La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams

No. 45: January 1971

The tank

P. and one of her friends and I have moved into an abandoned house. Though I recall having recently drunk water from the tap, we are told to use only mineral water, even to cook our food. But the bottle of water we find doesn’t even have a cap.

We sit down to eat. Under the table we find (a bit like a chewed and abandoned piece of gum) a bit of pâté. Though it is likely several days old, it doesn’t seem rotten in the slightest, but P. throws it out in disgust.

Out of the high, narrow window, I notice an immense tank. It’s actually a cliff, but it has the unmistakable look of a tank: large metallic plates covered with layers of varnish or paint that are chipping off in patches or coming loose from their base, like huge blisters. The whole thing looks muddy, dirty and slippery.

Soon I make out, moving from left to right, a small boy running on the upper tracks of the tank, which is really the length of a path carved into the face of the cliff. A man is chasing him. Another man pops up and blocks his passage. The child’s only chance of escape is to jump, but it’s truly a jump into the wide open and his life is at stake. It seems clear that he’s hesitant to dive, but at the last minute he loses his balance and jumps, like a child who is pushed into a pool and decides to make a dive of it once he realizes he’s going to fall into the water anyway.

At the very bottom of the cliff-tank is a lake that I can see from the window. P. and her friend are now on the opposite shore.

The child falls into the lake, feet first, but it’s as though he had jumped from only a few centimeters. There is very little water. The child keeps running toward the center of the lake, then, losing his footing, begins to swim. The two men swim after him. They are obviously cops and a police boat sets off from the bank and blocks the child’s path. He dives down and emerges a bit farther off, but this time he’s completely surrounded. Then a new person pops up: a man with a beard and maybe a pistol. He is threatening the police, not to kill them but to kill himself if they don’t let the child go. They do.

I catch up with P. on the bank. We recount indignantly what we have just seen, like a scandalous and revealing news story.