The Elementary Particles

by Michel Houellebecq

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.

Every Thursday he bought Pif, newly relaunched, with its free “gadget” every week. Unlike most children his age, he did not buy it for the gadget but for the adventure stories. Through a dazzling sweep of history and costume these tales played out some simple moral values. Michel slowly realized that this moral system ran through all the stories: “Ragnar the Viking”; “Teddy Ted and the Apache”; “Rahan, Son of a Savage Age”; and “Nasdine Hodja,” who duped viziers and caliphs. It was a realization that would profoundly affect him. Later, reading Nietzsche provoked only a brief irritation, and Kant served only to confirm what he already knew: that perfect morality is unique and universal. Nothing is added to it and nothing changes over the course of time. It is not dependent on history, economics, sociology or culture; it is not dependent on anything. Not determined, it determines; not conditioned, it conditions. It is, in other words, absolute.

His father did not object. Like all old libertines, he had become maudlin with age and bitterly regretted that his selfishness had ruined his son’s life—which was not entirely untrue.

In contemporary Western society, death is like white noise to a man in good health; it fills his mind when his dreams and plans fade. With age, the noise becomes increasingly insistent, like a dull roar with the occasional screech. In another age the sound meant waiting for the kingdom of God; it is now an anticipation of death. Such is life.

Physically, he was still the epitome of a sensual man, a man of the world; his eyes twinkled with irony and perception, a look certain exceptionally stupid girls thought of as radiant and benevolent. He did not feel in the least benevolent, and moreover thought of himself as a mediocre actor. How could they all be so easily taken in? Decidedly, he thought sometimes, a little sadly, these young people searching for spiritual values were really idiots.

In the midst of nature’s barbarity, human beings sometimes (rarely) succeed in creating small oases warmed by love. Small, exclusive, enclosed spaces governed only by love and shared subjectivity.

As a teenager, Michel believed that suffering conferred dignity on a person. Now he had to admit he had been wrong. What conferred dignity on people was television.

The story of life on Mars was a modest one. However (and Bruno Masure did not seem to understand this), this brief, feeble misfire brutally refuted

all the mythological and religious constructs in which the human race delights. There had been no unique, wondrous act of creation; no chosen people; no chosen species or planet; simply a series of tentative attempts, flawed for the most part, scattered across the universe. It was all so distressingly banal. The DNA of the Martian bacteria seemed identical to that of terrestrial bacteria. More than anything this saddened him, in itself a sign of depression.

“Oh, I know, I know,” Bruno went on, waving his hand as if to dismiss an objection Michel had not voiced. “Everyone says Brave New World is supposed to be a totalitarian nightmare, a vicious indictment of society, but that’s hypocritical bullshit. Brave New World is our idea of heaven: genetic manipulation, sexual liberation, the war against aging, the leisure society. This is precisely the world that we have tried—and so far failed—to create. The only thing in the book that rankles a little with our idea of equal opportunities—or meritocracy—is the idea of dividing society into castes where each performs tasks according to their genetic makeup. But that’s also the only point on which Huxley proved a false prophet. Advances in automation and robotics have made the whole idea pointless.

As a child, he could not bear the deterioration of objects, the breakage, the wear and tear. For years he continually taped two broken ends of a plastic ruler together again. With all the layers of tape, the ruler was now lopsided. To draw a straight line was impossible, so it didn’t even fulfill the basic function of a ruler. Nevertheless, he kept it. Then it would break again and he would repair it, adding another layer of tape, and put it back in his pencil case.

Children existed solely to inherit a man’s trade, his moral code and his property. This was taken for granted among the aristocracy, but merchants, craftsmen and peasants also bought into the idea, so it became the norm at every level of society. That’s all gone now: I work for someone else, I rent my apartment from someone else, there’s nothing for my son to inherit. I have no craft to teach him, I haven’t a clue what he might do when he’s older. By the time he grows up, the rules I lived by will have no value—he will live in another universe. If a man accepts the fact that everything must change, then he accepts that life is reduced to nothing more than the sum of his own experience; past and future generations mean nothing to him. That’s how we live now. For a man to bring a child into the world now is meaningless.

more doubt: it seems obvious that everything

“I’m useless,” he said resignedly. “I couldn’t breed pigs, I don’t have the faintest idea how to make sausages or forks or mobile phones. I’m surrounded by all this stuff that I eat or use and I couldn’t actually make a single thing—couldn’t even begin to understand how they’re made. If industrial production ceased tomorrow, if all the engineers and the specialist technicians disappeared off the face of the earth, I couldn’t do anything to start things over again. In fact, outside the industrialized world, I couldn’t even survive; I wouldn’t know how to feed or clothe myself, or protect myself from the weather. My technical competence falls far short of Neanderthal man. I’m completely dependent on my society, but I play no useful role in it. The only thing I know how to do is write dubious commentaries on outdated cultural issues. I get paid for it, too, well paid—much more than the average wage. Most of the

people I know are exactly the same.

Back in Paris they had happy moments together, like stills from a perfume ad (dashing hand in hand down the steps of Montmartre; or suddenly revealed in motionless embrace on the Pont des Arts by the lights of a bateau-mouche as it turned). There were the Sunday afternoon half-arguments, too, the moments of silence when bodies curl up beneath the sheets on the long shores of silence and apathy where life founders. Annabelle’s studio was so dark they had to turn on the lights at four in the afternoon. They sometimes were sad, but mostly they were serious. Both of them knew that this would be their last human relationship, and this feeling lacerated every moment they spent together. They had a great respect and a profound sympathy for each other, and there were days when, caught up in some sudden magic, they knew moments of fresh air and glorious, bracing sunshine. For the most part, however, they could feel a gray shadow moving over them, on the earth that supported them, and in everything they could glimpse the end.

Contemporary consciousness is no longer equipped to deal with our mortality. Never in any other time, or any other civilization, have people thought so much or so constantly about aging. Each individual has a simple view of the future: a time will come when the sum of pleasures that life has left to offer is outweighed by the sum of pain (one can actually feel the meter ticking, and it ticks always in the same direction). This weighing up of pleasure and pain, which everyone is forced to make sooner or later, leads logically, at a certain age, to suicide. On this subject, it’s amusing to note that two highly respected fin-de-siècle intellectuals, Gilles Deleuze and Guy Debord, both committed suicide for no reason other than that they could not bear the idea of their own physical decline. Their suicides provoked neither surprise nor comment; generally, the suicide of elderly people—by far the most commonplace—seems to us perfectly rational. It is perhaps also useful to cite public reaction to the prospect of a terrorist attack as symptomatic: the overwhelming majority of people would prefer to be killed outright rather than tortured, maimed or even disfigured. In part, this is because they are somewhat tired of life; but the principal reason is that nothing—not even death—seems worse than the prospect of living in a broken body.

Had he missed Bruno? Probably, though he had never said anything. Children suffer the world that adults create for them and try their best to adapt to it; in time, usually, they will replicate it.

The Socialists are in on it too. They hate sheep because sheep are conservative, whereas everyone knows wolves are left-wing—which is kind of strange, because wolves look like German shepherds and they’re clearly on the extreme right. Who’re you gonna trust?” He shook his head solemnly.

“She was a radiant woman,” he said emphatically, carrot in hand. “We think she’s ready for death, having reached a sufficiently advanced level of spiritual awareness.” What the fuck did that mean? There was no point in getting into it. It was obvious the old guy wasn’t actually saying anything, just making noises with his mouth.

Actually, man has always been terrified by death—he’s never been able to face the idea of his own disappearance, or even physical decline, without horror. Of all worldly goods, youth is clearly the most precious, and today we don’t believe in anything but worldly goods.

“So they let you . . . write,” Michel said quietly. He was not surprised. Most psychiatrists were particularly interested in their patients’ scribblings. Not that they ascribe particular therapeutic value to them, but it’s something to do and anything is better than slashing your wrists with a razor.

There is no power in the world—economic, political, religious or social—that can compete with rational certainty. Western society is interested beyond all measure in philosophy and politics, and the most vicious, ridiculous conflicts have been about philosophy and politics; it has also had a passionate love affair with literature and the arts, but nothing in its history has been as important as the need for rational certainty. The West has sacrificed everything to this need: religion, happiness, hope—and, finally, its own life.

After the third week she was allowed out, and would take short walks along the river or in the surrounding woods. It was August, and the weather was exceptionally beautiful: day after day, each one identically radiant, without so much as the murmur of a storm or anything that might signal an ending. Michel held her hand; often they would sit together on the bench beside the Grand Morin. The grass on the riverbank was scorched, almost white; in the shadow of the beech trees, the river wound on forever in dark green ripples. The world outside had its own rules, and those rules were not human.

Simply present in the grass, Such will be the death Of every individual. We will have loved little In our human forms Perhaps the sun, the rain on our graves, The wind and frost Will end all our pain.

The coffin was placed on a moving platform leading to the furnace. They had thirty seconds of silent thought, then one of the staff started the motor. The cogs that moved the platform grated a little; the door closed. It was possible to watch the blaze through a Pyrex porthole. At the moment the flames leapt from the huge burners, Michel turned his head away. For about twenty seconds, a red smudge persisted in his field of vision and then was gone.