Free Whatever: a novel by Michel Houellebecq Page A

adolescent males passing within a radius of fifty metres. And this, let it be noted, in the very midst of an activity both eminently sportive and familial in character.

    'Her little stratagem was not, moreover, without producing its effect, as I was quick to realize; drawing near to her, the boys were rolling their shoulders, and the cadenced scissoring of their gait was slowing to a noteworthy degree. Turning her head towards them with a lively movement which provoked in her hair a temporary dishevelment not denuded of a saucy grace, she then bestowed upon the most interesting of her victims a fleeting smile immediately contradicted by a no less charming movement aimed this time at hitting the shuttlecock dead centre.

    'And so I found myself returning once again to a subject of meditation which for years has not ceased haunting my thoughts: why, having once attained a certain age, do boys and girls reciprocally pass their time in flirting and seducing each other?

    'Certain people will say, in a charming voice, "It is the awakening of sexual desire, no more no less, that is all." I understand this point of view; I have myself long shared it. It can pride itself in mobilizing on its side the multiple lineaments of thought which intersect, as translucid jelly, at our ideological horizon as well as in the robust centripetal force of good sense. It might, then, seem audacious, even suicidal, to run smack into its incontrovertible premises. This I shall not do. I am very far, in fact, from seeking to deny the existence and the strength of sexual desire in adolescent humans. Tortoises themselves feel it and do not venture, in these troubled times, to importune their young master. It nonetheless remains a fact that certain grave and concordant indices, like a rosary of strange facts, have progressively led me to suppose the existence of a more profound and more hidden force, a veritable existential nodosity from whence desire would arise. I have not, hitherto, personally informed anyone of this, so as not to dissipate in idle chatter the credit for mental health that men have generally accorded me during the time of our relations. But my conviction has now taken shape, and it is time to speak out.

    'Example number 1. Let us consider a group of young people who are together of an evening, or indeed on holiday in Bulgaria. Among these young people there exists a previously formed couple; let us call the boy François and the girl Françoise. We will have before us a concrete, banal and easily observable example.

    'Let us abandon these young people to their amusing activities, but before that let us clip from their actual experience a number of aleatory temporal segments which we will film with the aid of a high-speed camera concealed in the environs. It is apparent from a series of measurements that Françoise and François will spend around 37% of their time in kissing and canoodling, in short in bestowing marks of the greatest reciprocal tenderness.

    'Let us now repeat the experiment in annulling the aforesaid social environment, which is to say that Françoise and François will be alone. The percentage drops straightaway to 17%.

    'Example number 2. I wish to speak to you now of a poor young girl whose name was Brigitte Bardot. Yes, it's true. In my sixth-form class there really was a girl called Bardot, since her father was called thus. I have looked up various information on him: he was a scrap merchant from near Trilport. His wife was not working; she stayed at home. These people hardly ever went to the cinema, I am persuaded they didn't call her by this name deliberately; perhaps for the first few years they were even amused by the coincidence ... It is difficult to say.

    'At the time I knew her, in the bloom of her seventeen years, Brigitte Bardot was truly repulsive. First of all she was extremely fat, a porker and even a super-porker, with abundant rolls of fat gracelessly disposed at the intersections of her obese