Serotonin

by Michel Houellebecq

  They had had time to get into an acceptable combat formation; a second armoured vehicle had arrived in the meantime and had driven a few journalists away without much ceremony; they had protested of course, but had yielded in the face of the simple manly threat of a good truncheon blow to the head; there was no need for them to even show their weapons – though that’s easier in any case when you’re dealing with a bunch of softies – well, they had withdrawn to a spot some way down from the action (the journalists in question were already tweeting their protests about attacks on press freedom, but that wasn’t the job of the CRS – there were spokespeople for that kind of thing).

  Either way, the line of CRS men was there, about thirty metres away as far as I could see from the line of farmers. It was a compact, slightly curved line, militarily acceptable, defined by a rampart of reinforced Plexiglas shields.

  * * *

  For a while I thought I was the only witness to what was about to happen, but I wasn’t in fact; a BFM cameraman had managed to hide in a bush on the slope of the motorway embankment, escaping the CRS raid, and he would produce perfectly clear images of the event – which were later broadcast for two hours on the channel before it issued a public apology and took them down, but it was too late; the sequence had appeared on social media and by mid-afternoon it had had over a million views; the voyeurism of the television channels was once again, and rightly, stigmatised; it would have been better in fact for that video to have been used at the inquiry, and only the inquiry.

  With his assault rifle comfortably resting at hip level, Aymeric began a slow rotating motion, aiming at one CRS man after another. They tightened their formation and the width of the line shortened by at least a metre; there was quite a loud noise when their Plexiglas shields collided, then silence. The other farmers had picked up their rifles and were advancing in front of Aymeric while also aiming their weapons; but they only had hunting rifles, and the CRS obviously understood that Aymeric’s Schmeisser, with a calibre of 223, was the only one that could shatter their shields and pierce their bulletproof vests. And in retrospect I think it was that – the extreme slowness of Aymeric’s movements – that led to the tragedy, but also the strange expression on his face; he looked as if he was ready for anything, and luckily there aren’t many men who are ready for everything, but they can do considerable damage and those ordinary CRS men, usually based in Caen, knew that in a rather theoretical way; they weren’t prepared to confront this danger and the people from GIGN or RAID would probably have kept their cool for longer – that rebuke was levelled often enough at the Minister of the Interior – but how can you predict these things; they weren’t international terrorists, they were, at least at first, a bunch of farmers demonstrating. Aymeric seemed amused, sincerely amused and mocking, but very distant too, somewhere else, frankly – I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so far away – and I remember because I briefly had the idea of going down the slope and running towards him, but at the very moment when it came to me I understood that it was pointless and nothing friendly or human would be able to reach him at that final moment.

  He turned slowly, from left to right, aiming individually at each CRS man behind his shield (in any case they couldn’t shoot first, I was sure; but that was in fact the only certainty that I had). Then he made the same movement in reverse, from right to left; then, slowing down again, he came back towards the middle and froze for a few seconds – I think less than five. Then a different expression passed across his face, like that of general pain; he turned the barrel around, placed it under his chin and pulled the trigger.

  His body collapsed backwards, noisily striking the metal bed of the pick-up; there was no spurt of blood or brain – nothing like that – everything was strangely sober and flat; but nobody apart from me and the BFM cameraman had seen what had just happened. Two metres in front of him, Frank yelled and fired his gun towards the CRS without even aiming; several other farmers immediately imitated him. It was all clearly established in the course of the inquest, by a viewing of the tape: contrary to what his comrades had believed not only had the CRS not killed Aymeric, but they had taken four or five shots before returning fire. The fact remains that in returning fire – and this was the subject of another, more serious controversy – the CRS didn’t do half-measures; nine farmers were killed on the spot; and a tenth died during the night at the general hospital in Caen, together with one CRS man, bringing the number of victims to eleven. Nothing like this had been seen in France for a very long time, and certainly not at a farmers’ demonstration. I learned that a little later in the media, over the next few days. I don’t know how I managed to get back to Canville-la-Rocque the same day; there are automatic reflexes for driving; there are automatic reflexes for pretty much everything, it seems.

  I woke up very late the next morning in a state of nausea and disbelief that was close to spasm; none of what had happened seemed possible or real; Aymeric couldn’t have shot himself, it couldn’t end like that. I had experienced a similar phenomenon once, a very long time ago, coming down from acid, but it was infinitely less serious: no one had died, there was just the matter of a girl who couldn’t remember if she’d agreed to be fucked in the arse; well, young people’s problems. I turned on the coffee machine, swallowed my Captorix pill and undid the wrapping on a new carton of Philip Morris before turning on BFM, and everything immediately blew up in my face. I hadn’t dreamt the previous day; BFM was showing exactly the same pictures that I remembered – which they tried to match with appropriate political comments – but either way the previous day’s events really had happened: the ambient noise among the dairy farmers of Manche and Calvados had crystallised into drama, a local disagreement had solidified into a short sequence of extreme violence, and a historical configuration matched with a mini-narrative had been organised immediately. That configuration was local, but it would plainly have global repercussions: political commentaries were gradually appearing on the news channel, and I was surprised by their general tenor: everyone as usual condemned the violence, deplored the tragedy and the extremism of certain agitators; but among senior politicians there was an unease, an embarrassment rarely associated with them, and they all emphasised that one had to understand the distress and anger of the farmers up to a certain point, the dairy farmers in particular; the scandal of the abolition of milk quotas returned like an obsessive, guilty, unspoken question that nobody could quite shake off: only the National Assembly seemed to be entirely clear on the subject. The unbearable conditions that large-scale distribution was placing on producers was also a shameful subject that everyone, apart from the communists perhaps – I learned on this occasion that there was still a Communist Party, and that it even had Members of Parliament – preferred to try and avoid. I realised with a mixture of alarm and disgust that Aymeric’s suicide might have a political effect where nothing else had. For my part there was only one certainty – I had to leave, I had to find a new place to stay. I thought about the Internet connection in the byre; it was bound to function, there was no reason why it wouldn’t.

  A police van was parked in the courtyard of the château. I drove in as well. Two gendarmes, one maybe fifty and the other about thirty-five, had stopped by the cupboard where Aymeric kept his guns, and were examining them carefully. They were plainly captivated by this arsenal; they were exchanging comments in low voices which I imagine were judicious – that was more or less their job, after all – and I had to say ‘Hello!’ loudly for them to pay me any attention. I had a brief moment of panic when the older man turned towards me – I thought again of the Steyr Mannlicher – but I immediately came to my senses; I said to myself that it must have been the first time they had seen Aymeric’s guns, so they had no reason to suspect that one was missing – two even, with the Smith & Wesson. Obviously if they checked the gun licences and cross-checked, there was the risk of a problem, but tomorrow takes care of tomorrow as Ecclesiastes says, more or less. I explained to them that I was staying
in one of the bungalows, but didn’t add that I knew Aymeric. I wasn’t worried in the slightest: for them I was an insignificant element, a kind of tourist; they had no reason to complicate their lives with me and their task couldn’t have been easy anyway: it was a peaceful department, where criminality barely existed – Aymeric had told me that people often left their doors open when they went away during the day, which was rare these days even in a rural area – in short, they had probably never encountered a situation like this before.

  ‘Ah yes, the bungalows…’ the older officer said as if emerging from a long daydream, seemingly having forgotten the very existence of the bungalows.

  ‘I’ve got to leave now,’ I went on. ‘That’s all I’ve got to do.’

  ‘Yes, you’ve got to leave,’ the older man confirmed. ‘That’s all you have to do.’

  ‘You were supposed to be on holiday,’ the younger man said. ‘That’s a shame for you.’

  All three of us nodded, satisfied that our analyses converged. ‘I’ll be back straight away,’ I concluded, slightly strangely, to bring the conversation to an end. As I passed through the door I turned round: they were already immersed once more in their examination of the rifles and carbines.

  * * *

  In the byre, I was welcomed by long, worried, plaintive moos; of course, I said to myself, they haven’t been fed or milked this morning, and they should probably also have been fed last night; did cows have regular mealtimes? I had no idea.

  I went back up to the château and joined the gendarmes in front of the gun rack; they still seemed to be immersed in impenetrable meditations, probably of a ballistic and technical nature; they must also have been saying to themselves that if all the local farmers were similarly armed they risked having difficulties in case of serious trouble. I informed them of the cows’ situation. ‘Ah yes, the cows…’ the older man sad sadly. ‘What are we going to do with the cows?’ Well, I don’t know, feed them, or call someone who can – in the end it was their problem, not mine. ‘I’m going to leave straight away,’ I went on. ‘Yes, of course, you’re going to leave straight away,’ the younger man agreed, as if it was clearly the only thing to do, as if he was wishing me to go. It was as I thought: the police officers seemed to be trying to tell me they really didn’t need any additional problems, in fact they seemed completely overwhelmed by the scale of what would happen, and by the minute detail with which the police hierarchy would be picking apart their report into the ‘aristocratic martyr to the farmers’ cause’, as they were starting to call him in certain newspapers, and I returned to my 4x4 without another word being exchanged.

  In the end I didn’t have the will to look on the Internet for a place to stay, particularly as I was accompanied by the plaintive mooing of the cows; to tell the truth, I didn’t have the will to do anything so I drove around completely at random for a few kilometres, in an almost totally blank mental state, with my last perceptual faculties entirely devoted to looking for a hotel. The first one I noticed was called Hostellerie de la Baie; I hadn’t even noticed the name of the village, but the landlord would later tell me it was Regnéville-sur-Mer. For two days I lay prostrate in my room, still taking my Captorix but unable to get up, wash or even unpack my suitcase. I was incapable of thinking of the future, or indeed of the past, and not the present either, but the immediate future in particular posed a problem. To avoid alarming the landlord, I explained that I was a friend of one of the farmers killed in the demonstration, that I had been there when it had happened. His rather pleasant face darkened all of a sudden; clearly, like everyone who lived in the region, he was on the side of the farmers. ‘I say they did the right thing!’ he stated firmly. ‘Things couldn’t go on like that – there are things that can’t be allowed, there are times when you have to react…’ I wasn’t tempted to contradict him, not least because deep down I felt more or less the same.

  On the evening of the second day I got up to go shopping. On the way out of the village there was a little restaurant called Chez Maryvonne. The rumour that I was a friend of ‘Monsieur d’Harcourt’ must have spread around the village, and I was given a kind and respectful welcome by the owner: she asked with concern several times if I didn’t need anything else, if I was sitting in a draught, etc. The few other customers were local farmers drinking glasses of white wine at the bar; I was the only one eating. From time to time they swapped a few words in a low voice and I recognised the word ‘CRS’ several times, uttered with rage. I sensed a strange atmosphere around me in this café, almost ancien régime, as if 1789 had only left superficial traces; from one moment to the next I expected a farmer to mention Aymeric and call him ‘our gentleman’.

  * * *

  The next day I went to Coutance, which was immersed in fog; you could hardly make out the spires of the cathedral which, having said that, seemed to be very elegant. The town in general was peaceful, leafy and beautiful. I bought a Figaro in the bar that doubled as a newsagent’s and tobacconist’s, and set about reading it in the Taverne du Parvis, a huge brasserie that stood right in the cathedral square, and which was also a restaurant and a hotel, with early 1900s decor, all wood and leather chairs, and some art nouveau lamps; well, it was visibly the place to be in Coutances. I was in search of some background analysis, or at least the official position of the Republicans, but there was nothing of the kind; instead, there was a long article devoted to Aymeric, whose funeral had been held the previous day – the ceremony had been celebrated in Bayeux cathedral in the presence of a ‘dense and contemplative crowd’, the paper explained. ‘The tragic end of a great French family’ seemed excessive – he did have two sisters, after all, though that might pose a problem in passing on the aristocratic title, but such things were outside my area of expertise.

  I found a cybercafé two streets further on, run by two Arabs who looked so similar that they must have been twins, and whose Salafist look was so extreme that they were probably harmless. I imagined they must be bachelors living together, or perhaps they were married to twin sisters and lived in adjacent houses; anyway, it was that kind of relationship.

  There were a fair few websites – there are websites for everything these days – and I struck lucky with aristocrates.org, or perhaps it was noblesse.net, I can’t remember now. I knew that Aymeric had come from an old family but I didn’t know how old, and I was quite impressed. The founder of the dynasty was one Bernard the Dane, companion to Rollon, the Viking chief who had gained possession of Normandy in 911 with the treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte. Then the three brothers, Errand, Robert and Anquetil d’Harcourt, had taken part in the conquest of England beside William the Conqueror. By way of reward they had received suzerainty over vast domains on either side of the Channel, and had consequently experienced certain difficulties in choosing which side to take during the Hundred Years War; however, they ended up opting for the Capetians to the detriment of the Plantagenets – well, apart from Geoffroy d’Harcourt, known as ‘the Lame’, who played quite an ambiguous role in the 1340s for which he was emphatically reproached by Chateaubriand, but with that one exception they became loyal servants of the French crown and provided a considerable number of ambassadors, priests and senior military officers to the country. There was still, however, an English branch whose motto, ‘The good time will come’, was far from appropriate in the circumstances. Aymeric’s violent death on the bed of his Nissan Navara pick-up seemed to me to be both in line with and contrary to the vocation of his family, and I wondered what his father would have thought of it; Aymeric had died with his gun in his hand protecting the French peasantry, which had always been the mission of the aristocracy; on the other hand, he had committed suicide, which did not look like the passing of a Christian knight; it would have been preferable, all in all, for him to have taken two or three CRS men with him.

  My research had taken me some time, and one of the two brothers offered me a mint tea, which I refused – I had always hated the stuff – but I did accept a fizzy drink
. As I sipped my Sprite Orange, I was aware once again that my initial plan had been to find somewhere to stay, preferably in the region and preferably that very night – I didn’t yet feel up to going back to Paris, where there was nothing calling me back in any case. My idea had been to find a holiday cottage to rent somewhere near Falaise; it took me just over an hour of additional research to find the appropriate spot, between Flers and Falaise, in a village answering to the strange name of Putanges, which sounded like a combination of pute (whore) and ange (angel) and inevitably led to Pascalian circumlocutions, such as ‘Woman is neither angel nor whore’, ‘They who wish to behave like angels behave like whores’, etc. Having said that, it didn’t mean very much, but the meaning of the original had always escaped me anyway – what could Pascal have been trying to say? My lack of sex drive probably brought me closer to the angel, at least that’s what my small knowledge of angelology told me, but how did that lead me to behave like a beast as suggested by the original? I didn’t get it.

  Either way, the owner of the cottage was easy to get hold of and, yes, the place was available for an indeterminate amount of time, available that very evening if I wished; it was quite difficult to find, he warned me, isolated in the middle of the woods, and so we agreed to meet at 6.00 p.m. at the foot of Putanges church.

  Isolated in the middle of the woods, I would need to buy some food. Various posters had informed me of the existence of a Centre Leclerc in Coutances, with a Leclerc Drive, a Leclerc filling station, a Leclerc bookshop and a travel agent’s – also Leclerc. There was no Leclerc undertaker’s, but that seemed to be the only service missing.