the salary, and more generally the financial benefits; the prestige and distinction of the post tended nowadays to occupy a much less significant position. There existed, however, a highly developed system of fiscal redistribution which allowed the useless, the incompetent and the dangerous - a group of which, in I some sense, I was a part - to survive. In short, we were living in a mixed economy which was slowly evolving towards a more pronounced liberalism, slowly overcoming the prejudice against usury - and in more general terms, against money - which persists in traditionally Catholic countries. They could expect no real benefits from such a change. A number of young Hautes Etudes Commerciales business graduates, much younger than Jean-Yves - some of them still students - had thrown themselves headlong into market speculation without ever considering looking for paid employment. They had computers connected to : the internet, sophisticated market-tracking software. Quite; frequently, they formed groups or clubs in order to be able to make more substantial investments. They lived with their computers, worked in shifts twenty-four hours a day, never took holidays. The goal of each and every one was extraordinarily simple: to become billionaires before they turned thirty.
Jean-Yves and Valerie were part of an intermediary generation for whom it still seemed difficult to imagine a career outside business, or possibly the public sector; a little older than they were, I was in more or less the same position. The three of us were caught up in a social system ; like insects in a block of amber; there wasn't the slightest possibility that we could turn back.
On the morning of March 1, Valerie and Jean-Yves officially took up their positions at the Aurore group. A meeting had already been scheduled for March 4 with the principal executives who would be working on the Eldorador project. Senior management had requested a long-term study of the future of holiday clubs from Profiles, a well-known consultancy working in the field of behavioural sociology.
Despite himself, as he walked into the 23rd floor conference room for the first time, Jean-Yves was quite impressed. There were about twenty people there, every one of whom had several years' experience with Aurore behind them; and it was now up to him to lead the group. Valerie sat immediately to his left. He had spent the weekend studying the files; he knew the names, precise responsibilities and professional history of every person sitting at the table; yet he could not help feeling a little anxious. A grey day settled over the graceful suburbs of Essonne. When Paul Dubrule and Gerard Pelisson had decided to set up their head office in Evry, they had been influenced by cheap land and the proximity of the motorway to Orly Airport and the south; at the time, it was a quiet suburb. Now, the local communities had the highest crime rate in all France. Every week, there were attacks on buses, police cars, fire engines; there was not even an exact figure for assaults or robberies; some people estimated that to get the true figure, you had to multiply the number of reported crimes by five. The company premises were watched over twenty-four hours a day by a team of armed guards. An internal memo advised that public transport was best avoided after a certain time. For employees who had to work late and who did not have their own cars, Aurore had negotiated a discount with a local taxi firm.
When Lindsay Lagarrigue, the behavioural sociologist, arrived, Jean-Yves felt he was on familiar territory. The guy was about thirty, with a receding hairline, his hair tied back in a ponytail; he wore an Adidas tracksuit, a Prada tee-shirt and a pair of battered Nikes: in short, he looked like a behavioural sociologist. He began by handing out copies of a very slim file, mostly made up of diagrams with arrows and circles; his briefcase contained nothing else. The front page was a photocopy of an article from the Nouvel Obsewateur, more precisely, it was an editorial from the travel section, entitled 'Another Way to Travel'.
'In the year 2000,' Lagarrigue began, reading the article aloud, 'mass tourism has had its day. We dream of travel as of individual fulfilment, but we have ethical concerns.' This opening paragraph seemed to him symptomatic of the changes that were occurring. He talked about this for a few minutes, then asked those present to concentrate on the following sentences: 'In the year 2000, we worry about whether tourism is respectful of others. Being affluent, we want our travels to be more than simply selfish pleasures, we want them to bear witness to a certain sense of solidarity.'
'How much did we pay this guy for the study?' Jean-Yves asked Valerie discreetly.
'A hundred and fifty thousand francs.'
'I don't believe it ... Is this asshole just going to read out a photocopy of an article from the Nouvel ObsV
Linsday Lagarrigue went on, loosely paraphrasing the article, then he read a third passage, in an absurdly emphatic voice: 'In the year 2000,' he declared, 'we want to be nomads. We travel by train or by ship, over rivers and oceans; in an age of speed, we are rediscovering the pleasures of slothfulness. We lose ourselves in the silent infinities of the desert, and then, without a break, plunge into the tumult of great cities. But always with the same passion . . .' Ethical, individual fulfilment, solidarity, passion: these, according to him, were the key words. In this new mood, it was hardly surprising that the holiday club, based on selfish isolation, on the standardisation of needs and desires, was beset by chronic problems. The days of the sun worshippers were over: what travellers today were looking for was authenticity, discovery, a sense of sharing. More generally, the Fordist production-line model of leisure travel - typified by the famous '4 S': Sea, Sand, Sun . . . and Sex - was doomed. As the work of Michky and Braun had shown so spectacularly, the industry as a whole would have to begin to consider its activities from a post-Fordist perspective.
The behavioural sociologist clearly knew his job; he could have gone on for hours. 'Excuse me . . .' Jean-Yves interrupted him in a tone of barely suppressed irritation.
'Yes . . .' the behavioural sociologist gave him a winning smile.
'I think that every person at this table, without exception, is aware that the holiday-club model is undergoing some problems at the moment. What we want from you isn't so much an endless description of the nature of those problems, but rather an attempt, however slight, to indicate the beginnings of a solution.'
Lindsay Lagarrigue was open-mouthed; he had not anticipated an objection of this kind. 'I think . . .' he mumbled eventually, 'I think that in order to solve the problem it is important to define it and to have some sense of what has caused it.' Another empty phrase, thought Jean-Yves furiously; not only empty, but, as it happened, untrue. The causes were clearly part of general shifts in society which were beyond their powers to change. They 'had to adapt to this new business climate, that was all. How could they adapt to it? This moron clearly hadn't the faintest idea.
'What you're telling us, broadly speaking,' went on Jean-Yves, 'is that the holiday-club model is obsolete.'
'No, no, not at all. . .' The behavioural sociologist was beginning to lose his footing. 'I think ... I simply think that it requires thought.' 'And what the hell are we paying you for, asshole?' retorted Jean-Yves under his breath before addressing all those present:
'All right, we'll try to give it some thought. I'd like to thank Monsieur Lagarrigue for his contribution; I don't think we'll be needing you again today. I suggest we break for ten minutes for coffee.'
Piqued, the behavioural sociologist packed away his diagrams. When the meeting resumed, Jean-Yves picked up his notes and began:
'Between 1993 and 1997, as you know, Club Med went through the worst crisis in its history. Competitors and imitators had multiplied, they had ripped off the Club formula wholesale while undercutting the Club considerably: numbers were in freefall. How did they manage to turn the situation around? Chiefly, by dropping their prices. But they didn't drop them to the same level as their rivals: they knew that they had the advantage of being the original, they had a reputation, an image; they knew their customers would accept a certain price differential - which they set, according to destination, and after meticulous research, at between 20 and 30 per cent - for the real Club Med experience, the 'original' if you like. This is the first idea I propose that we explore in the coming weeks: is there room in the holiday-club sector for something different from the Club Med formula? And, if so, can we begin to visualise what that something might be, what its target market might look like? The question is far from simple.