“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 enti
re 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.
Generally, the initial reaction of a thwarted animal is to try harder to attain its goal. A starving chicken (Gallus domesticus) prevented from reaching its food by a wire fence will make increasingly frantic efforts to get through it. Gradually, however, this behavior is replaced by another which has no obvious purpose. When unable to find food, for example, pigeons (Columba livia) will frequently peck the ground even if nothing there is edible. Not only will they peck indiscriminately, but they start to preen their feathers; such inappropriate behavior, frequently observed in situations of frustration or conflict, is known as displacement activity. Early in 1986, just after he turned thirty, Bruno began to write.
13
“No metaphysical mutation takes place,” Djerzinski would write many years later, “without first being announced. The radical change is preceded by many minor mutations—facilitators whose historic appearance often goes unnoticed at the time. I consider myself to have been one such mutation.”
Drifting among the mass of European humanity, Djerzinski was little understood in his lifetime. In the introduction to Djerzinski’s posthumously published Clifden Notes, Hubczejak writes: “An idea which evolves in a single mind, without the counterbalance of debate, can nonetheless avoid the pitfalls of idiosyncrasy and folly. It is significant, however, that Djerzinski presents his idea in the form of a quasi-Socratic dialogue. It should be added that, until the end, Djerzinski considered himself primarily a scientist. He believed that his principal contribution to human evolution was his work in biophysics, which he had developed within the classical scientific constraints of consistency and refutability. As far as he was concerned, the more philosophical elements of his later works were never more than rash, even crazy conjectures, which he recorded less for their intrinsic claims to truth than out of personal considerations.”
. . .
He felt a little tired; the moon glided over the sleeping city. He knew that he only had to say the word and Bruno would get up, put on his jacket and disappear into the elevator. He could easily hail a cab at La Motte-Picquet.
When we think about the present, we veer wildly between the belief in chance and the evidence in favor of determinism. When we think about the past, however, there is no more doubt: it seems obvious that everything happened in the way it was intended. Djerzinski had long since seen through this perceptual illusion, based as it was on an ontology of objects and intrinsic properties and dependent on a strong notion of external reality. It was this realization, rather than any feeling of compassion or respect, which prevented him from uttering the simple, established phrase that would have cut short this broken, tearful creature’s confession. This evening, sprawled on the sofa, this animal with whom he shared one half of his genetic code had overstepped the unspoken boundaries of decent human conversation. This evening, Djerzinski had a faint but definite feeling that Bruno’s tortuous, pathetic tale was tending toward some conclusion; words would be spoken and—for the first time—these words would have meaning and finality. He stood up and went to the bathroom, where discreetly, without a sound, he vomited. He splashed water on his face and went back to the living room.
“You’re not human,” Bruno said quietly, looking up at Michel. “I knew it from the start, from the way you behaved with Annabelle. But you’re the audience life has given me. At the time, I suppose you weren’t surprised when you got my article on John Paul II.”
“Every civilization has had to find some way to justify the sacrifices parents make,” said Michel sadly. “Under the historical circumstances, you didn’t have much choice.”
“But I really did admire John Paul II,” Bruno protested. “I remember it was in 1986—Canal+ and M6 had just started broadcasting, the Globe had just been launched and the Restos du Coeur soup kitchens started up. John Paul II was the only person—the only person—who really understood what was happening in the West. I was stunned when my paper was badly received by my ‘Living with Faith’ group in Dijon; they criticized the Pope’s position on abortion, condoms—all that rubbish. I have to admit I didn’t make much of an effort to see their point of view, either. We used to take turns holding the meeting in our houses; everyone would bring something to eat, a salad, a dip, a cake. I used to spend the evenings smiling like a half-wit, nodding my head and knocking back the wine; I wasn’t really listening. Anne was really into it, though. She signed up to help with a literacy program. The evenings she was out, I’d put a sedative into Victor’s bottle, log on to the Minitel and jerk off, but I never actually met anyone in person.
“In April, for Anne’s birthday, I’d bought her a silver lamé bodice and garters. She was a little wary at first, but I persuaded her to try it on. While she was strapping herself into it, I finished the champagne. Then I heard her small trembling voice saying nervously: ‘I’m ready . . .’ The minute I walked into the bedroom I knew it had been a lousy idea. Her sagging ass was squeezed into the garters and her tits had never really recovered from breast-feeding. She needed liposuction, silicone implants, the works—though she would never have agreed to it. I closed my eyes and slipped a finger into her G-string; I was completely soft. At that moment Victor started howling from the next room—loud, shrill, unendurable screams. She put on a dressing gown and ran into his room. When she got back I just asked her for a blow-job. She wasn’t very good at it—you could feel her teeth—but I closed my eyes and imagined it was a Ghanaian girl from my seconde class. Thinking about her rough, pink tongue, I managed to come in my wife’s mouth. I had no intention of having another child. I wrote the piece about the family the next day—you know, the one that was published.”
“I still have a copy of it,” said Michel. He got up and took down the magazine from a bookshelf. Bruno thumbed through it, somewhat surprised, and found the page.
There are families still, more or less
(Sparks of faith among atheists,
Sparks of love in the pit of nausea),
And we do not know how
These sparks glow.
Slaves working for incomprehensible organizations,
The only way in which we can live our lives is through sex
(Though only, of course, those for whom sex is still permitted,
Those for whom sex is possible).
Now, marriage and fidelity cut us off from any possibility of existence,
We will not find—in the office or the classroom—that spirit in us which clamors for adventure, for light, for dance;
And so we try to pool our destinies through increasingly difficult loves,
We try to sell a body which is ever more exhausted, mutinous, recalcitrant
And we disappear
In the shadow of sorrow
Into true despair,
We go down the long, solitary road to the place where all is dark,
Without children, without wives,
We enter the lake
In the middle of night
(and the water on our ancient bodies is so cold).
Just after writing this, Bruno had slipped into a kind of alcoholic coma. He was woken some hours later by the screams of his son. Between the ages of two and four, human children acquire a sense of self, which manifests itself in displays of megalomaniacal histrionics. Their aim in this is to control their social environment, making slaves of those around them (specifically, their parents); slaves dedicated to satisfying their every whim. Their egotism knows no bounds—such is the nature of the individual. As Bruno picked himself up from the living room floor, the screaming grew loud and shrill with rage. He crushed two Lexomil, mashed them into a spoonful of jam and headed toward Vict
or’s room. The child had crapped itself. Where the fuck was Anne? These jungle-bunny literacy classes were ending later and later. He took off the soiled diaper and threw it on the floor; the stench was atrocious. The child swallowed the mixture on the spoon easily and his body stiffened as though he’d been struck. Bruno put on his jacket and went to the Madison, an all-night bar on the rue Chaudronnerie. He bought a three-thousand-franc bottle of Dom Pérignon on his credit card and shared it with a pretty blonde. In one of the upstairs rooms, the girl jacked him off slowly, pausing every now and then to heighten his pleasure. Her name was Hélène. She came from Dijon and was studying tourism; she was nineteen. As he slipped inside her, she tightened her vagina and he had three whole minutes of complete contentment. When he left, Bruno kissed her on the lips and insisted on giving her a tip—he only had three hundred francs in cash left.
The following week he decided to show a colleague—a fifty-year-old Marxist who taught literature—what he had written. He was tall and thin; rumor had it he was homosexual. Fajardie was pleasantly surprised. “You’re obviously influenced by Claudel—or perhaps Péguy, in his blank verse. But it’s very original, and that’s something you don’t come across much anymore.” He was certain as to what should happen next: “L’Infini—it’s the only serious literary magazine nowadays. Send it to Sollers.” A little taken aback, Bruno asked him to repeat the name—he later realized he’d confused it with a brand of mattress—and sent off his work. Three weeks later he telephoned the publisher, Denoël, and was surprised when Philippe Sollers answered and suggested that they meet. Bruno had no classes on Wednesday, so it would be possible to get to Paris and back in a day. On the train, he tried to read Sollers’s novel A Curious Solitude but quickly gave up, though he did manage to read some of Women—mostly the bits about sex. They had arranged to meet in a café on the rue de l’Université. Sollers arrived ten minutes late, brandishing the cigarette holder which would become his trademark. “You’re in the suburbs? Pity. You should move to Paris right away. You have talent.” He told Bruno that he would publish the piece on John Paul II in the next issue of L’Infini. Bruno was stunned; he couldn’t have known that Sollers was deep into his “Counter-Reformation” phase and was publishing a variety of impassioned tracts favorable to the Pope. “I really admire Péguy!” said Sollers enthusiastically, “and de Sade, you must read de Sade . . .”