The Elementary Particles (8 page)

15

The following morning Michel’s tent was empty. His things were gone, but he had left a note which read, simply,
Don’t worry
. Bruno himself left a week later. As he boarded the train, he realized that since arriving he hadn’t tried to flirt with anyone, or even talk to anyone.

Late in August, Annabelle noticed that her period was late. She thought it was probably best this way. There was no problem; David’s father knew a doctor in Marseilles, a fervent champion of family planning. The guy’s name was Laurent, he was about thirty, expansive, with a little red mustache. He insisted that she call him Laurent. He showed her the instruments and explained to her the procedure of dilation and curettage. He liked to establish a rapport with his clients, thinking of them almost as friends. He had been an advocate of women’s rights from the beginning, and believed there was still a long way to go. The operation was scheduled for the following day; the costs would be covered by the family planning clinic.

By the time she returned to her hotel, Annabelle was distraught. She would have the abortion the following day and stay overnight at the hotel before going home; that was what she had decided. Every night for three weeks she had slept in David’s tent. The first time it had been painful, but afterward she enjoyed it. She had never thought that sexual pleasure could be so overpowering. But she felt no particular affection for the guy; she knew he would quickly find someone else, was probably with someone now.

At a dinner party that same evening, Laurent talked enthusiastically about Annabelle’s case. This was precisely what they had been fighting for, he remarked, to ensure that a seventeen-year-old girl—“and a pretty girl, too,” he almost added—did not have her life destroyed by a holiday romance.

Annabelle was apprehensive about returning to Crécy-en-Brie, but her fears were unfounded. When she got back on 4 September her parents complimented her on her tan. Michel had already left, they told her, moving into the university dormitory in Bures-sur-Yvette; they obviously did not suspect a thing. She went to visit Michel’s grandmother. Though the old woman seemed tired, she greeted Annabelle warmly and managed to find her grandson’s address for her. Yes, it was a little strange that Michel had come back from vacation before the others; and she thought it odd that he should go to the university weeks before he was due to start, but then Michel had always been a strange boy.

In the midst of nature’s barbarity, human beings sometimes (rarely) succeed in creating small oases warmed by love. Small, exclusive, enclosed spaces governed only by love and shared subjectivity.

Annabelle spent the fortnight that followed writing to Michel. It was hard work; several times she crossed out what she had written and started again. When finished, it ran to forty pages; it was her first
love letter
. She posted it on 17 September, the day she went back to school; then she waited.

The University of Paris IX—Orsay—is the only one in the Paris area modeled on the American campus system. Both undergraduates and graduate students stay in dormitories set in quads. Orsay University also has an exceptional physics research facility dedicated to the study of elementary particles.

Michel lived at the top of building 233, in a corner room on the fourth floor where he felt immediately at home. There was a small bed, a desk and some shelves for his books. His window looked out onto a lawn which ran down to the river. If he leaned out and craned his neck, he could see the gray concrete expanse of the particle accelerator on the right. With a month to go before lectures began, the dorms were almost empty. There were some African students, whose problem was where to stay in August, when the dormitories closed completely. Michel sometimes talked to the concierge and during the day he walked by the river. He didn’t suspect that he would be here for more than eight years.

One morning, at about eleven o’clock, he lay down on the grass beneath some indeterminate trees. He was surprised at how miserable he felt. Far removed from Christian notions of grace and redemption, unfamiliar with the concepts of freedom and compassion, Michel’s worldview had grown pitiless and mechanical. Once the parameters for interaction were defined, he thought, and given the initial conditions, events took place in an empty, spiritless space, each inexorably predetermined. What happened was meant to happen; it could not be otherwise; no one was to blame. At night Michel dreamed of abstract snow-covered spaces—his body, bandaged from head to foot, drifting beneath lowering skies between steel mills. During the day he would sometimes run into one of the African students, a short Malian boy with sallow skin, and they would nod to each other. The university cafeteria was not yet open, so Michel bought tins of tuna at the supermarket in Courcelles-sur-Yvette and went back to his room. Night fell. He walked the empty corridors.

In mid-October Annabelle wrote to him again—a shorter letter this time. She had phoned Bruno only to discover that he had no news either; all he could tell her was that Michel telephoned his grandmother regularly but probably would not be home before Christmas.

One evening in November, coming out of a lecture on analysis, Michel found a note in his pigeonhole at the dorm. It read:
Phone your aunt, Marie-Thérèse. URGENT.
He had not seen his aunt or his cousin Brigitte for two years. He phoned back immediately. His grandmother had had another stroke and she was in a hospital in Meaux. It was serious, very serious. Her aorta was weak; her heart might fail at any time.

. . .

It was around 10 p.m. when he walked through Meaux, past the lycée. At the same time, Annabelle was inside reading a passage by the Greek thinker Epicurus: brilliant, liberal and, to be honest, a pain in the ass. The sky was dark and the river Marne filthy and turbulent. He found the Hôpital Saint-Antoine easily, a complex of modern glass-and-steel buildings which had opened the previous year. His aunt Marie-Thérèse was waiting for him, with his cousin Brigitte, in the hall on the seventh floor; they had clearly been crying. “I don’t know if you should see her,” Marie-Thérèse said. He ignored the suggestion. What had to be endured, he would endure.

She was in intensive care, in a room of her own. The sheet was a bright white against her exposed shoulders and arms; he could scarcely tear his eyes away from the bare flesh, wrinkled, pale and terribly old. Her arms, perforated with tubes, were bound to the bedrails with straps. Her throat had been intubated, and wires ran from under the sheets to monitoring devices. They had taken away her nightdress and had not allowed her to redo her chignon, as she had every morning for years. With her long gray hair undone, she no longer seemed like his grandmother but simply a creature of flesh and blood who seemed both very young and very old, given up into the hands of the medical profession. Michel took her hand; it was the one thing he still recognized. He often held her hand, even now at seventeen. She did not open her eyes, but perhaps she sensed it was his touch, despite everything. He did not squeeze her hand, but simply took it in his as he had always done; he dearly hoped that she knew it was him.

Her childhood had been grim. From the age of seven she had labored on the farm surrounded by semialcoholic brutes. Her adolescence was too short for her to have any precise memories of it. After the death of her husband, she worked in a factory and brought up her four children; in midwinter she drew water from the pump in the courtyard so they could wash. At sixty, having just retired from the factory, she agreed to look after her son’s only child. He had wanted for nothing—clean clothes, good Sunday lunches and love. All these things she had done for him. Any analysis of human behavior, however rudimentary, should take account of such phenomena. Historically, such human beings have existed. Human beings who have worked—worked hard—all their lives with no motive other than love and devotion, who have literally given their lives for others, out of love and devotion; human beings who have no sense of having made any sacrifice, who cannot imagine any way of life other than giving their lives for others, out of love and devotion. In general, such human beings are generally women.

Michel had been in the room for about fifteen minutes, holding his grandmother’s hand in his, when an intern came in and told him that he would be in the way if he were to stay any longer. There might be something they could do; not an operation, it was past that, but something, maybe. He shouldn’t give up hope.

They headed back in silence; Marie-Thérèse drove the Renault 16 mechanically. They ate without saying much, occasionally evoking a memory. Marie-Thérèse cooked and served, needing to keep busy; now and again she would stop and cry a little and then go back to cooking.

Annabelle had been there when the ambulance came and when the Renault came back. At about one a.m., she rose and dressed—her parents were asleep—and walked to the gate of Michel’s house. The lights were still on, and everyone was probably in the living room, but it was impossible to make out anything through the heavy curtains. A light rain fell. Ten minutes passed. Annabelle knew she could ring the doorbell and see Michel, but she could also do nothing. She did not know that these ten minutes were a concrete example of
free will;
she knew only that they were terrible and that when they had elapsed, she would never be quite the same again. Many years later Michel proposed a theory of human freedom using the flow of superfluid helium as an analogy. In principle, the transfer of electrons between neurons and synapses in the brain—as discrete atomic phenomena—is governed by quantum uncertainty. The sheer number of neurons, however, statistically cancels out elementary differences, ensuring that human behavior is as rigorously determined—in broad terms and in the smallest detail—as any other natural system. However, in rare cases—Christians refer to them as
acts of grace
—a different harmonic wave form causes changes in the brain which modify behavior, temporarily or permanently. It is this new harmonic resonance which gives rise to what is commonly called
free will
.

Nothing of the sort happened on this occasion, and Annabelle went home. She felt much older. It would be almost twenty-five years before she saw Michel again.

At three a.m. the telephone rang; the nurse seemed truly sorry. Everything possible had been done, but very little was possible. Her heart was too weak. At least they could be sure that she had not suffered. But, she had to tell them, it was over now.

Michel went back to his room, taking short steps, barely twenty centimeters at a time. Brigitte moved to get up but Marie-Thérèse prevented her. For a minute or two there was silence, and then a sort of mewing or howling from his room. Brigitte hurried to him. Michel was rolled into a ball at the foot of his bed. His eyes were wide open, but his expression was not one of grief, nor of any recognizable human emotion. His face was filled with abject, animal fear.

PART TWO

Strange Moments

1

Bruno lost control of the car just outside Poitiers. The Peugeot 305 skidded across the expressway and hit the guardrail, spun 180 degrees, righted itself, then stopped. “Christ!” he muttered numbly, “Jesus fucking Christ!” A Jaguar hurtled toward him, doing 220 km; the driver braked sharply and swerved, narrowly missing the other guardrail, then drove off leaning on his horn. “Bastard!” screamed Bruno, climbing out and shaking his fist. “Fucking bastard!” Then he got back into his car, made a U-turn and continued on his way.

The Lieu du Changement was founded in 1975 by a group of ’68 veterans (in fact, they were more “spirit of ’68,” since none of them had actually been involved in the riots). It was just south of Cholet on a vast estate scattered with pine forests that belonged to one of the members’ parents. Their plan, inspired by the liberal values of the early seventies, was to create an authentic utopia—a place where the principles of self-government, respect for individual freedom and true democracy could be practiced in the “here and now.” The Lieu was not a commune, but had the more modest aim of providing a place where like-minded people could spend the summer months living according to the principles they espoused. It was intended that this haven of humanist and democratic feeling would create synergies, facilitate the meeting of minds and, in particular, as one of the founding members put it, provide an opportunity to “get your rocks off.”

Just before Cholet Sud, Bruno took the exit off the expressway and drove for ten kilometers along country roads. The map was not very clear, and he felt hot. It was pure chance, he thought, that he finally saw the sign. In large, multicolored letters it read
LIEU DU CHANGEMENT
and, underneath:
I am properly free when all the men and women about me are equally free
(Mikhail Bakunin). On the right, two teenage girls were walking up a path that led to the sea and dragging a plastic duck. The sluts were wearing nothing under their T-shirts. Bruno watched them as they passed; his cock ached. Wet T-shirts, he thought solemnly, were a wonderful thing. The girls turned off the road; they were clearly heading to the nearby campsite.

He parked the 305 and walked over to a small wooden hut with a welcome sign. Inside, a woman of about sixty sat in the lotus position. Her thin, wrinkled breasts hung over her thin cotton tunic; Bruno felt sorry for her. She gave him a big, somewhat stilted smile. “Welcome to the Lieu du Changement,” she said at last. She smiled broadly again; was she demented? “Have you got your reservation form?” Bruno took his papers out of his wallet. “Perfect!” muttered the hag, still smiling like a half-wit.

It was forbidden to drive cars within the grounds of the campsite so he decided to work in stages: first he would find a place to pitch his tent, then he would get his things from the car. He had bought a tent from La Samaritaine before setting off (“Made in the People’s Republic of China, 2/3 persons, 449FF”).

The first thing Bruno noticed when he arrived in the clearing was the pyramid. It was twenty meters high and twenty meters along the base: exactly equilateral. The sides were constructed of glass panes in heavy wood frames. The dying sun glinted on some of them, while through others it was possible to see the internal framework of levels and partitions, also constructed of dark wood. It was intended to symbolize a tree. In the center, a large cylinder housed the central staircase. A stream of people—some alone, others in small groups; some dressed, others naked—was leaving the building. With the sunset flaring through the long grass, the whole scene looked like a science fiction movie. Bruno observed the scene for two or three minutes, then took his tent under his arm and started up the first hill.

The land was hilly and wooded with clearings here and there; the ground was carpeted with pine needles, and there were communal sanitary facilities at regular intervals. No plots were marked out. Bruno started to sweat, and he had gas; he’d eaten too much at the rest stop. He was finding it difficult to think clearly, but he knew that the choice of where to pitch his tent could make all the difference in the success of his stay.

He was concluding as much when he noticed a clothesline strung between two trees. An evening breeze moved gently through the panties that had been hung out to dry. It might be a good idea to camp here, he thought, since it’s easy to get to know your neighbors when camping. Not necessarily to fuck them, just to get acquainted. It was a start. He put down the tent and began to study the instructions. The French translation was abominable, the English not much better; he assumed that the other European languages were just as bad. Fucking Chinks. What the hell did
upturn the demipoles to stable the dome
mean?

He was standing staring hopelessly at the diagrams when a sort of squaw appeared, dressed in a miniskirt of animal pelt, her large breasts dangling in the twilight. “Just got here?” the apparition asked. “Need a hand setting up your tent?”

“I’ll be okay,” he said in a strangled voice. “I’ll be okay, thanks . . . It’s very good of you,” he whispered. He had the impression this was a trap. Moments later, a wailing erupted from the neighboring wigwam (where the hell had they bought this thing—or had they made it themselves?). The squaw ran off, returned with two little brats, one on each hip, and rocked them gently. They screamed louder. The squaw’s brave trotted up, his cock dangling in the breeze. He was about fifty, a stocky guy with long gray hair and a beard. He took one of the little monkeys in his arms and started tickling it. Disgusting. Bruno moved a little way off—that was a close call. With little monsters like that, he wouldn’t get a wink of sleep. She was obviously breast-feeding, the cow; nice tits, though.

He walked a couple of meters away from the wigwam, but didn’t want to stray too far from the panties. They were delicate, lacy and transparent, and he couldn’t imagine they belonged to the squaw. He finally found a spot between two Canadian girls (cousins? sisters? school friends?) and set to work.

It was almost dark by the time he had finished. In the half-light, he went back to get his suitcases. He met a number of people on the way: both couples and singles, and quite a few single women in their forties. At regular intervals there were signs nailed to the trees reading
MUTUAL RESPECT
. He walked up to one of them; underneath was a small dish full of condoms conforming to French specifications. Below, there was a white plastic trash can. He stepped on the pedal and turned on his flashlight; the trash can was mostly full of empty beer cans, but there were also used condoms. That’s reassuring, thought Bruno; it looks like this place is humming.

The trip back was difficult; he was out of breath and the suitcase handles cut into his hands. He had to stop halfway up. Some people were still circulating, the beams from their flashlights crossing in the darkness. There was still a lot of traffic on the coast road. The Dynasty on the way to Saint-Clément had a topless night, but he didn’t feel up to it. He stood motionless for half an hour. This is my life, thought Bruno, I’m watching the cars’ headlights through the trees.

When he got back to his tent he poured himself a whiskey and jerked off slowly, flicking through a copy of
Swing—
“pleasure is a right”—having bought a copy at a service station near Angers. He had no intention of really replying to any of the small ads; he couldn’t hack a
gang bang
or a
sperm fest
. The women seeking single men were generally looking for black guys, and in any case he did not come close to the minimum size they required. Issue after issue, he came to the conclusion that his cock was too small for the porn circuit.

In general, however, he was not unhappy with his body. The hair transplant had taken well—luckily he’d found a good surgeon. He worked out regularly and, frankly, thought he looked good for forty-two. He poured another whiskey, ejaculated on the magazine and fell asleep, almost content.