La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams

No. 13: February 1970

The hotel

I am looking to rent an apartment for a month. Someone whose job is to sell or rent apartments suggests that I go to a hotel instead, and recommends La Boule Blanche, in the middle of Saint-Germain. As it turns out, I know that hotel by name, but I’ve never been there.

La Boule Blanche is on a very calm square, not unlike the Square Louis-Jouvet, near the Opera (where the Cintra bar is). It reminds me of another hotel, not far off, where one of my friends either went or told P. (or maybe me) to go.

A rather fin-de-siècle congress is being held in the hotel. The reading rooms are packed, the tables strewn with outspread newspapers.

I turn around in a circle, looking for the hotel office, and end up asking someone, who tells me:

“But it’s right there.”

It is, in fact, right there. It looks a bit like my writing desk, but curved. Three young women are behind it.

They whisper to me that there have been many departures and that I will have no trouble getting a room. Just now, three or four gentlemen are returning their keys.

I want to ask for a room, but by mistake I ask for a suite. They ask me why. I explain that I am in the middle of changing apartments and that I wish to move in for a month.

Two of the three employees talk amongst themselves and decide to show me the bridal suite.

It’s at the very top of the hotel. We take the stairs up. In the small entryway there is a carved lamp whose base represents a headless naked woman gripping or strangling a boa constrictor coiled around her. The woman and the snake are made of wood, but the imitation is so perfect that you could believe, for a moment, that they are alive.

I tour the suite, which consists of two rooms connected by a small staircase.

I try to explain that a room, a large room, would be fine for me. Then, changing the subject, I ask what brands of whiskey they have at the bar. They answer with a certain number of words (“long john,” “glen,” “mac,” etc.) and then the word “Chivas,” which they repeat several times until it loses its shape (chavass, chivelle, etc.).

Then I ask what they have in the way of vodka. They answer with a word that ends in “ya”: I hear “Denitskaya” or “Baltiskaya.” I am pleased that it is an authentic vodka …