The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq Page A
Authors: Michel Houellebecq
Tags: Fiction
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silence that followed her appearance in a café or a classroom, but it would be years before she completely understood it. At the school in Crécy-en-Brie, it was common knowledge that she and Michel were “together,” but even if they hadn’t been, no boy would have dared to try. The terrible predicament of a beautiful girl is that only an experienced womanizer, someone cynical and without scruple, feels up to the challenge. More often than not, she will lose her virginity to some filthy lowlife in what proves to be the first step in an irrevocable decline.
In September 1972 Michel entered the
seconde
at the Lycée de Meaux, leaving Annabelle, who was in the
troisième,
in Crécy for another year. Every evening Michel took the train home, changed at Esbly and usually arrived in Crécy on the 6:33 p.m. train, where Annabelle would be waiting at the station. They would walk through the small town and along the banks of the canals. Sometimes—though not often—they would go to the café. Annabelle knew that one day Michel would want to take her in his arms, kiss her and caress her body, which she could feel was changing. She waited patiently for that day, and wasn’t unduly worried; she was confident it would happen.
Many fundamental aspects of sexual behavior are innate, though experiences during the formative years of life play an important role in birds and mammals. Early physical contact with members of the same species seems to play a vital role in the development of dogs, cats, rats, guinea pigs and rhesus monkeys (
Macaca mulata
). Male rats deprived of maternal contact during infancy exhibit serious disturbances in sexual behavior, especially in mating rituals. If his life had depended on it (and, in a very real sense, it did), Michel could not have kissed Annabelle. Often, when he arrived at Crécy station Annabelle would be so overjoyed to see him that she threw her arms around him. For a moment they were held in a state of happy paralysis; only afterward would they begin to talk.
Bruno was also in the
seconde
at Meaux, though not in Michel’s class. He knew that his mother had a son by a different father, but no more than that. He saw little of his mother. He twice had spent his holidays in the villa in Cassis where she now lived. She regularly entertained hitchhikers and sundry young men passing through. The popular press would have characterized them as
hippies
. It was true that they were unemployed, and that Janine—who by now had changed her name to Jane—provided for them during their stay. They lived off the profits of the plastic surgery clinic her ex-husband had set up—in other words, off the desire of well-to-do women to fight the ravages of time, or correct certain natural imperfections. They would swim naked in the creeks. Bruno always refused to take off his trunks; he felt small, pale, fat and repulsive. Sometimes his mother would take one of the boys to her bed. She was forty-five years old and her vulva was scrawny and sagged slightly, but she was still a very beautiful woman. Bruno jerked off at least three times a day. Here he was surrounded by the vulvas of young women, sometimes less than a meter away, but Bruno understood that they were closed to him: other boys were bigger, stronger, more tanned. Much later, Bruno would come to realize that the petit-bourgeois world of employees and middle managers was more accepting, more tolerant, than the alternative scene—represented at that time by hippies. “If I dress up as a middle manager, they’ll accept me as one,” Bruno liked to say. “All I need is a suit, a shirt and tie—all for eight hundred francs on sale at C&A. In fact, all I really have to do is learn to tie a necktie. Not having a car is a bit of a problem—the only real problem middle managers face in life. But it can be done: take out a loan, work for a couple of years to pay it off and there you go. But there’s no point in trying to pass myself off as a dropout.
In September 1972 Michel entered the
seconde
at the Lycée de Meaux, leaving Annabelle, who was in the
troisième,
in Crécy for another year. Every evening Michel took the train home, changed at Esbly and usually arrived in Crécy on the 6:33 p.m. train, where Annabelle would be waiting at the station. They would walk through the small town and along the banks of the canals. Sometimes—though not often—they would go to the café. Annabelle knew that one day Michel would want to take her in his arms, kiss her and caress her body, which she could feel was changing. She waited patiently for that day, and wasn’t unduly worried; she was confident it would happen.
Many fundamental aspects of sexual behavior are innate, though experiences during the formative years of life play an important role in birds and mammals. Early physical contact with members of the same species seems to play a vital role in the development of dogs, cats, rats, guinea pigs and rhesus monkeys (
Macaca mulata
). Male rats deprived of maternal contact during infancy exhibit serious disturbances in sexual behavior, especially in mating rituals. If his life had depended on it (and, in a very real sense, it did), Michel could not have kissed Annabelle. Often, when he arrived at Crécy station Annabelle would be so overjoyed to see him that she threw her arms around him. For a moment they were held in a state of happy paralysis; only afterward would they begin to talk.
Bruno was also in the
seconde
at Meaux, though not in Michel’s class. He knew that his mother had a son by a different father, but no more than that. He saw little of his mother. He twice had spent his holidays in the villa in Cassis where she now lived. She regularly entertained hitchhikers and sundry young men passing through. The popular press would have characterized them as
hippies
. It was true that they were unemployed, and that Janine—who by now had changed her name to Jane—provided for them during their stay. They lived off the profits of the plastic surgery clinic her ex-husband had set up—in other words, off the desire of well-to-do women to fight the ravages of time, or correct certain natural imperfections. They would swim naked in the creeks. Bruno always refused to take off his trunks; he felt small, pale, fat and repulsive. Sometimes his mother would take one of the boys to her bed. She was forty-five years old and her vulva was scrawny and sagged slightly, but she was still a very beautiful woman. Bruno jerked off at least three times a day. Here he was surrounded by the vulvas of young women, sometimes less than a meter away, but Bruno understood that they were closed to him: other boys were bigger, stronger, more tanned. Much later, Bruno would come to realize that the petit-bourgeois world of employees and middle managers was more accepting, more tolerant, than the alternative scene—represented at that time by hippies. “If I dress up as a middle manager, they’ll accept me as one,” Bruno liked to say. “All I need is a suit, a shirt and tie—all for eight hundred francs on sale at C&A. In fact, all I really have to do is learn to tie a necktie. Not having a car is a bit of a problem—the only real problem middle managers face in life. But it can be done: take out a loan, work for a couple of years to pay it off and there you go. But there’s no point in trying to pass myself off as a dropout.
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