La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams

No. 32: November 1970

An evening at the theater

I was, with Z., at a public event that Aragon and Elsa Triolet were also attending. Elsa Triolet, a small and gentle woman, waved to me, which surprised me because we don’t know one another.

Later.

We are at the theater.

I am packed in right near the stage, just above the illuminated walkway. At one point one of the actors, who had been sitting with his back to the audience, rises and begins to count off time like a conductor. We hear music from backstage. First it’s just a harpsichord, then a whole orchestra. A character on the right begins to sing. It’s the end of the play. I am overwhelmed, even as I realize there’s nothing to it and wonder vaguely why I appear to be the only one at all moved.

The exit of the theater is mobbed.

I am with Z. at the top of the stairs. Elsa Triolet walks by below, toward another exit perpendicular to ours. Once again she tilts her head toward me. I tell Z.: “That’s Elsa Triolet.” Z. asks how small I was when I met her and tells me she’s going to introduce me to someone who knew me even smaller. But all of this is said in such a way that I can’t tell whether we’re talking about a woman or a man, and whether she really means “even smaller than I am.”

We go home.

My uncle, a bald man, is following us. I recognize him as Z.’s current lover. Walking in front of my uncle and somehow losing him, Z. brings me into a little dormitory, a dark room I identify as one of the annexes of the house in Dampierre.

We tumble down onto a bed. Z. presses against me, panting slightly, but I sense that she plans to rejoin my uncle and wants me to stay here. All told, she doesn’t seem entirely sure what she’s going to do. In any case, I tell her, I don’t feel like sleeping anywhere besides my room.