La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams

No. 104: February 1972

A dream by P.:

The third person

I am standing on a hotel balcony (overlooking the sea? the Seine? the road?). A couple comes up. The woman asks for the phone book; she specifies that it’s white — maybe it’s the most recent edition — and that, since she knows it, she’ll have an easier time finding what she’s looking for. A woman who was standing next to me (the hotel manager?) gives it to her: it’s actually several unbound volumes that aren’t white.

Later, a whole section of the same balcony is occupied by diners. I am at a table with several people. At the next table is the woman from earlier (it wasn’t the hotel manager, just a guest like the others) with her husband: Mr. and Mrs. Cruel. Mrs. Cruel still has the phone book. I want to check something in it; I ask for the volume corresponding to the letter of the name in question, she seems to refuse; I explain to her what I want, and finally she gives it to me and I take it with a knowing look.

I flip through the “phone book,” which turns out to be a sort of Cruel family album. The frontispiece for a chapter in the middle of the book is a photo of the Cruels’ son. He is in the middle of a group of three: on the left, his father, who looks exactly like him, and who is a sort of cruel-looking Sami Frey, very brown, black eyes, thirty years old. The child must be about twelve; he seems kinder, blonder, his eyes are bluer. Suddenly I realize the photo is animated: the eyes are moving, the father’s look is extremely mean and filled with rage, and the son’s eyes are moving as well.

I am amazed by this effect. I turn the pages and I come to another animated photo: a corner of a room in which you see the corner of the bed and the curve of a large bowl decorated with characters, which I recognize as the Cruels’ Roman bath. The child — he is eight — is crossing through the space toward a door on the left side, half open onto darkness, which I know is the bathroom (I’m surprised the Cruels don’t use the Roman bath for the children, which seems perfectly suited to just that use).

Later, another dream.

Upon waking up, I remember the dream with the phone book and realize I do not know who the 3rd person in the first photo is — I don’t think it was the mother.