Free Whatever: a novel by Michel Houellebecq Page B

body. Yet had she followed a slimming diet of the most frightening severity for twenty-five years her fate would not have been markedly improved. Because her skin was blotchy, puffy, and acned. And her face was wide, flat and round, with little deep-set eyes, and straggly, lustreless hair. Indeed, the comparison with a sow forced itself on everyone in an inevitable and natural way.

    'She had no girlfriends, and obviously no boyfriends. She was therefore completely alone. Nobody addressed a word to her, not even during a physics test; they would always prefer to address themselves to someone else. She came to classes then returned home; never did I hear it said that someone might have seen her other than at school.

    'During classes certain people sat next to her; they got used to her massive presence. They didn't notice her and neither did they poke fun at her. She didn't participate in discussions in the philosophy class; she didn't participate in anything at all. She wouldn't have been more tranquil on the planet Mars.

    'I suppose her parents must have loved her. What would she do of an evening, after getting home? Because surely she must have had a room, with a bed, and some teddies dating from her childhood. She must have watched the telly with her parents. A dark room, and three beings united by the photonic flux; such is the image I have.

    'As for Sundays, I can well imagine the immediate family welcoming her with feigned cordiality. And her cousins, probably pretty. A depressing thought.

    'Did she have fantasies, and if so which? Romantic ones à la Barbara Cartland? I find it hard to believe that she might have somehow imagined, be it only in a dream, that a young man of good family pursuing his studies in medicine would one day nourish the prospect of taking her in his open-top car to visit the abbeys of the Normandy coast. Unless, perhaps, she were previously provident with a penitent's hood, so lending a mysterious edge to the adventure.

    'Her hormonal mechanisms must have functioned normally, there's no reason to suppose otherwise. And then? Does that suffice for having erotic fantasies? Did she imagine masculine hands lingering between the folds of her obese belly? Descending as far as her sexual parts? I turn to medicine and medicine can afford me no answer. There are many things concerning Bardot I have not managed to elucidate. I have tried.

    'I didn't go as far as sleeping with her. I merely took the first steps along the path which normally leads to this. To be exact, I began at the beginning of November to speak to her, a few words at the end of class, nothing more than this for a whole fortnight. And then, on two or three occasions I asked her for explanations on such and such a point of mathematics; all this with great prudence, and without drawing attention to myself. Around mid-December I began to touch her hand, in a seemingly accidental way. Each time she reacted as if to an electric shock. It was rather impressive.

    'The culminating point of our relations was attained just before Christmas, when I again accompanied her to her train (in reality a rail-car). As the station was more than eight hundred metres away this was no mean feat; I was even spotted on this occasion. In class I was generally taken to be a rather weird person, so this in fact only did limited harm to my social image.

    'That evening, in the middle of the platform, I kissed her on the cheek. I did not kiss her on the mouth. What is more I think that paradoxically she would not have permitted this, since even if her lips and her tongue had never ever known the experience of contact with a masculine tongue she nonetheless had a very precise idea of the time and place when this operation ought to take place within the archetypal unfolding of adolescent flirting, I would even say that a more precise idea than the latter had never had occasion to be rectified and assuaged by the fluid vapour of the lived instant.

    'Immediately