The Possibility of an Island (25 page)

“Science, art, creation, beauty, love…Play, tenderness, laughter…How beautiful, my friends, life is! How marvelous it is, and how we wish it could go on for eternity!…This, my dear friends, will be possible, and possible very soon…The promise has been made, and it will be kept.”

After these last tenderly anagogical words, he stopped speaking, and marked a period of silence before singing the welcome song for the Elohim again. This time the entire gathering sang loudly, slowly clapping their hands. Beside me Vincent was singing his head off, and I myself was inches away from feeling a genuine collective emotion.

The fasting ended at ten in the evening, and big tables were set up under the stars. We were invited to place ourselves at random, without taking account of our usual relationships and friendships, something made all the easier as it was almost totally dark. The prophet sat down at a high table, on a platform, and everyone lowered their heads as he said a few words about the diversity of tastes and flavors, and how this was another source of pleasure that the day of fasting would enable us to appreciate even more; he also mentioned the need to chew slowly. Then, changing the subject, he invited us to concentrate on the marvelous human person we were going to find opposite us, on all those marvelous human persons, in the splendor of their magnificently developed individualities, whose diversity, in just the same way, promised us an unheard-of variety of encounters, joys, and pleasures.

With a slight whistling noise, and slightly missing their cue, the gas lamps at the corner of each table lit up. I lifted my eyes again: on my plate, there were two tomatoes; in front of me was a young girl of about twenty, with very white skin, and a face whose purity of lines reminded me of Botticelli; her thick, black, tightly curled hair fell down to her waist. She played the game for a few minutes, smiled at me, spoke to me, tried to learn more about the
marvelous human person
I could have been; she was called Francesca, was Italian, more precisely she came from Umbria, but was studying in Milan; she had followed the Elohimite teachings for two years. Quite quickly, however, her boyfriend, who was sitting on her right, intervened in the conversation; he was called Gianpaolo and was an actor—well, he acted in some commercials, and occasionally a few TV films—he was, in short, at about the same stage as Esther. He too was very handsome, with fairly long, shiny chestnut hair, and a face that one could easily trace back to the primitive Italians whose name escaped me for the moment; he was also quite well built, his tanned biceps and pectorals could be clearly made out under his T-shirt. Personally he was a Buddhist, and had only come on this course out of curiosity—his first impression, however, was good. They lost interest in me quite quickly, and began a lively conversation in Italian. Not only did they make a splendid couple, but they also seemed to be sincerely in love. They were still in that enchanted moment when you discover the universe of the other, when you feel the need to marvel at what they marvel at, be amused by what amuses them, share in whatever entertains, pleases, and offends them. She was looking at him with the tender rapture of a woman who knows herself chosen by a man, who feels joy in it, who has not yet become completely inured to the idea of having a companion at her side, a man for her exclusive use, and who says to herself that life is going to be very sweet.

The meal was as frugal as usual: two tomatoes, some tabbouleh, a piece of goat cheese; but once it had been cleared away, the two fiancées made their way between the tables, carrying amphoras that contained a sweet, apple-based liqueur. A communicative euphoria, made up of many light, interspersed conversations, spread among the guests; several of them were singing softly. Patrick came over and crouched beside me, promising that we would see each other often in Spain, that we were going to become true friends, and that I could visit him in Luxembourg. When the prophet stood up to speak again, there was ten minutes of enthusiastic applause; under the spotlights, his silvery silhouette was surrounded by a sparkling halo. He invited us to meditate on the plurality of worlds, to turn our thoughts toward those stars that we could see, each surrounded by planets, and to imagine the diversity of life forms populating those planets, the strange vegetation, the animal species about which we knew nothing, and the intelligent civilizations, some of which, like that of the Elohim, were much more advanced than our own, and only asked to share with us their knowledge, to allow us to come among them, to inhabit the universe in the pleasure of their company, in permanent renewal and in joy. Life, he concluded, was from all points of view marvelous, and it only remained for us to make every instant worthy of being lived.

When he came down from the podium everyone stood up; a line of disciples formed around him as he passed, waving their arms to the sky and repeating rhythmically: “Eeee-looo-hiiim!”; some were laughing uncontrollably, others burst into tears. Once he reached Fadiah, the prophet stopped and lightly caressed her breasts. She started joyfully and emitted a sort of “Yeep!” They went off together, through the crowd of disciples who sang and applauded wildly. “It is the third time! The third time she has had this distinction!” Patrick proudly whispered to me. He then informed me that in addition to his twelve fiancées, the prophet would from time to time give an ordinary female disciple the honor of spending a night in his company. The excitement gradually calmed down, and the followers returned to their tents. Patrick wiped the lenses of his glasses, which were misted over with tears, then put an arm around my shoulders, looking up to the sky. It was an exceptional night, he told me; he could feel the waves coming from the stars even more than normal, the waves full of love that the Elohim were carrying to us; it was on such a night, he was convinced, that they would return among us. I didn’t really know what to say in reply. I had not only never held any religious belief, but I hadn’t even envisaged the possibility of doing so. For me, things were exactly as they appeared to be: man was a species of animal, descended from other animal species through a tortuous and difficult process of evolution; he was made up of matter configured in organs, and after his death these organs would decompose and transform into simpler molecules; no trace of brain activity would remain, nor of thought, nor, evidently, of anything that might be described as a
spirit
or a
soul.
My atheism was so monolithic, so radical, that I had never been able to take these subjects completely seriously. During my days at secondary school, when I would debate with a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew, I had always had the impression that their beliefs were to be
taken ironically;
that they obviously didn’t believe, in the proper sense of the term, in the reality of the dogmas they professed, but that they were a sign of recognition, a sort of password allowing them access to the community of believers—a bit like grunge music was, or Doom Generation for fans of that game. The weighty seriousness they sometimes brought to debates between equally absurd theological positions seemed to contradict this hypothesis; but the same thing, basically, could be said for the fans of a game: for a chess player, or a participant who is truly immersed in a roleplay, the fictional space of the game becomes something completely serious and real, you could even say that nothing else exists for him, for the duration of the game at least.

This annoying enigma of those who believe was therefore being posed to me once again, in practically the same terms, with regard to the Elohimites. Of course in certain cases the dilemma was easy to resolve. Knowall, for example, obviously could not take this twaddle seriously, but he had very good reasons to remain in the sect: given the heterodox character of his research, he would never have been able to obtain as much financial support elsewhere, or a laboratory with as much modern equipment. The other leaders—Cop, Joker, and, of course, the prophet—also drew a material benefit from their membership. The case of Patrick was more curious. Certainly, the Elohimite sect had enabled him to find a lover who was explosively erotic, and probably as hot as she appeared to be—which would not have been so easy in the outside world: the sex life of bankers and business leaders, in spite of all their money, is in general absolutely miserable, they have to content themselves with brief and highly expensive rendezvous with escort girls who despise them and never miss an opportunity to make them feel the physical disgust they inspire. However, Patrick seemed to exhibit a real faith, an unfeigned hope in the eternity of delights that the prophet offered a glimpse of; all the same, in a man whose behavior bore the imprint of a great bourgeois rationality, it was troubling.

Before falling asleep, I thought again at length about the case of Patrick, and that of Vincent. Since the first evening, the latter had not spoken to me. Waking early the following morning, I saw him again walking down the winding road along the hillside in the company of Susan; they appeared to be plunged once again into an intense and interminable discussion. They separated at the top of the first terreplein, with a nod, and Vincent went back in the direction of his bedroom. I was waiting for him near the entrance; he jumped at the sight of me. I invited him for coffee at my place; taken aback, he accepted. While the water was heating, I put the cups and cutlery on the little garden table on the terrace. The sun was emerging with difficulty between some bumpy dark gray clouds; a thin violet ray ran just above the line of the horizon. I poured him a cup of coffee; he added a sugar cube, and pensively stirred the mixture in his cup. I sat down in front of him; he remained silent, lowered his eyes, and brought the cup to his lips. “Are you in love with Susan?” I asked him. He raised an anxious look toward me. “It’s as obvious as that?” he asked after a long pause. I nodded in agreement. “You should take a step back…,” I said, and my calm, firm tone gave the impression that I had been reflecting on this deeply, earlier, while in fact I had only just thought of it for the first time, but I forged ahead:

“We could take a trip around the island…”

“You mean…leave the camp?”

“Is it forbidden?”

“No…No, I don’t think so. We’d have to ask Jérôme how we go about it…” All the same, the prospect seemed to worry him a little.

“Of course you can! Of course you can!” Cop exclaimed good-humoredly. “We’re not in a prison here! I’ll ask someone to drive you to Arrecife; or perhaps to the airport, that’ll be more practical for renting a car.”

“But you’ll be coming back this evening?” he asked just as we were getting into the minibus. “It’s just so I know…”

I had no precise plan, other than to bring Vincent back to the normal world for a day, i.e., almost anywhere; i.e., given the place we were in, it would most likely be the beach. He exhibited a surprising docility and lack of initiative; the car-rental man had provided us with a map of the island. “We could go to Teguise beach…,” I said, “it’s the easiest to get to.” He didn’t even bother to reply.

He had brought along a pair of trunks and a towel, and he sat placidly between the dunes, he even seemed ready to spend the day there if he had to. “There are a lot of other women…,” I said, out of the blue, to begin a conversation, before I became aware that this wasn’t that straightforward. It was the low season, there were probably about fifty people in our field of vision: teenage girls with attractive bodies, flanked by
boys;
young mothers whose bodies were already less attractive, accompanied by small children. Our mutual sharing of a common space with them was fated to remain purely theoretical; none of these people belonged to a kind of reality with which we could, in one way or another, interact; in our eyes they had no more existence than if they had been images on a cinema screen—in fact, rather less, I’d say. I was beginning to feel that this excursion into the normal world was doomed to failure when I became aware that there was, moreover, a risk of it ending in quite an unpleasant manner.

I hadn’t done it deliberately, but we had installed ourselves in the portion of beach that belonged to a Thomson Holidays club. On returning from the sea, which had been rather cold, and which I hadn’t managed to get into, I saw that a hundred or so people were thronging around a podium on which a mobile sound system had been set up. Vincent hadn’t moved; sitting in the middle of the crowd, he regarded the surrounding agitation with perfect indifference. As I rejoined him, I was able to read “Miss Bikini Contest” on a banner that hung above the podium. Indeed, about ten little sluts aged thirteen to fifteen waited by one of the stairs to the podium, wiggling and emitting little cries. After a spectacular musical gimmick, a tall black man dressed like a circus chimp bounded onto the podium and invited the girls to come up one by one. “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,” he shouted in English into his HF microphone, “welcome to the ‘Miss Bikini’ contest! Have we got some sexy girls for you today!” He turned to the first girl, a leggy red-haired teenager sporting a minimal white bikini. “What’s your name?” he asked her. “Ilona,” the girl replied. “A beautiful name for a beautiful girl!” he shouted with gusto. “And where are you from, Ilona?” She came from Budapest. “Budaaaa-pest! That city’s ho-ooot!” he roared with enthusiasm; the girl burst into nervous laughter. He moved on to the next girl, a platinum-blond Russian, very curvaceous in spite of her fourteen years, who looked a right tart, then he asked each of the others a couple of questions, bounding around and puffing out his chest in his silver lamé smoking jacket, making essentially more and more obscene remarks. I threw a despairing look at Vincent: he was as much at home in this seaside spectacle as Samuel Beckett in a rap video. Having gone through all the girls, the black man turned toward four paunchy sixtysomethings, seated behind a small table, notebooks in front of them, and made a great show of pointing them out to the public: “And judging the-eem…is our international jury!…The four members of our panel have been around the world a few times—that’s the least you can say! They know what sexy boys and girls look like! Ladies and gentlemen, a special hand for our experts!” There was some weak applause, during which the ridiculed seniors waved to their families in the audience, then the competition began in earnest: one after the other, the girls took to the stage, in their bikinis, to do a sort of erotic dance: they wiggled their bottoms, smeared themselves with suntan oil, played with their bra straps, etc. The music was house, played at full volume. And so, that was it: we were in the
normal world.
I thought again of what Isabelle had told me on our first evening together: a world of definitive
kids.
The black man was an adult
kid,
the members of the jury aging
kids;
there was nothing here that might actually encourage Vincent to return to his place in society. I suggested that we leave at the point when the Russian girl began stuffing her hand down her bikini bottom; he accepted with indifference.