The Map and the Territory (13 page)

He went outside and came back five minutes later, just as the waiter was bringing their dishes. He attacked his lamb biryani with gusto, but looked suspiciously at Jed’s course. “I’m sure they’ve put mint sauce on your gigot,” he commented. “You can’t do anything about that, it’s the English influence. Yet the English also colonized Pakistan. But here it’s worse, they’ve become mixed with the natives.” His cigarette had obviously done him some good. “It counts a lot, for you, this exhibition, no?” he continued.

“Yes, enormously. I’ve the impression that since I began my series of professions, no one understands where I’m coming from anymore. On the pretext that I practice painting on canvas, and even the particularly dated form that is oil painting, I’m always classified in a sort of movement that preaches for a return to painting, when in fact I don’t know these people and I don’t feel the slightest affinity with them.”

“Is there a return to painting at the moment?”

“More or less. Well, it’s one of the trends. Return to painting, or to sculpture, well, let’s say return to the object. But in my view, it’s above all for commercial reasons. An object is easier to store and resell than an installation or a performance. In truth, I’ve never done performance art, but I feel like I might have something in common with that. From one painting to another, I try to construct an artificial, symbolic space where I can depict situations that have a meaning for the group.”

“It’s a bit like what theater tries to do as well. Except that you’re not obsessed with the body … I must admit I find that comes as a relief.”

“And anyway, it’s a bit passé, this obsession with the body. Well, not yet at the theater, but in the visual arts, yes. What I do, in any case, is situated entirely in the social.”

“Okay, I see … I now almost see what I can do. You need the text for when?”

“The opening of the exhibition is scheduled for May; we’d need the text of the catalogue by the end of March. That gives you two months.”

“It’s not much time.”

“It doesn’t have to be very long. Five or ten pages, that would be very good. If you want to do more, you can, of course.”

“I’m going to try … Well, it’s my fault, I should’ve replied to your e-mails before.”

“As remuneration, as I told you, we’ve budgeted for ten thousand euros. Franz, my gallerist, told me that I could, instead, offer you a painting, but I’m a bit uncomfortable with that, as it would be delicate for you to refuse. So,
a priori
, we’ll say ten thousand euros; but if you prefer a painting, it’s a deal.”

“A painting,” Houellebecq said pensively. “Well, I have walls to hang it on. It’s the only thing I really have, in my life: walls.”

At midday, Jed had to check out of his hotel, and his flight for Paris didn’t leave until 7:10 that evening. Although it was a Sunday, the neighboring shopping center was open; he bought a bottle of local whisky—the cashier was called Magda and asked him if he had the Dunnes Stores loyalty card. He hung around for a few minutes in the sparklingly clean alleys, coming across groups of youths who were going to a fast-food restaurant or a video-games room. After an orange-kiwi-strawberry fruit juice at Ronnie’s Rocket, he felt he knew enough about the Skycourt Shopping Center and ordered a taxi for the airport; it was just after one o’clock.

The Estuary Café had the same qualities of sobriety and size that he’d noticed in the rest of the edifice: the rectangular tables, made of dark wood, were spaced far apart, much more than in most luxury restaurants today; they had been designed so that six people could sit there comfortably. Jed then remembered that the 1950s had also been the time of the baby boom.

He ordered low-fat coleslaw and a chicken korma, and sat down at one of the tables, accompanying his meal with small sips of whisky while studying the schedule of flights departing from Shannon Airport. No capitals of Western Europe were served, with the exception of Paris and London, respectively by Air France and British Airways. However,
there were no fewer than six flights bound for Spain and the Canary Islands: Alicante, Girona, Fuerteventura, Málaga, Reus, and Tenerife. All of these flights were Ryanair. The low-cost company also served six destinations in Poland: Krakow, Gdansk, Katowice, Łódź, Warsaw, and Wrocław. The previous evening, over dinner, Houellebecq had told him that there was an enormous number of Polish immigrants in Ireland. It was the country they preferred above all others, no doubt because of its reputation—long since weakened, it must be said—as a sanctuary of Catholicism. Thus free-market economics redrew the geography of the world in terms of the expectations of the clientele, whether the latter moved to indulge in tourism or to earn a living. The flat, isometric surface of the map was substituted by an abnormal topography where Shannon was closer to Katowice than to Brussels, to Fuerteventura than to Madrid. For France, the two airports used by Ryanair were Beauvais and Carcassonne. Were they two particularly touristy destinations? Or did they become touristy for the simple reason that Ryanair had chosen them? Meditating on power and the topology of the world, Jed dozed off.

He was in the middle of a white, apparently limitless space. No horizon could be made out, the matte-white floor merging, very far away, with an identically colored sky. On the surface of the floor could be seen, irregularly arranged from place to place, blocks of text with black letters forming a slightly raised relief; each of the blocks could include about fifty words. Jed then realized that he was standing in a book, and wondered if this book told the story of his life. Looking down at the blocks he encountered as he walked, he had the impression this was the case: he recognized names like Olga and Geneviève; but no precise information could be drawn from any of them, most of the words having been erased or angrily crossed out, indecipherable, and new names appeared that meant nothing to him. No temporal direction could be defined, either: progressing in a straight line, he encountered several times the name of Geneviève, reappearing after Olga’s. While he was certain, absolutely certain, that he would never have occasion to see Geneviève again, Olga, perhaps, was still part of his future.

He was woken by the loudspeakers announcing boarding for the flight to Paris. On arriving in the boulevard de l’Hôpital, he telephoned Houellebecq—who again answered almost immediately.

“So there you are,” Jed said. “I’ve had a think. Rather than offering you a painting I would like to do your portrait and give it to you as a gift.”

Then he waited: at the end of the line, Houellebecq stayed silent. Jed creased his eyes: the lighting in the studio was brutal. In the center of the room, the floor was still strewn with the ripped remains of
Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons Dividing Up the Art Market
. As the silence lengthened, he added: “That wouldn’t put into question your remuneration: that would come on top of the ten thousand euros. I really want to do your portrait. I’ve never painted a writer, so I feel I have to do it.”

Houellebecq was still saying nothing, and Jed began to worry; then finally, after at least three minutes’ silence, in a voice terribly slurred by alcohol, he replied: “I don’t know. I don’t feel capable of posing for hours.”

“Ah, but that’s not important! Sittings are all in the past, no one agrees to them anymore. People are overbooked or imagine or pretend they are, I don’t know, but I know absolutely no one who would agree to stay still for an hour. No, if I do your portrait I’ll come back and visit you, and take photos. Lots of photos: general pictures but also of the place where you work, the tools of your trade. And also detailed shots of your hands, the grain of your skin. Then I’ll use all that back here.”

“Okay,” the author replied unenthusiastically. “It’s a deal.”

“Is there a day or a particular week when you’re free?”

“Not really. Most of the time I do nothing. Call me when you intend to come. Good night.”

The following morning, very early, Jed phoned Franz, who reacted enthusiastically and proposed that he come to the gallery straightaway. Jed had rarely seen him so excited.

“Now we can really put on something … And I guarantee you that it’ll make some noise. We can already choose the press officer. I’d thought of Marylin Prigent.”

“Marylin?”

“Do you know her?”

“Yes, she was the one who looked after my first exhibition. I remember her well.”

Curiously, Marylin had rather sorted herself out with age. She had slimmed down a bit, and had her hair cut very short—with dull and flat hair like hers, she said, it was the only thing to do. She had ended up following the advice of women’s magazines—she was dressed in very close-fitting trousers and a leather jacket; altogether she had the fake lesbian-intellectual look which might seduce boys with a rather passive temperament. In fact, she looked a bit like the novelist Christine Angot—but a bit nicer all the same. And then, above all, she had managed to get rid of the quasi-permanent sniffling that had so characterized her.

“That took me years,” she said. “I spent my holidays following cures in all the thermal resorts you can imagine, but I finally found a treatment. Once a week I do inhalations of sulphur, and that works; well, up to now it hasn’t returned.”

Her voice itself was stronger, clearer, and she now spoke of her sex life with a candor that was astonishing to Jed. As Franz complimented her on her tan, she replied that she had just come back from her winter holidays in Jamaica. “I fucked my brains out,” she added. “Christ, those guys are superb.” Jed raised his eyebrows in surprise; but, already changing the subject, she had taken out of her handbag—an elegant bag now, an Hermès, in tawny leather—a big blue spiral-bound notebook.

“No, that’s something that hasn’t changed,” she told Jed with a smile. “Still no PDA … But I’ve modernized a little all the same.” She took from her inside jacket pocket a memory stick. “On there you have all the scanned articles on your Michelin exhibition. That’ll help us a lot.” Franz nodded, giving her an impressed and incredulous look.

She sat back in her chair and stretched. “I’ve tried to follow a little what you were doing,” she said to Jed, speaking familiarly with him now; this, too, was new. “I think you were right not to exhibit earlier, most of the critics would’ve had difficulty following your change in direction. I’m not even talking about Pépita Bourguignon, and anyway she’s never understood your work.”

She lit a cigarillo—another novelty—before continuing. “As you haven’t exhibited, they haven’t had to pronounce judgment. If they have to do a good review now, they won’t give the impression they’re going back on their opinions. But it’s true, and there I’m in agreement with you, that we have to target the Anglo-Saxon magazines straightaway; and it’s there that Houellebecq’s name can help us. What will the print run of the catalogue be?”

“Five hundred copies,” said Franz.

“That’s not enough: print a thousand. I need three hundred just for the press office. And we’ll authorize the reproduction of extracts, even long ones, almost everywhere; we’ll have to check with Houellebecq or Samuelson, his agent, so they don’t have any difficulties with it. Franz told me about the portrait of Houellebecq. It’s a truly a great idea. What’s more, at the time of the exhibition, it will be your most recent work; that’s excellent, and it’ll give extra impact to the whole thing, I’m sure of it.”

“She’s a smooth talker, that girl,” Franz remarked after she left. “I knew her by reputation, but I’d never worked with her.”

“She’s changed a lot,” said Jed. “I mean, on a personal level. Professionally, however, not a bit. It’s impressive all the same to what extent people cut their lives into two parts that don’t really communicate, that don’t have any interaction at all. I’m amazed they manage it so well.”

“It’s true you’ve been very interested in the work … in the professions that people do,” continued Franz once they’d got to Chez Claude. “More than any other artist I know.”

“What defines a man? What’s the question you first ask a man, when you want to find out about him? In some societies, you ask him first if he’s married, if he has children; in our society, we ask first what his profession is. It’s his place in the productive process, and not his status as reproducer, that above all defines Western man.”

Franz pensively emptied, with small sips, his glass of wine. “I hope that Houellebecq’s going to write a good text,” he finally said. “It’s a big gamble, you know. It’s very difficult to make people accept an artistic development as radical as yours. And what’s more, I think it’s in the visual arts that we have the most favorable conditions. In literature and
music, it’s downright impossible to change direction, you’re certain to get lynched. On the one hand, if you always do the same thing, you’re accused of repeating yourself and being in decline, but if you change you’re accused of being an incoherent dilettante. I know that in your case, it makes sense to return to painting, and at the same time to the portrayal of human beings. I would be incapable of explaining exactly why, and probably so would you, but I know there’s nothing gratuitous about it. But that’s just an intuition, and to have some reviews isn’t enough; you need to produce some kind of theoretical discourse. And I’m completely incapable of doing that; so are you.”