La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams

by Perec, Georges

  No. 11

  October 1969

  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.

  No. 12

  October 1969

  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

  No. 13

  February 1970

  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 …

  No. 14

  February 1970

  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.

  No. 15

  May 1970

  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.

  Past the kitchen is a large bathroom with a trapezoidal bathtub. Then a hallway and, at the very end, a somewhat worm-eaten wooden door. This is how I discover, for the first time in my life, that my apartment has two doors; I vaguely suspected as much, but I (finally?) have tangible proof.

  I open the door. Immediately the three cats who live in the apartment run out. There is one white cat and two grey cats, one of which is certainly my cat. No big deal, they’ll definitely be back; obviously it’s through this door, and not the other, that P. usually lets them out.

  I look through the keyhole (which is round and eye-sized). I see the avenue, wide, lined with trees and a few stores, including a restaurant.

  P. is asleep in the apartment. She has found only one of the cats. He was on rue Mortimer.

  I realize, first of all, that the first room of the apartment belongs jointly to P. and to the neighbor, and, second, that this is not my apartment, that I have never lived here.

  In the first room, the neighbor’s section and P.’s are separated by a heap of books. The neighbor, a fairly old and rather boorish woman, can no longer tell which of these books she has borrowed from P., nor which she has finished reading and wishes to return.

  She hands me a very pretty book, a bit like the Hetzel editions of Jules Verne. I quiver with joy: the title of the book is

  LUNGS

  It’s an extremely rare book, a classic of respiratory physiology that I remember hearing G. mention. I open it. It is written in German (in Gothic characters).

  I recognize, in the heap of books, many familiar volumes (the Queneau-Massin-Carelman edition of Exercises in St
yle, books by Steinberg, etc.).

  The neighbor’s husband arrives. He is an old, tired man. He has no mustache. Or, rather, he has one. He looks a bit like the actor André Julien, or maybe like André R., the father of one of my old classmates. In his hand is a case shaped like a large ballpoint pen, which is full either of many ballpoint pens or of one enormous pen with—let’s say—twelve colors. He nods, looking displeased.

  Later: I am lying on a bed, next to the pile of books. In front of me, to my left, P. is spread out on another bed, perpendicular to mine. In front of P.’s bed, across from me, there is a long table with the husband sitting behind it (just across from me) and (on my right) the neighbor, who has a tiny electric battery in front of her.

  Long before, P. and I were in the street. We were wandering in a lovely park, as pretty as the Jardin des Missions Étrangères on rue de Varenne.

  No. 16

  July 1970

  The arrest

  I am in Tunis. It is a vertically sprawling city. I’m on a very long walk: winding roads, lines of trees, fences, panoramas. It’s as if the whole landscape turned out to be the background of an Italian painting.

  The next day, the police come to arrest me. Long ago I committed a minor infraction. I no longer have any memory of it, but I know that today it could cost me twenty years.

  I flee, armed with a revolver. The places I pass through are unfamiliar. There is no immediate danger, but I know already that my flight won’t solve anything. I go back to places I know, where I had been walking the previous night. Three sailors ask me for directions. Behind a line of trees, women in veils wash laundry.

  I return to town on a winding road. There are cops everywhere, hundreds of them. They’re stopping everyone and searching vehicles.

  I pass between the cops. As long as I don’t make eye contact, I have a chance of making it out.

  I go into a café, where I find Marcel B. I sit down near him.

  Three men enter the café (cops, obviously!); they make a halfhearted search of the room. Maybe they haven’t seen me? I almost breathe a sigh of relief, but one of them comes and sits down at my table.

  “I don’t have my papers on me,” I say.

  He is about to stand and leave (which would mean I’m saved), but he says to me in a low voice:

  “Copulate!”

  I don’t understand.

  He writes the word in the margin of a newspaper, in huge bubble letters:

  then he goes back over the first three letters, filling them in:

  Eventually I get his drift. It’s extremely complicated: I am to go home and “have marital relations with my wife” so that, when the police come for me, the fact of “copulating” on a Sunday will constitute for me, being Jewish, an aggravating circumstance.

  My being Jewish is, of course, at the root of this whole affair and complicates it considerably. My arrest is a consequence of the Judeo-Arab conflict and affirming my pro-Palestinian sentiments will do me no good.

  I return to my villa (which might be just a single room). Most of all I want to know whether I will be a Tunisian prisoner in France or a French prisoner in Tunisia. Either way, I anticipate an amnesty during a visit from a head of state.

  I feel innocent. What bothers me most is having to go for several years without being able to change my dirty socks.

  No. 17

  July 1970

  The switch

  “One fine morning,” I am once again in a concentration camp. It’s time to get up; the challenge is to find clothes (I am dressed in everyday attire, tweed jacket, English shoes).

  In the camp, everything is for sale. I see rolls of large bills in circulation. The guardians give potions to the detainees.

  Someone finds me a jacket. We line up to go down (we’re in a large dormitory on the second floor of a sort of repurposed barrack).

  We hide for a moment in a hallway.

  We walk in quadruple file. An officer lines us up with a long bamboo switch. He is kind at first, then suddenly he begins to insult us horribly.

  In line for roll call. The officer is still shouting but not striking anyone. At one point, each of us (he and I) is holding an end of the switch; I am overcome with panic at the prospect of him hitting me.

  The universe of the camp is unbroken: nothing can be done to affect it.

  Later, I burst into tears while passing a tent where children with an incurable disease are being treated. Their only chance of survival is here. I wonder if this survival doesn’t consist in their being turned into pills, which reminds me of an anecdote about dieting cures that work because the dieters are told to ingest pills that actually contain a tapeworm.

  No. 18

  August 1970

  Vergelesses

  I am with her at a restaurant.

  I look at a menu that is very extensive but contains only dishes that are both dull and overpriced (for instance, a hot dog with fries for twelve francs).

  I consult the wine list and suggest that we order “vergelesses.”

  No. 19

  August 1970

  The roll of bills

  An American-style comedy. It’s one of those stories we’ve all heard before, and where we already know what happens next.

  There’s a whole group of us. The police arrest us once, then a second time (but they have to let us go) and a third time, when the impunity we were hoping for no longer works.

  Finally, the Chief of Police sets us free and gives us back our money.

  Three famous actors, wrinkled like old Western heroes (Stewart, Fonda, etc.) are seated at a table, smiling as they handle thick rolls of dollars.

  Wide shot: a roll of blue and yellow bills, differing only by the digit: $500, $500, $100, etc., a long stretch of $1 bills in the middle, then back to large denominations.

  In the meantime, I learn that I’m going to be a father, then that I am: the child was born, I wasn’t even told.

  I walk down a long hallway, trying to think of a suitable name: it needs to be very short (like Jorg’) or very long. Didier, for instance, would not work.

  It’s a girl. Her name is something like Didière or Denise. She has very skinny legs with socks and little white shoes. She seems rather unhappy to see me.

  While kissing her, I happen to tear off a tiny piece of her tongue in development (flesh not yet fully firm). I worry that this will harm her growth.

  It’s not my wife who is looking after the girl but rather a friend of hers.

  No. 20

  August 1970

  C.

  Weekend in Dampierre. C. and one of his friends arrive. I talk to him about a project for a television adaptation of The Raise. Someone else proposed a similar project to me recently.

  C. tells me he’s the one behind the project, that he had talked about it to (neither one of us manages to remember the name).

  (I don’t remember anything else when I wake up, but all of this seems so logical that I remain convinced that the scene is plausible, even real).

  No. 21

  September 1970

  S/Z

  I go back to that bookstore where the books, most of them used, are stacked, or rather heaped, in a corner.

  I’m looking for a particular book, but the bookseller says she doesn’t have it. Z. and I browse a few other titles.

  I find a book; I recognize the name of the author, but nothing more; it’s a huge collection, or dictionary, of S/Z variations in the works of Balzac.

  Each page has four columns:

  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.

  No. 22

  August 1970

  Initials

  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.