On a sloping street you can see a sign indicating: Paris (or Marseilles) 4 (a digit in the tens place); a bit later, the confusion (is it 40 … or 49) clears: it’s 41.
No. 75: June 1971
The painters
In a huge empty apartment, no doubt Denis B.’s. Gisèle lived across from an even bigger apartment (wasn’t it that big, the place on rue de l’Assomption?).
I’m sleeping on the bare floor, on a mattress with no frame. In the next room J.L., or R.K., is typing on my typewriter.
Are we mad at each other? I pretend to be asleep. They move about not far from me and eventually leave.
Maybe S.B. will show up a bit later and slide under the sheets next to me?
Very quickly, a crowd takes over the apartment.
Above all, four painters who, though the apartment seems rather clean (shiny lacquered walls), are beginning to repaint it.
They intend to “make something of it.”
No. 76: July 1971
The renovation
I enter the courtyard of a building under renovation (just as mine is under renovation).
Everything is very white and very dusty.
There was an external elevator, which has been enlarged and moved.
There was a stone fountain, which has been moved to the other side. The pipes are still there, but the stones of the base and basin have been moved.
A whole section of the wall has been reduced to rubble: a newly installed metal ceiling beam runs across it (like in the old “Taride” building at Mabillon).
No. 77: July 1971
The vendor
I have killed my wife and cut her rather crudely into small pieces, which I have wrapped hastily in paper bundles. The whole of her fits in a cardboard box, which is still relatively easy to handle.
My only hope is for someone to make her into wine or alcohol. I go to the distillery. I walk without knocking into a room where there are three women in overalls. Two are sitting down, the third is standing near a waist-high double door (like a saloon door).
Either I address them with a wink, like we know one another, or I call out, flatly, something like:
“I have 50 kilos of quality meat!”
The young woman who was standing brings me into a tiny room, where she begins to examine my merchandise. My package has all the necessary labels, but the young woman claims that the firm I represent is not an approved client of her Company and that I’m going to have a hard time closing the deal.
As a sample, I take a series of small bottles from the package. This should be no more than a simple formality, but, to my great confusion, there are more and more bottles: red wine, white wine, rosé, all sorts of liquor, even a pitcher of water — tiny, but full and above all uncorked: you could dip a finger in without making it overflow, which strikes me as an indubitable experimental demonstration of osmosis or of capillarity.
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)
1
The actress, I
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)
1
The man with a dog
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.