La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams (7 page)

Another time, on the other hand, the Maharajah awarded me a decoration. It was a rectangular silver plaque, roughly the size of a 10-franc bill, very complexly corrugated: you could imagine it divided into, say, twelve squares, alternately hollow and embossed; each hollow and each embossing divided in turn into twelve hollows and embossments, and so on …

Ultimately, the Maharajah’s hesitations had no consequence whatsoever. I thought it was six o’clock and that the departure had been irremediably compromised, but according to the big clock in my room it was only one p.m.
Moreover, even later, I was in line at the métro station and it was only eleven a.m.

The line at the métro station was either to not buy a ticket or to buy a ticket out of the métro. Everyone found this grotesque, in any case. We could see, down below in the distance, train cars. On the left, at the bottom of a small iron staircase, were three doors; on the first nothing was written; on the second, something like
CHORISTS
’
ENTRANCE;
on the third
KITCHENS
. My confidant told me, or rather reminded me (I had been informed shortly before) that the RATP served affordable meals, even free for those unable to pay, but in the latter case they served only a cheaper plate of just cold meat, and I concluded from this that no hot meals were available there.

Back to Z.’s house.

“Strange,” I tell myself, “usually she covers her floors uniformly, with stones or with a carpet; here she’s chosen an altogether different approach, doubtless under the influence of the Maharajah and his architects; true, she has a great deal of means at her disposal, whence these differently sized tiles, these large rocks emerging from the stones, this marvelous parquet of blond wood and the intricate pattern …”

Her room is a veritable sea of blue carpet. All the rooms
where she normally lives have been reconstructed faithfully. I’m certain I will find my old room (haven’t I come to take a book—a man asleep—from my library?).

At the end of the corridor, I open a door and find two men, very tall, dressed in business clothes; they seem nervous to see me, almost afraid, and flee out the other side.

Another door. I am in a sort of dressing room. Z. appears, her back to me; she is naked; in passing she grabs a red bathrobe and disappears through a side door.

/ /

I tell Z. I’ve come to find a book. Where is my old library? She tells me it’s in her son’s place. I go to see her son; he is seated at his work table.

“How’s it going?”

“Fine!”

I don’t see my library, but I’m not even thinking about it anymore.

Walking in front of the two men, Z. and I prepare to leave the house. We are crossing the patio. It’s a very long room (the one I watched being built) whose sides are taken up by terraces and in which you move around on thin stone
paths, on top of narrow canals filled with water. Lots of flowers. Tables with lots of people. Party ambiance. Hullabaloo. I hear things like

“Your party is, was a smashing success,”

then, more distinctly,

“Champagne and Perrier.”

Z. says a few words in English.

We go down rue Soufflot. We are walking, Z. and I, fairly far ahead of the two men. Z. can’t stop laughing:

“I was so sure you’d come, I didn’t even need to wait for you. You see, this morning nothing, the telephone didn’t even ring, and here you are!”

She seems perfectly reassured, ironic and mean. I realize I have no cigarettes with me. I spot a little tobacco shop on the right. I run over (across the street, I think). It’s a tiny room where they sell mostly haberdashery. There is a partially screened counter. Some young girls all dressed in red are crowded in front of the counter, no doubt schoolgirls or boarders. On the other side of the counter are two young women dressed the same way, and a few more schoolgirls.

I get impatient.

“I’d like filtered Gitanes and a box of matches.”

“We don’t have filtered Gitanes.”

I’m preparing to ask for different cigarettes when I see, on a shelf to the right, a whole bundle of random, unsorted packs of cigarettes, among them a pack of filtered Gitanes. I point to it. They give it to me. I pay and leave.

I look for Z., but she has disappeared along with the two men. A moment of despair, followed by an almost reassuring feeling of irrevocability. My error in seeing her again wasn’t so great, then, because now she’s disappeared once more. As is my habit, I tear off the translucent paper covering my pack of cigarettes. I then realize with anger that I’ve been sold not a pack of cigarettes but a large box of matches.

I walk down boulevard Saint-Michel on the right-hand sidewalk. It’s Friday. Though it’s only 4 p.m. it is dark, or almost dark. I decide to call M., though I am convinced it will be useless. I go into a tobacco shop. I wait in front of the register. The customer in front of me leaves holding a newspaper that had been covering half of the newsman’s counter. I find a five-centime piece, go to put it in my pocket, and instead give it to the newsman (an old man), who commends me for my honesty. I give him a ten-franc bill and ask for a pack of filtered Gitanes and a box of matches, or 2.10 francs. But he makes several mistakes while trying to give me my change.

Ultimately, I have to do as follows:

ask him for a pack of cigarettes, or 2 francs, with a 10-franc bill. He’ll give me 8 back;

give him a 1-franc coin and ask for a box of matches, or 10 centimes, so that he gives me back 90 centimes.

But it’s not even clear that this transaction will work.

(… no doubt I finally called

M. who told me to come get her)

I find her almost in front of her building. She’s smiling. We begin walking arm in arm. She’s wearing a white jacket with four pockets and I only a T-shirt. I realize I have only 20, or 40, or 60 francs in my pocket, though we’re planning to have dinner at Balzar; but I tell myself it’s okay because I can always tell the maître d’ that I’ll come back and pay the next day; a bit later, I realize it’s even easier for us to go to a bar where I settle my tab monthly.

Though I’m not expecting anything in particular from this evening, thinking I’m still indifferent to M., I realize bit by bit that M. loves me. At one point, we kiss. For an instant I am flooded with joy, but soon some concerns surface. First of all, M. seems much taller than usual, almost too tall for me; I have to stand on tiptoe and crane my neck up to see her face! Also, her hair isn’t done as it usually is; half of it is
blown up in front with large swooping waves. Her eyes are not exactly her eyes, but they’re still pretty eyes.

We resume walking. She hooks her left arm around my waist and, laughing, caresses my navel and fly with her long fingers. She presses against me. I harden at the contact with her stomach, my hands gliding along her smooth back.

We keep walking. She tells me she sent her children to boarding school; she tried to kill herself but she doesn’t tell me how. Now she lives at Hôtel Degotex.

“If you could see my room!” she tells me, laughing.

I tell her that she will come live with me and that she’ll be perfectly happy there.

A girlfriend of hers joins us. We arrive in the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève neighborhood. We climb up a narrow, sinuous street. Soon the pavement is replaced with thick, close-cropped grass. Two
passenger
cars pass us. In one there is a mourning woman, in a state of complete prostration.

Soon it becomes a snowy path, less and less passable.
Lots of people are getting worn out climbing up the sides. We make painstaking progress. I see that my grey sock has a hole in the toe, then it’s just a bit worn, then it’s covered with its shoe (it’s a Church Bros. shoe). I was also surprised to be wearing only socks.

At the very end, a little ice cliff that’s very difficult to climb. You have to plant an ice axe in the ice, well above your head, balance on it (execute a difficult pull-up), balance on the axe before you can try to touch the top of the cliff with your fingertips and make it up there with another pull-up.

But before even getting that far, you have to climb a rather steep still hill heap. M. goes for it. I want to follow her but I can’t. All of my will (and it’s the only thing I want to do at this moment) is useless; my muscles are like cotton.

M.’s friend signals to us to come down; a bit farther on is a road that goes straight off, with no snow on it.

We are somewhere near Lans.

Did we cross a mountain pass?

It seems to me that this road and the path we’re coming from are part of the same valley.

This vaguely frustrating situation seems to be written
on a chalkboard that someone is carrying by and which says something like

/ /

/ /

After a long absence, the Avenger returns to Mexico. A traitor is about to shoot him in the back when a gloved hand rises up and stops him.

Long horseback rides to protect watering holes and secret sources.

In town, riots break out. The gates of the grand plaza have been torn off, the posters torn down.

The country is dominated by a petty tyrant, a servant of Yankee imperialism.

Many twists and turns, which become gags in the style of
Lucky Luke
.

/ /

A “Brechtian” musical comedy.

We are marines. We are shipping off to war. There is great confusion in the passageway. Nobody knows exactly which room to take.

We have set sail.

The liner, viewed from above: majestic. It’s understood this war is going to be something terrible; it seems as though a bomb is going to fall right on the liner.

The liner is full of oblong compartments (not unlike coffins) arranged in long parallel rows, some of which have lids that clack shut (when the “coffin” is empty) while others stay stubbornly closed. It’s like a Busby Berkeley ballet, or like the bank of mussels Alphonse Allais taught to play the castanets. Soon it’s clear that these are crew cabins, then that it’s the bread, which is sealed (vacuum-packed under a nylon sheath).

With a friend (H.M.) I’m performing a duet dance number, very Astaire-Kelly, while singing:

Don’t shut away the bread

The bread must be free (ad. lib.)

We persuade various trade associations, who are seen for just a moment in intensely colored close-ups in the film. Thus, a “mustachioed General Boulanger.”

Large demonstration.

My friend (or is it me?) takes a microphone that has dropped down from the sky and shouts:

“In a few seconds, under the direction of [stumbles through a comically overlong name], the Marine Orchestra will perform the Bread Liberation.”

Music. The musicians are far above us. We’re on the quay and they’re on the liner.

I find a friend (or it’s still H.M.). He shows me his new wife (he used to have an enormous wife, like an Italian matriarch): a slender woman in a long coat.

I insist on going to their house, but he begins to embrace and caress his wife and soon I find myself caressing her too and, finally, naked on top of her and, though she crossed her legs at first, planted strong and deep inside of her.

Moved by a sort of premonition—one entirely vindicated by what would happen—I arranged for C.T. not to stay and made a “backup meeting” with P. at the Rougeot restaurant near Montparnasse.

At Rougeot, I find P. with F. I am furious.

P. says to me only:

“Indeed, Rougeot really is quite good.”

Dream B
.

One of the singers I am to meet tomorrow is a granddaughter of Miss B.

This surprises me at first—Miss B. is not married and has no children—until I remember having met, long ago, in Switzerland, a young Yugoslavian couple of which the man was also a grandchild in the B. family.

I can’t even believe this memory had never come back to me.

At the end, I’m supposed to go with the customs agent to see his manager. He tells me to wait in the dining car. It seems empty at first, but all of the tables are taken. The bar stools are free, but some children playing in front of the bar have put their lottery cards on them.

I look out the window. A soft hill. This is the exact spot where, last year, the Vigilante launched his attack on us.

The train begins again. I look at a map. We have just left Buda, we are crossing a bridge, a long island, another bridge, before stopping again in Pest where, I hope, I will find the solution.