The Possibility of an Island (9 page)

This figure was the result of a long evolution, scarcely begun at the time of Daniel1, when the average age at death was much higher, and suicide by old people was still infrequent. The now-ugly, deteriorated bodies of the elderly were, however, already the object of unanimous disgust, and it was undoubtedly the heat wave of summer 2003, which was particularly deadly in France, that provoked the first consciousness of the phenomenon. “The Death March of the Elderly” was the headline in
Libération
on the day after the first figures became known—more than ten thousand people, in the space of two weeks, had died in the country; some had died alone in their apartments, others in the hospital or in retirement homes, but all had essentially died because of a lack of care. In the weeks that followed, that same newspaper published a series of atrocious reports, illustrated with photos that were reminiscent of concentration camps, relating the agony of old people crammed into communal rooms, naked on their beds, in diapers, moaning all day without anyone coming to rehydrate them or even to give them a glass of water; describing the rounds made by nurses unable to contact the families who were on vacation, regularly gathering up the corpses to make space for new arrivals. “Scenes unworthy of a modern country,” wrote the journalist, without realizing that they were in fact the proof that France was
becoming
a modern country, that only an authentically modern country was capable of treating old people purely as rubbish, and that such contempt for one’s ancestors would have been inconceivable in Africa, or in a traditional Asian country.

The obligatory indignation aroused by these images quickly faded, and the development of active euthanasia—or, increasingly often, active voluntary euthanasia—would, in the course of the following decades, solve the problem.

It was recommended to humans, wherever possible, that they end up with a
complete
life story, before they died, in accordance with the belief, widespread at the time, that the last moments of life might be accompanied by some kind of
revelation.
The example cited most often was that of Marcel Proust, whose first reflex upon sensing death’s approach was to rush to the manuscript of
Remembrance of Things Past
in order to note his impressions of dying.

Very few, in practice, had this courage.

Daniel1, 8

All in all, Barnaby, we would need a powerful ship, with a thrust of three hundred kilotons. Then we could escape the Earth’s gravity and make for the satellites of Jupiter.

—Captain Clark

PREPARATION, FILMING,
post-production, a limited promotional tour (
Two Flies Later
had been released simultaneously in most of the European capitals, but I restricted myself to France and Germany): in all, I had stayed away from home for just over a year. The first surprise awaited me at the Almería airport: a compact group of around fifty people, massed behind the barriers at the exit, were brandishing diaries, T-shirts, and posters of the film. I already knew this much from the early viewing figures: the movie, which had modest takings in Paris, had been a hit in Madrid—as well as, I might add, in London, Rome, and Berlin; I had become a star in Europe.

Once the group had dispersed, I noticed Isabelle, on a seat at the back of the arrivals hall. That too was a shock. Dressed in trousers and a shapeless T-shirt, she screwed up her eyes in my direction with a mixture of fear and shame. When I was a few meters away from her she began to cry, the tears streamed down her cheeks without her trying to wipe them away. She had put on at least twenty kilos. Even her face, this time, had not been spared: puffy and blotchy, her hair greasy and unkempt, she looked awful.

Obviously Fox was overjoyed, jumped in the air, licked my face for a good quarter of an hour; I sensed easily that that was not going to be enough. She refused to undress in my presence, and reappeared dressed in a flannelette tracksuit that she wore to bed. In the taxi from the airport, we did not exchange a word. Empty bottles of Cointreau were scattered on the bedroom floor; that said, the house had been tidied.

In the course of my career, I had blathered enough about the opposition between eroticism and tenderness, and I had played the roles of all the characters: the girl who goes to gang bangs and yet seeks a very chaste, refined, and sisterly relationship with the true love of her life; the half-impotent simpleton who accepts her; the gangbanger who takes advantage. Consummation, forgetting, misery. I had made entire theaters laugh their heads off with these kinds of themes; and they had earned me considerable sums of money. Nevertheless, this time they concerned me directly, and this opposition between eroticism and tenderness appeared to me as it really is: one of the worst examples of bullshit of our time, one of those that sign, definitively, the death warrant of civilization. “The laughing’s over, you little bugger…,” I repeated to myself with disturbing gaiety (because at that time the sentence turned over and over in my head, I couldn’t stop it, eighteen tablets of Atarax made no difference, and I ended up resorting to a pastis-Tranxene cocktail). “But the one who loves someone for her beauty, does he love her? No: for the pox, which will kill beauty without killing the person, will make him stop loving her.” Pascal did not know Cointreau. It is also true that, living in a time when bodies were less on show, he overestimated the importance of the beauty of the face. The worst part of it is that it was not her beauty, in the first place, that I had found attractive in Isabelle: intelligent women have always turned me on. To tell the truth, intelligence is not very useful in sexual intercourse, and it serves really only one purpose: to know at which moment you should put your hand on a man’s cock in a public place. All men like this; it’s the monkey’s sense of domination, residual traces of that kind of thing, and it would be stupid not to realize it; the only issue is the choice of the time, and the place. Some men prefer that the indecent gesture be witnessed by a woman; others, probably those who are a little gay or very dominant, prefer it to be another man; others still find nothing pleases them as much as a couple giving them a complicit look. Some prefer trains, others swimming pools, others nightclubs or bars; an intelligent woman knows this. Anyway, I still had good memories of being with Isabelle. At the end of each night I could conjure up sweeter and quasi-nostalgic thoughts; at this point, at my side, she would be snoring like a cow. Dawn approached, and I realized that these memories, also, would vanish quite quickly; it was then that I opted for the pastis-Tranxene cocktail.

On the practical level, there was no immediate problem: we had seventeen bedrooms. I moved into one of those overlooking the cliffs and the sea; Isabelle, apparently, preferred to contemplate inland. Fox went from room to room, it amused him a lot; he suffered no more from it than a child from the divorce of his parents, rather less, I’d say.

Could things continue in this way for a long time? Well, unfortunately, yes. During my absence, I had received 732 faxes (and I must acknowledge, there too, that Isabelle had regularly changed the paper tray); I could spend the rest of my days running from one festival invitation to the next. From time to time, I’d stop by: a little caress for Fox, a little bit of Tranxene, and Bob’s your uncle. For the moment, however, I was in need of a complete rest. I therefore went to the beach, on my own, obviously—I wanked a little on the terrace while ogling naked teenage girls (I too had bought a telescope, but it wasn’t for looking at the stars, ha ha ha); in short, I was muddling through. I muddled more or less well; although, all the same, I almost threw myself off the cliff three times in two weeks.

I revisited Harry, and he was on form; Truman, however, had aged. We were invited again to dinner, this time in the company of a Belgian couple who had just settled in the region. Harry had introduced the man as a
Belgian philosopher.
In reality, after completing his doctorate in philosophy, he had passed the civil service exam, then led the dreary life of a tax inspector (with conviction, however, for, as a socialist supporter, he believed in the benefits of high taxation). He had published, here and there, a few philosophical articles in journals of a materialist bent. His wife, a sort of gnome with short white hair, had also spent her life as a tax inspector. Oddly, she believed in astrology, and insisted on doing my horoscope. I was Pisces with Gemini in the ascendant, but for all I fucking cared I could well have been Poodle with Mechanical Digger in the ascendant, ha ha ha. This witty remark won me the esteem of the philosopher, who liked to smirk at his wife’s fads—they had been married for thirty-three years. He, for his own part, had always fought obscurantism; he came from a very Catholic family, and this, he assured me, with a little quaver in his voice, had been a great obstacle to his sexual development. “Who
are
these people? Who
are
these people?” I repeated to myself in despair as I fiddled with my herrings. (When he became nostalgic for his native Mecklenburg, Harry bought his food in a German supermarket in Almería.) Evidently, the two gnomes had not had any sex life, other than, perhaps, one that was vaguely procreative (subsequent events, in fact, were to reveal that they had begotten a son); they simply did not belong to that group of people who have access to sexuality. This did not prevent them from becoming indignant, criticizing the pope, bemoaning an AIDS virus that they would never have the chance to catch; all this made me feel like dying, but I restrained myself.

Fortunately Harry intervened, and the conversation was raised to more transcendent subjects (the stars, infinity, etc.), which allowed me to tuck into my plate of sausages without trembling. Naturally, there too the materialist and the Teilhardian were in disagreement—I became conscious at that moment that they must have met up with each other often, drawing pleasure from this exchange, and that this could go on for thirty years, to their mutual satisfaction. We got onto the subject of death. After having fought all his life for a sexual liberation he had never experienced, Robert the Belgian now fought for euthanasia—which he had, on the contrary, every chance of experiencing. “And the soul? What about the soul?” gasped Harry. All in all, their little double-act was running smoothly; Truman fell asleep at about the same time as me.

Hildegarde’s harp brought everyone into harmony. Ah yes, music; especially when the volume is down. There wasn’t even material here for a sketch, I told myself. I could no longer laugh at the idiotic militants of immorality, at the kind of remark: “It is, all the same, more pleasant to be virtuous when you have access to vice,” no, I couldn’t. Nor could I laugh anymore at the terrible distress of cellulite-ridden fiftysomething women, and their unfulfilled desire for passionate love; nor at the handicapped child they had succeeded in procreating by half raping an autistic man (“David is my sunshine”). All in all, I couldn’t laugh at anything anymore; I had reached the end of my career, that was clear.

There was no lovemaking, that evening, as we went home through the dunes. We had to put an end to it all, however, and a few days later Isabelle announced her decision to leave. “I don’t want to be a burden,” she said. “I wish you all the happiness you deserve,” she said as well—and I still wonder to this day if it was a bitchy remark.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“Go back to my mother’s, I suppose…it’s what women generally do in my situation, no?”

It was the only moment, the only one, when she let a little bitterness show. I knew that her father had left her mother, ten years before, for a younger woman; the phenomenon was certainly becoming more widespread, but of course, there was nothing new about it.

We behaved like a civilized couple. In all, I had earned forty-two million euros. Isabelle was happy with half of our assets, and she did not demand any compensation. This still added up to seven million euros; she wouldn’t be joining the ranks of the poor.

“You could do a bit of sex tourism…,” I proposed. “In Cuba, there are some very nice men.”

She smiled and nodded. “They prefer Soviet queers…,” she said lightheartedly, furtively imitating the style of my glory days. Then she became serious again and looked me straight in the eye (it was a very still morning; the sea was blue and slack).

“Have you still not fucked any whores?” she asked.

“No.”

“Well, me neither. So,” she continued, “you haven’t fucked for two years?”

“No.”

“Well, me neither.”

Oh, we were little darlings, sentimental little darlings; and it was going to kill us.