Free The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq

youth and age (abortion and, some decades later, euthanasia) would become the battleground for different and radically antagonistic worldviews.
    The agnosticism at the heart of the French republic would facilitate the progressive, hypocritical and slightly sinister triumph of the materialist worldview. Though never overtly discussed, the question of the
value
of human life would nonetheless continue to preoccupy people’s minds. It would be true to say that in the last years of Western civilization it contributed to a general mood of depression bordering on masochism.
    For Bruno, who had just recently turned eighteen, the summer of 1974 was a significant, possibly crucial period in his life. Years later it would recur in sessions with his psychiatrist, who seemed to enjoy the story immensely. Sometimes Bruno altered or refined the details, but this is his standard version:
    “It was the end of July. I was staying on the coast with my mother for a week. The house was full of people coming and going. My mother was sleeping with some Canadian guy at the time — young, built like a lumberjack. The day I was supposed to leave, I got up early. It was already pretty hot. I went into her room. They were still asleep. I hesitated for a second or two and then I pulled the sheet off them. My mother moved and for a minute I thought she was going to open her eyes; her thighs parted slightly. I knelt down in front of her vagina. I brought my hand up close—a couple of centimeters away—but I didn’t dare touch her. Then I went outside and jerked off. There’d always been cats hanging around the house, mostly strays. A black cat lay sunning itself on a rock. The land around the house was stony and white, a merciless white. The cat looked over at me from time to time while I was whacking off, but closed its eyes just before I came.
    “I bent down and picked up a rock. The cat’s skull shattered and some of its brains spurted out. I covered the body with a pile of stones and went back inside. There was still nobody awake. Later that morning, driving me back to my father’s house about fifty kilometers away, my mother talked to me about di Meola for the first time. Apparently, he’d left California four years earlier and had bought a big place on the hills of Ventoux near Avignon. In the summer he took in young people from all over Europe and America. She thought maybe I could go there one summer; she said it would broaden my horizons. According to her, di Meola’s commune wasn’t a cult, it simply passed on the teachings of the Brahman. Di Meola knew a lot about cybernetics and communication skills and used deprogramming techniques he’d developed at Esalen. It was all about liberating the individual’s innate potential—‘Because we only use ten percent of our brain, you know.’ ”
    “Anyway,” said Jane as they drove through the pine forests, “there’d be kids your own age there. It would be good for you. We all thought you were pretty hung up about sex while you were here this summer.”
    The Western concept of sexuality was perverse and unnatural, she went on. In many primitive societies, sexual initiation was a natural thing that took place early in adolescence under the supervision of the tribal elders. “I am your mother,” she stressed. She did not mention that she had initiated di Meola’s son David in 1963. David was thirteen at the time. In the first encounter, she had undressed in front of him and encouraged him to masturbate. The second afternoon, she had masturbated him and sucked him off. On the third and final afternoon, he had been able to penetrate her. Jane had pleasant memories of it; the young boy’s rock-hard cock never seemed to go down, even after he had come several times. It was probably this experience which converted her to young men. “Of course,” she went on, “the initiation should always take place outside of the immediate family—that’s very important. It opens the world up