La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams

No. 90: October 1971

My height

I’m supposed to write an item (like a Who’s Who listing) about my boss.

To make my job easier, Jean Duvignaud gives me a “window notebook,” a notebook whose hard cover has been cut out on the inside, a bit like for a passport.

The “window notebook” isn’t about my boss but about L. This is how I learn that one of his middle names is Bertrand. Flipping through the notebook, I notice that the information it contains isn’t up to date at all.

It’s a window notebook, but it’s not a current notebook.

I am at S.B.’s house. In a narrow and tortuous hall, she introduces me to her mother, mentioning my height (1.65m and a half). I correct her. I say first: 1.70m., then 1.68m. I feel desperately short.

Now there is a crowd in S.B.’s living room. Someone is telling — or maybe showing — the story of a young man who begins to levitate, earning the audience’s admiration. But he ends up falling back to the ground (regardless of how gracefully he was floating) and he rushes under a train.

Earlier, I had had a long conversation with her father, and maybe also with her uncle. Both of them were abominably drunk.