Georges Perec - La Boutique Obscure - 124 Dreams

After what might have been countless adventures, I manage to board the train just as it’s preparing to leave, as the dull black automatic doors are already closing.

The compartment is long and narrow, almost empty. There is only an immensely tall woman on the other side of the car, lying over several seats — not across a row but down the length of the car, her feet roughly where I am and her head almost at the other end of the compartment.

(Suddenly) I feel something (someone) gently running (a hand) through my hair.

I am frightened.

I shout.

It is certainly not the woman, who seems even more than I am.

Sinusitis

I spoke with a doctor for a long time about my sinus infections.

Writers

In a store, or rather at a large carnival, something like the Fête de l’Humanité. There is a large crowd. We arrange to meet in one place and then another.

I step out “to be introduced to some Soviet writers.” They greet me but then, to my great disappointment, nobody pays me any attention; everyone is listening to Armand Lanoux nearly immediately to say she is not going to Dampierre (I have never seen him before; he looks nothing like I imagined he would), who is speaking in Russian (which I understand without the slightest difficulty) about his ten books that have been translated in the USSR. I am shocked by the number ten, and I mentally correct it to something like “ten times the same thing”

I belong to a group of hippies. We stop traffic on a national highway. We have surrounded a luxury car and are closing in on it, threateningly.

The death of Helmlé

I receive a letter from Germany in which I learn that Eugen Helmlé is dead. I had written to him the night before.

Bit by bit, I understand that I am dreaming and that Eugen Helmlé is not dead.

Go

I am playing Go (though it’s more like a puzzle whose pieces finally form a sort of sphere) with a writer named Bourgoin, whom I find fairly unpleasant.

I am on rue de l’Assomption and I decide to go to Dampierre. I head toward a café at the end of the street, then veer off in the direction of la Muette. I am furious.

Maybe it’s in Dampierre, or still on rue de l’Assomption? The place is under repair, even though they’re holding a reception, whence the presence — rather surprising at first — of workers in the middle of the sitting room. A writer enters; I realize I have his book in my hand and am playing (fanning myself?) with it.

J. and M.L. appear to have made up and are playing Go together. A bit later I walk in on them kissing in a dusty room, which looks like my old office on rue du Bac. A workman comes to tear out the doorpost, saying, in a very technical manner:

“It has beveled edges.”

The post carries electrical wires, so there is a brief blackout. I remark to myself that he is an excellent electrician and that it will be easier to remove the furniture this way.

Three workers (one of whom is the gardener from Dampierre) are building an outdoor living room.

I have a scene with

The hotel

I am looking to rent an apartment for a month. Someone whose job is to sell or rent apartments suggests that I go to a hotel instead, and recommends La Boule Blanche, in the middle of Saint-Germain. As it turns out, I know that hotel by name, but I’ve never been there.

La Boule Blanche is on a very calm square, not unlike the Square Louis-Jouvet, near the Opera (where the Cintra bar is). It reminds me of another hotel, not far off, where one of my friends either went or told P. (or maybe me) to go.

A rather fin-de-siècle congress is being held in the hotel. The reading rooms are packed, the tables strewn with outspread newspapers.

I turn around in a circle, looking for the hotel office, and end up asking someone, who tells me:

“But it’s right there.”

It is, in fact, right there. It looks a bit like my writing desk, but curved. Three young women are behind it.

They whisper to me that there have been many departures and that I will have no trouble getting a room. Just now, three or four gentlemen are returning their keys.

I want to ask for a room, but by mistake I ask for a suite. They ask me why. I explain that I am in the middle of changing apartments and that I wish to move in for a month.

Two of the three employees talk amongst themselves and decide to show me the bridal suite.

It’s at the very top of the hotel. We take the stairs up. In the small entryway there is a carved lamp whose base represents a headless naked woman gripping or strangling a boa constrictor coiled around her. The woman and the snake are made of wood, but the imitation is so perfect that you could believe, for a moment, that they are alive.

I tour the suite, which consists of two rooms connected by a small staircase.

I try to explain that a room, a large room, would be fine for me. Then, changing the subject, I ask what brands of whiskey they have at the bar. They answer with a certain number of words (“long john,” “glen,” “mac,” etc.) and then the word “Chivas,” which they repeat several times until it loses its shape (chavass, chivelle, etc.).

Then I ask what they have in the way of vodka. They answer with a word that ends in “ya”: I hear “Denitskaya” or “Baltiskaya.” I am pleased that it is an authentic vodka …

Ski-hunting

A film that I am (a) watching as it is being filmed, (b) seeing in the theater, or (c) acting in.

Somewhere in the forest. Hunting scene. We are in the middle of the woods. Maybe there is snow.

The hunters curse the poachers, who are always a few steps ahead, hunting their game and thinning its population.

The shot moves (pan, lateral). I am very far off-screen .

Four forms pass, hairy, bearded, covered in furs: the poachers.

Then, on skis, the “Lead Hunter,” then the cameraman, who is carrying a ridiculous contraption on his back, then the sound engineer, also heavily loaded, then, etc., the rest of the crew.

They are walking backwards, on skis, bringing in the poachers. Close-up of their skis, which look quite strange, like they have heels.

Among the smugglers, an old Jewish woman, very ugly, extremely unpleasant (like an anti-Semitic caricature).

She is wearing an expensive fur coat.

I speak to her as we return to the village; in principle, she could take part in a real hunt (and even have her own), but she prefers to hunt other people’s game.

I tell her she is at risk of being pursued and of seeing her name dishonored.

The rest is confused: we speak of slander, of fines.

The scandal must be kept quiet.

La rue de Quatrefages

P. and I are living in the building on rue de Quatrefages, at the very back of the yard, no longer on the fifth floor but on the ground floor. We are living separately, which is to say we have separated our apartment in two. After some complicated construction, we even end up sharing the apartment with our neighbor.

I am touring the apartment. The first two rooms are familiar; it’s basically our old apartment on rue de Quatrefages. Then you come to a curious part: a bizarrely furnished kitchen. There is a tiny ceramic basin (a “scullery sink”) whose faucet is open over a covered casserole pot (a “hot-dish”) larger than the sink (which can suggest only imminent overflow …); above the sink, there is an immense glass fume hood (a “sorbonne”); it’s glass but it’s barely clear, more like “bumpy” (fluted?) glass; also notable: the hood is completely detached from the wall, the length of which is lined with water and gas pipes, and actually has to be suspended from the ceiling. There is also a gas cooker with plates simmering on it.