The Possibility of an Island

by Michel Houellebecq

  Vincent had nothing of the dominant male about him, he had no taste for harems, and a few days after the death of the prophet he had had a long conversation with Susan, following which he had given the other girls back their freedom. I do not know what they had been able to say to one another, I don’t know what she believed, if she saw in him the reincarnation of the prophet, if she had recognized him as Vincent, if he had confessed to her that he was the prophet’s son, or if she had fabricated any in-between conceptions; but I think that for her all this would have been of little importance. Incapable of relativism, and basically quite indifferent to the question of truth, Susan could only live by being entirely in love. Having found a new being to love, perhaps having loved him for a long time already, she had found a new reason for living, and I knew without any danger of being mistaken that they would stay together to the end, until death did them part, as they say, except that perhaps this time death would not occur, Miskiewicz would succeed in reaching his goals, they would be reborn together in renewed bodies, and perhaps, for the first time in the history of the world, they would effectively live a love without end. It’s not weariness that puts an end to love, or rather it’s a weariness that is born of impatience, of the impatience of bodies who know they are condemned and want to live, who want, in the lapse of time granted them, to not pass up any chance, to miss no possibility, who want to use to the utmost that limited, declining, and mediocre lifetime that is theirs, and who consequently cannot love anyone, as all others appear limited, declining, and mediocre to them.

  Despite this new orientation toward monogamy—an implicit orientation, moreover, Vincent had given no directive, the choice he had made of Susan alone was a purely individual choice—the week following the “resurrection” was marked by a more intense, more liberated, and more varied sexual activity, I even heard of some genuine orgies. The couples in the center did not, however, seem to suffer from this, no break in conjugal relations was observed, nor even a fight. Perhaps the closer prospect of immortality had given some substance to that notion of nonpossessive love that the prophet had preached throughout his life without ever having managed to convince anyone; I think above all that the disappearance of his crushing male presence had liberated the followers, and given them a desire to experience some lighter and more ludic moments.

  What awaited me back in my own life had little chance of being as much fun, I could sense it more and more clearly. It was only on the eve of my departure that I managed, at last, to speak to Esther: she explained to me that she had been very busy, that she had been given the main part in a short film, that it had been a stroke of luck, she had been taken on at the last moment, and that the filming had started just after her exams—which she had, incidentally, passed with flying colors; in short, she spoke only about herself. She was, however, aware of the events in Lanzarote and knew that I had been an eyewitness. “Que fuerte!” she exclaimed, which seemed a pretty thin comment; I realized then that with her, too, I would keep my silence, and that I would stick to the widely held version of a probable scam, without ever indicating I had been involved up to that point in the events, and that Vincent was the only person in the world with whom, perhaps, I might one day have the chance to speak of them. I then understood why the éminences grises, and even the simple witnesses of a historical event whose underlying causes have remained unknown to the general public, feel at some point or another the need to ease their consciences, and to put down on paper what they know.

  The next day, Vincent accompanied me to the Arrecife airport, he drove the four-wheel drive himself. When we were driving again along that strange beach, its black sand scattered with little white pebbles, I tried to explain this need I felt for a written confession. He listened to me carefully, and after parking just in front of the departure hall, as we smoked, he told me he understood, and gave me permission to write down what I had seen. It was simply necessary that the story be published only after my death, or at least that I would wait before publishing it, or indeed before having it read by anyone, for formal permission from the ruling council of the Church—that is to say the triumvirate he formed with Knowall and Cop. Apart from these conditions, which I accepted easily—and I knew he trusted me—I felt he was pensive, as though my request had just thrown him into vague reflections that he was having difficulty disentangling.

  We waited for my boarding call in a hall with immense bay windows, overlooking the runways. The volcanoes could be clearly seen in the distance, presences that were familiar and even reassuring under a dark blue sky. I sensed that Vincent would have liked to make his farewell warmer, from time to time he pressed my arm, or took me by the shoulders; but he couldn’t really find the right words, and didn’t really know how to make the right gestures. That very evening, a sample of my DNA had been taken, and I was, therefore, officially part of the Church. Just as an air hostess announced the boarding for the flight to Madrid, I said to myself that this island, with its temperate stable climate, where sunshine and temperature experienced only minimal variations throughout the year, was truly the ideal place to attain eternal life.

  Daniel25, 7

  IN FACT, Vincent1 informs us that it was following this conversation with Daniel1 in the parking lot of the Arrecife airport that he had for the first time the idea of the life story, which would be introduced first as an annex, a simple palliative while the research of Slotan1 on the cabling of memory networks progressed, but which would assume such great importance following the logical conceptualizations by Pierce.

  Daniel1, 19

  I HAD TWO HOURS TO WAIT in the Madrid airport for the flight to Almería; these two hours were sufficient to sweep away the state of abstract strangeness in which the time with the Elohimites had left me and plunge me back completely into misery, like venturing, step by step, into ice-cold water; as I got on the plane, in spite of the warmth, I was already literally trembling with anxiety. Esther knew I was leaving that very day, and it had taken an enormous effort not to confess to her that I had a two-hour wait at the Madrid airport—the prospect of hearing her tell me that two hours was too short for her to bother making the journey there and back in a taxi, etc., being almost unbearable. Nevertheless, during those two hours, wandering between the CD shops, which were shamelessly promoting the new disc from David Bisbal (Esther had figured, scantily clad, in one of the singer’s recent videos), the Punta de Fumadores, and the Jennyfer clothes shops, I had the increasingly unbearable sensation that I could see her young body, eroticized in a summer dress, crossing the city streets, a few kilometers away, beneath the admiring gazes of boys. I stopped at Tap Tap Tapas and ordered some disgusting sausages, swimming in an incredibly greasy sauce, which I washed down with several beers; I could feel my stomach swell, filling with shit, and the idea crossed my mind of consciously accelerating the process of destruction, of becoming old, repellent, and obese to better feel definitively unworthy of Esther’s body. Just as I started on my fourth glass of Mahou, a song began playing on the bar radio, I did not know the singer but it wasn’t David Bisbal, rather a traditional Latino, with those attempts at vibrato that the young Spaniards now found ridiculous, essentially a singer for housewives rather than a singer for babes, still the refrain was: “Mujer es fatal,” and I realized that I had never heard this simple and silly thing expressed so accurately, and that poetry when it achieved simplicity was a great thing, undoubtedly thebig thing. The word “fatal” in Spanish fitted perfectly, I could see no other that could have better described my situation, it was hell, genuine hell, I had returned to the trap myself, I had wanted to return to it but I didn’t know how to get out and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to, my soul, inasmuch as I had one, was growing more and more confused, and my body, because whatever else was true I had a body, was suffering, ravaged by desire.

  Back in San José I went to bed immediately, after taking a massive dose of sleeping pills. Over the following days, I just wandered from room to room in the residence; it’s true,
I was immortal but for the moment that didn’t change much, Esther still didn’t call, and that was the only thing that seemed important to me. Listening by chance to a cultural program on Spanish television (it was more than by chance; it was a miracle, for cultural programs are rare on Spanish television, the Spaniards don’t like cultural programs at all, nor culture in general, it’s an area that is fundamentally hostile to them, one occasionally has the impression when talking about culture to them that they are sort of personally insulted), I learned that the last words of Immanuel Kant, on his deathbed, had been: “That’s enough.” Immediately I had a painful fit of laughter, accompanied by stomach pangs that went on for three days, at the end of which I began to vomit bile. I called a doctor, who diagnosed poisoning, asked me what I had eaten in the last few days, and recommended that I buy some dairy products. I bought some dairy products, and that evening returned to the Diamond Nights Bar, which I had remembered as being an honest establishment, where you were not pushed to consume excessively. There were about thirty girls around the bar, but only two male customers. I opted for a Moroccan girl who could have been only seventeen; her big breasts were finely displayed by her décolleté, and I really thought that things were going to go well, but once we were in the bedroom I had to face up to the fact that I wasn’t hard enough for her to put a condom on me, under these conditions she refused to suck me off, and so what could we do? She ended up tossing me off, staring obstinately into a corner of the room, she was doing it too hard, it hurt. After a minute there was a small translucent spurt, and she immediately let go of my cock; I pulled my trousers back up before going for a piss.

  The following morning, I received a fax from the producer of Diogenes the Cynic. He had heard that I was giving up the “Highway Swingers” project, he thought it was a real pity; he felt ready to take on the production if I agreed to write the script. He happened to be passing through Madrid the following week, he proposed we meet to talk about it.

  I wasn’t really in regular contact with this guy, in fact I hadn’t seen him for more than five years. On entering the café, I realized that I had completely forgotten what he looked like; I sat at the nearest table and ordered a beer. Two minutes later a man of about forty, with curly hair, dressed in an extraordinary khaki hunting jacket with lots of pockets, stopped in front of my table, smiling widely and holding a glass. He was badly shaven, his face oozed sleaziness, and I still didn’t recognize him; despite all this, I invited him to sit down. My agent had made him read my treatment and the pre-credits sequence I had developed, he said; he found the project exceptionally interesting. I nodded mechanically while looking out of the corner of my eye at my cell phone; when I arrived at the airport, I had left a message for Esther telling her I was in Madrid. She called me back at an opportune moment, just as I was beginning to get tangled up in my contradictions, and promised to come by in ten minutes’ time. I looked up again at the producer, I still couldn’t remember his name but I realized I didn’t like him, nor did I like his view of mankind, and more generally I wanted nothing to do with this guy. He was now suggesting that we collaborate on the script; I flinched at this idea. He noticed and backpedaled, assured me I could absolutely work alone if I preferred, that he had complete trust in me. I had no desire to throw myself into that stupid script, I just wanted to live, to live again a little bit, if such a thing was possible, but I couldn’t talk to him about this openly, after all he was a spiteful gossip, the news wouldn’t take long to do the rounds in the business, and for obscure reasons—maybe simply through fatigue—it still seemed necessary for me to put people off the scent for a few months. In order to keep the conversation going I told him the story of that German who had eaten another German he had met on the Internet. First he had cut off his penis, then had fried it, with onions, and they had eaten it together. Then he had killed him before cutting him up into pieces, which he then stocked in his freezer. From time to time, he would take out a piece, defrost it, and cook it, using a different recipe for each occasion. The moment of common manducation of the penis had been an intense religious experience, of real communion between him and his victim, he had stated to the investigators. The producer listened to me with a smile that was both silly and cruel, probably imagining that I intended to integrate these elements into my work in progress, delighting already at the repellent images he would be able to extract from it. Fortunately, Esther arrived, all smiles, her pleated summer skirt twirling around her thighs, and threw herself into my arms with an enthusiasm that made me forget everything. She sat down and ordered a mint diabolo, waiting politely for our conversation to end. From time to time the producer sent her appreciative looks—she had put her feet up on the chair in front of her, parted her legs, she wasn’t wearing any panties, and all this seemed natural and logical, a simple consequence of the prevailing temperature, I expected her at any moment to wipe her pussy with one of the bar’s paper napkins. Finally he took his leave and we promised to stay in contact. Ten minutes later I was inside her, and I felt good. The miracle happened again, as strongly as on the first day, and I believed again, for the last time, that it was going to last for eternity.

  Unrequited love is a hemorrhage. Over the months that followed, as Spain settled into summertime, I could still have pretended to myself that all was well, that we were equally in love; but unfortunately I had never been very good at lying to myself. Two weeks later she visited me in San José, and if she still gave me her body with as much abandon, as little restraint as ever, I also noticed that, more and more frequently, she would move a few meters away to speak into her cell phone. She laughed a lot during these conversations, more than she did with me, she would promise to be coming back soon, and the idea I had had of proposing that she spend the summer in my company appeared more and more plainly to be senseless; it was almost with relief that I took her back to the airport. I had avoided the breakup, we were still together, as they say, and the following week it was I who made the trip to Madrid.

  She still went out clubbing a lot, I knew, and sometimes spent the entire night dancing; but she never asked me to accompany her. I imagined her, replying to her friends who asked her out: “No, not this evening, I’m with Daniel…” I now knew most of them, many were students or actors; often of the groovy type, with longish hair and comfortable clothes; some by contrast would wittily play up the macho, Latin-lover style; but all of them, obviously, were young, and how could it have been otherwise? How many of them, I sometimes wondered, could have been her lovers? She never did anything that might make me ill at ease; but nor did I ever have the feeling I was part of her group. I remember an evening, it could have been ten p.m., there were a dozen or so of us in a bar and everyone was talking with great animation about the merits of various clubs, the ones that were more house, the others more trance. For ten minutes, I was dying to say to them that I, too, wanted to enter this world, to have fun with them, to stay up all night; I was ready to beg them to take me. Then, by accident, I saw my reflection in a window, and I understood. I looked my fortysomething years; my face was careworn, stiff, marked by the experience of life, by responsibilities and sorrows; I didn’t look at all like someone you could imagine having fun; I was condemned.

  During the night, after making love with Esther (and it was the only thing that still worked well, it was without doubt the only youthful, pure thing left in me), contemplating her smooth white body in the moonlight, I thought with pain of Fat Ass. If I was, following the words of the Gospel, to be measured by the measure I had used, then I was in a bad way, for there was no doubt that I had behaved pitilessly toward Fat Ass. Not that pity, actually, could have served any useful purpose: there are many things you can do with compassion, but get a hard-on, no, that’s not possible.

  At the time I had met Fat Ass, I was about thirty, and I was beginning to have some success—not yet with the general public as such, but still a kind of critical success. I noticed immediately this fat and pallid woman who came to all my sh
ows, sat in the front row, and each time handed me her autograph book. It took her almost six months to bring herself to speak to me—come to think of it, no, I believe that, finally, I was the one who took the initiative. She was a cultivated woman, taught philosophy in a Paris university, and I really didn’t suspect anything. She asked my permission to publish an annotated transcript of some of my sketches in the Journal of Phenomenological Studies; naturally, I said yes. I was a little flattered, I must admit, after all I hadn’t even sat my baccalaureate and here she was comparing me to Kierkegaard. We exchanged e-mails for a few months, gradually things began to degenerate, I accepted an invitation to dinner at her place, I should have been immediately suspicious when I saw the dress she was wearing indoors, however I managed to leave without humiliating her too much, or at least that’s what I had hoped, but the following morning the first pornographic e-mails began. “Ah, to feel you at last inside me, to feel your stem of flesh opening my flower…” It was awful, she wrote like Gérard de Villiers. She really wasn’t well preserved, she looked much older, but in reality she was only forty-seven when I met her—exactly the same age as I was when I met Esther. I jumped out of bed the second I became conscious of this, gasping with anxiety, and began running up and down the bedroom—Esther was sleeping peacefully, she had thrown off the blankets, God she was beautiful.