La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams (9 page)

I call P., who is in the next compartment. She comes to
join me, walking on the steps outside the wagon. Now we are 4 in my compartment: P., me, and two of her girlfriends. The three women undress simultaneously, lifting their blouses over their heads, and wind up on the bunk under the same sheet. They all still have their underwear on. For my part, I’m completely naked; I bunch my underwear and socks into a ball and slide it under a fold in the bed.

I make love to the three women, one after the other.

I notice then that I’m on some sort of wide pedestal and that everyone in the wagon can see us. Not far from us, four men are sitting around a table; they look a bit like gangsters.

Slowly, the train crosses the town of Coursons. I’m surprised: if we’ve passed Lyons, this can’t be Coursons, and yet it is Coursons: P. recognizes it well, me less so, having been there only once. Then the light bulb goes off: it’s Coursons in the Nièvre (and I add: “You don’t know …”), not Coursons in the Yonne.

On a sloping street you can see a sign indicating: Paris (or Marseilles) 4 (a digit in the tens place); a bit later, the confusion (is it 40 … or 49) clears: it’s 41.

In a huge empty apartment, no doubt Denis B.’s. Gisèle lived across from an even bigger apartment (wasn’t it that big, the place on rue de l’Assomption?).

I’m sleeping on the bare floor, on a mattress with no frame. In the next room J.L., or R.K., is typing on my typewriter.

Are we mad at each other? I pretend to be asleep. They move about not far from me and eventually leave.

Maybe S.B. will show up a bit later and slide under the sheets next to me?

Very quickly, a crowd takes over the apartment.

Above all, four painters who, though the apartment
seems rather clean (shiny lacquered walls), are beginning to repaint it.

They intend to “make something of it.”

I enter the courtyard of a building under renovation (just as mine is under renovation).

Everything is very white and very dusty.

There was an external elevator, which has been enlarged and moved.

There was a stone fountain, which has been moved to the other side. The pipes are still there, but the stones of the base and basin have been moved.

A whole section of the wall has been reduced to rubble: a newly installed metal ceiling beam runs across it (like in the old “Taride” building at Mabillon).

I have killed my wife and cut her rather crudely into small pieces, which I have wrapped hastily in paper bundles. The whole of her fits in a cardboard box, which is still relatively easy to handle.

My only hope is for someone to make her into wine or alcohol. I go to the distillery. I walk without knocking into a room where there are three women in overalls. Two are sitting down, the third is standing near a waist-high double door (like a saloon door).

Either I address them with a wink, like we know one another, or I call out, flatly, something like:

“I have 50 kilos of quality meat!”

The young woman who was standing brings me into a tiny room, where she begins to examine my merchandise. My package has all the necessary labels, but the young woman claims that the firm I represent is not an approved client of her Company and that I’m going to have a hard time closing the deal.

As a sample, I take a series of small bottles from the
package. This should be no more than a simple formality, but, to my great confusion, there are more and more bottles: red wine, white wine, rosé, all sorts of liquor, even a pitcher of water—tiny, but full and above all uncorked: you could dip a finger in without making it overflow, which strikes me as an indubitable experimental demonstration of osmosis or of capillarity.

All the demonstration proves useless: a man comes out from the office next door and tells me this will end badly for me if they don’t find my name in their files.

I had learned long ago to jump from a certain height (for example from the top of a high beam). This time, I seem to be much higher, almost at the first story of the Eiffel Tower. Below I can clearly see the grass and sand grooves of a garden, and I’m convinced I’ll die if I jump. But finally I learn that I don’t have to jump from this height, just from a much lower beam, and for that matter not even jump from it, just cross it.

H.M. and I are on a boat from New York to Paris. This obviously takes much longer than flying, but it’s much more pleasant.

We’re going to show a film at a festival whose first half was in New York and whose second half is to be in Paris.

A fire breaks out in a cabin on the level below. H.M. and I rush down and save the passengers. We are the heroes of the day and the passengers honor us.

I return to my cabin. A steward is there. He makes me realize how pleasant it all is. He changes my towels and, seeing
that I’m a little sweaty, dabs my face with a towel (one of the ones he’s collected to change).

I go to H.M.’s cabin. I learn that we are on the festival jury. The jury is called “the helical complex” and consists of 4 jurors: H.M. and myself, and two farmers who are just this moment coming into the cabin; they are from Villard-de-Lans, which H.M. knows well; one of them is “Lulu,” whom I know also (no doubt I was in school with him during the war), but the second is unknown to me even though his face looks familiar.

I am in New York at a gigantic coffee shop.

In Paris, a café terrace, enormous. There are lots of people, especially Algerians, with a vaguely menacing air.

I forget my satchel on the terrace; there are 2,500 francs in it. I go back to get it; obviously, nothing. I am genuinely devastated. My only hope is that I am dreaming (I wake up, relieved).

I’m visiting a female friend (nothing between us, just friends). The actress M.D. arrives. She is a tall woman, pretty and cheerful, with long blond hair; she is naked under a light dress.

I begin touching her, caressing her “absent-mindedly.”

I wind up on top of her, fondling her bare breasts.

I make love to her.

Rehearsals for my next play have begun. We’re already on set. I am explaining to the director, Marcel Cuvelier, the importance of the 6th character, who is mute but who appears to be spared the fate to which the 5 others are bound.

I am a soldier in Grenoble. I take 8 days of vacation, to go to Lans or Villard. I call to explain that I’m sick: spots on my skin, pityriasis, or, rather, to make the case more extreme, psoriasis. A woman answers, kindly but neutral. She doesn’t seem to think this is possible, but she agrees to “prepare my file” anyway.

After a long time pondering, I try to remember the tune and the words of a song I wrote in 1941.

I am visiting one of my nieces and her boyfriend. I am concerned to learn that they only got an average of 80 on their exams, when they would have needed 100. My niece suddenly seems swollen, almost ugly. I tell myself the life she is leading with her boyfriend isn’t working out.

I return home. I live in a large single room in the same house as my niece. Above me, in a third apartment, live either P. or F. and an Algerian friend. I go to see P.; I find F., accompanied by another Algerian and Henri C. The three men seem each as unfriendly as the next, even almost hostile.

Out of some unknown necessity, I move a meeting scheduled for that night to the following day (which will be July 30
^th
) at 11 a.m.

Now I remember with a sort of panic that I made an appointment for July 29th with a psychoanalyst, Mr. Bezu, at 34 rue Daru. I call Mr. Bezu to cancel the appointment. I have a very complicated conversation with his secretary, because she doesn’t want to give me another appointment, though I insist on asking for the appointment that would normally have followed this one anyway. After much hesitation, the secretary finally concedes and gives me an appointment for July 30
^th
at 2 p.m. This seems surprising to me, since at first it seems to me that the 30th is a Sunday. But in fact it’s a Saturday.

I call from a phone booth and by the end of the conversation I have stepped halfway out. When I go back in to hang up, I find an old, kindly-looking man who shows me how I could have made the call without paying: just strip the wires and place them on the contacts, squeezing them between thumb and forefinger.

I go to rue Daru: it’s in a neighborhood that’s being torn down. In fact, it’s a large esplanade where all the remains of the quarter are on display. It’s very white. Some details look like paintings by Niki de Saint Phalle, as though they were made of celluloid baby parts.

I look around the exhibit, followed a few paces behind by Henri C., who is carrying a dog in his arms. Henri seems more interested in what I’m doing than in the exhibit itself, but he doesn’t say anything to me. While going down the stairs toward the exit, I steal something of minor importance (like a newel post): maybe I’m caught by Henri C., who begins to smile.

Sudden change of scenery. I’m home again and I’m invisible. A Jerry Lewis-type gag: a man disguised as a dog (only by looking in his eyes—shining, almost red—can you tell that it’s not a dog) exits, pulling on his leash, forcing the man leading him to break into a trot. The real dog, sitting in an armchair, watches him leave, then gets up on his hind legs (like a cartoon animal) and begins miming a boxing match.

Another scene from another film; this time it’s
Designing Woman
by Vincent Minnelli. Two gangsters are terrorizing—or rather intimidating—a man (no doubt F.) who owes them 4,000 francs. As they leave, one of the gangsters tries to knock over a pedestal with several fragile objects on it. I end up opening the door and chasing them away (they leave without a fight).

Now I live in an immense, sumptuous apartment. I walk through the rooms, followed by F., who is telling me about his problems. I scold him for seeming to always wind up in situations like these, almost intentionally.

I come to a room filled with people. All of them look at me in a friendly way. It’s the family of a little boy I barely know, but who I know likes me a great deal. The little boy introduces me to his father and his aunts. The father asks what he can do for me. I take him on an escalator to a long, narrow room where a congress is in session. I explain that I would like to install a projection hall in this room and show him how I’m thinking of doing so. The father tells me it’s a very good idea. We go back across the apartment. The little boy takes my hand. He tells me he has 1,000 dollars and wants to give them to me. I tell him I cannot accept them, that it can’t be a gift but only, if he wants, a donation to the film I’m going to make. I expect the father to offer that much, maybe even more, but there seems to be no question

I am in the lobby of M.’s house. I knock on the glass—black—of the concierge’s window to ask what floor M. lives on. The window comes up very slowly, as though automatically. Apparently there’s nobody behind it. Two of M.’s friends arrive. One of them tells me M. is gone, which makes me very angry. She told me to come by! This isn’t the first time she’s stood me up, but this time I’ve had enough and I decide to leave her a short goodbye note. All I can find to write on is a very large sheet of paper, which forces me to write vertically, since the sheet is pressed up against one of the lobby walls. The short text I compose is particularly violent.

The problem now is to find the mailbox. One of M.’s friends explains that it’s hidden in the lobby walls, and sometimes even in the pipes (which are in fact false pipes); they’re huge and mask the real ones; in one a miniature theater has been installed.

While we continue to look for this troublesome box, a crowd takes over the lobby and the situation evolves.

I worked with Michel M. on a screenplay at his house. Then he went on vacation and left me his apartment. Many people (more distant acquaintances than actual friends) have come to stay there.

I spend a long while in a large café (la Coupole?).

I’m on the street. I need stamps and I don’t have any money with me. My uncle passes by, at the wheel of his car. I stop him and ask him for money. He goes to get me some, then reconsiders and asks what I plan to do with it.