...of an art student

For almost six months he seldom went out, except for a daily walk that took him to the Casino hypermarket on the boulevard Vincent-Auriol. His contact with the other students from the Beaux-Arts, already rare while he was there, became rarer until it disappeared completely, and it was with surprise he received, at the beginning of March, an email inviting him to take part in a collective exhibition, Let’s Remain Courteous, which was organised in May by the Ricard foundation. He accepted immediately, without understanding that it was precisely his almost ostentatious detachment that had created around him an aura of mystery, and that many of his former classmates wanted to know what he was up to.

On the morning of the vernissage, he realised that he hadn’t said a word for almost a month, except the ’No’ he repeated every day to the cashier (rarely the same one, it has to be said) who asked him if had the Club Casino loyalty card; nevertheless he made his way, at the agreed hour, to the rue Boissy d’Anglas. There were perhaps a hundred people (well, he had never known how to calculate that sort of thing; in any case, the guests numbered in tens), and he was worried at first when he noticed that he didn’t recognise any of them. For a moment he feared that he’d got the wrong day or exhibition, but his photo prints were there, hung on a wall at the back and lit correctly. After serving himself a glass of whisky, he went around the hall several times, following an ellipsoidal trajectory, more or less pretending to be absorbed in his own thoughts while his brain managed to formulate no thoughts whatsoever except the surprise his former classmates had completely disappeared from his memory, was effaced, and radically so, which made him wonder if he belonged to the human race. He would have recognised Geneviève, at least. Yes, it was certain that he would have recognised his former lover. That was a certainty he could cling to.

[The Map and The Territory, Houellebecq, M.]