The Map and the Territory

by Michel Houellebecq

  20

  When Jed came out onto the square of Notre-Dame de la Gare, a light and icy rain suddenly began to fall, like a warning, then stopped just as suddenly after a few seconds. He climbed the few steps leading to the entrance. The double doors of the church were wide open; it looked deserted inside. He hesitated, then turned around. The rue Jeanne-d’Arc descended as far as the boulevard Vincent-Auriol, which the Métro passed over; in the distance you could see the dome of the Panthéon. The sky was a dark and dull gray. Basically, he didn’t have much to tell God; not at that moment.

  The place Nationale was deserted, and trees stripped of their leaves revealed the rectangular and perfectly fitting structures of the campus at Tolbiac. Jed turned into the rue du Château-des-Rentiers. He was early, but Franz was already there, sitting in front of a glass of cheap red wine, and it was visibly not his first. Bloodshot-eyed and hirsute, he looked like he hadn’t slept for weeks.

  “Okay,” he summed up as soon as Jed had sat down. “I’ve had offers for almost all the paintings now. I’ve pushed up the bidding, maybe I can push it up a bit more; let’s say that for the moment the average price has stabilized at around five hundred thousand euros.”

  “Pardon?”

  “You heard right: five hundred thousand euros.”

  Franz was nervously twisting locks of his untidy white hair; it was the first time that Jed had noticed this tic. He emptied his glass and immediately ordered another one.

  “If I sell now,” he continued, “we’ll make thirty million euros, approximately.”

  Silence fell again in the café. Next to them, a very thin old man in a gray overcoat was dozing in front of his Picon beer. At his feet, an obese little white-and-ginger ratter was half asleep, like its master. The light rain began to fall again.

  “So?” Franz asked a minute later. “What do I do? Do I sell now?”

  “As you wish.”

  “What the fuck do you mean, as I wish? Do you realize how much money that represents?” He’d almost shouted, and the old man next to them woke up with a start; the dog got up with difficulty and growled in their direction.

  “Fifteen million euros … Fifteen million euros each,” Franz went on more softly, but in a choked voice. “And I get the impression that doesn’t mean anything to you.”

  “No, no, sorry,” Jed quickly replied. “Let’s just say I’m in shock,” he added a little later.

  Franz looked at him with a mixture of suspicion and dismay. “Well, okay,” he said finally, “I’m not Larry Gagosian. I don’t have the nerves for this kind of thing. I’m going to sell now.”

  “You’re surely right,” Jed said a good minute later. Silence had fallen again, troubled only by the snores of the ratter, which had lain down again, reassured, at the feet of its master.

  “In your view,” Franz went on, “in your view, which painting should’ve got the best offer?”

  Jed reflected for a moment. “Maybe Bill Gates and Steve Jobs,” he finally suggested.

  “Exactly. It’s gone up to one and a half million euros. From an American broker, who apparently works for Jobs himself.

  “For a long time,” he continued, his voice tense, on the brink of exasperation, “for a long time, the art market has been dominated by the richest businessmen on the planet. And now, for the first time, as well as buying what is most avant-garde in the aesthetic domain, they have the opportunity to buy a painting that portrays themselves. I can’t tell you the number of proposals I’ve received, from businessmen or industrialists, who would like you to paint their portrait. We’ve returned to the time of ancien-régime court painting … Well, what I mean is that there’s pressure, a big pressure, on you at this time. Do you still intend to give Houellebecq his painting?”

  “Obviously. I promised.”

  “As you wish. It’s a beautiful gift. A gift worth seven hundred and fifty thousand euros … Look, he deserves it. His text’s played an important role. By insisting on the systematic, theoretical side of your approach, he’s enabled you to avoid being likened to the new figurative painters, all those losers … Obviously, I haven’t left the paintings in my warehouse in Eure-et-Loir, I’ve rented the vaults of a bank. I’m going to sign a paper, so you can pass by and take Houellebecq’s portrait whenever you want.”

  “I had a visitor, as well,” he went on after a brief pause. “A young Russian woman, I guess you know who she is.” He took out a business card and handed it to Jed. “A very pretty young woman …”

  Light was beginning to fade. Jed put the business card in the inside pocket of his jacket, then started pulling it on.

  “Wait,” Franz interrupted. “Before you leave, I’d just like to make sure that you completely understand the situation. I’ve received about fifty calls from men who are among the richest in the world. Sometimes they’ve had an assistant call, but they’ve mainly phoned themselves. They’d all like you to do their portraits. They’re all offering you a million euros—minimum.”

  Jed finished putting on his jacket and took out his wallet to pay.

  “I’m inviting you,” said Franz with a mocking grimace. “Don’t reply, there’s no point, I know exactly what you’re going to say. You’ll ask to have time to think; and in a few days you’ll phone to tell me you’re saying no. And then you’re going to stop. I’m starting to know you, you’ve always been like that, even at the time of the Michelin maps: you work, you work away in your little corner for years; and then, once your work is exhibited, as soon as you get recognition, you drop it all.”

  “There are small differences. I was at a dead end when I gave up Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons Dividing Up the Art Market.”

  “Yes, I know; that’s what made me organize the exhibition. Besides, I’m happy you didn’t finish that painting. However, I liked the idea, the project had a historical relevance, it was quite an accurate reflection of the art world at a given time. There was, indeed, a sort of dividing up; on the one hand, fun, sex, kitsch, and innocence; on the other, trash, death, and cynicism. But, in your situation, that would inevitably have been interpreted as the work of a minor artist, jealous of the success of his richer counterparts; anyway, we’re at a point where success in market terms justifies and validates anything, replacing all the theories. No one is capable of seeing further, absolutely no one. Now you could indulge in this painting, because you’ve become the best-paid French artist of the moment; but I know you won’t paint it, you’ll move on to something else. Maybe you’ll simply stop doing the portraits, or stop figurative art in general, or stop painting completely, and perhaps return to photography, I don’t know.”

  Jed kept his silence. At the neighboring table the old man roused himself from his slumber, got up, and went over to the door; his dog followed him with difficulty, its fat body bobbing on its short legs.

  “In any case,” Franz said, “I want you to know that I remain your gallerist. Whatever happens.”

  Jed nodded. The café owner came out of the cellar, lit the ramp of neon lights above the counter, and nodded to Jed, who nodded back. They were regular customers, but no real familiarity had been established between them. The owner of the establishment had even forgotten that, ten years previously, he’d allowed Jed to take pictures of him and his café. Those pictures inspired Jed to make Claude Vorilhon, Bar-Tabac Manager, the second painting in the Series of Simple Professions—for which an American stockbroker had just offered three hundred and fifty thousand euros. He had always considered them untypical customers, not of the same age or background as the rest of his regulars; in short, they weren’t part of his core market.

  Jed stood up. He wondered when he would see Franz again; at the same time he became aware that all of a sudden he was a rich man. Just before he went to the door, Franz asked him: “What are you doing for Christmas?”

  “Nothing. I’m seeing my father, as usual.”

  21

  Not quite as usual, thought Jed as he walked back up toward the rue Jeanne-
d’Arc. On the phone his father had sounded completely broken, and he’d initially proposed canceling their annual dinner. “I don’t want to be a burden to anyone …” His rectal cancer had suddenly worsened, he had losses of matter now, he announced with masochistic delight. They were going to have to fit him with an artificial anus. After Jed insisted, he agreed to meet, on the condition that his son receive him at home. “I can no longer bear to see human beings …”

  Arriving on the square of Notre-Dame de la Gare, he hesitated, then went in. At first the church seemed empty, but on advancing toward the altar he saw a young black girl, eighteen at most, in front of a statue of the Virgin; she was speaking very softly. Concentrated in prayer, she paid no attention to him. Her ass, arched by kneeling, was hugged very precisely by her thin white trousers, Jed noted against his will. Did she have sins to be forgiven? Sick parents? Both, probably. Her faith seemed deep. It must have been very practical, that belief in God; when you could no longer do anything for others—and that was often the case in life, it was basically almost always the case, and particularly concerning his father’s cancer—there remained the resource of praying for them.

  He went out, ill at ease. Night was falling on the rue Jeanne-d’Arc, the red lights of the cars edging slowly toward the boulevard Vincent-Auriol. In the distance, the dome of the Panthéon was bathed in an inexplicable greenish light, a bit like some spherical aliens were planning a massive attack on the Paris region. Some people were doubtless dying, at that very minute, here and there, in the city.

  However, at the same time the following day, he found himself lighting candles and putting out coquilles de saumon on his trestle table while darkness spread over the place des Alpes. His father had promised to be there at six.

  He rang down below at one minute past six. Jed buzzed him in and breathed slowly and deeply, several times, as the lift came up.

  He lightly kissed his father’s rough cheeks as he stood still in the center of the room. “Sit down, sit down,” he said. Obeying immediately, his father took a seat on the edge of a chair and looked timidly around him. He has never come here, Jed suddenly realized, he’s never been to my flat. He then had to tell him to take off his coat as well. His father was trying to smile, a bit like a man trying to show how valiantly he’s bearing an amputation. Jed wanted to open the champagne, but his hands were trembling and he almost dropped the bottle he’d just taken out of the refrigerator, and he was sweating. His father was still smiling, a rather fixed smile. Here was a man who, with dynamism and sometimes harshness, had led a firm of about fifty people, who’d had to hire and fire, who’d negotiated contracts involving tens, sometimes hundreds of millions of francs. But the approach of death makes you humble, and he seemed to want everything to go as smoothly as possible, he seemed above all to want to avoid trouble; that was apparently his only ambition now on this earth. Jed managed to open the champagne, and relaxed a little.

  “I’ve heard about your success,” his father said, lifting his glass. “We drink to your success.”

  That was a way forward, Jed immediately thought, an opening for a possible conversation, and he began talking about his paintings, this work he had started ten years ago, his will to describe, through painting, the different parts that contributed to the functioning of society. He spoke with ease, for almost an hour, regularly serving champagne and then wine, while they ate dishes bought from the caterer the day before, and what he was saying then, he realized to his astonishment the following day, he’d never said to anyone. His father listened attentively, asking a question from time to time, with the surprised and curious expression of a little child. In short, everything went marvelously well until the cheese course, when Jed’s inspiration began to dry up and his father, as if under the effect of gravity, fell back into a sorrowful despondency. He was, however, cheered up by the dinner, and it was without any real sadness, rather shaking his head incredulously, that he said in a low voice, “Fucking hell … an artificial anus.

  “You know,” he added, now in a voice which betrayed a slight drunkenness, “in a sense I’m happy that your mother’s no longer here. She who was so refined, so elegant … she would’ve found physical decline unbearable.”

  Jed went rigid. That’s it, he thought. That’s it, we’re there; after all these years, he’s going to speak. But his father had noticed his change in expression.

  “I’m not going to reveal this evening why your mother committed suicide!” he declaimed in a loud, almost angry voice. “I’m not going to reveal it to you because I don’t know!” He calmed down almost immediately, and shrank into his chair. Jed was sweating again. Maybe it was too hot. The heating was almost impossible to set, and he was always worried it would break down. He was going to move now that he had money; surely that’s what people do when they have money, they try to improve their living situation, but move where? He had no particular desire for property. No, he was going to stay, maybe do some improvements, in any case replace the boiler. He stood up again and tried to manipulate the thermostat. His father was nodding gently, muttering softly. Jed returned to his side. All he needed to do was put his hand out, touch his shoulder or something, but how could he do that? He’d never done that. “An artificial anus …” his father murmured again dreamily.

  “I know she wasn’t satisfied with our life,” he continued, “but is that sufficient reason for dying? I wasn’t satisfied with my life, either. I confess I was hoping for something more from my career as an architect than building stupid fucking seaside resorts for dumb tourists, under the control of fundamentally dishonest and almost infinitely vulgar property developers. But, okay, it was work, a routine … Probably she just didn’t like life. What shocked me the most is what the neighbor, whom I’d only just met, told me. She was coming back from her shopping, she had probably just procured the poison—we’ve never known how, by the way. What this woman told me was that she seemed happy, incredibly enthusiastic and happy. She had exactly, she said, the expression of someone who is preparing to go on holiday. It was cyanide, and she must have died almost instantly; I’m absolutely certain she didn’t suffer.”

  Then he stopped speaking, and the silence continued for a long time. Jed ended up slightly losing consciousness. He had the vision of immense meadows whose grass was waving in the wind, and the light was that of an eternal spring. When he woke suddenly, his father was still nodding his head and muttering, pursuing a painful internal debate. Jed hesitated; he’d planned a dessert—there were chocolate profiteroles in the fridge. Did he have to take them out? Or did he have to learn more about his mother’s suicide? He had basically almost no memory of her. It was more important for his father, probably. He decided to let the profiteroles wait a little.

  “I’ve known no other woman,” his father said in a lifeless voice. “No other, absolutely. I didn’t even feel the desire.” Then he started again to mutter and nod his head gently. Jed decided, finally, to take out the profiteroles. His father stared at them in astonishment, like they were a completely new object, for which nothing, in his previous life, had prepared him. He took one, turned it between his fingers, looking at it with as much interest as he would a dog turd; but he finally put it in his mouth.

  There then followed two to three minutes of mute frenzy, as they took the profiteroles one by one from the decorated box provided by the pâtissier and promptly ate them. Then things calmed down, and Jed proposed coffee. His father accepted immediately.

  “I feel like smoking a cigarette,” he said. “Do you have any?”

  “I don’t smoke,” Jed said, and leapt up. “But I can go out for them. I know a tobacconist on the place d’Italie that’s open late in the evening. And then …” He consulted his watch in disbelief. “It’s only eight.”

  “Even on Christmas Eve, you think they’re open?”

  “I can try.”

  He put on his coat. Outside, he was struck by a violent blast of wind; snowflakes were swirling around in the freezing air. It
must have been several degrees below zero. On the place d’Italie, the bar-tabac was closing. The owner returned to his counter, grumbling.

  “What will it be?”

  “Cigarettes.”

  “What brand?”

  “I don’t know. Some good cigarettes.”

  The man looked at him furiously.

  “Dunhill! Some Dunhill and some Gitanes! And a lighter!”

  His father hadn’t moved, still shrunk in his chair, and didn’t even react on hearing the door open. Nevertheless, he took a Gitane from the pack and looked at it with curiosity before lighting up. “It’s twenty years since I last smoked,” he remarked. “But what’s the importance of all that now?” He drew a puff, then another. “It’s strong,” he said. “It’s good. When I was young, everybody smoked. In meetings, discussions in the cafés, we smoked all the time. It’s funny how things change …”

  He sipped the cognac his son had placed in front of him, then again fell silent. In the silence, Jed could make out the increasingly violent whistling of the wind. He looked through the window: the snowflakes were swirling, very dense; it was turning into a real storm.

  “I always wanted to be an architect, I think,” his father continued. “When I was small I was interested in animals, like all children probably; when asked I would say I wanted to become a vet later in life, but deep down I think I was already attracted by architecture. At the age of ten, I remember, I tried to build a nest for the swallows who spent the summer in the shed. In an encyclopedia I’d found some indications on how swallows built their nests, with earth and saliva. I spent weeks on it …” His voice quavered slightly and he stopped again. Jed looked at him worriedly, but then he took a big sip of cognac before continuing.

  “But they never wanted to use my nest. Never. They even stopped nesting in the shed …” The old man suddenly began to cry. Tears were pouring down his face and it was awful.