All the demonstration proves useless: a man comes out from the office next door and tells me this will end badly for me if they don’t find my name in their files.
No. 78
July 1971
The trip
I had learned long ago to jump from a certain height (for example from the top of a high beam). This time, I seem to be much higher, almost at the first story of the Eiffel Tower. Below I can clearly see the grass and sand grooves of a garden, and I’m convinced I’ll die if I jump. But finally I learn that I don’t have to jump from this height, just from a much lower beam, and for that matter not even jump from it, just cross it.
H.M. and I are on a boat from New York to Paris. This obviously takes much longer than flying, but it’s much more pleasant.
We’re going to show a film at a festival whose first half was in New York and whose second half is to be in Paris.
A fire breaks out in a cabin on the level below. H.M. and I rush down and save the passengers. We are the heroes of the day and the passengers honor us.
I return to my cabin. A steward is there. He makes me realize how pleasant it all is. He changes my towels and, seeing that I’m a little sweaty, dabs my face with a towel (one of the ones he’s collected to change).
I go to H.M.’s cabin. I learn that we are on the festival jury. The jury is called “the helical complex” and consists of 4 jurors: H.M. and myself, and two farmers who are just this moment coming into the cabin; they are from Villard-de-Lans, which H.M. knows well; one of them is “Lulu,” whom I know also (no doubt I was in school with him during the war), but the second is unknown to me even though his face looks familiar.
No. 79
July 1971 (Lans)
The actress, I
1
I am in New York at a gigantic coffee shop.
2
In Paris, a café terrace, enormous. There are lots of people, especially Algerians, with a vaguely menacing air.
3
I forget my satchel on the terrace; there are 2,500 francs in it. I go back to get it; obviously, nothing. I am genuinely devastated. My only hope is that I am dreaming (I wake up, relieved).
4
I’m visiting a female friend (nothing between us, just friends). The actress M.D. arrives. She is a tall woman, pretty and cheerful, with long blond hair; she is naked under a light dress.
I begin touching her, caressing her “absent-mindedly.”
I wind up on top of her, fondling her bare breasts.
I make love to her.
No. 80
July 1971 (Lans)
The rehearsal
Rehearsals for my next play have begun. We’re already on set. I am explaining to the director, Marcel Cuvelier, the importance of the 6th character, who is mute but who appears to be spared the fate to which the 5 others are bound.
I am a soldier in Grenoble. I take 8 days of vacation, to go to Lans or Villard. I call to explain that I’m sick: spots on my skin, pityriasis, or, rather, to make the case more extreme, psoriasis. A woman answers, kindly but neutral. She doesn’t seem to think this is possible, but she agrees to “prepare my file” anyway.
After a long time pondering, I try to remember the tune and the words of a song I wrote in 1941.
No. 81
July 1971 (Lans)
The man with a dog
1
I am visiting one of my nieces and her boyfriend. I am concerned to learn that they only got an average of 80 on their exams, when they would have needed 100. My niece suddenly seems swollen, almost ugly. I tell myself the life she is leading with her boyfriend isn’t working out.
2
I return home. I live in a large single room in the same house as my niece. Above me, in a third apartment, live either P. or F. and an Algerian friend. I go to see P.; I find F., accompanied by another Algerian and Henri C. The three men seem each as unfriendly as the next, even almost hostile.
3
Out of some unknown necessity, I move a meeting scheduled for that night to the following day (which will be July 30th) at 11 a.m.
4
Now I remember with a sort of panic that I made an appointment for July 29th with a psychoanalyst, Mr. Bezu, at 34 rue Daru. I call Mr. Bezu to cancel the appointment. I have a very complicated conversation with his secretary, because she doesn’t want to give me another appointment, though I insist on asking for the appointment that would normally have followed this one anyway. After much hesitation, the secretary finally concedes and gives me an appointment for July 30th at 2 p.m. This seems surprising to me, since at first it seems to me that the 30th is a Sunday. But in fact it’s a Saturday.
I call from a phone booth and by the end of the conversation I have stepped halfway out. When I go back in to hang up, I find an old, kindly-looking man who shows me how I could have made the call without paying: just strip the wires and place them on the contacts, squeezing them between thumb and forefinger.
5
I go to rue Daru: it’s in a neighborhood that’s being torn down. In fact, it’s a large esplanade where all the remains of the quarter are on display. It’s very white. Some details look like paintings by Niki de Saint Phalle, as though they were made of celluloid baby parts.
I look around the exhibit, followed a few paces behind by Henri C., who is carrying a dog in his arms. Henri seems more interested in what I’m doing than in the exhibit itself, but he doesn’t say anything to me. While going down the stairs toward the exit, I steal something of minor importance (like a newel post): maybe I’m caught by Henri C., who begins to smile.
6
Sudden change of scenery. I’m home again and I’m invisible. A Jerry Lewis-type gag: a man disguised as a dog (only by looking in his eyes—shining, almost red—can you tell that it’s not a dog) exits, pulling on his leash, forcing the man leading him to break into a trot. The real dog, sitting in an armchair, watches him leave, then gets up on his hind legs (like a cartoon animal) and begins miming a boxing match.
7
Another scene from another film; this time it’s Designing Woman by Vincent Minnelli. Two gangsters are terrorizing—or rather intimidating—a man (no doubt F.) who owes them 4,000 francs. As they leave, one of the gangsters tries to knock over a pedestal with several fragile objects on it. I end up opening the door and chasing them away (they leave without a fight).
8
Now I live in an immense, sumptuous apartment. I walk through the rooms, followed by F., who is telling me about his problems. I scold him for seeming to always wind up in situations like these, almost intentionally.
I come to a room filled with people. All of them look at me in a friendly way. It’s the family of a little boy I barely know, but who I know likes me a great deal. The little boy introduces me to his father and his aunts. The father asks what he can do for me. I take him on an escalator to a long, narrow room where a congress is in session. I explain that I would like to install a projection hall in this room and show him how I’m thinking of doing so. The father tells me it’s a very good idea. We go back across the apartment. The little boy takes my hand. He tells me he has 1,000 dollars and wants to give them to me. I tell him I cannot accept them, that it can’t be a gift but only, if he wants, a donation to the film I’m going to make. I expect the father to offer that much, maybe even more, but there seems to be no question
No. 82
July 1971 (Lans)
The three Ms
1
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 th
e 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.
No. 83
July 1971 (Lans)
The bank note
1
Vacation
L. is on vacation. We’re staying at his place, in a dormitory, waiting for his return.
In the middle of the night I wake up and go into an adjoining room. I flip through the books and magazines on a table. / /. It’s not impossible that that’s when I happen upon the clipping from L’Express.
Someone comes in and asks for L. He’s on vacation, I say. He looks at me carefully, tells me he thinks he believes me and asks if I’m not Z.’s boyfriend. I say (smiling “sadly”) that I was.
There is light coming from L.’s office.
I go back to the common room. I sit down on a corner of the table. There are several open bottles, and I pour myself a glass of beer. It’s not tepid; it’s cold. I am totally demoralized. Someone, a young woman (M.F.), sweeps a bit in my corner, wipes the crumb-covered table, which comforts me somewhat.
/ /
2
Oedipus-Express
Home. R. comes in. He takes off his coat—it’s a mariner’s peacoat—and sighs that he’s totally broke and needs me to support him. I tell him to make himself at home. He looks at B. who is walking around the apartment totally nude, as though indifferent to his attention. I go to my room, followed by Nourredine M. / / While talking to him I make a stack of wide—exceptionally wide—5-franc coins. I find several dozen of them. I exchange a dozen for a 50-franc bill (a bank note) (from whom? Maybe M.F.?). In the other room, I hear R. on the telephone. He comes in, laughing, to tell me he’s on the line with an airplane in mid-flight. I think at first that it’s D. on the plane and that he wants to speak to her (even though they’ve been separated for several years) but he clarifies that it’s not, that it’s the Express plane.
Several months before, “as a matter of fact,” I found a paragraph in L’Express devoted to Oedipus—or, more precisely, to the figure of Oedipus—and decided to write an article using that clipping as a starting point. On one hand I immediately made it clear that it wasn’t a real article about psychoanalysis, more of an “opinion by a contemporary author” on his own behalf. On the other hand, I found several pleasing titles, mostly puns I found very subtle and surprising that nobody had used before.
It seems it’s quite complicated to have an article published in L’Express, or even elsewhere. I speak about this to a friend of François Maspero, who later tells me, or has someone tell me, that François Maspero is interested but that he wants to submit the article to a specialist (which I obviously find hilarious). Also, Marcel B., who seems to have a friend in a very high place (the king of Morocco) promises me his support: he is meeting with him very soon.
A whole “combination of circumstances” ensues around this article. It’s like the old days of “La Ligne générale,” a review I tried to found with a group of friends. This is how, while in line for a movie, I learn, again from Mar
cel B., that one of the former participants from La Ligne générale has become a critic under an assumed name and that he too can support my efforts. We remark that choosing a pseudonym is a sign of homosexuality and immediately come up with four examples, which form two almost-famous couples from Parisian Arts and Letters.
Inside the theater I noticed L. with a friend. We said hello discreetly. He seemed to be eating an Eskimo Pie with a small spoon, but I understood right away that he was eating a hashish jam.
Finally, I have been taken on by L’Express. The director is none other than Jean Duvignaud and the secretary is Monique A.
Very soon there are the kind of squabbles that always erupt in such places.
La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams Page 7