La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams

No. 100: December 1971

Finland

I finished my military service in a large citadel in the suburb of Malakoff. It was an immense fortress surrounded by an enormous network of roads.

On the way back from leave, I drive around it in a car. Here and there from the road you can see the huge towers of the fortress pop up, with innumerable concrete stairways leading up to it.

A change of posting brings me across the citadel to look for the health services office. It’s on the twelfth floor of one of those towers. It takes me a long time to find the right one. I get into an elevator: it’s a horizontal platform that slides at high speed along four dangerously slick walls. You have to avoid coming into contact with these walls (a vaguely upsetting feeling).

On the twelfth floor there is no health services office, but an immense drugstore, whose aisles are the size of streets. Thus I arrive at a sort of impasse. At the end is (maybe) health services (it’s a hospital, or an infirmary, or maybe even a bank). On the right there’s a small hotel, the “FINLAND” hotel, according to a neon sign out front.

I go into this “FINLAND” hotel and head for the bar. I notice right away that there is no Christmas tree. Deeply moved, almost in tears, I explain that there will be no Christmas party this year.

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