Free Submission by Michel Houellebecq Page A

still existed, certainly, but because he moved in literary circles he never met them. The university wasn’t much better, to tell the truth. Take Myriam, for example. Could she turn herself into a good little cook over the years? I was pondering the question when my mobile phone rang, and oddly enough it was her. I stammered in surprise, I’d never actually expected her to call. I looked over at the alarm clock, it was already 6 p.m. I’d been so absorbed in my reading, I’d forgotten to eat. On the other hand, I also noticed that I’d practically finished my second bottle of wine.
    ‘I thought we …’ She hesitated. ‘I thought we might get together tomorrow.’
    ‘Really …?’
    ‘Tomorrow’s your birthday. Did you forget?’
    ‘Yes. Yes, to tell the truth, I’d forgotten all about it.’
    ‘And also …’ She hesitated again. ‘There’s something I have to tell you. And it would be good to see you, too.’

Saturday, 21 May
     
    I woke at four in the morning. After Myriam had called, I’d finished
En ménage
, the book was indisputably a masterpiece, I’d hardly got three hours of sleep. The woman Huysmans looked for all his life he had already described when he was twenty-seven or -eight, in
Marthe
, his first novel, published in Brussels in 1876. He wanted a good little cook who could also turn herself into a whore, and he wanted this on a fixed schedule. It didn’t seem so hard, turning into a whore, it seemed easier than making a good béarnaise, yet he sought this woman in vain. For the moment, I wasn’t doing much better. It’s not that I minded turning forty-four, it was just another birthday, except that Huysmans was forty-four years old, exactly, when he found God. From 12 July to 20 July, 1892, he paid his first visit to Igny Abbey, in the Marne. On 14 July he made confession, after much hesitation, which hesitation he scrupulously recounts in
En route
. On 15 July, for the first time since he was a boy, he took communion.
    While I was writing my dissertation on Huysmans, I’d spent a week at Ligugé Abbey, where he eventually took lay orders, and another week at Igny Abbey. Although Igny was completely destroyed during the First World War, my stay there had been a great help to me. The decor and the furniture, modernised of course, had retained the same simplicity, the nakedness that impressed Huysmans, and the daily schedule of the various prayers and offices was unchanged, from the Angelus at four in the morning to the Salve Regina at night. Meals were taken in silence, which was very restful after the university cafeteria; and I remembered that the monks made chocolate and macaroons. Their handiwork, recommended by the Petit Futé, could be found all over France.
    I could easily understand how someone might be attracted to the monastic life, even though I didn’t see things the way Huysmans did, at all. I couldn’t share the disgust he claimed to feel for the carnal passions. I couldn’t even make sense of it. Generally speaking, my body was the seat of various painful afflictions – headaches, rashes, toothaches, haemorrhoids – that followed one after another, without interruption, and almost never left me in peace – and I was only forty-four! What would it be like when I was fifty, sixty, older? I’d be no more than a jumble of organs in slow decomposition, my life an unending torment, grim, joyless and mean. When you got right down to it, my cock was the one organ that hadn’t presented itself to my consciousness through pain, only through pleasure. Modest but robust, it had always served me faithfully. Or, you could argue, I had served it – if so, its yoke had been easy. It never gave me orders. It sometimes encouraged me to get out more, but it encouraged me humbly, without bitterness or anger. This past evening, I knew, it had interceded on Myriam’s behalf. It had always enjoyed good relations with Myriam, Myriam had always treated it with affection and respect, and