La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams

No. 116: May 1972

The monkey

After various twists and turns, I find myself sharing an apartment with a stranger. One of the oddities of this apartment is that it has a huge entrance-hall — much larger, in fact, than the other rooms, including the bedrooms. Maybe the shared entrance causes the first problem.

In any case, I’ve written a score and this stranger, who says he is a musician, has offered to play it. But I suspect he actually intends to steal it.

Perhaps to apologize for this tactlessness, he introduces me to Adolf Hitler.

Adolf Hitler is a grotesque clown, with pale skin and long hair: he is played emphatically and exaggeratedly, and at first ridicules his aide-de-camp, General Hartmann, a good old fat ruddy-nosed German who is obviously drunk: he can’t find the right key on his keychain, and is trying desperately to put his outfit in order — shirt and suspenders untucked, shako on his ear — to present himself before his Führer.

Hitler begins by sweetly saying many nice things about Mariani. But bit by bit, as his speech continues, it gets increasingly pernicious and concludes as a torrent of foul curses.

Adolf Hitler’s eminence grise is a monkey; it has a very long tail that ends in a hand (in a black glove?) and does not stop playing with itself (exactly like Marsupilami from the Spirou cartoons) to accompany and underscore its master’s speech.

But I think at one point it loses its glove, or its whole hand.

Sudden change of scenery. Deathly silence. On a vast esplanade, a crowd of soldiers dressed in black is pushing everyone back while the monkey, at once terrible and grotesque, advances through the middle of the grand plaza. He is sitting on a little chariot (the carriage of a cannon), tail pointing in front of him like a tank cannon.

A child is running. One of the soldiers turns around quickly as the child passes and knocks him down with his rifle butt.

I am at a demonstration. We are singing “La Jeune Garde.” The song fades out slowly. The silence is oppressive. I sense the police just in front of us and know they are going to charge.

I know this is only a scene from Duck, You Sucker!, but still, why on earth do I always get myself into these situations?

I managed to take refuge in a building under construction. I’m hidden in a little square room without a door (I had to enter through the ceiling). This is where the toilets will be; the plumbing is not yet installed, but there are already footprints in the cement.