The Elementary Particles (14 page)
11
After Bruno’s visit, Michel took to his bed for two weeks. How could society function without religion, he wondered. It seemed difficult enough for an individual human being. For several days he studied the radiator beside his bed. It was a useful and ingenious device—when it was cold, the pipes filled with hot water—but how long could Western civilization continue without some kind of religion? As a child, he liked to water the plants in the kitchen garden. He still had a small black-and-white photograph of himself at the age of six, holding the watering can, watched over by his grandmother. Later, he liked to go on errands; with the change from the bread money, he was allowed to buy a Carambar. Then he would fetch the milk from the farm, swinging the aluminum pail of still-warm milk at arm’s length, and he was a little bit afraid as he walked back at nightfall along the deserted path hedged with brambles. Now every trip to the supermarket was torture, though the stock changed regularly and they were always introducing new TV dinners for one. He’d recently—for the first time—seen ostrich steak in the meat section of Monoprix.
To facilitate reproduction, the two helices which make up the DNA molecule separate before each attracts complementary nucleotides. The moment of separation is dangerous, as it is then that random mutations—mostly harmful—occur. The impression of intellectual stimulation created by fasting is real, and by the end of the first week Michel had the intuition that perfect reproduction was impossible while DNA was in the form of a double helix. To obtain an exact replication across an indefinite succession of cellular generations, it would probably be necessary for genetic information to be on a compact structure—for example, a Möbius strip or a torus.
As a child, he could not bear the deterioration of objects, the breakage, the wear and tear. For years he continually taped two broken ends of a plastic ruler together again. With all the layers of tape, the ruler was now lopsided. To draw a straight line was impossible, so it didn’t even fulfill the basic function of a ruler. Nevertheless, he kept it. Then it would break again and he would repair it, adding another layer of tape, and put it back in his pencil case.
“One of the marks of Djerzinski’s genius,” Frédéric Hubczejak would write many years later, “was his ability to go beyond his first intuition that sexual reproduction was, in itself, a source of deleterious mutations. For millions of years, human societies had instinctively made the incontrovertible link between sex and death; a scientist who had irrefutably established such a link in molecular biological terms would normally consider his work done, and leave it at that. Djerzinski, however, understood it was necessary to look past the framework of sexual reproduction to study the general topological conditions of cell division.”
From his first week at primary school in Charny, Michel had been struck by the cruelty of boys. It’s true that the little beasts were farmers’ sons, and therefore closer to animals than most. Nevertheless, it was startling to witness the instinctive, unaffected, joyful way they stabbed frogs with a compass point or a fountain pen; violet ink blossoming beneath the skin of the unfortunate animal as it slowly suffocated to death. They would gather in a circle, their eyes bright, to watch its final agony. Another of their favorite games was to cut the antennae off snails with their round-ended children’s scissors. All of the snail’s sensory awareness comes from its antennae, crowned by the eyes. Without them the snail is reduced to a pulpous mass, suffering and helpless. Michel quickly realized that he should keep his distance from these young savages; there was little to fear from girls, however, more gentle creatures. This instinctive notion of the world was confirmed every Wednesday night when he watched
The Animal Kingdom
. Amid the vile filth, the ceaseless carnage which was the lot of animals, the only glimmer of devotion and altruism was the protective maternal instinct, which had gradually evolved into mother love. The female squid, a pathetic little thing barely twenty centimeters long, unhesitatingly attacks the diver who comes near her eggs.
Thirty years later he could not come to any other conclusion: women were indisputably better than men. They were gentler, more affectionate, loving and compassionate; they were less prone to violence, selfishness, cruelty or self-centeredness. Moreover, they were more rational, intelligent and hardworking.
What on earth were men for, Michel wondered as he watched sunlight play across the curtains. In earlier times, when bears were more common, perhaps masculinity served a particular and irreplaceable function, but for centuries now men clearly served no useful purpose. For the most part they assuaged their boredom playing tennis, which was a lesser evil; but from time to time they felt the need to
change history
—which basically meant inciting revolutions or wars. Aside from the senseless suffering they caused, revolutions and wars destroyed the best of the past, forcing societies to rebuild from scratch. Without regular and continuous progress, human evolution took random, irregular and violent turns for which men—with their predilection for risk and danger, their repulsive egotism, their irresponsibility and their violent tendencies—were directly to blame. A world of women would be immeasurably superior, tracing a slower but unwavering progression, with no U-turns and no chaotic insecurity, toward a general happiness.
On the morning of 15 August he went out, hoping that the streets would be deserted, which they were. He took some notes which he would stumble across ten years later while writing his most important paper, “Toward a Science of Perfect Reproduction.”
At precisely that moment Bruno, exhausted and despairing, was taking his son back to his ex-wife. Anne had just come back from a package tour with Nouvelles Frontières to Easter Island or Benin—he couldn’t remember which. She had probably made friends with some of the women on the trip. They would have exchanged addresses, and she would see them once or twice before growing bored with them. She certainly would not have met any men. Bruno had the impression that she had completely given up on everything having to do with men. She would take him aside for a minute or two and ask how things had been. He would say “Fine” in the calm, self-assured tone that women like, before adding, a little facetiously, “though Victor did watch a lot of television.” He would quickly feel uncomfortable, as since she had given up smoking, Anne wouldn’t tolerate it in her tastefully furnished apartment. As he got up to leave, he would be choked with regret and again wonder what he could do to make things different. He would kiss Victor quickly and then go. His vacation with his son would be over.
In truth, the two weeks they spent together had been a nightmare. Lying on his bed with a bottle of bourbon in his hand, he listened to the sounds of his son in the next room—the toilet flushing after he pissed, the buzz of the remote control. Just like his half brother—though he did not know it—he stared dumbly at the radiator for hours at a time. Victor slept on the sofa bed in the living room and spent fifteen hours a day watching television. The set was already on by the time Bruno woke up every morning—Victor would be watching cartoons on M6 with the sound down and his headphones on. He was not a violent boy and did not mean to be rude, but he and his father had absolutely nothing to say to each other. Twice a day, Bruno would heat something in the microwave and they would eat at the table with hardly a word.
How had it come to this? Victor had just turned fourteen. Some years before, he spent his time drawing pictures he would bring over for his father to see. He copied characters from Marvel Comics—Fatalis, Fantastik, the Pharaoh of the Future—and made up stories for them. Sometimes they would play a game of Mille Bornes, and on Sunday mornings they would go to the Louvre. When he was six, Victor had made a card for his father’s birthday. On heavy drawing paper, he had written in big, multicolored letters: i love you dad. Now all that was past, over and done with. Bruno knew that things would only get worse, that they would move from mutual indifference to loathing. In a couple of years his son would try to go out with girls his own age; the same fifteen-year-old girls that Bruno lusted after. They would come to be rivals—which was the natural relationship between men. They would be like animals fighting in a cage; and the cage was time.
On the way home Bruno stopped at a local Arab grocery and bought two bottles of
pastis
. Then, before he drank himself into a stupor, he phoned his brother to arrange to see him the following day. When he arrived at Michel’s apartment he found his brother, suddenly famished after weeks of fasting, stuffing himself with Italian salami between great gulps of wine. “Help yourself,” he said vaguely, “help yourself.” It seemed to Bruno as though he was barely listening. It was like talking to a wall, or a psychiatrist, but he talked nonetheless.
“For years my son turned to me for love and I rejected him. I was depressed, I hated my life, I thought there’d be a time when I felt better. I didn’t realize how quickly the years would go by. Between seven and twelve, a child is an astonishing being—kind, rational and open, full of joy and convinced that the world is a logical place. He’s full of love, and happy to accept what love we’re prepared to give. After that it all goes wrong—it all goes horribly wrong.”
Michel gobbled down the last two slices of salami and poured himself another glass of wine. His hands were trembling violently. Bruno continued: “There’s nothing more stupid, aggressive, hateful or obnoxious than a teenage boy, especially when he’s with boys his own age. He is a monster crossed with an imbecile. He’s unbelievably conformist—at puberty a boy is the sudden, malicious and unpredictable (considering the child he was) crystallization of the very worst in mankind. When you think about it, sexuality has to be an absolutely evil force. I don’t know how people can live under the same roof as kids like that. I think the only reason they can stomach it is because their lives are completely empty, though I suppose my life is completely empty and I didn’t manage it. In any case, the world is full of liars; people spend their lives telling appalling lies. ‘We’re divorced now, but we’re still good friends. I get to see my son every other weekend . . .’ That’s bullshit. Complete bullshit. In reality, men don’t give a damn about their kids, they never really love them. In fact, I’d say men aren’t capable of love; the emotion is completely alien to them. The only emotions they know are desire—in the form of pure animal lust—and male rivalry. There used to be a time when, late in life, a man would come to feel a certain affection for his spouse—though not before she’d borne his children, made a home for them, cooked, cleaned and proved herself in the bedroom. That sort of regard meant they enjoyed sleeping in the same bed. It was probably not what the women were looking for, and it might even have been a delusion—but it could be a powerful feeling. Strong enough that even if men still became excited—though to a decreasing degree—at getting a little piece of ass on the side from time to time, they literally could not live without their wives. When, out of unhappiness, their wives left them, they hit the bottle and died soon afterward—often in a matter of months. Children existed solely to inherit a man’s trade, his moral code and his property. This was taken for granted among the aristocracy, but merchants, craftsmen and peasants also bought into the idea, so it became the norm at every level of society. That’s all gone now: I work for someone else, I rent my apartment from someone else, there’s nothing for my son to inherit. I have no craft to teach him, I haven’t a clue what he might do when he’s older. By the time he grows up, the rules I lived by will have no value—he will live in another universe. If a man accepts the fact that everything must change, then he accepts that life is reduced to nothing more than the sum of his own experience; past and future generations mean nothing to him. That’s how we live now. For a man to bring a child into the world now is meaningless. Women are different, because they continue needing to have someone to love—which is not and has never been true of men. It’s bullshit to pretend that men need to fuss over their children, play with them or cuddle them. I know people have been saying it for years, but it’s bullshit. After divorce—once the family unit has broken down—a man’s relationship with his children is nonsensical. Kids are a trap that has closed, they are the enemy—you have to pay for them all your life—and they outlive you.”
Michel got up and went into the kitchen to get a glass of water. He could see colored wheels spinning in midair, and felt like throwing up. First he had to stop his hands from shaking. Bruno was right—paternal love was a lie, a fiction. A lie is useful if it transforms reality, he thought, but if it fails, then all that’s left is the lie, the bitterness and the knowledge that it was a lie.
When he came back Bruno was curled up in the armchair, as still as if he were dead. Night was falling over the towers and, after another stifling day, the temperature was bearable again. Suddenly Michel noticed the empty cage where for years his canary had lived; he would have to throw it out, as he had no intention of getting another pet. For a moment, he thought of his neighbor opposite—the girl who worked on
Vingt Ans
—whom he hadn’t seen for months. She probably had moved out. He forced himself to concentrate on his hands and saw they were shaking a little less. Bruno still had not moved; the silence between them continued for some minutes.
12
“I met Anne in 1981,” Bruno went on with a sigh. “She wasn’t really beautiful, but I was tired of jacking off. The good thing, though, was she had big tits. I’ve always liked big tits . . .” He sighed again. “A WASP with big tits . . .” To Michel’s surprise, his eyes were wet with tears. “Later, her tits started to go south and our marriage went with them. I fucked up her whole life. That’s one thing I can’t forget—I fucked up this woman’s life. Is there any wine left?”
Michel went into the kitchen to get another bottle. This was all very strange; he knew Bruno had been seeing an analyst and that he’d stopped. Human beings always do what is least painful. For as long as it is less painful to confess, we talk; then we go silent, we give up, we’re alone. If Bruno felt the need to talk about how his life was a failure, it was probably because he was hoping for something, some new beginning; it was probably a good sign.
“I’m not saying she was ugly,” Bruno went on, “but her face was plain, charmless. She never had that delicacy, that luminous beauty that can light up a young girl’s face. Her legs were too fat for her to wear miniskirts, but I convinced her to wear short tops with no bra; looking at big tits from below is a real turn-on. She was a bit embarrassed at first, but she got used to it. She was very inexperienced sexually; she didn’t understand the erotic and didn’t know the first thing about lingerie. Here I am going on about her, but you did meet her, didn’t you?”
“I came to your wedding . . .”
“That’s true,” said Bruno, almost stupefied with amazement. “I remember being surprised you turned up. I was sure you didn’t want to see me again.”
“I
didn’t
want to see you again.”
Michel thought about the wedding and wondered what on earth had persuaded him to attend that dismal ceremony. He remembered the depressingly austere room in the temple at Neuilly, a little more than half filled with a congregation of the discreetly rich—her father was in finance.
“They were left-wing,” said Bruno, “but everyone was left-wing back then. They had no problem with me living in sin with their daughter. We only got married because she was pregnant. The usual story.” Michel could still hear the pastor’s voice ringing out in the cold, bare room: something about Christ being true God and true man and about the new covenant between the Almighty and his people. In fact, he hadn’t really understood what it was about. After three quarters of an hour of this, he was nodding off; he woke with a start at the words: “May the God of Israel bless you, he who had pity on two little children.” He had trouble working out what was going on. Were they Jews? He had to think for a moment before registering that it was the same God. The pastor went on smoothly, his voice booming with conviction: “He that loveth his wife loveth himself: for no man ever yet hated his own flesh but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: for we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall be joined unto his wife; and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.” It really was a phrase that hit home:
they two shall be one flesh
. Michel considered this for a time and glanced over at Anne: she was calm, focused, and it seemed as though she was holding her breath; she was almost beautiful. Undoubtedly fired up by Saint Paul, the pastor continued with increasing passion: “Lord, send thy blessing upon this thy servant who craves thy protection at the hour of her marriage. Grant that she may be in Christ a pure and faithful wife and that she, like Rachel, will be a comfort to her husband; that, like Rebecca, she will be wise; and that, like Sarah, she will be faithful unto him. Grant that she will remain in the faith and observe thy commandments, cleave to her spouse and renounce all evil. May she be honored for her modesty and respected for her humility and may she be instructed in the ways of the Lord. Grant, Lord, that she shall be fruitful in childbirth and that these two shall see their children’s children to the third and fourth generation. May they grow together to a happy old age, and may they know the rest of the chosen in the Kingdom of Heaven. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.” Michel pushed his way through the crowd toward the altar, attracting angry glances as he went. At the third row, he stopped and watched the exchange of rings. Head bowed, the priest took the couple’s hands in his own, the intensity of his concentration impressive; the silence in the chapel was total. Then he lifted his head and, in a loud voice sounding both vital and despairing, exclaimed violently: “That which God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.”
Later, Michel went up to the priest as he was packing away the tools of his trade. “I was very interested in what you were saying earlier . . .” The man of God smiled urbanely, then Michel began to talk about the Aspect experiments and the EPR paradox: how two particles, once united, are forever an inseparable whole, “which seems pretty much in keeping with what you were saying about one flesh.” The priest’s smile froze slightly. “What I’m trying to say,” Michel went on enthusiastically, “is that from an ontological point of view, the pair can be assigned a single vector state in Hilbert space. Do you see what I mean?”
“Of course, of course . . .” murmured the servant of Christ, looking around. “Excuse me,” he said abruptly, and turned to the father of the bride. They shook hands warmly and slapped each other on the back. “Beautiful ceremony . . . magnificent,” said the banker, his voice choked with emotion.
“You didn’t stay for the reception,” said Bruno. “It was a bit embarrassing for me—I was at my own wedding and didn’t know anyone there. My father arrived very late, but at least he came: he hadn’t shaved and his tie was crooked, he looked the very picture of a decrepit old playboy. I’m sure Anne’s parents would have preferred that she married someone else, but being liberal middle-class Protestants, they had a healthy respect for the teaching profession. Anyway, I was certified and she only had a diploma. The only problem was that her little sister was really pretty. She looked a bit like Anne—she had big tits too—but she wasn’t plain at all, she had a beautiful face. It’s amazing how the smallest detail in someone’s features can make all the difference. Life’s a bitch . . .” He sighed again and poured himself another glass.
“I got my first job as a teacher in September ’84, at the Lycée Carnot in Dijon. Anne was six months pregnant. There we were—we were teachers, a teaching couple, and now all we had to do was live a normal life.
“We rented an apartment on the rue Vannerie not far from the school. ‘You won’t be paying Paris prices here,’ the realtor told us. ‘It’s not like life in Paris, either, but it’s pretty lively in the summer—we get a lot of tourists here. There’s a lot of young people in town now for the Baroque Music Festival.’ Baroque music?
“I knew from the start that I was doomed. It wasn’t that I missed ‘life in Paris.’ I couldn’t have cared less about that—I’d always been completely miserable in Paris. It was just that I was attracted to every woman except my wife. Like in most provincial towns, there are lots of pretty girls in Dijon; it was much worse than Paris. Those first couple of years the fashions were a real turn-on. It was unbearable, all those cute little girls in their little skirts with their little laughs. At school I saw them in class, at lunchtime I’d see them chatting up boys in the Penalty—the bar next to the school—but I always went home to my wife for lunch. On Saturday afternoons I’d see them in town buying records and clothes. I was always with Anne, who only wanted to look at baby clothes. She had an easy pregnancy and she was really happy. She slept a lot and ate whatever she wanted. We stopped having sex, but I don’t think she even noticed. At the prenatal classes she’d made friends with some of the other women. Anne was always very sociable, affable and friendly, she was very easy to live with. I was really shocked when I found out she was expecting a boy. That was the worst—I was going to have to endure the worst. I should’ve been happy. I was only twenty-eight, but I felt dead inside.
“Victor was born in December. I remember taking him to be baptized at the Église Saint-Michel—I found it incredibly disturbing. ‘Those that are baptized shall become the living stones of a spiritual edifice to the glory of the holy mother church,’ said the priest. Victor was all red and wrinkled in his little white lace gown. There were about a dozen families—it was a collective baptism, like in the early church. ‘Baptism binds us to the church,’ said the priest, ‘and cleaves us to the body of Christ.’ Anne was cradling Victor in her arms—he weighed four kilos. He was very good, he didn’t cry at all. ‘Are we not then of the same body?’ The parents looked at each other and seemed rather dubious. Then the priest poured the baptismal water three times on my son’s forehead and anointed him with chrism. ‘This perfumed oil, sanctified by the bishop, symbolizes the gift of the Holy Spirit,’ said the priest. Then he addressed Victor directly. ‘Victor,’ he said, ‘you are now a Christian and by the power of Holy Unction you have been incorporated into Christ’s body. From henceforth you will participate in his holy, apostolic and catholic mission.’
“I was so impressed I joined a ‘Living with Faith’ group that met every Wednesday. There was a young Korean girl there—she was very pretty, and I wanted to fuck her the first time I saw her. It was a bit delicate because she knew I was married. Anne invited the group to our house one Saturday. The Korean girl sat on the sofa. She was wearing a short dress. I spent the whole afternoon staring at her legs, but nobody noticed.
“Anne took Victor to see her parents for the midterm holidays in February and I stayed in Dijon on my own. I tried again to become a Catholic. I’d lie on my Épéda mattress drinking
pastis
and reading
The Mystery of the Holy Innocents
. It was really beautiful—Péguy is an amazing writer—but in the end it just depressed me. All that stuff about sin and the forgiveness of sin, and God rejoicing more in the return of the sinner than in the thousands of the just . . . I wanted to be a sinner, but I just couldn’t do it. I felt like I’d been robbed of my childhood. All I wanted was for some little bitch to put her full lips around my cock and give me a blow-job. I saw a lot of little bitches with pouting lips in the nightclubs, and I went to the Slow Rock and l’Enfer a few times while Anne was away; but they were always going out with someone else, always sucking someone else’s cock, and I just couldn’t stand it.
“It was around this time that sex sites took off on the Minitel; everyone was talking about it. I used to stay online all night. Victor would be asleep in our room, but he slept through the night, so that wasn’t a problem. I was terrified when the first telephone bill arrived. I took it out of the mailbox and opened it on the way to school: fourteen thousand francs. Luckily I still had a savings account at the Caisse d’Épargne from my student days, so I transferred everything into our joint account. Anne didn’t notice a thing.
“We only begin to live through other people’s eyes. As time went by, I noticed that my colleagues at school looked at me without a trace of bitterness or dislike. I was no longer a threat to them; we were all in the same boat; I was
one of them
. They taught me how the system worked. I got my driver’s license and started to get into home-improvement catalogues. When spring came, we spent the afternoons on the lawn at the Guilmards’. They lived in an ugly old house in Fontaine-lès-Dijon, but they had a big garden with a beautiful tree-lined lawn. Guilmard taught math, and we taught the same students, pretty much. He was tall, thin and stooped, with reddish-blonde hair and a drooping mustache—he looked like some German accountant. His wife would help him with the barbecue. There were usually four or five teachers with their partners. In the late afternoons we’d talk about the holidays—we were usually a bit stoned. Guilmard’s wife was a nurse and she had the reputation of being a real slut; in fact, when she sat on the grass you could see that she wasn’t wearing anything under her dress. They spent their holidays at Cap d’Agde, on the nudist beach. I think they went to a wife-swapping sauna on the Place Bossuet—well, that’s what I heard, anyway. I never dared to talk to Anne about it, but I really liked them. They were sort of social democrats, not at all like the aging hippies who used to hang around with Mother in the seventies. Guilmard was a good teacher, and thought nothing of staying behind after class to help a kid who was having problems. He gave to some charity for the handicapped as well, I think.”
Abruptly Bruno fell silent. After a minute or two, Michel got up, opened the French doors and went out onto the balcony for a breath of the night air. Most of the people he knew had lived lives very like Bruno’s. Excepting some high-profile businesses like advertising and fashion, it’s pretty easy to be accepted physically in professional circles; the dress code is simple and obvious. After a couple of years of working, sexual desire wanes and people turn their attention to gourmet food and wine. Some of Michel’s colleagues—many of them much younger—had already started a cellar. Bruno wasn’t like that—he hadn’t even commented on the wine, Vieux Papes at twelve francs a bottle. Half forgetting that his brother was there, Michel leaned on the railing and looked out at the other buildings. It was dark now and the lights in most of the apartments were out. It was 15 August, a Sunday evening. He came back inside and sat near Bruno, their knees almost touching. Was it possible to think of Bruno as an individual? The decay of his organs was particular to him, and he would suffer his decline and death as an individual. On the other hand, his hedonistic worldview and the forces that shaped his consciousness and desires were common to an entire generation. Just as determining the apparatus for an experiment and choosing one or more observables made it possible to assign a specific behavior to an atomic system—now particle, now wave—so could Bruno be seen as an individual or, from another point of view, as passively caught up in the sweep of history. His motives, values and desires did not distinguish him from his contemporaries in any way.
