The Elementary Particles Read Free Page A

worked on his pecs and talked like a character from a second-rate cop show. Bruno was definitely in the throes of a midlife crisis. Was Michel? A man in a midlife crisis is asking only to live, to live a little more, a little longer. Michel, on the other hand, had had enough; he could see no reason to go on.
    That evening he stumbled on a photo taken at his primary school in Charny and he cried. The child in the photograph sat at his desk holding a textbook open in front of him. The boy smiled straight at the camera, happily, confidently; it seemed unthinkable to Michel that he was that boy. The child did his homework, worked hard in class with an assured seriousness. He was just beginning to discover the world, and what he saw did not frighten him; he was ready to take his place in society. All of this was written on the boy’s face. He was wearing a jacket with a narrow collar.
    For several days Michel kept the photograph beside him on his bedside table. The mysteries of time were banal, he told himself, this was the way of the world: youthful optimism fades, and happiness and confidence evaporate. He lay on his Bultex mattress, struggling to come to terms with the transience of life. There was a small round dimple on the boy’s forehead—a scar, from chickenpox, that had accompanied him down the years. Where was truth? The heat of midday filled the room.

4
    Born to illiterate peasants in central Corsica in 1882, Martin Ceccaldi seemed destined for the undistinguished life of a farmer, which had been the lot of his ancestors for countless generations. It is a way of life long since vanished, and is fondly remembered only by a handful of radical environmentalists. A detailed description of this pastoral “idyll” is of limited interest, but to be comprehensive I will outline it broadly. You are at one with nature, have plenty of fresh air and a couple of fields to plow (the number and size of which are strictly fixed by hereditary principle). Now and then you kill a boar; you fuck right and left, mostly your wife, whose role is to give birth to children; said children grow up to take their place in the same ecosystem. Eventually, you catch something serious and you’re history.
    Martin Ceccaldi’s singular destiny was entirely symptomatic of the role played by secularism, throughout the Third Republic, in integrating citizens into French society and promoting technological progress. His teacher quickly realized that he was an exceptional pupil, a child of considerable intelligence with a gift for abstract thought—qualities which would have little opportunity to develop in peasant society. Martin’s teacher was keenly aware that there was more to his job than spoon-feeding elementary facts and figures to every untrained citizen. His task was to seek out the qualities that allowed a child to join the elite of the Third Republic. He managed to persuade Martin’s parents that their son could fulfill his destiny only if he were to leave Corsica.
    In 1894, supported by a scholarship, the boy started school at Thiers de Marseille, an institution faithfully described in the autobiography of Marcel Pagnol (the author’s well-written, realistic reconstruction of the ideals of an era through the rags-to-riches story of a gifted young man would remain Martin’s favorite). In 1902 his teacher’s faith was rewarded when he was admitted to the École Polytechnique.
    In 1911 he accepted a position which would change the course of his life forever. He was to create an efficient system of waterways throughout French Algeria. For more than twenty-five years he calculated the curve of aqueducts and the diameter of pipes. In 1923 he married Geneviève July, a secretary whose family had come from the Languedoc to settle in Algeria two generations before. In 1928 their daughter, Janine, was born.
    The story of a life can be as long or as short as the teller wishes. Whether the life is tragic or enlightened, the classic gravestone