The Possibility of an Island by Houellebecq Michel

Author:Houellebecq, Michel [Houellebecq, Michel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, Philosophy, Dystopia, Contemporary, Literature
ISBN: 9780307265326
Amazon: 0307265323
Goodreads: 7115443
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2005-08-31T07:00:00+00:00

“Of course you can! Of course you can!” Cop exclaimed good-humoredly. “We’re not in a prison here! I’ll ask someone to drive you to Arrecife; or perhaps to the airport, that’ll be more practical for renting a car.”

“But you’ll be coming back this evening?” he asked just as we were getting into the minibus. “It’s just so I know…”

I had no precise plan, other than to bring Vincent back to the normal world for a day, i.e., almost anywhere; i.e., given the place we were in, it would most likely be the beach. He exhibited a surprising docility and lack of initiative; the car-rental man had provided us with a map of the island. “We could go to Teguise beach…,” I said, “it’s the easiest to get to.” He didn’t even bother to reply.

He had brought along a pair of trunks and a towel, and he sat placidly between the dunes, he even seemed ready to spend the day there if he had to. “There are a lot of other women…,” I said, out of the blue, to begin a conversation, before I became aware that this wasn’t that straightforward. It was the low season, there were probably about fifty people in our field of vision: teenage girls with attractive bodies, flanked by boys; young mothers whose bodies were already less attractive, accompanied by small children. Our mutual sharing of a common space with them was fated to remain purely theoretical; none of these people belonged to a kind of reality with which we could, in one way or another, interact; in our eyes they had no more existence than if they had been images on a cinema screen—in fact, rather less, I’d say. I was beginning to feel that this excursion into the normal world was doomed to failure when I became aware that there was, moreover, a risk of it ending in quite an unpleasant manner.

I hadn’t done it deliberately, but we had installed ourselves in the portion of beach that belonged to a Thomson Holidays club. On returning from the sea, which had been rather cold, and which I hadn’t managed to get into, I saw that a hundred or so people were thronging around a podium on which a mobile sound system had been set up. Vincent hadn’t moved; sitting in the middle of the crowd, he regarded the surrounding agitation with perfect indifference. As I rejoined him, I was able to read “Miss Bikini Contest” on a banner that hung above the podium. Indeed, about ten little sluts aged thirteen to fifteen waited by one of the stairs to the podium, wiggling and emitting little cries. After a spectacular musical gimmick, a tall black man dressed like a circus chimp bounded onto the podium and invited the girls to come up one by one. “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,” he shouted in English into his HF microphone, “welcome to the ‘Miss Bikini’ contest! Have we got some sexy girls for you today!” He turned to the first girl, a leggy red-haired teenager sporting a minimal white bikini.

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