La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams

No. 15: May 1970

La rue de Quatrefages

P. and I are living in the building on rue de Quatrefages, at the very back of the yard, no longer on the fifth floor but on the ground floor. We are living separately, which is to say we have separated our apartment in two. After some complicated construction, we even end up sharing the apartment with our neighbor.

I am touring the apartment. The first two rooms are familiar; it’s basically our old apartment on rue de Quatrefages. Then you come to a curious part: a bizarrely furnished kitchen. There is a tiny ceramic basin (a “scullery sink”) whose faucet is open over a covered casserole pot (a “hot-dish”) larger than the sink (which can suggest only imminent overflow …); above the sink, there is an immense glass fume hood (a “sorbonne”); it’s glass but it’s barely clear, more like “bumpy” (fluted?) glass; also notable: the hood is completely detached from the wall, the length of which is lined with water and gas pipes, and actually has to be suspended from the ceiling. There is also a gas cooker with plates simmering on it.

Past the kitchen is a large bathroom with a trapezoidal bathtub. Then a hallway and, at the very end, a somewhat worm-eaten wooden door. This is how I discover, for the first time in my life, that my apartment has two doors; I vaguely suspected as much, but I (finally?) have tangible proof.

I open the door. Immediately the three cats who live in the apartment run out. There is one white cat and two grey cats, one of which is certainly my cat. No big deal, they’ll definitely be back; obviously it’s through this door, and not the other, that P. usually lets them out.

I look through the keyhole (which is round and eye-sized). I see the avenue, wide, lined with trees and a few stores, including a restaurant.

P. is asleep in the apartment. She has found only one of the cats. He was on rue Mortimer.

I realize, first of all, that the first room of the apartment belongs jointly to P. and to the neighbor, and, second, that this is not my apartment, that I have never lived here.

In the first room, the neighbor’s section and P.’s are separated by a heap of books. The neighbor, a fairly old and rather boorish woman, can no longer tell which of these books she has borrowed from P., nor which she has finished reading and wishes to return.

She hands me a very pretty book, a bit like the Hetzel editions of Jules Verne. I quiver with joy: the title of the book is

LUNGS

It’s an extremely rare book, a classic of respiratory physiology that I remember hearing G. mention. I open it. It is written in German (in Gothic characters).

I recognize, in the heap of books, many familiar volumes (the Queneau-Massin-Carelman edition of Exercises in Style, books by Steinberg, etc.).

The neighbor’s husband arrives. He is an old, tired man. He has no mustache. Or, rather, he has one. He looks a bit like the actor André Julien, or maybe like André R., the father of one of my old classmates. In his hand is a case shaped like a large ballpoint pen, which is full either of many ballpoint pens or of one enormous pen with — let’s say — twelve colors. He nods, looking displeased.

Later: I am lying on a bed, next to the pile of books. In front of me, to my left, P. is spread out on another bed, perpendicular to mine. In front of P.’s bed, across from me, there is a long table with the husband sitting behind it (just across from me) and (on my right) the neighbor, who has a tiny electric battery in front of her.

Long before, P. and I were in the street. We were wandering in a lovely park, as pretty as the Jardin des Missions Étrangères on rue de Varenne.