Submission Read online

  ‘Under the circumstances,’ he went on softly, ‘the National Front may well win the run-off. If they do, their supporters will force them to pull France out of the EU, and abandon the euro. It may turn out to be a very good thing for the economy, but in the short term we’ll see some serious convulsions in the markets. It’s not clear that French banks, even the biggest ones, could hang on. So I’d suggest you open an account with a foreign bank – ideally an English one, like Barclays or HSBC.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s not nothing. Do you have a place in the country where you can go to ground?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘Even so, I’d urge you to take off, sooner rather than later. Find a little hotel somewhere. Didn’t you say you lived in Chinatown? I doubt we’ll see any looting or rioting near you, but all the same, I’d have a holiday and wait for things to settle down.’

  ‘I’d feel kind of like a rat abandoning ship.’

  ‘Rats are intelligent mammals,’ he answered calmly, almost with amusement. ‘They will probably outlive us. Their society, at any rate, is a good deal more stable than ours.’

  ‘The academic year isn’t over. I still have two weeks of teaching.’

  ‘The academic year!’ Now he was grinning, almost laughing. ‘It’s true that all sorts of things could happen, and nobody knows just what, but I do doubt we’ll make it to the end of the academic year!’

  Now he fell silent and sipped his champagne, and I knew I’d get nothing more out of him. A slightly contemptuous smile played over his lips, which was odd, since I’d have said he was almost starting to be nice to me. I ordered another beer, this time raspberry-flavoured. I had no desire to go home. There was nothing and no one waiting for me there. I wondered whether Lempereur had a partner, or at least a girlfriend. Probably. He was a kind of éminence grise, a political leader, in a clandestine movement. Everyone knows there are girls who go for that kind of thing. There are girls who go for Huysmanists, for that matter. I once met a girl – a pretty, attractive girl – who told me she fantasised about Jean-François Copé. It took me several days to get over it. Really, with girls today, all bets are off.

  Friday, 20 May

  The next day I opened an account at the Barclays bank in the avenue des Gobelins. The funds would be transferred in just one working day, the bank clerk informed me. A few minutes later I had a Visa, very much to my surprise.

  I decided to walk home. I had filled out the paperwork mechanically, on autopilot, and now I needed to think. Crossing Place d’Italie, I was overcome by the feeling that everything could disappear. That petite black woman with the curly hair and the tight jeans, waiting for the 21 bus, could disappear; she would disappear, or at least she’d be in for some serious re-education. There were the usual fund-raisers in front of the Italie 2 shopping centre – today they were Greenpeace – and they would disappear, too. I blinked as a bearded young man with long brown hair came up to me holding his clipboard, and it was as if he were already gone. I passed by without seeing him and went through the glass doors that led to the ground floor of the mall.

  Inside, the results were more mixed. The Bricorama would stay, but the Jennyfer’s days were numbered. It had nothing to offer the good Muslim tween. Secret Stories, which advertised name-brand lingerie at discount prices, had nothing to worry about: the same kind of shops were doing fine in the malls of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. Neither, for that matter, did Chantal Thomass or La Perla. Hidden all day in impenetrable black burkas, rich Saudi women transformed themselves by night into birds of paradise with their corsets, their see-through bras, their G-strings with multicoloured lace and rhinestones. They were exactly the opposite of Western women, who spent their days dressed up and looking sexy to maintain their social status, then collapsed in exhaustion once they got home, abandoning all hope of seduction in favour of clothes that were loose and shapeless. All of a sudden, as I stood in front of the Rapid’Jus (whose concoctions kept getting more and more complicated: they had coconut–passion fruit–guava, mango–lychee–guarana, and a dozen other flavors, all with bewildering vitamin ingredients), I thought of Bruno Deslandes. I hadn’t seen him for twenty years. I hadn’t thought of him, either. We’d been doctoral students together, we’d even been what you might call friendly. He worked on Laforgue. His dissertation had received a pass without distinction, and soon afterwards he’d got a job as a tax inspector, then married a girl named Annelise, whom he’d probably met at some student function. She worked in the marketing department of a mobile network, she made much more than he did, but he had job security, as they say. They’d bought a house on a plot of land in Montigny-le-Bretonneux, and they already had two kids, a boy and a girl. He was the only one on our course who’d ended up with a normal family life. The others drifted around, with a little online dating here, a little speed dating there, and a lot of solitude in between. I’d bumped into Bruno on the commuter train, and he’d invited me over the following Friday for a barbecue. It was late June, he had a garden, he could have people over for barbecues. There would be a few neighbours but, he cautioned me, ‘nobody from university’.

  Their mistake, I realised as soon as I set foot in his garden and said hello to his wife, was choosing a Friday night. She’d been working all day and was exhausted, plus she’d been watching too many reruns of Come Dine with Me on Channel M6 and had planned a menu that was much too ambitious. The morel soufflé was a lost cause, but just when it became clear that even the guacamole was ruined and I thought she was going to break down in sobs, her three-year-old son started screaming at Bruno, who’d got shit-faced as soon as the first guests arrived and couldn’t manage to turn the sausages on the grill, so I helped him out. From the depths of her despair she gave me a look of profound gratitude. It was more complicated than I’d thought, barbecuing: before I knew it, the lamb chops were covered in a film of charred fat, blackish and probably carcinogenic, the flames were leaping higher and higher but I didn’t have any idea what to do, if I fiddled with the thing the bottle of butane could explode, we were alone before the mound of charred meat, and the other guests were emptying the bottles of rosé, oblivious. I was relieved to see the storm clouds gathering overhead. When we felt the first drops, wind-driven and icy, we beat a hasty retreat to the living room, where the barbecue turned into a cold buffet. As she sank down into her sofa, glaring at the tabbouleh, I thought about Annelise’s life – and the life of every Western woman. In the morning she probably blow-dried her hair, then she thought about what to wear, as befitted her professional status, whether ‘stylish’ or ‘sexy’, most likely ‘stylish’ in her case. Either way, it was a complex calculation, and it must have taken her a while to get ready before dropping the kids off at day care, then she spent the day e-mailing, on the phone, in various meetings, and once she got home, around nine, exhausted (Bruno was the one who picked the kids up, who made them dinner – he had the hours of a civil servant), she’d collapse, get into a sweatshirt and tracksuit trousers, and that’s how she’d greet her lord and master, and some part of him must have known – had to have known – that he was fucked, and some part of her must have known that she was fucked, and that things wouldn’t get better over the years. The children would get bigger, the demands at work would increase, as if automatically, not to mention the sagging of the flesh.

  I was one of the last to leave. I even helped Annelise clear up. I had no intention of trying anything with her – which would have been possible. In her situation, anything was possible. I just wanted her to feel a sense of solidarity: solidarity in vain.

  Bruno and Annelise must be divorced by now. That’s how it goes nowadays. A century ago, in Huysmans’ time, they would have stayed together, and maybe they wouldn’t have been so unhappy after all. When I got home I poured myself a big glass of wine and plunged back into En ménage. I remembered it as one of Huysmans’ best books, and from the first page, even after twenty years, I found my pleasure in reading it was miracul
ously intact. Never, perhaps, had the tepid happiness of an old couple been so lovingly described: ‘André and Jeanne soon felt nothing but blessed tenderness, maternal satisfaction, at sharing the same bed, at simply lying close together and talking before they turned back to back and went to sleep.’ It was beautiful, but was it realistic? Was it a viable prospect today? Clearly, it was connected with the pleasures of the table: ‘Gourmandise entered their lives as a new interest, brought on by their growing indifference to the flesh, like the passion of priests who, deprived of carnal joys, quiver before delicate viands and old wines.’ Certainly, in an era when a wife bought and peeled the vegetables herself, trimmed the meat and spent hours simmering the stew, a tender and nurturing relationship could take root; the evolution of comestible conditions had caused us to forget this feeling, which, in any case, as Huysmans frankly admits, is a weak substitute for the pleasures of the flesh. In his own life, he never set up house with one of these ‘good little cooks’ whom Baudelaire considered, along with whores, the only kind of wife a writer should have – an especially sensible observation when you consider that a whore can always turn herself into a good little cook over time, that this is even her secret desire, her natural bent. Instead, after a period of ‘debauchery’ (these things being relative), Huysmans turned to the monastic life, and that’s where he and I parted ways. I picked up En route, tried to read a few pages, then went back to En ménage. I was almost completely lacking in spiritual fibre, which was a shame since the monastic life still existed, unchanged over the centuries. As for the good little cooks, where were they now? In Huysmans’ day they still existed, certainly, but because he moved in literary circles he never met them. The university wasn’t much better, to tell the truth. Take Myriam, for example. Could she turn herself into a good little cook over the years? I was pondering the question when my mobile phone rang, and oddly enough it was her. I stammered in surprise, I’d never actually expected her to call. I looked over at the alarm clock, it was already 6 p.m. I’d been so absorbed in my reading, I’d forgotten to eat. On the other hand, I also noticed that I’d practically finished my second bottle of wine.

  ‘I thought we …’ She hesitated. ‘I thought we might get together tomorrow.’

  ‘Really …?’

  ‘Tomorrow’s your birthday. Did you forget?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, to tell the truth, I’d forgotten all about it.’

  ‘And also …’ She hesitated again. ‘There’s something I have to tell you. And it would be good to see you, too.’

  Saturday, 21 May

  I woke at four in the morning. After Myriam had called, I’d finished En ménage, the book was indisputably a masterpiece, I’d hardly got three hours of sleep. The woman Huysmans looked for all his life he had already described when he was twenty-seven or -eight, in Marthe, his first novel, published in Brussels in 1876. He wanted a good little cook who could also turn herself into a whore, and he wanted this on a fixed schedule. It didn’t seem so hard, turning into a whore, it seemed easier than making a good béarnaise, yet he sought this woman in vain. For the moment, I wasn’t doing much better. It’s not that I minded turning forty-four, it was just another birthday, except that Huysmans was forty-four years old, exactly, when he found God. From 12 July to 20 July, 1892, he paid his first visit to Igny Abbey, in the Marne. On 14 July he made confession, after much hesitation, which hesitation he scrupulously recounts in En route. On 15 July, for the first time since he was a boy, he took communion.

  While I was writing my dissertation on Huysmans, I’d spent a week at Ligugé Abbey, where he eventually took lay orders, and another week at Igny Abbey. Although Igny was completely destroyed during the First World War, my stay there had been a great help to me. The decor and the furniture, modernised of course, had retained the same simplicity, the nakedness that impressed Huysmans, and the daily schedule of the various prayers and offices was unchanged, from the Angelus at four in the morning to the Salve Regina at night. Meals were taken in silence, which was very restful after the university cafeteria; and I remembered that the monks made chocolate and macaroons. Their handiwork, recommended by the Petit Futé, could be found all over France.

  I could easily understand how someone might be attracted to the monastic life, even though I didn’t see things the way Huysmans did, at all. I couldn’t share the disgust he claimed to feel for the carnal passions. I couldn’t even make sense of it. Generally speaking, my body was the seat of various painful afflictions – headaches, rashes, toothaches, haemorrhoids – that followed one after another, without interruption, and almost never left me in peace – and I was only forty-four! What would it be like when I was fifty, sixty, older? I’d be no more than a jumble of organs in slow decomposition, my life an unending torment, grim, joyless and mean. When you got right down to it, my cock was the one organ that hadn’t presented itself to my consciousness through pain, only through pleasure. Modest but robust, it had always served me faithfully. Or, you could argue, I had served it – if so, its yoke had been easy. It never gave me orders. It sometimes encouraged me to get out more, but it encouraged me humbly, without bitterness or anger. This past evening, I knew, it had interceded on Myriam’s behalf. It had always enjoyed good relations with Myriam, Myriam had always treated it with affection and respect, and this had given me an enormous amount of pleasure. And sources of pleasure were hard to come by. In the end, my cock was all I had. My interest in the life of the mind had greatly diminished; my social life was hardly more satisfying than the life of my body; it, too, presented itself as a series of petty annoyances – clogged sink, slow Wi-Fi, points on my licence, dishonest cleaning woman, mistakes in my tax return – and these, too, followed one after another without interruption, and almost never left me in peace. In the monastery, I imagined, one left most of these worries behind. One laid down the burden of one’s individual existence. One renounced pleasure, too, but there was a case to be made for that. It was a shame, I thought while I read, that Huysmans spent so much of En route insisting on his disgust at the debauches in his past. Here, perhaps, he hadn’t been completely honest. What attracted him about the monastery, I suspected, wasn’t so much that one escaped from the quest after carnal pleasures; it was more that one could be freed from the exhausting and dreary succession of aggravations that made up daily life, from everything that he had described with such mastery in À vau-l’eau. In the monastery, at least, one was assured of room and board – and, best-case scenario, eternal life as a bonus.

  Myriam came over at seven. ‘Happy birthday, François …’ she said in a tiny little voice when I opened the door, then she threw herself into my arms. Our lips and tongues met in a long, voluptuous kiss. As I walked her into the living room, I saw she was dressed even more sexily than last time. She had on another black miniskirt, even shorter than the one before, and stockings: when she sat down on the sofa I could see a garter, black against the top of her very white thigh. Her blouse, also black, was very sheer. I could see her breasts moving underneath. I realised that my fingers could still recall the touch of her aureoles. She gave a hesitant smile. There was something momentous and undecided in the air.

  ‘Did you bring me a present?’ I asked in what I hoped was a joking tone of voice, to lighten things up.

  ‘No,’ she answered gravely. ‘I couldn’t find anything that seemed right.’

  After another silence, she suddenly spread her thighs wide; she was naked under her skirt, and it was so short that I could see the outline of her hairless, unabashed pussy. ‘I’m giving you a blow job,’ she said, ‘a good one. Come here, sit on the edge of the sofa.’

  I obeyed, letting her undress me. She kneeled down and began by tonguing my arsehole, slowly and tenderly, then she took me by the hand and raised me to my feet. I leaned back against the wall. She kneeled down again and began licking my balls, all the while wanking me off with short quick strokes.

  ‘Tell me when you want me to suck you,’ she said, pausing. I waited and w
aited, until my desire overwhelmed me. ‘Now,’ I said.

  I looked her in the eye just before she touched her tongue to my cock; seeing her do it turned me on even more. She was in a strange state, a frenzy of concentration, as her tongue swirled over my glans, now fast, now hard and slow; she squeezed the base of my cock in her left hand, and with her right hand she stroked my balls. Waves of pleasure surged and swept over my consciousness. I could hardly stand, I was about to faint. Just before I exploded into a cry, I found the strength to beg her, ‘Stop … Stop …’ I hardly recognised my own voice – it was distorted, almost inaudible.

  ‘You don’t want to come in my mouth?’

  ‘No – not now.’

  ‘All right … I hope that means you’ll want to fuck me later on. Let’s have something to eat.’

  This time I’d ordered the sushi in advance. It had been sitting in the fridge since mid-afternoon. I’d also chilled two bottles of champagne.

  ‘You know, François …’ she said, after she’d taken a first sip, ‘I’m not a whore. I’m not a nymphomaniac, either. When I go down on you, it’s because I love you. I do love you, you know?’

  I did know. And I knew there was something else, something she hadn’t yet told me. I looked deep into her eyes, but I didn’t know how to ask what was the matter. She finished her champagne, sighed, poured another and said: ‘My parents are leaving the country.’

  I was speechless. She drained her glass and poured herself a third.

  ‘They’re emigrating to Israel. They fly to Tel Aviv on Friday. They’re not even waiting for the run-offs. The crazy part is, they’ve done it all behind our backs, completely in secret. They opened a bank account in Israel, they lined up a flat, my father cashed in his pension, they put the house up for sale, and they never said a word to any of us. My little sister and brother I could maybe understand, they’re pretty young, but I’m twenty-two years old and they didn’t even consult me. They’re not forcing me to go with them. If I insist, they’ll rent me a room in Paris, but we do have the summer break coming up, and I don’t see how I can leave them, not right now. They’re too scared. I hadn’t really noticed till now, but in the last few months they’ve stopped going out. The only people they still see are other Jews. They stay in at night, working each other up – and they’re not the only ones, they’ve got at least five other friends who’ve sold everything so they can move to Israel. I spent a whole night arguing with them, but they’ve made up their minds. They’re convinced that something really bad is going to happen to Jews in France. It’s weird, it’s like a delayed reaction fifty years after the war. I told them they’re being idiots, the National Front stopped being anti-Semitic a long time ago –’