The Possibility of an Island (35 page)

Daniel25, 10

THE MAJORITY OF TESTIMONIES
confirm it: it was in fact from this time onward that the Elohimite Church was to gain more and more followers, and spread unhindered across the whole of the Western world. After having achieved, in less than two years, a takeover of the Western trend toward Buddhism, the Elohimite movement absorbed, with the same ease, the last residues from the fall of Christianity before turning toward Asia, the conquest of which, starting with Japan, was also surprisingly rapid, especially when you consider that this continent had, for entire centuries, victoriously resisted all Christian missionary expeditions. It is true that times had changed, and that Elohimism marched in many respects behind consumer capitalism—which, turning youth into the supremely desirable commodity, had little by little destroyed respect for tradition and the cult of the ancestors—inasmuch as it promised the indefinite preservation of this same youth, and the pleasures associated with it.

Islam, curiously, was a more durable bastion of resistance. Relying on massive and unending immigration, the Muslim religion became stronger in the Western countries at practically the same rate as Elohimism; targeting as a priority the people of the Maghreb and black Africa, it had no less success with some “indigenous” Europeans, a success that owed itself uniquely to machismo. If the abandonment of machismo had effectively made men unhappy, it had not actually made women happy. There were more and more people, especially women, who dreamed of a return to a system where women were modest and submissive, and their virginity was preserved. Of course, at the same time, the erotic pressure on the bodies of young girls did not stop growing, and the expansion of Islam was only made possible thanks to the introduction of a series of compromises, under the influence of a new generation of imams who, inspired by Catholic tradition, reality shows, and American televangelists’ sense of spectacle, developed for the Muslim public an edifying script for life based on conversion and forgiveness of sin, two notions that were, however, relatively foreign to Islamic tradition. In the typical plotline, which you would find identically reproduced in dozens of
telenovelas
most often filmed in Turkey and North Africa, a young girl, to the consternation of her parents, starts off by leading a dissolute life stained by alcohol, drug-taking, and the wildest sexual freedom. Then, shaped by an event that provokes a salutary shock in her (a painful abortion; meeting a pious and upright Muslim boy who is studying to be an engineer), she leaves the world’s temptations far behind and becomes a submissive, chaste, veiled wife. The same plotline existed in its masculine form, this time setting the story around rappers, and emphasizing delinquency and the consumption of hard drugs. This hypocritical script was to have a success that was all the more stunning because its designated age for conversion (between twenty-two and twenty-five years old) corresponded pretty accurately to the age when young North African girls, spectacularly beautiful in their teenage years, begin to get fat and feel the need for less revealing clothes. In the space of a couple of decades, Islam thus managed to assume, in Europe, the role that had been Catholicism’s in its heyday: that of an “official” religion, organizer of the calendar and of mini-ceremonies marking out the passage of time, with dogmas that were sufficiently primitive to be grasped by the greatest number while preserving sufficient ambiguity to seduce the most agile minds, claiming in principle to have a redoubtable moral austerity while maintaining, in practice, bridges across which any sinner could be reintegrated. The same phenomenon occurred in the United States of America, beginning in the black community in particular—with the caveat that Catholicism, buoyed up by Latin American immigration, retained important footholds there for a long time.

All this, however, could only go on for so long, and the refusal to grow old, to
settle down
and be transformed into a fat mother was, a few years later, to impact the immigrant populations in their turn. When a social system is destroyed, this destruction is definitive, and there can be no going back; the laws of social entropy, valid in theory for any human-relational system, were rigorously demonstrated by Hewlett and Dude two centuries later; but they had already, for a long time, been understood intuitively. The fall of Islam in the West curiously echoes that, a few decades earlier, of Communism: in both cases, the phenomenon of decline was to take shape in their countries of origin, and in a few years sweep away the organizations, however powerful and wealthy they were, that had been established in the host countries. When the Arab countries, after years of being insidiously undermined, essentially through underground Internet connections, could at last have access to a way of life based on mass consumption, sexual freedom, and leisure, the enthusiasm of their populations was as intense and eager as it had been, half a century earlier, in the Communist countries. The movement started, as is so often the case in human history, in Palestine, more precisely in a sudden refusal by young Palestinian girls to limit their existence to the repeated procreation of future jihadists, and from their desire to take advantage of the moral freedom enjoyed by Israeli women. In a few bursts, the transformation, to the accompaniment of techno music (as rock music, a few years earlier, had been the accompaniment to the move toward the capitalist world, and with an effectiveness increased by use of the Web) spread to all the Arab countries, which were forced to face a mass revolt by their youth, in the face of which they could obviously do nothing. It then became perfectly clear, in the eyes of the Western populations, that all of the countries of Dar-el-Islam had only been kept in their primitive faith by ignorance and constraint; deprived of their bases in the rear, the Western Islamist movements collapsed at a stroke.

As for Elohimism, it was adapted perfectly to the leisure civilization in which it had been born. Imposing no moral constraints, reducing human existence to categories of interest and of pleasure, it did not hesitate, for all that, to make its own the fundamental promise at the core of all monotheistic religions: victory over death. Eradicating any spiritual or confusing dimension, it simply limited the scope of this victory, and the nature of the promise associated with it, to the unlimited prolongation of material life, that is to say the unlimited satisfaction of physical desires.

The first fundamental ceremony to mark the conversion of each new follower—the taking of a DNA sample—was accompanied by the signing of a document in which the postulant bequeathed all his possessions to the Church, after his death—the latter reserving the right to invest them, while promising to return them to the follower, after his resurrection, in their entirety. This came across as all the less shocking as the objective being pursued was the elimination of all natural bonds, and therefore all systems of inheritance, and because death was presented as a neutral period, simply a stasis in anticipation of a rejuvenated body. After intense lobbying of the American business world, the first convert was Steve Jobs—who requested, and was granted, a partial derogation in favor of the children he had procreated before discovering Elohimism. He was closely followed by Bill Gates, Richard Branson, and then a growing number of leaders of the most important firms in the world. The Church thus became extremely rich, and only a few years after the death of the prophet it was already, in terms of capital invested as well as the number of its followers, the leading religion in Europe.

The second fundamental ceremony was the entry into anticipation of resurrection—in other words suicide. After a period of hesitation and uncertainty, the custom was gradually established of carrying it out in public, according to a simple, harmonious ritual, at a moment chosen by the follower, when he felt that his physical body was no longer in a state to give him the joys he could legitimately expect from it. It was embarked upon with great confidence, in the certainty that resurrection was near—something that was all the more surprising as Miskiewicz, despite the colossal research funding at his disposal, had made no real progress, and, even if he could in fact guarantee the unlimited preservation of DNA, he was for the moment unable to create a living organism more complex than a simple cell. The promise of immortality made at the time of Christianity rested, it must be said, on even shakier foundations. The idea of immortality had basically never been abandoned by man, and even though he may have been forced to renounce his old beliefs, he had still kept, close to him, a nostalgia for them, he had never given up, and he was ready, in return for any explanation, however unconvincing, to let himself be guided by a new faith.

Daniel1, 22

Then, a transformable cult will achieve over a withered dogma the empirical predominance that must prepare the systematic ascendancy attributed by positivism to the emotional aspect of religion.

—Auguste Comte,
Appeal to Conservatives

THERE WAS SO LITTLE
of the believer in my nature that I was, in reality, almost indifferent to other people’s beliefs; it was without any difficulty, but also without attaching any importance to it, that I gave Isabelle the contact details for the Elohimite Church. I tried to make love with her, that last night, but it was a failure. For a few minutes she tried to chew on my cock, but I had the strong sense that she hadn’t done this for years, that she didn’t believe in it, and anyway, to do this kind of thing properly you need a minimum of faith, and enthusiasm; the flesh in her mouth remained soft and my drooping balls no longer reacted to her halfhearted caresses. She gave up and asked me if I wanted some sleeping pills. Yes I wanted some, it’s always a mistake to refuse, in my opinion, it’s useless torturing yourself. She was still capable of getting up first and preparing the coffee, that was one thing she could still do. There was a little dew on the lilacs, the temperature was cooler, I had reserved a seat on the 8:32 a.m. train, and summer was beginning to loosen its grip.

As usual I took a room at the Lutétia, there too it took me a long time to call Vincent, perhaps a month or two, for no precise reason. I did the same things as before but I did them in slow motion, as if I had to break down the movements in order to carry them out in an almost satisfying manner. From time to time I sat down at the bar, imbibed tranquilly, phlegmatically; quite often, I was recognized by old acquaintances. I made no effort to encourage the conversation, and this didn’t bother me at all; truly this is one of the few advantages of being a
star
—or rather a former star, in my case: when you meet someone else and you arrive, as you might normally expect, at a point when you’re both bored, even though neither of the two is precisely the cause of it, in some way by
common agreement,
it’s always the other who bears the responsibility for it, who feels guilty for not having kept the conversation at a sufficiently high level, for not having known how to establish a sufficiently warm and sparkling atmosphere. This situation is comforting, and even relaxing as soon as one truly begins not to give a fuck. Sometimes, in the middle of a verbal exchange in which I contented myself with nodding my head in a knowing way, I would indulge in involuntary daydreams—moreover, generally rather unpleasant ones. I thought back to those casting sessions when Esther had had to kiss boys, to those sex scenes she had acted out in various short films; I remembered how much I had taken it personally, uselessly as it happens, I could have made a scene or burst into tears but that would have changed nothing, and I was well aware that I could not have survived very long under those conditions anyway, I was too old, I had no strength left; this observation did not, however, diminish my sorrow, because from the place I now found myself in there was no way out other than to go on suffering right to the end, I would never forget her body, her skin, nor her face, and I had never felt with such clarity that human relations are born, evolve, and die in a totally deterministic manner, as inexorable as the movements of a planetary system, and that it is absurd and vain to hope, however slightly, that you can modify their course.

I could have stayed at the Lutétia for quite some time, perhaps not as long as in Biarritz, because I was starting in spite of everything to drink a bit too much, anxiety was slowly burrowing into my organs and I spent whole afternoons at Bon Marché looking at pullovers, there was no sense in going on like that. One October morning, probably a Monday morning, I phoned Vincent. From the moment of my arrival at the house in Chevilly-Larue I felt as though I were penetrating a termite nest or a hive, an organization in which everyone had a precisely defined task, and where things had begun to operate at full capacity. Vincent was waiting for me at the door, ready to leave, his cell phone in his hand. He got up when he saw me, shook my hand warmly, and invited me to accompany him around their new offices. They had acquired a small office building, the construction was not yet finished, some workers were installing soundproofed walls and halogen lights, but about twenty people were already settled in their offices: some were answering the telephone, others were typing letters, updating databases, or whatever, in short I was in an SME—frankly, it was really a
big
enterprise. If there was one thing I would not have expected from Vincent the first time I met him, it was to see him transform himself into a
business leader,
but after all, anything was possible, and what’s more he seemed at ease in the role; sometimes improvements happen, in spite of everything, in the lives of certain people, the process of living cannot simply be reduced to a purely declining trajectory, this would be a deceptive simplification. After introducing me to two of his colleagues, Vincent announced that they had just won an important victory: after several months of legal battles, the Council of State had finally made a judgment authorizing the Elohimite Church to buy for its own use the religious buildings that the Catholic Church no longer had the means to keep up. The only obligation was that which already applied to the previous owners: to maintain, in partnership with the National Office for Historical Monuments, the artistic and architectural heritage in a well-preserved state; but, as far as the nature of the religious celebrations within these buildings went, no limitation had been imposed. Even in eras more aesthetically distinguished than our own, Vincent remarked to me, it would have been unthinkable to bring to fruition in only a few years the conception and realization of such a display of artistic splendors; this judgment, in addition to putting at the disposal of the faithful a good number of highly beautiful places of worship, was also going to allow them to concentrate their efforts on the building of the embassy.