La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams

No. 72: May 1971

The carnival

With a young woman who works in the same laboratory as me, I’m getting ready to take a bus to go home.

The bus arrives. It’s empty except for a single person at the back, who is Z. I board and, after thinking for a long time, I ask the conductor to give me a single ticket and I pay with a one-franc coin.

I sit next to my colleague, facing Z. but fairly far from her. To all indications she hasn’t seen me, but deep down I’m sure she has.

We are passed by some motorcyclists, then we come to a crazy carnival that seems to have been organized by high school students. There’s a whole series of painted backdrops, trompe-l’œil, makeup, etc., made with a sort of liquid plastic matter; the colors are very bright: mauve, candy pink, red, etc. It’s sold in pressurized tubes, so quite easy to use.

Various carnival scenes. Battle reenactment; an enormous shell falls awfully from a howitzer; a whole section of the street is heaved up, as though a gigantic mole were burrowing underneath it.

This now seems to be happening near rue de l’Assomption.

A young boy is lying in a pool of (fake) blood with a grimace of feigned agony; I look at him in passing, but without showing any emotion, and he seems disappointed that I didn’t appreciate his performance (or that I didn’t show my appreciation).

The road back is now the little road in Dampierre. There’s a whole group of us. They’re explaining how the plastic bombs work, insisting on how practical they are.

At the table in Dampierre. I’m across from Z. There is a ridiculously small cheese-plate. Z. explains how difficult it is to find good cheeses. Someone brings a slice of brie that needs to be cut, or, more precisely, whose rind needs to be removed. I try to do so with a long knife that I find next to me, but someone on my left (maybe S.B.) takes the plate from me and passes it to Z. I groan, saying something like

“I can’t do anything right here.”

I notice that I’ve made a tiny cut on my index finger; it seems covered in soot and I have to press down hard to see a drop of blood form.