La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams

No. 123: August 1972

The workshop

Major changes are being made in my lab. During a meeting, my boss asks me to devote my time solely to writing manuscripts and to leave the organization of the documentary filing to a young woman he has just hired.

The young woman is not very pretty, nor particularly pleasant, but she proves to be remarkably efficient; in particular, she uncovers an official document that allows each member of the lab (1) to have regular interviews in room B1 or B2 with a confessor of his or her choice and (2) to visit the painter.

It turns out that, like all universities (be they of medicine or fine arts), ours has a “functional workshop” and the young woman takes me there. Sure enough, I was wondering where this door led.

I enter, expecting to find that the painter is nothing but a dirty penpusher.

“Wait, I recognize this!” I exclaim.

It is, in fact, none other than the workshop of the painter Bizet, and you can immediately see all his major pieces covered with gridded patterns. The workshop is an immense room with a very high ceiling; the painter is a very tall old man; he shows me around his workshop graciously, but you can tell he’s annoyed about it (but he can work here only on the condition that he gives tours). He makes mostly tapestries, but he also shows me some drawings, many done on graph paper.

T., one of the researchers from the lab, comes next, running, to visit the workshop. The painter seems more interested in her than he was in me, even though she starts talking about his painting in an especially banal way, saying something like: “Now that’s not very realistic!” which doesn’t seem to offend the painter (whereas I am shocked).

The painter takes T. by the waist and leans his other arm on my shoulder: I am much smaller than they are.

Other people come into the workshop. On the ground are two banknotes that turn out to be large amounts.