Read Online Submission by Michel Houellebecq - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Michel Houellebecq
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decided to walk home. I had filled out the paperwork mechanically, on autopilot, and now I needed to think. Crossing Place d’Italie, I was overcome by the feeling that everything could disappear. That petite black woman with the curly hair and the tight jeans, waiting for the 21 bus, could disappear; she
would
disappear, or at least she’d be in for some serious re-education. There were the usual fund-raisers in front of the Italie 2 shopping centre – today they were Greenpeace – and they would disappear, too. I blinked as a bearded young man with long brown hair came up to me holding his clipboard, and it was as if he were already gone. I passed by without seeing him and went through the glass doors that led to the ground floor of the mall.
Inside, the results were more mixed. The Bricorama would stay, but the Jennyfer’s days were numbered. It had nothing to offer the good Muslim tween. Secret Stories, which advertised name-brand lingerie at discount prices, had nothing to worry about: the same kind of shops were doing fine in the malls of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. Neither, for that matter, did Chantal Thomass or La Perla. Hidden all day in impenetrable black burkas, rich Saudi women transformed themselves by night into birds of paradise with their corsets, their see-through bras, their G-strings with multicoloured lace and rhinestones. They were exactly the opposite of Western women, who spent their days dressed up and looking sexy to maintain their social status, then collapsed in exhaustion once they got home, abandoning all hope of seduction in favour of clothes that were loose and shapeless. All of a sudden, as I stood in front of the Rapid’Jus (whose concoctions kept getting more and more complicated: they had coconut–passion fruit–guava, mango–lychee–guarana, and a dozen other flavors, all with bewildering vitamin ingredients), I thought of Bruno Deslandes. I hadn’t seen him for twenty years. I hadn’t thought of him, either. We’d been doctoral students together, we’d even been what you might call friendly. He worked on Laforgue. His dissertation had received a pass without distinction, and soon afterwards he’d got a job as a tax inspector, then married a girl named Annelise, whom he’d probably met at some student function. She worked in the marketing department of a mobile network, she made much more than he did, but he had job security, as they say. They’d bought a house on a plot of land in Montigny-le-Bretonneux, and they already had two kids, a boy and a girl. He was the only one on our course who’d ended up with a normal family life. The others drifted around, with a little online dating here, a little speed dating there, and a lot of solitude in between. I’d bumped into Bruno on the commuter train, and he’d invited me over the following Friday for a barbecue. It was late June, he had a garden, he could have people over for barbecues. There would be a few neighbours but, he cautioned me, ‘nobody from university’.
Their mistake, I realised as soon as I set foot in his garden and said hello to his wife, was choosing a Friday night. She’d been working all day and was exhausted, plus she’d been watching too many reruns of
Come Dine with Me
on Channel M6 and had planned a menu that was much too ambitious. The morel soufflé was a lost cause, but just when it became clear that even the guacamole was ruined and I thought she was going to break down in sobs, her three-year-old son started screaming at Bruno, who’d got shit-faced as soon as the first guests arrived and couldn’t manage to turn the sausages on the grill, so I helped him out. From the depths of her despair she gave me a look of profound gratitude. It was more complicated than I’d thought, barbecuing: before I knew it, the lamb chops were covered in a film of charred fat, blackish and probably carcinogenic, the flames were leaping higher and higher but I didn’t have any idea what to do, if I fiddled with the
would
disappear, or at least she’d be in for some serious re-education. There were the usual fund-raisers in front of the Italie 2 shopping centre – today they were Greenpeace – and they would disappear, too. I blinked as a bearded young man with long brown hair came up to me holding his clipboard, and it was as if he were already gone. I passed by without seeing him and went through the glass doors that led to the ground floor of the mall.
Inside, the results were more mixed. The Bricorama would stay, but the Jennyfer’s days were numbered. It had nothing to offer the good Muslim tween. Secret Stories, which advertised name-brand lingerie at discount prices, had nothing to worry about: the same kind of shops were doing fine in the malls of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. Neither, for that matter, did Chantal Thomass or La Perla. Hidden all day in impenetrable black burkas, rich Saudi women transformed themselves by night into birds of paradise with their corsets, their see-through bras, their G-strings with multicoloured lace and rhinestones. They were exactly the opposite of Western women, who spent their days dressed up and looking sexy to maintain their social status, then collapsed in exhaustion once they got home, abandoning all hope of seduction in favour of clothes that were loose and shapeless. All of a sudden, as I stood in front of the Rapid’Jus (whose concoctions kept getting more and more complicated: they had coconut–passion fruit–guava, mango–lychee–guarana, and a dozen other flavors, all with bewildering vitamin ingredients), I thought of Bruno Deslandes. I hadn’t seen him for twenty years. I hadn’t thought of him, either. We’d been doctoral students together, we’d even been what you might call friendly. He worked on Laforgue. His dissertation had received a pass without distinction, and soon afterwards he’d got a job as a tax inspector, then married a girl named Annelise, whom he’d probably met at some student function. She worked in the marketing department of a mobile network, she made much more than he did, but he had job security, as they say. They’d bought a house on a plot of land in Montigny-le-Bretonneux, and they already had two kids, a boy and a girl. He was the only one on our course who’d ended up with a normal family life. The others drifted around, with a little online dating here, a little speed dating there, and a lot of solitude in between. I’d bumped into Bruno on the commuter train, and he’d invited me over the following Friday for a barbecue. It was late June, he had a garden, he could have people over for barbecues. There would be a few neighbours but, he cautioned me, ‘nobody from university’.
Their mistake, I realised as soon as I set foot in his garden and said hello to his wife, was choosing a Friday night. She’d been working all day and was exhausted, plus she’d been watching too many reruns of
Come Dine with Me
on Channel M6 and had planned a menu that was much too ambitious. The morel soufflé was a lost cause, but just when it became clear that even the guacamole was ruined and I thought she was going to break down in sobs, her three-year-old son started screaming at Bruno, who’d got shit-faced as soon as the first guests arrived and couldn’t manage to turn the sausages on the grill, so I helped him out. From the depths of her despair she gave me a look of profound gratitude. It was more complicated than I’d thought, barbecuing: before I knew it, the lamb chops were covered in a film of charred fat, blackish and probably carcinogenic, the flames were leaping higher and higher but I didn’t have any idea what to do, if I fiddled with the
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