The Map and the Territory (15 page)

“That’s true,” Jed replied after a few moments’ thought. “I’ve always loved industrial products. I would never have imagined photographing, for example … a sausage.” He held his hand out toward the table, and then immediately apologized. “Well, it’s very good, I don’t mean that, I like eating it … But photographing it, no. There are those irregularities of organic origin, those venules of fat that vary from one slice to the next. It’s a bit … off-putting.”

Houellebecq nodded, opening his arms as if he were entering a tantric trance; he was, more probably, drunk, and trying to keep his balance on the kitchen stool where he’d crouched. When he spoke again his voice was soft and deep, filled with naive emotion. “In my life as a consumer,” he said, “I’ve known three perfect products: Paraboot walking boots, the Canon Libris laptop-printer combination, and the Camel Legend parka. I loved those products, with a passion; I would’ve spent my life in their presence, buying regularly, given wear and tear, identical products. A perfect and faithful relationship had been established, making me a happy consumer. I wasn’t completely happy in all aspects of life, but at least I had that: I could, at regular intervals, buy a pair of my favorite boots. It’s not much but it’s something, especially when you’ve quite a poor private life. Ah yes, that joy, that simple joy, has been denied me. My favorite products, after a few years, have disappeared from the shelves, their manufacture has stopped purely and simply—and in the case of my poor Camel Legend parka, no doubt the most beautiful parka ever made, it will have lived for only one season …” He slowly began to cry, big tears streaming down his face, and served himself another glass of wine. “It’s brutal, you know, it’s terribly brutal. While the most insignificant animal species take thousands, sometimes millions of years to disappear, manufactured products are wiped off the surface of the globe in a few days; they’re never given a second chance, they can only suffer, powerless, the irresponsible and fascistic diktat of product-line managers who of course know better than anyone else what the customer wants, who claim to capture an
expectation of novelty
in the
consumer, and who in reality just turn his life into one exhausting and desperate quest, an endless wandering between eternally modified product lines.”

“I understand what you mean,” Jed interjected. “I know that a lot of people were heartbroken when they stopped manufacturing the doublelens Rolleiflex. But maybe then … maybe you’d have to reserve your trust and love for extremely expensive products that enjoy a mythical status. I can’t imagine, for example, Rolex stopping production of the Oyster Perpetual Day-Date.”

“You’re young … You’re so terribly young … Rolex will do like all the others.” He then seized three slices of chorizo, put them on a bit of bread, gulped it down, and poured himself another glass of wine. “You’ve just bought a new camera, you told me … Show me the manual.”

For two minutes he went through the owner’s manual of the Samsung ZRT-AV2, nodding his head as if each of the lines confirmed his dark predictions. “Ah, yes,” he finally said, handing it back. “It’s a beautiful product, a modern product that you can love. But you must know that in a year, or two at most, it will be replaced by some new product with supposedly improved features.

“We too are products,” he went on, “cultural products. We too will become obsolete. The functioning of the system is identical—with the difference that, in general, there is no obvious technical or functional improvement; all that remains is the demand for novelty in its pure state.

“But that’s nothing, that’s nothing,” he went on lightheartedly. He began to cut up a second sausage and then, with his knife in his hand, stopped to intone in a powerful voice: “To love, laugh, and sing!” His sweeping hand knocked over the bottle of wine, which shattered on the tiles.

“I’ll tidy it up,” said Jed, springing up from his stool.

“No, leave it, it’s not a problem.”

“Yes it is, there’re bits of broken glass, you could cut yourself. Do you have a mop?” He looked around him: Houellebecq was just nodding his head. In a corner, he saw a small brush and a plastic dustpan.

“I’m going to open another bottle,” said the writer. He stood up and crossed the kitchen, zigzagging past the shards of glass that Jed was doing his best to sweep up.

“We’ve already drunk a lot … and I’ve done all my photos.”

“Come on, you’re not going to leave now! The fun’s just started,” he announced before gulping down a glass of Chilean wine.
“Foucra bouldou! Bistroye! Bistroye!”
he added with conviction. For some time now, the famous writer had contracted this mania for using bizarre, outmoded, or frankly inappropriate words, as if they weren’t infantile neologisms worthy of Captain Haddock. His few remaining friends, like his publishers, allowed him this weakness, as you do almost anything from a tired old decadent.

“It’s grandiose, this idea you’ve had of making my portrait, truly grandiose.”

“Really?” Jed asked, surprised. He finished tidying up the pieces of glass, put it all in a special garden garbage bag (Houellebecq, apparently, didn’t have any other kind), sat down again at the table and took a slice of sausage.

“You know,” he continued, unflustered, “I really intend to do this painting well. These last ten years, I’ve tried to portray people belonging to all layers of society, from the horse butcher to the chief executive of a multinational. My only failure was when I tried to portray an artist—more precisely, Jeff Koons, I don’t know why. Well, I also failed in the case of a priest, I didn’t know how to approach that subject, either, but in the case of Jeff Koons it’s worse. I’d started the painting, and I was obliged to destroy it. I don’t want to end on this failure—and with you, I believe, I will succeed. There’s something in your eyes, I don’t know what, but I believe I can transcribe it …”

The word
passion
suddenly crossed Jed’s mind, and all of a sudden he found himself ten years previously, during his last weekend with Olga. It was on the
terrasse
of the Château de Vault de Lugny, on the Sunday of Pentecost. The
terrasse
overlooked the immense park, whose trees swayed in a gentle breeze. Night was falling, and the temperature ideally mild. Olga seemed deep in contemplation of her pressed lobster. She had said nothing for at least a minute when she lifted her head, looked him straight in the eyes, and asked: “Do you know why you’re attractive to women?”

He muttered an inaudible reply.

“I suppose you’ve had the opportunity to notice it. You’re rather cute, but it’s not that, beauty’s almost a detail. No, it’s something else.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s very simple: it’s because you have an intense look in your eyes. A passionate look. And it’s that, above all, that women are looking for. If they can read in the eyes of a man an energy, a passion, then they find him attractive.”

Leaving him to meditate on this conclusion, she took a sip of Meursault and tasted her starter. “Obviously,” she said a little later with a slight sadness, “when this passion isn’t addressed to them, but to an artistic work, women are incapable of noticing it. Well, at least at the beginning.”

Ten years later, observing Houellebecq, Jed became aware that there was also passion in his eyes, even something wild. He must have aroused passions in women, maybe violent ones. Yes, from everything Jed knew about women, it seemed probable that some of them might have fallen for this tortured wreck who was now gently nodding his head in front of him while devouring slices of pâté de campagne, and who had manifestly become indifferent to anything connected to a loving relationship, and most probably any kind of human relationship.

“It’s true, I feel only a faint sense of solidarity with the human species …” Houellebecq said as if he’d read Jed’s thoughts. “I would say that my feeling of belonging diminishes a little more each day. Yet I like your last paintings, even if they portray human beings. They have something … general, I would say, which goes beyond the anecdotal. I mean, I don’t want to anticipate my text, otherwise I’ll write nothing. In fact, that doesn’t bother you too much, does it, if I haven’t finished it by the end of March? I’m really not well at the moment.”

“No problem. We’ll delay the exhibition; we’ll wait for as long as it takes. You know you’ve become important for me, and what’s more,” exclaimed Jed, “that’s happened so quickly! No human being has ever had this effect on me!

“What’s curious, you know,” he went on more calmly, “is that you expect a portrait painter to stress the singularity of the model, what makes him a unique human being. And that’s what I do in a way, but from another point to view I have the impression that people resemble one another more than is normally said; especially when I do the planes or the jawbones, I have the sense I’m repeating the motifs of a puzzle. I know very well that human beings are the subject of the novel, of the
great Western novel
, and one of the great subjects of painting as well, but I can’t help thinking that people are much less different than they generally think. That there are too many complications in society, too many distinctions and categories.”

“Yes, it’s a bit
byzantinesque
,” the author of
Platform
agreed heartily. “But I don’t feel that you’re really a portrait painter. Picasso’s portrait of Dora Maar, who gives a fuck about that? Anyway, Picasso’s ugly, and he paints a hideously deformed world because his soul is hideous, and that’s all you can say about Picasso. There’s no reason anymore to support the exhibition of his works. He has nothing to contribute, and with him there’s no light, no innovation in the organization of colors or forms. I mean, in Picasso’s work there’s absolutely nothing that deserves attention, just an extreme stupidity and a priapic daubing that might attract a few sixtysomethings with big bank accounts. The portrait of Fuckface, member of the Merchants’ Guild, by Van Dyck, now that’s something else; because it’s not Fuckface who interests Van Dyck, but the Merchants’ Guild. I mean, that’s what I understand in your paintings, but maybe I’ve got it completely wrong; anyway, if you don’t like my text you can just chuck it in the trash. Sorry, I’m becoming aggressive, it’s this damn athlete’s foot.” Before Jed’s terrified eyes, he began scratching his feet, furiously, until drops of blood began to appear. “I’ve got athlete’s foot, a bacterial infection, a generalized atopic eczema. I’m rotting on the spot and no one gives a damn, no one can do anything to help me. I’ve been shamefully abandoned by science, so what’s left for me to do? Just scratch and scratch myself endlessly, that’s what my life’s now become, one endless scratching session …”

Then he stood up, slightly relieved. “I’m a bit tired now, I think I’m going to have a rest,” he said, sounding like a man who had got out of a jam pretty well.

Houellebecq accompanied Jed to the door. At the last moment, just before he disappeared into the night, he told him: “You know, I realize what you’re doing, and I know the consequences. You’re a good artist—without going into detail, one could say that. The result is that while I’ve been photographed thousands of times, if there’s an image of me, just one, that will last for the centuries to come, it will be your painting.” He suddenly made a smile that was juvenile and this time truly
disarming
. “You see, I take painting seriously,” he said. Then he closed the door.

Jed stumbled into a baby carriage, only just regained his balance before the body scanner, then stepped back to retake his place in line. Apart from him there were mostly families, each with two or three children. In front of him, a blond child aged about four was whining, demanding God knows what, then suddenly threw himself on the floor screaming and trembling with rage; his mother exchanged an exhausted look with her husband, who tried to pick the vicious little bastard up again. It’s impossible to write a novel, Houellebecq had told him the day before, for the same reason that it’s impossible to live: due to accumulated inertia. And all the theories of freedom, from Gide to Sartre, are just immoralisms thought up by irresponsible bachelors. Like me, he’d added, attacking his third bottle of Chilean red.

There were no designated seats in the plane, and at boarding he tried to join a group of teenagers but was held back at the foot of the metal steps—his hand luggage was too big, he had to pass it to the flight crew—and found himself stuck between a five-year-old girl who was fidgeting in her seat, constantly demanding sweets, and an obese woman, with dull hair, holding in her lap a baby which began to scream just after takeoff; half an hour later, she had to change its diaper.

At the exit from the airport of Beauvais-Tillé, he stopped, put down his travel bag, and breathed slowly before picking it up again. The families loaded with buggies and children were rushing onto the bus
bound for the Porte Maillot. Just next to it was a small white van, with big side windows, bearing the logo of Beauvaisis Urban Transport. Jed approached and asked for information: it was the shuttle for Beauvais, the driver told him; the journey cost two euros. He bought a ticket; he was the only passenger.

“Shall I drop you at the station?” the driver asked a little later.

“No, in the center.”

The driver looked at him in surprise; Beauvaisis tourism, apparently, hadn’t benefited much from the presence of the airport. However, an effort had been made, as in almost every town in France, to reserve streets in the center for pedestrians, with signs giving historical and cultural information. The first traces of settlement on the site of Beauvais could be dated from 65000
B.C
. A camp fortified by the Romans, the town took the name of Caesaromagus, then of Bellovacum, before being destroyed in
A.D
. 275 by the barbarian invasions.

Standing at a crossroads of trade routes, surrounded by very rich wheat fields, Beauvais enjoyed considerable prosperity from the eleventh century onwards, and a textile industry developed there; draperies made in Beauvais were exported as far as Byzantium. It was in 1225 that the count-bishop Milon de Nanteuil began building the Saint-Pierre Cathedral (three Michelin stars,
worth the journey
); and though incomplete, it nonetheless boasts one of the highest Gothic vaults in Europe. The decline of Beauvais, accompanying that of the textile industry, was to start at the end of the eighteenth century; it hadn’t really stopped since, and Jed had no difficulty finding a room in the Kyriad Hotel. He even thought he was the only guest, until dinner. As he tucked into his
blanquette de veau
—the dish of the day—he saw come in a solitary Japanese man, aged about thirty, who shot terrified looks around the room, then sat down at the next table.