The Elementary Particles Read online

  3

  The storm broke at about nine o’clock that evening. Djerzinski listened to the rain and sipped cheap Armagnac. He had just turned forty—perhaps he was having a midlife crisis. Improved living standards meant that a forty-year-old nowadays was in excellent physical shape. The first signs that one had crossed a threshold—whether in physical appearance or in the slowing of the body’s responses—and begun the long decline toward death, tended to appear at forty-five, perhaps fifty. In any case, the typical midlife crisis was sexual—a sudden frantic pursuit of young girls. This was hardly the case for Djerzinski. He used his cock to piss, nothing more.

  The following morning he got up at seven, took his copy of Werner Heisenberg’s autobiography, Physics and Beyond, and headed for the Champ-de-Mars. The dawn was limpid and cool. He’d owned the book since he was seventeen. He sat under a plane tree on the Allée Victor-Cousin and reread the chapter in which Heisenberg, recounting his years as a student, tells of his first encounter with atomic theory:

  It must have been in the spring of 1920. The end of the First World War had thrown Germany’s youth into a great turmoil. The reins of power had fallen from the hands of a deeply disillusioned older generation, and the younger one drew together in an attempt to blaze new paths, or at least to discover a new star by which they could guide their steps in the prevailing darkness. And so, one bright spring morning, some ten or twenty of us, most of them younger than myself, set out on a ramble which, if I remember correctly, took us through the hills above the western shore of Lake Starnberg. Through gaps in the dense emerald screen of beech we caught occasional glimpses of the lake beneath, and of the tall mountains in the far distance. It was here that I had my first conversation about the world of atoms which was to play such an important part in my subsequent life.

  At around eleven the heat began to become oppressive, and Michel went back to his apartment. He undressed completely and lay down. In the three weeks that followed he barely moved. It is easy to imagine that a fish, bobbing to the surface to gulp the air, sees a beautiful but insubstantial new world. Then it retreats to its world of algae, where fish feed on one another. But for a moment it has a glimpse of a different, a perfect world—ours.

  On the evening of 15 July he phoned Bruno. His half brother’s voice on his answering machine was coolly ironic over a jazz riff. Bruno had a leather jacket and a goatee. To enhance his streetwise image he smoked cigarillos, worked on his pecs and talked like a character from a second-rate cop show. Bruno was definitely in the throes of a midlife crisis. Was Michel? A man in a midlife crisis is asking only to live, to live a little more, a little longer. Michel, on the other hand, had had enough; he could see no reason to go on.

  That evening he stumbled on a photo taken at his primary school in Charny and he cried. The child in the photograph sat at his desk holding a textbook open in front of him. The boy smiled straight at the camera, happily, confidently; it seemed unthinkable to Michel that he was that boy. The child did his homework, worked hard in class with an assured seriousness. He was just beginning to discover the world, and what he saw did not frighten him; he was ready to take his place in society. All of this was written on the boy’s face. He was wearing a jacket with a narrow collar.

  For several days Michel kept the photograph beside him on his bedside table. The mysteries of time were banal, he told himself, this was the way of the world: youthful optimism fades, and happiness and confidence evaporate. He lay on his Bultex mattress, struggling to come to terms with the transience of life. There was a small round dimple on the boy’s forehead—a scar, from chickenpox, that had accompanied him down the years. Where was truth? The heat of midday filled the room.

  4

  Born to illiterate peasants in central Corsica in 1882, Martin Ceccaldi seemed destined for the undistinguished life of a farmer, which had been the lot of his ancestors for countless generations. It is a way of life long since vanished, and is fondly remembered only by a handful of radical environmentalists. A detailed description of this pastoral “idyll” is of limited interest, but to be comprehensive I will outline it broadly. You are at one with nature, have plenty of fresh air and a couple of fields to plow (the number and size of which are strictly fixed by hereditary principle). Now and then you kill a boar; you fuck right and left, mostly your wife, whose role is to give birth to children; said children grow up to take their place in the same ecosystem. Eventually, you catch something serious and you’re history.

  Martin Ceccaldi’s singular destiny was entirely symptomatic of the role played by secularism, throughout the Third Republic, in integrating citizens into French society and promoting technological progress. His teacher quickly realized that he was an exceptional pupil, a child of considerable intelligence with a gift for abstract thought—qualities which would have little opportunity to develop in peasant society. Martin’s teacher was keenly aware that there was more to his job than spoon-feeding elementary facts and figures to every untrained citizen. His task was to seek out the qualities that allowed a child to join the elite of the Third Republic. He managed to persuade Martin’s parents that their son could fulfill his destiny only if he were to leave Corsica.

  In 1894, supported by a scholarship, the boy started school at Thiers de Marseille, an institution faithfully described in the autobiography of Marcel Pagnol (the author’s well-written, realistic reconstruction of the ideals of an era through the rags-to-riches story of a gifted young man would remain Martin’s favorite). In 1902 his teacher’s faith was rewarded when he was admitted to the École Polytechnique.

  In 1911 he accepted a position which would change the course of his life forever. He was to create an efficient system of waterways throughout French Algeria. For more than twenty-five years he calculated the curve of aqueducts and the diameter of pipes. In 1923 he married Geneviève July, a secretary whose family had come from the Languedoc to settle in Algeria two generations before. In 1928 their daughter, Janine, was born.

  The story of a life can be as long or as short as the teller wishes. Whether the life is tragic or enlightened, the classic gravestone inscription marking simply the dates of birth and death has, in its brevity, much to recommend it. However, in the case of Martin Ceccaldi, it seems appropriate to set his life in a socioeconomic context, to say less about the individual than about the society of which he is symptomatic. Carried forward by the sweep of history and their determination to be a part of it, symptomatic individuals lead lives which are, in the main, happy and uncomplicated. A couple of pages are sufficient to summarize such a life. Janine Ceccaldi, on the other hand, belongs to a different and dispiriting class of individuals we can call precursors. Well adapted to their time and way of life on the one hand, they are anxious, on the other hand, to surpass them by adopting new customs, or proselytizing ideas still regarded as marginal. Precursors, therefore, require a more detailed study—especially as their lives are often tortuous or confused. They are, however, merely catalysts—generally of some form of social breakdown—without the power to impose a new direction on events; which role is the preserve of revolutionaries and prophets.

  From an early age, it was clear to Martin and Geneviève Ceccaldi that their daughter was extraordinarily intelligent—at least as brilliant as her father. She was an independent girl. She lost her virginity at the age of thirteen—a remarkable achievement given the time and place. She spent the war years (uneventful, for the most part, in Algeria) going to dances and balls in Constantine and, later, Algiers while somehow managing to sustain flawless grades term after term. So it was that, with a first-class baccalauréat and considerable sexual experience, Janine left Algiers for Paris in 1945 to study medicine.

  Postwar France was a difficult and troubled society: industrial production was at an all-time low and rationing would continue until 1948. Even so, a privileged few on the margins of society already showed symptoms of the mass consumption of sexual pleasure—a trend originating in the United States—that would swe
ep through the populace in the decades that followed. As a student in Paris, Janine had a ringside seat during the existential years. She danced to bebop at the Tabou with Jean-Paul Sartre. Though unimpressed by the philosopher’s work, she was struck by his ugliness, which almost amounted to a handicap; they did not meet again. She herself was a stunning Mediterranean beauty and had many lovers before she met Serge Clément in 1952, while he was completing his surgical internship.

  “You want to know what my dad was like?” Bruno liked to say, years later. “Give a gorilla a mobile phone and you’ve got the general idea.” Obviously, Serge Clément could not possibly have had a mobile phone at the time, but he was, it has to be admitted, somewhat hirsute. Though certainly not handsome, he had a simple, uncomplicated virility which seduced Janine. Moreover, he had plans. While traveling in the United States, he had become convinced that plastic surgery offered excellent career prospects for an ambitious young surgeon. The use of sex in marketing and the simultaneous breakdown of the traditional couple, together with the economic boom he sensed was coming to postwar Europe, suggested a vast untapped market which Serge Clément was among the first in Europe—certainly the first in France—to identify. His only problem was money: he needed funds to start out in business. Martin Ceccaldi, impressed by his future son-in-law’s entrepreneurial spirit, agreed to lend him the money. Clément’s first clinic opened in Neuilly in 1953. Promoted in a series of positive articles in women’s magazines—then rapidly expanding—it proved an outstanding success, and Serge opened a second clinic in 1955 in the hills above Cannes.

  Janine and Serge were what would later be called a “modern” couple and it was something of an accident that Janine got pregnant by her husband. She decided, however, to have the child, believing that maternity was something every woman should experience. It was an uneventful pregnancy, and Bruno was born in March 1956. The couple quickly realized that the burden of caring for a small child was incompatible with their ideal of personal freedom, so in 1958 they agreed to send Bruno to Algeria to live with his maternal grandparents. By then Janine was pregnant again, this time by Marc Djerzinski.

  Lucien Djerzinski had left Katowice in 1919 hoping to find work in France—or, more exactly, fled the misery and famine of the small mining community into which he had been born twenty years earlier. In France he found work on the railways as a laborer before being promoted to track maintenance. He married Marie le Roux, also employed by the railways, who was the daughter of a newspaperman from Burgundy, and fathered four children before dying in an Allied bombing raid in 1944.

  Marc, their third child, was fourteen when his father died. He was an intelligent boy, serious, perhaps a little sad. In 1946, with the help of a neighbor, he got a job as a junior electrician at the Pathé studios in Joinville, where it was immediately apparent that he had a talent for film. Given the most rudimentary instructions, he could set up and light a set before the lighting cameraman had even arrived. Henri Alekan was impressed by the boy’s work, and when he joined the ORTF, shortly after broadcasting began in 1951, he invited Marc to be his assistant.

  When he met Janine, in 1957, Marc was shooting a documentary on the “Tropezians.” Focusing principally on Brigitte Bardot (Et Dieu créa la femme, released in 1956, marked the beginning of the Bardot legend), it also covered the artistic and literary scene around Saint-Tropez with particular emphasis on what would later be called la bande à Sagan. Janine was fascinated by this milieu, which despite her wealth was closed to her. She seemed to be genuinely in love with Marc. She convinced herself that he had the makings of a great director—which probably was true. Marc made cinéma vérité documentaries. Using minimal lighting and the careful placement of objects, he could conjure disturbing scenes reminiscent of Edward Hopper: calm, prosaic but quietly desperate. Though he was surrounded by celebrities, his gaze never seemed more than indifferent. He filmed Sagan and Bardot as he might a lobster or a squid, with the same attention to detail. He spoke to no one, befriended no one; he was genuinely fascinating.

  Janine had divorced Serge in 1958, shortly after they had packed Bruno off to her parents. It was an amicable separation, with both parties admitting fault. Serge was generous, giving Janine his share of the Cannes clinic, which guaranteed her a comfortable income. Marc proved no less a loner after he and Janine moved into a villa in Sainte-Maxime. She nagged him constantly, telling him he should work on his career as a director. He agreed but did nothing, simply waiting for the next documentary opportunity to come his way. If she arranged a dinner party, he would eat in the kitchen before the guests arrived and then go walking on the beach. He would return just as the guests were leaving and explain that he was editing a film.

  The birth of his son in 1958 clearly disturbed him. He would stand for minutes at a time staring at the child, who bore an uncanny resemblance to him: the same angular face, high cheekbones and piercing green eyes. Shortly afterward, Janine began to be unfaithful. He was probably hurt by her infidelity, but it was impossible to tell as he spoke less and less. He spent his time building and photographing small altars of pebbles, driftwood and seashells under the blazing sky.

  His documentary about Saint-Tropez was well received in the industry, but he turned down an interview request from Les Cahiers du Cinéma. His reputation reached new heights in 1959 with the broadcast of a short, acerbic documentary about the film Salut les copains and the “yeah, yeah” phenomenon. He had no interest in drama and twice refused an invitation to work with Jean-Luc Godard. Janine had by now taken up with a group of Americans staying on the Riviera. Something radical was happening in California. At Esalen, near Big Sur, people were living together in communes based upon sexual liberation and the use of psychedelic drugs said to expand the realm of consciousness. Janine and Francesco di Meola became lovers. An Italian-American, he had met Ginsberg and Aldous Huxley and was one of the founding members of the Esalen commune.

  In January 1961 Marc traveled to China to shoot a documentary about the new communist society emerging in the People’s Republic. He arrived back in Sainte-Maxime on the afternoon of 23 June. The house seemed deserted. A girl of about fifteen sat naked and cross-legged on the floor of the living room. “Gone to the beach,” she finally said, listlessly, before sinking back into torpor. In Janine’s bedroom he found a large, bearded man, naked and visibly drunk, lying snoring across the bed. Listening, Marc thought he could hear cries or moans.

  Pushing open the door of one of the upstairs bedrooms, he smelled a retch-inducing stench. The sun flared violently through the huge bay window onto the black and white tiles where his son crawled around awkwardly, slipping occasionally in pools of urine or excrement. He blinked against the light and whimpered continuously. Sensing a human presence, the boy tried to escape; when Marc picked him up, the child trembled in his arms.

  Marc left the house and bought a child’s car seat from a nearby shop. He wrote a short note to Janine, strapped his son into his car, climbed in and headed north. When he reached Valence, he turned into the Massif Central. It was getting dark. From time to time, between the hairpin bends, he glanced back at his sleeping son and felt overcome by a strange emotion.

  Subsequently, Michel’s grandmother, who had retired to live in the Yonne, brought him up. His mother moved to America shortly afterward to join di Meola’s commune. He would not see her again until he was fifteen. He saw little of his father, either. In 1964 Marc went to Tibet to film a documentary about the Chinese occupation. He wrote to his mother to say he was well, and to tell her how much he admired Tibetan Buddhism—which the Chinese were brutally eradicating; after that, silence. The French government registered a protest with the Chinese authorities, but there was no response. Though no body was ever found, he was officially presumed dead a year later.

  5

  It is the summer of 1968; Michel is ten years old. He has lived with his grandmother since he was three, in the village of Charny in the Yonne, near the border with the Loiret. Every morni
ng he gets up early to make his grandmother’s breakfast. He has made a list: how long the tea should brew, how many slices of bread and butter and so on.

  He often stays in his room all morning reading Jules Verne, Pif le chien or The Famous Five, but he spends most of his time poring over a magazine he collects, The Universe Explained. There are articles about the structure of the elements, about how clouds form and bees swarm. He reads about the Taj Mahal, a palace built by an ancient king to honor his dead queen; about the death of Socrates; about Euclid’s invention of geometry three thousand years ago.

  In the afternoon, sitting in the garden with his back to the cherry tree, he can feel the springiness of the grass and the heat of the sun. The lettuces soak up the sun’s rays and water from the ground. He has to water them when it gets dark. He sits in the garden reading The Universe Explained, or one of the books in a series called One Hundred Facts About . . . He absorbs knowledge.

  Sometimes he cycles cross-country, pedaling as hard as he can, filling his lungs with a taste of the infinite. He doesn’t know it yet, but the infinity of childhood is brief. The countryside streams past.

  . . .

  There is nothing left in Charny but a small grocer’s shop. Every Wednesday, though, the butcher’s van comes around; the fishmonger’s every Friday. His grandmother often makes creamed cod for lunch on Saturday. Michel does not know that this is his last summer in Charny. His grandmother suffered a heart attack some months ago, and her daughters are already looking for a house in the suburbs of Paris where she can be closer to them. She is not strong enough to cope on her own anymore, nor to tend the garden all year long.

  Though Michel rarely plays with boys his own age, he gets along with his peers well enough. They consider him a bit of a loner. His schoolwork is excellent—he seems to understand everything effortlessly—and he is first in all his classes. Naturally, his grandmother is very proud. Yet he is neither bullied nor hated by his classmates; he is happy to let them copy his work in class, always waiting for the boy next to him to finish before turning the page. Despite his excellent academic record, he always sits at the back of the class. His is a fragile kingdom.