La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams

1

The three Ms

I am in the lobby of M.’s house. I knock on the glass — black — of the concierge’s window to ask what floor M. lives on. The window comes up very slowly, as though automatically. Apparently there’s nobody behind it. Two of M.’s friends arrive. One of them tells me M. is gone, which makes me very angry. She told me to come by! This isn’t the first time she’s stood me up, but this time I’ve had enough and I decide to leave her a short goodbye note. All I can find to write on is a very large sheet of paper, which forces me to write vertically, since the sheet is pressed up against one of the lobby walls. The short text I compose is particularly violent.

The problem now is to find the mailbox. One of M.’s friends explains that it’s hidden in the lobby walls, and sometimes even in the pipes (which are in fact false pipes); they’re huge and mask the real ones; in one a miniature theater has been installed.

While we continue to look for this troublesome box, a crowd takes over the lobby and the situation evolves.

2

I worked with Michel M. on a screenplay at his house. Then he went on vacation and left me his apartment. Many people (more distant acquaintances than actual friends) have come to stay there.

3

I spend a long while in a large café (la Coupole?).

4

I’m on the street. I need stamps and I don’t have any money with me. My uncle passes by, at the wheel of his car. I stop him and ask him for money. He goes to get me some, then reconsiders and asks what I plan to do with it.

“It’s to buy stamps.”

“You don’t have any at home?”

“I do.”

“Go get them.”

He smiles and starts his car again. (I can’t say I’m surprised at him.)

5

So I go home, or rather to Michel M.’s. I’ve barely made it through the door when a young girl in white, whom I recognize as Michel’s ex-girlfriend, comes to ask me for an explanation. She has just arrived with her fiancé and found the house full. I reassure her, send her to her room, and go to see the other occupants. I figure we’ll be able to work something out, since the house is huge. The others are going to bed, even though it’s broad daylight. There is in particular one girl who has put on a ridiculous and rather comical lace nightshirt with tiny buttons, which makes her look like a fragile doll or like a portrait of a child.

Everyone agrees to sleep during the day and go out at night. I declare myself satisfied and go to tell the fiancée — no, she is no longer the fiancée, she’s Michel’s ex-girlfriend. I cross several rooms and halls before arriving: indeed, this place is enormous.

I find Michel’s ex-girlfriend, her fiancé, and another girl, fairly pretty and very cheerful, who is undressing; her chest, very pretty, is exposed; she is passing continually between a small paneled room (“dressing room”) and another small room, maybe a bathroom. She tries to avoid my eyes, but it’s a modest (and flirtatious) game rather than a real act of modesty. For my part, amused, I pretend not to look at her while I explain to Michel’s ex-girlfriend that the apartment is large enough to accommodate everyone, provisionally.

6

I try to go back to the other part of the apartment. I wander the halls, and soon wind up in a neighborhood being torn down.

The sense I get is somewhat like the one you get upon seeing a façade barely transformed (or recognizable though profoundly transformed) after it’s been covered for a long time by a wooden fence (like the “TARIDE” building at Mabillon): here, at last, is the final look that this house, this street, this neighborhood will have! How long we have waited! That’s just what I thought it would look like! (like a statue being unveiled to inaugurate it).

7

There actually is an inauguration ceremony, not to place the first stone but to make the final blow (Tabula rasa). Without wanting to, I wind up alongside the procession, which passes me slowly until I begin walking faster to pass it. First there are a few cops, then a delegation of gentlemen in uniform (who are nonetheless plainclothes men) and finally a group of young men in uniform (some kind of athletic tracksuits), whom I think I recognize as reserve officers but who are in fact “ .” One of them comes up and specifies who they are: they live in groups of 30 in special houses (their name, followed by the designation “iary,” is what these houses are called) and they take 30-day oaths of chastity. I almost burst out laughing at the sound of this act of faith, but the young man looks at me with an amused smile too. I walk to the opposite sidewalk to rejoin my friends across the street.

8

I’m in a bar. There are two rooms, one large and one small, joined by a thin hallway where the proper bar (the counter) has been set up. I’m at the bar, perched on a stool. My friends are in the large room. Among them is Nour M. and, certainly, one of the girls from Michel’s apartment.

I drink vodka at first, then whiskey.

I buy cigarettes. At one point I pay and there is a minor but quickly resolved problem in the accounts, something that’s been paid for twice or something that hasn’t been paid for. The girl leaves. I walk out with her; she gives me her address. I seem to understand that it’s 5 rue Linné, or maybe on the street that runs along la Halle aux vins, where the Lutèce theater is, but it’s another street, a parallel one, not the rue des Boulangers but a street bordering the Arènes de Lutèce.

I go to find Nour and suggest that we go to dinner. Two of his companions want to go to a “full show” (dinner, drinks, dancing, etc.) but I prefer to go somewhere quiet. We decide to all go to a restaurant I know near Denfert or Glacière.