Sunk in a wicker chair, Bill Gates was spreading his arms out wide while smiling at his interlocutor. He was dressed in canvas trousers and a khaki short-sleeved shirt; his bare feet were in flip-flops. It was no longer the Bill Gates in a sea-blue suit at the time when Microsoft was consolidating its global domination, and when he himself, dethroning the Sultan of Brunei, became the world’s richest man. Nor was it yet the concerned, sorrowful Bill Gates, visiting Sri Lankan orphanages or calling on the international community to be vigilant about the outbreak of smallpox in West Africa. It was an intermediary Bill Gates, relaxed, manifestly happy about retiring from his post as chairman of the planet’s biggest software business; in short, a Bill Gates on holiday. Only his metal-framed glasses, with their strongly magnifying lenses, recalled his past as a nerd.
In front of him, Steve Jobs, although sitting cross-legged on the white leather sofa, seemed paradoxically an embodiment of austerity, of the Sorge traditionally associated with Protestant capitalism. There was nothing Californian in the way his hand clutched his jaw as if to help him in some difficult reflection, nothing in the look full of uncertainty which he sent his interlocutor; and even the Hawaiian shirt that Martin had decked him out in did nothing to dispel the impression of a general sadness produced by his slightly slumped position, and by the expression of disarray that could be read in his features.
The encounter, quite obviously, took place in Steve Jobs’s home. A mixture of coolly designed white furniture and brightly colored ethnic draperies, everything in the room recalled the aesthetic universe of the founder of Apple, the polar opposite of the profusion of high-tech gadgets, at the limit of science fiction, which, legend would have it, characterized the home the founder of Microsoft had built in the Seattle suburbs. Between the two men, a chessboard with handcrafted wooden pieces sat on a coffee table; they had just interrupted the game in a stage unfavorable to the blacks—namely to Jobs.
In certain pages of his autobiography, The Road Ahead, Bill Gates occasionally lets slip what could be considered total cynicism—particularly in the passage where he confesses quite plainly that it is not necessarily advantageous for a business to offer the most innovative products. More often it is preferable to observe what the competitors are doing (and there he clearly refers, without using the name, to Apple), to let them bring out their products, confront the difficulties inherent in any innovation, and, in a way, surmount the initial problems; then, in a second phase, to flood the market by offering low-price copies of the competing products. This apparent cynicism is not, however, as Houellebecq stresses, the true nature of Gates; this is expressed instead in the surprising, almost touching passages in which he reasserts his faith in capitalism, in the mysterious “invisible hand”; his absolute, unshakable conviction that whatever the vicissitudes and apparent counter-examples, the market, at the end of the day, is always right, and that the good of the market is always identical to the general good. It is then that the fundamental truth about Bill Gates appears, as a creature of faith, and it is this faith, this candor of the sincere capitalist, that Jed Martin was able to render by portraying him, arms open wide, warm and friendly, his glasses gleaming in the last rays of the sun setting on the Pacific Ocean. Jobs, however, made thin by illness, his face careworn and dotted with stubble, sorrowfully leaning on his right hand, is reminiscent of one of those traveling evangelists who, on finding himself preaching for perhaps the tenth time to a small and indifferent audience, is suddenly filled with doubt.
And yet it was Jobs, motionless, weakened, in a losing position, who gave the impression of being the master of the game; such was, according to Houellebecq’s text, the profound paradox of this canvas. In his eyes still burned that flame common not only to preachers and prophets but also to the inventors so often described by Jules Verne. By looking more closely at the position of Jobs’s chess pieces as portrayed by Martin, you realized that it was not necessarily a losing one; and that Jobs could, by sacrificing his queen, conclude in three moves with an audacious bishop–knight checkmate. Similarly, you had the sense that he could, through the brilliant intuition of a new product, suddenly impose new norms on the market. Through the bay window behind them could be made out a landscape of meadows, of an almost surreal emerald green, gently descending to a line of cliffs, where they joined a forest of conifers. Farther away, the Pacific Ocean unfurled its endless golden-brown waves. On the lawn, some young girls had started a game of Frisbee. Evening was falling, magnificently, in the explosion of a sun that Martin had wanted to be almost improbable in its orangey magnificence, setting on northern California, and the evening was falling on the most advanced part of the world; it was that too, that indefinite sadness of farewells, which could be read in Jobs’s eyes.
Two convinced supporters of the market economy; two resolute supporters also of the Democratic Party, and yet two opposing facets of capitalism, as different as a banker in Balzac could be from Verne’s engineer. The Conversation at Palo Alto, Houellebecq stressed in his conclusion, was far too modest a subtitle; instead, Jed Martin could have entitled his painting A Brief History of Capitalism, for that, indeed, is what it was.
19
After much equivocation, the vernissage was fixed for 11 December, a Wednesday—the ideal day, according to Marylin. Urgently produced by an Italian printer, the catalogues arrived just in time. They were elegant, luxurious objects—you don’t skimp on that, Marylin had decided, and Franz was more and more beholden to her. It was becoming curious; he followed her around everywhere, like a bichon, while she made her phone calls.
After stacking a pile of catalogues by the entrance and checking that all the canvases were hung correctly, they had nothing to do until the opening, scheduled for seven, and the gallerist began to show palpable signs of nervousness; he was wearing a curious embroidered Slovakian peasant shirt over his black Diesel jeans. Marylin, still composed, was checking a few details on her cell phone and wandering from one painting to another, with Franz at her heels. It’s a game, it’s a million-dollar game.
By six-thirty, Jed began to tire of his sidekicks’ antics, and announced he was going out for a walk. “Just a walk around the neighborhood, I’m taking a little walk. Don’t worry, walking does you good.”
The remark showed exaggerated optimism, as he realized once he set foot on the boulevard Vincent-Auriol. Some cars raced by, splashing him; it was cold and rainy, that’s all you could say, that evening, for the boulevard Vincent-Auriol. A Casino supermarket and a Shell service station were the only perceptible centers of energy, the only social propositions likely to provoke desire, happiness, or joy. Jed already knew these lively places: he had been a regular customer of the Casino supermarket for years, before switching to the Franprix in the boulevard de l’Hôpital. As for the Shell station, he also knew it well: on many a Sunday, he had appreciated being able to go there for Pringles and bottles of Hépar. But there was no point this evening. A cocktail party had obviously been scheduled, and they’d called on the services of a caterer.
However, along with dozens of other customers, he went into the supermarket and immediately noticed various improvements. Near the book section, a shelf of newspapers now offered a large choice of dailies and magazines. The range of fresh Italian pasta had expanded yet again (undoubtedly, nothing seemed able to stop the advance of fresh Italian pasta), and above all the food court had been enriched with a magnificent, brand-new self-service salad bar, which lined up about fifty varieties, some of which looked delicious. That’s what gave him the desire to come back, what gave him the stupefyingly strong desire to come back, as Houellebecq would’ve said. Jed suddenly missed him a lot, standing in front of the salad bar, where a few middle-aged women calculated, skeptically, the caloric content of the ingredients on offer. He knew the writer shared his taste for big food retailers—real retail, as he would say—and like him he wished, in a more or less utopian and distant future, for the fusion of the various chain stores into one total supermarke
t, which would cover all the needs of mankind. How nice it would have been to visit this refurbished Casino supermarket together, to nudge each other and point out the sections of completely new products, or particularly clear and exhaustive nutritional labeling!
Was he experiencing a feeling of friendship for Houellebecq? That would be an exaggeration. Jed didn’t think he was capable of such a feeling: he had gone through childhood and the start of adolescence without falling prey to strong friendships, while these periods of life are considered particularly propitious for their birth. It was scarcely probable that friendship would come to him now, late in life. But still, he had appreciated their encounter, and above all he liked his text. He found in it a surprising quality of intuition, given the author’s obvious lack of artistic education. Of course he had invited him to the vernissage; Houellebecq had replied that he would “try to pop in,” which meant that the chances of seeing him were almost nil. When they’d spoken on the phone, he was very excited by the renovation of his new home. When he’d returned, two months ago, in a sort of sentimental pilgrimage, to the village where he’d spent his childhood, his family home was up for sale. He’d considered this “absolutely miraculous.” It was fate, and he had bought it immediately, without even discussing the price, and moved in his things—most of which, it’s true, had never left their boxes—and now was busy furnishing it. That’s all he’d talked about, and Jed’s painting seemed the least of his concerns. Jed had, however, promised to bring it to him after the vernissage and the first days of the exhibition, when occasionally a few latecomer journalists would show up.
At about seven-twenty, when Jed returned to the gallery, through the bay windows he noticed people circulating in the rows between the paintings. They had come on time, which was probably a good sign. Marylin saw him from afar and shook her fist at him in a victory sign.
“There are heavyweights here,” she said when he rejoined her. “Some real heavyweights.”
In fact, a few meters away, he saw Franz in conversation with François Pinault, flanked by a ravishing young woman, probably of Iranian origin, who was assisting him as director of his artistic foundation. His gallerist seemed to be struggling, waving his arms around distractedly, and for an instant Jed wanted to come to his aid, before remembering what he’d always known, and what Marylin had categorically told him a few days before: he was never better than when silent.
“It’s not over yet,” the press officer went on. “You see that guy in gray, over there?” She pointed to a young man aged about thirty, with an intelligent face and extremely well dressed, his suit, tie, and shirt forming a delicate color-chart of gray. He had stopped in front of The Journalist Jean-Pierre Pernaut Chairing an Editorial Meeting, a relatively old painting, the first in which Jed had portrayed his subject in the company of work colleagues. That had been, he remembered, a particularly difficult one to paint: the expressions of Jean-Pierre Pernaut’s staff, listening to the directives of their charismatic leader with a curious mixture of veneration and disgust, had not been easy to render; he’d spent almost six months on it. But this painting had liberated him, and he immediately launched into The Architect Jean-Pierre Martin Leaving the Management of His Business, and in fact all his big compositions that took the world of work as their setting.
“That guy’s Roman Abramovich’s buyer for Europe,” Marylin told him. “I’ve already seen him in London and Berlin, but never in Paris; never in a contemporary art gallery, in any case.
“It’s good if you’ve got a competitive situation right from the evening of the vernissage,” she went on. “It’s a small world and they all know each other, so they’re going to start calculating, imagining the prices. Obviously, you need at least two bidders. And there …” She made a charming, cheeky smile, which made her look like a little girl, and which surprised Jed. “Look, there’s three of them … You see the guy over there, in front of the Bugatti painting?” She pointed at an old man with an exhausted and slightly puffy face and a small gray mustache, dressed in a badly cut black suit. “That’s Carlos Slim Helu. A Mexican of Lebanese origin. He doesn’t look like much, I know, but he made an enormous amount of money in telecommunications; according to estimates, he’s the third or fourth richest man in the world. And he’s a collector …”
What Marylin meant by the Bugatti painting was in fact The Engineer Ferdinand Piëch Visiting the Production Workshops at Molsheim, where the Bugatti Veyron 16.4—the fastest, and most expensive, car in the world—was produced. Fitted with a 16-cylinder W engine with 1,001 horsepower, complete with four turbochargers, it could go from 0 to 110 km per hour in 2.5 seconds and had a top speed of 407 km per hour. No tires available on the market could withstand such accelerations, and for this car Michelin had developed a special rubber.
Carlos Slim Helu stayed in front of the painting for at least five minutes, moving very little, stepping back and then forward a few centimeters. He had chosen, Jed noted, the ideal distance from which to view a canvas of this size; obviously, he was a real collector.
Then the Mexican billionaire turned around and made for the exit; he’d neither greeted nor spoken to anyone. As he passed, François Pinault gave him a cutting look; in the face of such a competitor, the Breton businessman wouldn’t have counted for much. Without making eye contact, Slim Helu got into the back of a black Mercedes limousine parked in front of the gallery.
Roman Abramovich’s envoy took his turn to go up to the Bugatti painting. It was indeed a curious work. A few weeks before starting it, at the flea market of Montreuil, Jed had bought for a tiny price—no more than the price of the paper—some old issues of Peking-Information and China in Construction, and the treatment had something ample and airy about it that resembled Chinese socialist realism. The wide V-shaped formation of the small group of engineers and mechanics following Ferdinand Piëch on his visit to the workshops recalled very precisely, as a particularly pugnacious and well-informed art historian noted later, that of the group of agronomists and middle-poor peasants accompanying President Mao Zedong in a watercolor reproduced in issue 122 of China in Construction, entitled Forward to Irrigated Rice Growing in the Province of Hunan! Besides, it was the only time, as other art historians have long pointed out, that Jed had tried watercolor. The engineer Ferdinand Piëch, two meters in front of the group, seemed to float rather than walk, as if levitating a few centimeters above the light epoxy floor. Three aluminum workstations accommodated the Bugatti Veyron chassis at various stages in its manufacture; in the background, the walls, made entirely of glass, opened out onto a panorama of the Vosges. By a curious coincidence, as Houellebecq observed in his text for the catalogue, this village of Molsheim, and the Vosges landscapes surrounding it, were already at the center of the Michelin map and satellite photographs with which Jed had chosen, ten years before, to open his first solo exhibition.
This simple remark, in which Houellebecq, a man of rational if narrow mind, certainly didn’t see anything more than an interesting but anecdotal fact, would inspire Patrick Kéchichian to write a passionate article, more mystical than ever: having shown us a God co-participating, with man, in the creation of the world, he wrote, the artist, completing his move toward incarnation, now showed us God descended among men. Far from the harmony of celestial spheres, God had now come “to plunge his hands in the dirty grease” so as to pay homage, with his full presence, to the sacerdotal dignity of human labor. Being himself both a true man and a true God, he had come to offer working mankind the sacrificial gift of his burning love. In the posture of the mechanic on the left leaving his workstation to follow the engineer Ferdinand Piëch, how could you not recognize, he stressed, that of Peter as he put down his nets at the invitation of Christ? “Come, I will make you a fisher of men.” And in the absence of the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 at the final stage of manufacture, he spotted a reference to the new Jerusalem.
The article was rejected by Le Monde, whose art editor, Pépita Bourguignon, threatened to resign if the
y published this “Jesus-freak shit”; but it would appear in Art Press the following month.
“Anyway, at this stage, we don’t give a damn about the reviews. It’s no longer there that the real decisions are made,” Marylin summed up at the end of the soirée, while Jed worried about the continual absence of Pépita Bourguignon.
At around ten, after the last guests had left, and while the catering staff was folding up the tablecloths, Franz collapsed in a soft plastic chair near the gallery entrance. “Fuck, I’m exhausted,” he said. “Absolutely exhausted.” He’d given his all, tirelessly retracing, for anyone interested, Jed’s artistic career or the history of his gallery, speaking nonstop all evening. Jed, for his part, had just nodded his head from time to time.
“Can you go get me a beer, please? From the fridge in the stockroom.”
Jed came back with a six-pack of Stella Artois. Franz gulped one down before speaking again.
“Okay, now all we have to do is wait for the offers,” he said. “We’ll assess the situation in a week’s time.”
The Map and the Territory Page 13