La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams

1

I am at a bar with a fairly famous Italian actress. Though she is over fifty, she is a remarkably pretty woman, still in excellent shape. She is imagining without rejecting — on the contrary, with satisfaction — the notion of becoming my mistress. But the clock strikes six and she abruptly gets up and leaves.

2

P. has given me a battery-operated alarm clock; it is spherical and transparent, and has several little suction pads and two oblong pieces attached laterally on each side whose function is unclear. But Abdelkader Z. is playing with the pieces, losing them. The alarm clock is unusable. I am very angry.

3

Major railway strike. Red flags on the tracks block the trains. I walk along the rails, suitcase in hand. I enter a city, perhaps Grenoble. I cross an intersection where cops (all in plainclothes, looking almost friendly) are gathered. Before, I had pulled out of the ground one of the innumerable red flags that were planted there and covered my hand with it to carry my suitcase (a gesture I felt was in solidarity with the strikers).

I walk along the palisades. I get to a church. Actually, there are no walls, and the floor is made of macadam, like the street, but only a roof held up by pillars.

I look for the priest, who is not there, but I see him suddenly, hiding above his altar. He comes toward me and says:

“I want to be a father”

“But you cannot you are a priest”

He answers that it makes no difference.

Two herring merchants (the fat Marseillais sort) look at us.

4

The same scene but another setting.

I am at a friend’s house (maybe H.’s). I am dismayed because I have to return to the army. I haven’t finished my service yet. I calculate that I should be free again around February 15th. They could let it slide, since it’s not worth making me come back for so little time, especially since I’ll have to jump (with a parachute) the following day and all the requisite medical visits will take a long time.

My companions explain to me that they’re going to leave town and go back to Paris, and I won’t see them again.

Maybe the battery-operated alarm clock makes another appearance here.