Georges Perec - La Boutique Obscure - 124 Dreams

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.

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.

The bank note

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.

/ /

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 Marcel 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.

From the window of Duvignaud’s office, I notice a group of men on the street; they’re hiding among parked cars. I smell a rat and go down to investigate. Except for one or two individuals, the group is made up of Englishmen who seem very irritated to see me. I ask to see what they’re hiding. Two are hiding photos in their watch casings. But these photos — whose title had something seductive about it — are just thin slices of leather folded in two and show only vague gray stripes. The third is holding something in his hand: a map or a puzzle, but, though I’m very excited by what he shows me, I don’t see anything of interest in it. Nonetheless, I’m sure the presence of these three Englishmen was what set off the whole affair.

I have a date with Monique A. to discuss just that. We’re supposed to meet in a deserted snack bar in a covered passage (surely Passage Choiseul). Next door there is an Algerian café and, in front, three Algerian women holding each other by the waists. Next to them, the boss, their older brother, scolds them for their behavior, invoking the Ancestor. I remember that, in some sort of alternate story, Monique A. was not fired and the whole affair ended in catastrophe. It’s in order to avoid such things happening again that she has quit this time, and we’re meeting to talk about it.

Monique A. arrives. She stands behind the bar, I in front of it. She is genuinely dismayed. Why, we wonder, did she have to leave? She wasn’t fired, but she had to leave. Why does this always happen at that damn company? Always bickering, people leaving, others staying, etc.

This seems related not so much to any particular newspaper stories as to life, in a much more general sense.

A gigantic snake creeps out from behind the counter and begins to swing above my head. First I tell myself I shouldn’t pay it any mind, but it very quickly turns threatening and I am fascinated and frozen in fear. It swings closer and closer, whistling. I notice that its eyes are like projectors. The moment I feel all is totally lost, a gunshot, fired from somewhere unknown by someone unknown, blasts and wakes me up.