La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams (4 page)

The “attested term” and “use reference” columns give explanations, the “S” and “Z” columns indicate all the transformed words. Thus:

(Maissé is the name of a character, and Maizsé, which at first I do not understand, is—of course! how could I forget?—the name of a village in Poland.)

This goes on for pages and pages. Each term, or rather each pair, is so evident that it seems odd that it didn’t occur to anybody earlier, shocking that we had to wait for Roland Barthes to notice it.

Leafing backward through the book, Z. shows me a series of epigraphs (in red?) at the beginning of a chapter. The first says something like “Perec gives up his letters”; it’s an excerpt from an article about
A Void
, but I can’t find the name of the author or the name of the newspaper; I am quite pleased with it, as if this quotation were a sign of recognition (of being taken seriously).

The author of the book is a woman and I remember having read one of her novels.

Two of my old friends (let’s say one is Pierre B., whom I have not seen in ten years are in Dampierre. A third—he has the same name as a manager whom I hear about sometimes but have never seen—may have been arrested. Someone asks if he is G.P. No, I exclaim. Maoist or P.C., then. I take that to mean P.C.F. and remark: that’s not the same thing, though! But the other one specifies: P.C.M.L.F.

Most of the terms in this dream are like crossword clues.

When I wake up, only one word remains:

We were heading South.

We had already been there, but we were coming from another town.

After various perambulations, I am back in the building on rue de Quatrefages (or is it rue des Boulangers? or rue de Seine?).

I’m going from the back room to the front. Denis B. is there (or is it Michaud?).

On the ground, cats. At least three. Tiny little balls of fur. I shout: I said loud and clear that I won’t have that a cat here! I take one of the cats, walk to the door, and toss it out. Then I notice that between the floor and the door there’s a space large enough for a small cat to enter.

Anyway, the whole house is an utter mess.

The downstairs neighbor has a gigantic chimney in his house. He makes a fire and my room burns. Beneath the ashes of the floorboards you can see pieces of masonry and bits of iron from the frame. My friend asks with dismay what we’re going to do. But I’m not in the least bit disturbed and I calmly go down the list of things that need to be done.

I am to be in two plays.

A recent walk-on part revealed my acting talent and I was cast on the spot.

At the moment I’m supposed to enter, I realize that I haven’t rehearsed, nor even read my part once.

The scene takes place in a large hall-cafeteria-dormitory-canteen. The actors are seated at a table. I take the remaining empty seat, right at the front of the stage.

I’m playing a tramp. On the table is a piece of paper with some lines on it, but an actor next to me (who is also the director) leans over and whispers that it’s not my part.

I am stricken with unease. A bit later, though, someone manages to pass me a sheet (of something like butcher paper) with a few notes from the script. I have to make do with winks from my partners to know when it’s my turn to speak.

The play begins.

I am lost. I’m sure I’m saying the wrong thing at the wrong moment. Happily, the author has written a very disjointed play, a hullabaloo.

After quite a while of considerable discomfort (I’m ruining everyone else’s work), riot police arrive in the back of the auditorium.

It’s part of the play.

Great confusion.

On to the second play.

It’s an act with three characters. I am playing the bear (or maybe the devil?) and across from me are either Faust and Marguerite or Don Juan and Faustine. Someone brings me fur for my costume. I’m not worrying much about my lines; my part consists chiefly of grunts.

I learn that the role was in fact written for Roger Blin, who’s supposed to take over for me after this performance, and I find it hilarious to “create a role for Blin to reprise.”

The first play, was it actually a rehearsal? In any case, the second is not performed.

I am with Pierre G. in my room. My bed is covered in plastic foam cubes wrapped in transparent plastic casings. Good thing, because water is dripping from the walls and ceiling. For that matter, it’s as though the walls and ceiling are just a single network of multicolored tubes. Everything is soaked. Pierre explains that the people upstairs are having their bathtub redone (refitted).

There is a table next to the bed and on the table a telephone off its hook. I sense that if I hang it up, it will begin to ring (actually, maybe it’s even ringing now, even though it’s off the hook). I hang up; nothing happens.

Later, Pierre and I are in a large drugstore. At one point I find myself alone in the book aisle. All the books are shelved flat and covered in pale-colored jackets (mauve, blue, light grey, rose, lavender, etc.). I realize that they’re all erotic books. The titles are mostly quite short, usually just a female first name (Fabienne, Irene). I don’t recognize the authors’ names (pseudonyms, no doubt).

Pierre and I come to a huge room where we think we can get something to eat or drink. But the maitre d’ directs us to a bar farther down, on the other side of a large picture window.

We each take a glass. One is a tapered whiskey tumbler, the other a handsome stemmed glass with an egg-shaped swelling near the base. On the other side of the window, another large room with a staircase leading up to the restaurant. The maître d’ points us to it, but we only want drinks, and he leads us to the bar. The bar is very long. It is shaped like an S. On the other side of the counter, several large young men, athletic types with crew cuts, are playing dice on a round tray that they seem to be supporting on their knees. The bartender hands us drinks. Someone asks if the dice players are from the university, but they respond by shaking their heads no and they seem to find the suggestion very amusing.

I’m supposed to fly to Venice, and later go to Toulouse to pay my taxes. Tricky money-changing issues. By going through Italy I save a great deal of money. But obviously I can’t declare it.

Great confusion.

I am carrying a check (for 5,000, 30,000, or 50,000 francs) and a single 500-franc bill.

I’m supposed to pay 6,000 francs, which seems exorbitant to me. Moreover, I realize that, although it’s Thursday, I can only be in Italy on Saturday and all the banks will be closed. I should have left the same night.

All of this is happening in transit from counter to counter, in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of a major airport.

I realize that this trip is completely useless in any case, since this banking operation could have been done a bit later during my trip to Germany.

The dreamer (this whole story is like a novel in the third person) has sat down at a little bistro. He is foreign, but they quickly come to treat him like a regular. The boss and some of the customers are discussing the epidemic. The Chinese cook of the restaurant enters (the dreamer thinks he looks like someone he knows); the Chinese cook says they need to find a replacement for him, because he can no longer continue to man the stoves and cook for the girls. On this note he cites a Shakespearean proverb:

“They died not all, but all were sick!”

Stunned, the owner of the café looks at the dreamer: he’s the one who taught him the proverb. At that instant the dreamer understands that he is no longer a stranger at some table and that he is now the “central character”; at the same time, he recognizes the Chinese cook; he knows only him; he’s the one who comes from time to time to volunteer for the girls.

There has been a great cholera epidemic. Everyone wants to be examined. The symptom is spitting up blood. The dreamer and two of his friends walk around the town. They arrive in front of a stairway blocked by a mass of young girls, surely a boarding school. They pretend to have priority, like one of them has been stricken, so that the doctor has to look after them first. The doctor has to clear a path through the girls.

A bit later, in a crowd of girls splayed out, sick, the dreamer picks up a piece of earth (and not a piece of trash or of feces) from the ground. And he discovers, behind a door, his friend J., laid flat, dead, turned into earth, turned into a block of earth that is missing the piece the dreamer just picked up.

I am in a foreign city. It’s London, an outlying neighborhood, far from Waterloo or Victoria.

I’m in a group of tourists wandering around a large drugstore. We meet another group, whom I’m supposed to know. Indeed, everyone seems familiar, looks like or could look like someone I know. I’m quite embarrassed. I offer a lot of vague smiles.

In any case, it’s clear that one of my old friends, Jacques M., is in the second group. He has grown a beard. There are also friends of his, whose last name is Fried. On the other hand, Jacques’s wife, Marianne, is in my group.

I realize then that Jacques and Marianne are separated.

The next morning, I run into Marianne and tell her that Jacques is there. She heads toward him, then suddenly veers off. I follow her.

We pass in front of a group of girls. One of them recoils in horror at my approach.

My boss pays me 82 francs (3 × 16) instead of 45 (3 × 15) for having served for three days as a fake subject in his experiment.

I propose that he put the money into a slush fund, but he shakes his head no.

He asks where my file is.

I think of GABA (gamma hydroxybutyric acid), then of presynaptic excitation, which is—evidently—synaptic excitation, and of presynaptic inhibition.

(long feeling of strangeness upon waking)

I was, with Z., at a public event that Aragon and Elsa Triolet were also attending. Elsa Triolet, a small and gentle woman, waved to me, which surprised me because we don’t know one another.

Later.

We are at the theater.

I am packed in right near the stage, just above the illuminated walkway. At one point one of the actors, who had been sitting with his back to the audience, rises and begins to count off time like a conductor. We hear music from backstage. First it’s just a harpsichord, then a whole orchestra. A character on the right begins to sing. It’s the end of the play. I am overwhelmed, even as I realize there’s nothing to it and wonder vaguely why I appear to be the only one at all moved.

The exit of the theater is mobbed.

I am with Z. at the top of the stairs. Elsa Triolet walks by below, toward another exit perpendicular to ours. Once again
she tilts her head toward me. I tell Z.: “That’s Elsa Triolet.” Z. asks how small I was when I met her and tells me she’s going to introduce me to someone who knew me even smaller. But all of this is said in such a way that I can’t tell whether we’re talking about a woman or a man, and whether she really means “even smaller than I am.”