The Map and the Territory

by Michel Houellebecq

  “It’s not stupid, what he’s saying,” Jed commented.

  She looked at him indignantly. “This article is enormous!” she replied severely. “Okay, it’s quite surprising that Kéchichian did it; usually he only deals with books. After all, Pépita Bourguignon was there …” She was perplexed for a few seconds before concluding, firmly: “Well, let’s say I prefer a full page by Kéchichian to a tiny note by Bourguignon.”

  “And now what’s going to happen?”

  “They’re going to come. The articles are going to come, more and more of them.”

  They celebrated the event that very evening at Chez Anthony et Georges. “They’re talking a lot about you,” Georges slipped to him while helping Olga to take off her coat. Restaurateurs like celebs; it’s with the utmost attention that they follow cultural and high-society news, and they know that the presence of celebs in their establishment can have a real draw on the stupidly rich segment of the population that they want above all as their clientele. And the celebs, in general, love restaurants; it’s a sort of symbiosis that is established, naturally, between restaurants and celebs. As a very young mini-celeb, Jed adopted without difficulty that attitude of modest detachment which suited his new status, for which Georges, an expert in intermediary celebrity, showed his appreciation. There weren’t many people that evening in the restaurant, just a Korean couple who left quickly. Olga opted for a gazpacho à l’arugula and semi-cooked lobster with a yam mash, Jed for pan-seared scallops and a baby-turbot and caraway soufflé with its Passe-Crassane pear emulsion. Anthony came to join them for dessert, wearing his kitchen apron and brandishing a bottle of Bas-Armagnac Castarède 1905. “On the house,” he said, out of breath, before filling the glasses. According to Rothenstein and Bowles, this millésime enchanted by its amplitude, nobility, and panache. The finale of prune and rancio was the typical example of a mature eau de vie, long on the finish, with a note of fine old leather at the last. Anthony had put on a bit of weight since their last visit, as was no doubt inevitable; the secretion of testosterone diminishes with age, the level of fat increases; he was reaching the critical age.

  Olga breathed in at length, and with delectation, the bouquet of the Armagnac, before wetting her lips: she was adapting marvelously well to France, it was difficult to believe that she had spent her childhood in a block of flats in the Moscow suburbs.

  “How is it that the new chefs,” she asked after her first sip—“I mean the chefs who get talked about—are almost all homosexuals?”

  “Hah!” Anthony stretched out voluptuously in his seat, casting a delighted look around the restaurant. “Well, there, ma chérie, lies the big secret, because homosexuals have always a-dored cooking, right from the start, but nobody said it, absolutely no-body. What helped a lot, I think, was the three stars given to Frank Pichon. That a transsexual cook could get three Michelin stars—now that, that was really a strong signal …” He took a sip, and seemed to plunge back into the past. “And then, obviously,” he continued with extraordinary excitement, “obviously what triggered everything, the atomic bomb, was the outing of Jean-Pierre Pernaut!”

  “Yes, it’s sure that the outing of Jean-Pierre Pernaut was huge …” agreed Georges with bad grace. “But you know, Tony,” he continued in a hissing and querulous tone, “basically it’s not society which refused to accept homosexual chefs, it was homosexuals who refused to accept themselves as chefs. Look, we’ve never had an article in Têtu, nothing; it was Le Parisien who spoke about the restaurant first. In the traditional gay scene, they didn’t find it glamorous enough to go into cuisine. For them it was homey, it was too homey, precisely that!” Jed suddenly intuited that Georges was also addressing Anthony’s emerging rolls of fat, that he was beginning to miss an obscure, preculinary leather-and-chains past, that it would be best to change the subject. Jed then skilfully returned to the outing of Jean-Pierre Pernaut, an obvious and outrageous subject: he himself as a television viewer had been overwhelmed. Pernaut’s “Yes, it’s true, I love David” live before the cameras of France 2 would remain in his view as one of the pivotal moments of television in the 2010s. A consensus was quickly reached on this subject and Anthony poured another round of Bas-Armagnac. “As for me, I define myself, above all, as a television viewer!” exclaimed Jed with a passionate exultation that earned him a surprised look from Olga.

  6

  A month later Marylin came into the office, her bag even more stuffed than usual. After having blown her nose three times, she set in front of Jed a fat dossier, held together with elastic bands.

  “It’s the press,” she added, as if he weren’t reacting.

  He looked blankly at the cardboard cover. “How is it?” he asked.

  “Excellent. We’ve got everyone.” She didn’t seem particularly pleased. Behind her sniveling façade, this little woman was a warrior, a specialist in commando operations. What got her juices flowing was unleashing the movement, getting the first big article; then, when things started going by themselves, she would fall back into her nauseous apathy. She spoke more and more softly, and Jed hardly heard her add: “There’s just Pépita Bourguignon who’s done nothing.

  “Oh, well,” she concluded sadly, “it was nice working with you.”

  “We’ll never meet again?”

  “If you need me, yes, of course. You have my cell-phone number.”

  Then she took her leave, going off to an uncertain fate—you had the impression, in fact, that she would go back to bed immediately and make herself a tisane. While passing through the doorway, she turned around one last time and added, in a lifeless voice, “I think it was the biggest success of my life.”

  The critics were, Jed realized on browsing through the dossier, exceptionally unanimous in their praise. It happens in contemporary societies, despite the determination with which journalists hunt and identify fashions in formation, and if possible create them, that some develop in a wild, anarchic fashion and prosper before being named—in fact, this happens more and more often, since the massive spread of the Internet and the accompanying collapse of printed media. The growing popularity, across all of France, of cookery classes, the recent appearance of local competitions rewarding new creations in charcuterie or cheese making, the massive and inexorable spread of hiking, and even the outing of Jean-Pierre Pernaut combined to bring about this new sociological fact: for the first time in France since Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the countryside had become trendy again. French society seemed to suddenly become aware of this, through its major dailies and magazines, in the few weeks which followed Jed’s vernissage. And the Michelin map, an utterly unnoticed utilitarian object, became in the space of those very weeks the privileged vehicle for initiation into what Libération was to shamelessly call the “magic of the terroir.”

  Patrick Forestier’s office, whose windows offered a view of the Arc de Triomphe, was ingeniously modular: by moving certain elements you could organize a conference, project images, or have a brunch, all confined in a space of seventy square meters; a microwave enabled you to heat up food; you could also sleep there. To receive Jed, Forestier had chosen the “working breakfast” option: fruit juice, pastries, and coffee waited on the table.

  He opened his arms wide to greet him; it was an understatement to say he was beaming. “I was confident … I’ve always been confident!” he exclaimed, something which, according to Olga, who had briefed Jed before the meeting, was at the very least exaggerated. “Now we must convert the try!” (His arms made rapid horizontal movements that were, Jed understood immediately, an imitation of rugby passes.) “Please sit down.” They took their places on the sofas surrounding the table; Jed poured himself coffee. “We are a team,” added Forestier in English, rather unnecessarily.

  “Our map sales have grown by seventeen percent in the past month,” he continued. “We could, and others would do it, raise the prices; we won’t.”

  He left Jed the time to appreciate the lofty considerations behind this commercial dec
ision before adding: “What is most unexpected is that there are even buyers for the old Michelin maps, which we have seen auctioned on the Internet. And until a few weeks ago, we were happy to pulp these old maps,” he said funereally. “We squandered a heritage whose value no one in-house suspected … until your magnificent photos.” He seemed to sink into a depressed meditation on this money lost so stupidly, or perhaps more generally on the destruction of value, but then pulled himself together. “Concerning your—” he sought the appropriate word—“concerning your works, we must strike very hard!” Suddenly he sat up on his sofa. Fleetingly, Jed had the impression that he was going to jump straight onto the table and beat his chest in a Tarzan impersonation; he creased his eyes to get rid of the vision.

  “I had a long conversation with Mademoiselle Sheremoyova, with whom I believe—” again he searched for the right words, which is a disadvantage with former pupils of the Polytechnique; they’re a bit cheaper to hire than those of the École Nationale d’Administration, but they take more time finding their words; finally, he noticed that he was off subject. “In short, we’ve concluded that marketing them directly through our networks is unthinkable. It’s out of the question for us to appear to take away your artistic independence. I believe,” he continued uncertainly, “that usually the trade in artworks happens via galleries …”

  “I don’t have a gallerist.”

  “That’s what I understood. So, I thought of the following arrangement. We could look after the designing of an Internet site where you would present your works, and put them directly on sale. Naturally the site would be in your name—Michelin would be mentioned nowhere. I believe it’s best that you personally oversee the making of the prints. That said, we can completely handle the logistics and the shipping.”

  “I agree.”

  “That’s perfect, perfect. This time, I believe we’re genuinely in a win-win situation!” he enthused. “I have formalized all that in a draft contract, which of course I will leave for you to study.”

  Jed went out into a very bright long corridor; in the distance a bay window looked out onto the arches of La Défense; the sky was a splendid winter blue, which appeared almost artificial—a phthalo blue, Jed fleetingly thought. He was walking slowly, hesitantly, as if he were crossing cotton wool; he knew that he had just reached a new turning point in his life. The door of Olga’s office was open and she smiled at him.

  “Well, it’s exactly as you told me.”

  7

  Jed’s studies had been purely literary and artistic, and he had never had the occasion to meditate on the capitalist mystery par excellence: that of price formation. He had opted for Hahnemühle FineArt canvas, which offered an excellent saturation of colors and very good performance over time. But with this paper the correct calibration of colors was difficult to achieve and very unstable. The Epson driver wasn’t quite right, either, so he decided to limit himself to twenty enlargements per photo. A print cost him about thirty euros; he thought he would offer them at two hundred euros on the site.

  When he put the first photograph online, an enlargement of the Hazebrouck region, the series was sold out in a little under three hours. Obviously, the price wasn’t quite right. After a few tentative weeks it stabilized at around two thousand euros for a 40-by-60-format print. There, that was now sorted out: he knew his market price.

  Spring was settling over Paris, and without having planned it, he was becoming comfortably well off. In April, they noticed with surprise that his monthly income had just overtaken Olga’s. That year, the long weekends in May were exceptional: May Day fell on a Thursday, as did VE Day—then there was Ascension Day, and it all ended with the long weekend of Pentecost. The new French Touch catalogue had just come out. Olga had supervised its production, occasionally correcting the texts proposed by the hoteliers, choosing the photos, and having them retaken if those proposed by the establishments didn’t seem sufficiently attractive.

  Evening was falling on the Jardin du Luxembourg. They sat out on the balcony in the mild air; the last cries of children were disappearing in the distance, and the gates would soon be closed for the night. Of France Olga basically knew only Paris, Jed thought as he flicked through the French Touch guide; and he, in truth, hardly knew more. Throughout the guide, France appeared as an enchanted land, a mosaic of superb terroirs spangled with châteaux and manors, of an astonishing variety but in which, everywhere, life was good.

  “Would you like to go away this weekend?” he proposed as he put down the volume. “In one of the hotels described in your guide?”

  “Yes, that’s a good idea.” She thought for a few seconds. “But incognito. Without saying I work for Michelin.”

  Even in these conditions, thought Jed, they could expect from the hoteliers a special welcome: a rich young urban couple without children, aesthetically very decorative, still in the first phase of their love affair—and for this reason quick to marvel at everything, in the hope of building up a store of beautiful memories that would come in handy when they reached the difficult years, perhaps enabling them to overcome a crisis in their relationship. They represented, for any professional in the hotel-restaurant trade, the archetype of ideal clients.

  “Where would you like to go first?”

  On reflection, Jed noticed that the question was far from simple. Many regions, as far as he knew, were of real interest. It was conceivably true, he thought, that France was a marvelous country—at least from the tourist’s point of view.

  “We’ll start with the Massif Central,” he finally decided. “For you, it’s perfect. It’s perhaps not the best, but I think it’s very French; I mean, it could only be in France.”

  It was Olga’s turn to flick through the guide, and she pointed out a hotel to him. Jed frowned. “The shutters are badly chosen. On gray stone I would’ve put brown or red shutters, green in a pinch, but certainly not blue.” He looked further at the introduction, and his perplexity increased. “What is this gibberish? ‘In the heart of a Cantal crossed with the Midi where tradition rhymes with relaxation and freedom with respect …’ ‘Freedom’ and ‘respect’—they don’t even rhyme!”

  Olga took the guide from him, and read the text closely. “Ah, yes, I see now … ‘Martine and Omar make us discover the authenticity of the food and wine.’ She married an Arab: that’s why ‘respect’ is there.”

  “That could be all right, especially if he’s Moroccan. It’s damn good, Moroccan cuisine. Maybe they do Franco-Moroccan fusion food, foie gras pastilla and the like.”

  “Yes,” said Olga, unconvinced. “But I’m a tourist. I want something Franco-French. A Franco-Moroccan or Franco-Vietnamese thing can work for a trendy restaurant on the Canal Saint-Martin; certainly not for a hôtel de charme in the Cantal. I’m maybe going to remove it from the guide, this hotel.”

  She did nothing of the sort, but this conversation gave her food for thought, and a few days later she proposed to the management that they organize a statistical survey of the dishes actually consumed in the hotels. The results were only known six months later, but they largely validated her first intuition. Creative cuisine, as well as Asian, was unanimously rejected. North African cooking was appreciated only in the far south and on Corsica. Whatever the region, the restaurants boasting a “traditional” or “à l’ancienne” image registered bills sixty-three percent higher than the average. Pork products and cheeses were a safe bet; but above all the dishes based on bizarre animals, with not only a French but also a regional connotation, such as wood pigeon, snails, and lamprey, achieved exceptional scores. The editor of the section “Food, Luxury, and Intermediary,” who authored the summary accompanying the report, concluded categorically:

  We were probably wrong to concentrate on the tastes of an Anglo-Saxon clientele in search of a light gastronomic experience, combining flavors with health and safety, and concerned with pasteurization and respect for the cold chain. This clientele, in reality, does not exist: American tourists have ne
ver been numerous in France, and the English are in constant decline; the Anglo-Saxon world as a whole now represents only 4.3% of our turnover. Our new clients, our real clients, from younger and rougher countries, with health norms that are recent and, anyway, seldom enforced, are on the contrary, when they stay in France, in search of a vintage, even hard-core gastronomic experience; only restaurants capable of adapting to this new situation should deserve, in the future, to figure in our guide.

  8

  They had several happy weeks. It was not, it couldn’t be, the exacerbated, feverish happiness of young people, and it was no longer a question for them in the course of a weekend to get plastered or totally shit-faced; it was already—but they were still young enough to laugh about it—the preparation for that epicurean, peaceful, refined but unsnobbish happiness that Western society offered the representatives of its middle-to-upper classes in middle age. They got used to the theatrical tone adopted by waiters in high-star establishments as they announced the composition of the amuse-bouches and other appetizers; and also to that elastic and declamatory way in which they exclaimed: “Excellente continuation, messieurs, dames!” each time they brought the next course, and which each time reminded Jed of the “Bonne célébration!” that a flabby and probably Socialist young priest had said to him when he and Geneviève, on an irrational whim, had entered the church of Notre-Dame-des-Champs, at Sunday-morning mass, just after making love in the studio flat she then had in the boulevard Montparnasse. Several times afterward he’d thought of this priest: physically he looked a bit like François Hollande, but unlike the political leader he had made himself a eunuch for God. Many years later, after he had started the Series of Simple Professions, Jed had sometimes envisioned doing a portrait of one of those men who, chaste and devoted, less and less numerous, criss-crossed the big cities to bring the comfort of their faith. But he had failed, and hadn’t even managed to comprehend the subject. Inheritors of a millennia-old spiritual tradition that nobody really understood anymore, once placed in the front rank of society, priests were today reduced, at the end of terrifyingly long and difficult studies that involved mastering Latin, canon law, rational theology, and other almost incomprehensible subjects, to surviving in miserable material conditions. They took the Métro alongside other men, going from a Gospels-reading group to a literacy workshop, saying mass every morning for a thin and aging audience, being forbidden all sensual joy or even the elementary pleasures of family life, yet obliged by their function to display day after day an unwavering optimism. Almost all of Jed Martin’s paintings, art historians would later note, represent men and women practicing their profession in a spirit of goodwill, but what was expressed there was a sensible goodwill, where submission to professional imperatives guaranteed in return, in variable proportions, a mixture of financial satisfaction and the gratification of self-esteem. Humble and penniless, sneered at by everyone, subjected to all the problems of urban life without having access to any of its pleasures, young urban priests constituted, for those who did not share their faith, a puzzling and inaccessible subject.