Michel Houellebecq - Whatever

Whatever

A Novel

Michel Houellebecq

First published in French as Extension du domaine de la lutte in 1994

The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.

• Romans XIII, 12

Friday evening I was invited to a party at a colleague from works house. There were thirty-odd of us, all middle management aged between twenty-five and forty. At a certain moment some stupid bitch started removing her clothes. She took off her T-shirt, then her bra, then her skirt, and as she did she pulled the most incredible faces. She twirled around in her skimpy panties for a few seconds more and then, not knowing what else to do, began getting dressed again. Shes a girl, whats more, who doesnt sleep with anyone. Which only underlines the absurdity of her behaviour.

After my forth vodka I started feeling pretty groggy and had to go and stretch out on a pile of cushions behind the couch. A bit later two girls came and sat down on this same couch. Nothing beautiful about this pair, the frumps of the department in fact. Theyre going to have dinner together and they read books about the development of language in children, that kind of thing.

They got straight down to discussing the days big news, about how one of the girls on the staff had come to work in a really mini miniskirt that barely covered her ass.

And what did they make of it all? They thought it was great. Their silhouettes came out as bizarrely enlarged Chinese shadows on the wall above me. Their voices appeared to come from on high, a bit like the Holy Ghosts. I wasnt doing at all well, that much was clear.

They went on trotting out the platitudes for a good fifteen minutes. How she had the perfect right to dress as she wished, how this had nothing to do with wanting to seduce the men, how it was just to be comfortable, to feel good about herself, etc. The last dismaying dregs of the collapse of feminism. At a certain moment I even uttered the words aloud: the last dismaying dregs of the collapse of feminism. But they didnt hear me.

Me too, Id clocked this girl. It was difficult not to. Come to that even the head of department had a hard-on.

I fell asleep before the end of the discussion, but had a horrible dream. The two frumps were arm-in-arm in the corridor that bisects the department, and they were kicking out their legs and singing at the top of their voices:

If I go around bare-assed,

It isnt to seduce you!

If I show my hairy legs

Its because I want to!

The girl in the miniskirt was in a doorway, but this time she was dressed in a long black robe, mysterious and sober. She was watching them and smiling. On her shoulders was perched a giant parrot, which represented the head of department. From time to time she stroked the feathers on its belly with a negligent but expert hand.

On waking I realized Id thrown up on the moquette. The party was coming to an end. I concealed the vomit under a pile of cushions, then got up to try and get home. It was then that I found Id lost my car keys.

Amid the Marcels

The next day but one was a Sunday. I went back to the area, but my car remained elusive. The fact was I couldnt remember where Id parked it. Every street looked to be the one. The Rue Marcel-Sembat, Rue Marcel-Dassault there were a lot of Marcels about. Rectangular buildings with people living in them. A violent feeling of identity. But where was my car?

Walking up and down these Marcels I was gradually overcome by a certain weariness in relation to cars and worldly goods. Since buying it, my Puegeot 104 had given me nothing but trouble: endless and barely comprehensible repairs, slight bumps To be sure, the other drivers feign coolness, get out their nice official papers, say OK, no problem, but deep down theyre throwing you looks full of hatred; its most unpleasant.

And then, if you really wanted to think about it, I was getting to work on the mtro; I rarely left for the weekend anymore, having no where I wanted to go; for my holidays I was mainly opting for the organized kind, the club resort now and then. What goods this car? I repeated impatiently while marching along the Rue mile-Landrin.

It was only, however, on arriving at the Avenue Ferdinand-Buisson that the idea occurred to me of putting in a claim for theft. Lots of cars get stolen these days, especially in the inner suburbs; the story would be understood and readily accepted by both the insurance company and my colleagues at the office. Anyway, how was I going to say Id lost my car? Id pass for a practical joker, right off, a fruitcake or weirdo even; this was extremely unwise. Joking about such matters is not the done thing; this is how reputations are made, friendships formed or broken. I know life, Ive grown accustomed to it. Saying youve lost your car is tantamount to being struck off the social register; lets definitely talk theft, then.

Later that evening my loneliness became tangible, painfully so. On the kitchen table were strewn sheets of paper, slightly spotted with the remains of a Saupiquet tuna la catalane. These were notes relating to a story about animals; animal fiction is a literary genre like any other, may be superior to the others; be that as it may, I write animal stories. This one was called Dialogues Between a Cow and a Filly ; a meditation on ethics, you might say; it had been inspired by a short business trip to Brittany. Heres a key passage from it:

Let us first consider the Breton cow: all year round she thinks of nothing but grazing, her glossy muzzle ascends and descends with impressive regularity, and no shudder of anguish comes to trouble the wistful gaze of her light-brown eyes. All that is as it ought to be, and even appears to indicate a profound existential oneness, a decidedly enviable identity between her being-in-the-world and her being-in-itself. Alas, in this instance the philosopher is found wanting, and his conclusions, while based on a correct and profound intuition, will be rendered invalid if he has not previously taken the trouble of gathering documentary evidence from the naturalist. In fact the Breton cows nature is duplicitous. At certain times of the year (precisely determined by the inexorable functioning of genetic programming) an astonishing revolution takes place in her being. Her mooing becomes more strident, prolonged, its very harmonic texture modified to the point of recalling at times, and astonishingly so, certain groans which escape the sons of men. Her movements become more rapid, more nervous, from time to time she breaks into a trot. It is not simply her muzzle, though it seems, in its glossy regularity, conceived for reflecting the abiding presence of a mineral passivity, which contracts and twitches under the painful effect of an assuredly powerful desire .

The key to the riddle is extremely simple, and it is that what the Breton cow desires (thus demonstrating, and she must be given credit here, her lifes one desire) is, as the breeders say in their cynical parlance, to get stuffed. And stuff her they do, more or less directly; the artificial insemination syringe can in effect, whatever the cost in certain emotional complications, take the place of the bulls penis in performing this function. In both cases the cow calms down and returns to her original state of earnest meditation, except that a few months later she will give birth to an adorable little calf. Which, let it be said in passing, means profit for the breeder.

The breeder, of course, symbolized God. Moved by an irrational sympathy for the filly, he promised her, starting from the next chapter, the everlasting delight of numerous stallions, while the cow, guilty of the sin of pride, was to be gradually condemned to the dismal pleasures of artificial fertilization. The pathetic mooing of the ruminant would prove incapable of swaying the judgment of the Great Architect. A delegation of sheep, formed in solidarity, had no better luck. The God presented in this short story was not, one observes, a merciful God.