We walk into a medieval courtyard. At the foot of a cathedral stands a Gothic construction, recognizable by its flying buttresses and lancet arch windows. I point out a window to her, saying I live there. She answers:
“But that’s at least the fifth floor!”
“No,” I say, “it’s the ground floor.” But, even as I say these words, I feel deeply troubled, since, indeed, from the outside, it’s indisputably much higher than the ground floor.
I have returned to P.’s and gone to sleep, even though lots of people are still coming and going in the apartment. I tell myself I’ll have time, if I get up in the middle of the night, to finish my report for tomorrow. After all, this isn’t the first time I’ve done this; on the contrary, I’m quite used to doing it.
I take stock of everything I have to write. This report is about a product (something like “Perspirex” or “Respirex,” it seems to me that, give or take a letter, it has the name of a product that actually exists) that has been tested on a cruise. I’ve made a list of everything I need to say. At some moments, it seems like I’m almost done, that nothing will get in my way; at others, I realize with despair that I haven’t even finished with the second point on my list (of more than a hundred).
It was Patrice who assigned me this task. At some other point, I had gone down to call him and promised him my report the next day at 9 p.m. That’s already much later than the time we had initially agreed on. Patrice accepted (in all projects like this, it’s a given that they’ll be done at the last minute and they’re programmed accordingly), but it’s getting less and less likely that I’ll make it in time …
No. 114: April 1972
1
The puzzle
The puzzle
Along with a poorly identified person (maybe my aunt), I am visiting a sort of colonial trading post. At the very back of one room, we come upon a gigantic puzzle laid on a long, slightly inclined table. From far away, it looks like there is a nearly completed puzzle in the center — it’s of a Renaissance painting, with very bright and glossy colors — with other objects all around it. Close up, though, you realize the whole thing is a puzzle: the puzzle itself (the painting) is but a fragment of a larger puzzle, unfinished because it can’t be finished; the distinguishing feature of the puzzle is that it’s made up of volumes (cubes, roughly, or more precisely irregular polyhedra) whose faces can be combined at wilclass="underline" each face of cube A can be combined with each face of cube B, and not just two by two, as in children’s (cube) games. Thus there are, if not an infinite number, at least an extremely large number of possible combinations. The painting is only one of them; the fragments surrounding the painting are sketches, drafts, outlines of other puzzles.
As proof, somehow, of this nearly limitless permutation, I take a piece from the side of one of the fragments (which are, I forgot to say, like the puzzle, not square or regular like most puzzles, but somehow “sideless,” without a rectilinear border) and turn it over for a few moments, then replace it at the side of another fragment, where it fits immediately.
We go into another room, where we run into my niece Sylvia. It seems to me something very violent happens then (perhaps we break something?)
2
Felice’s letters
(it seems that) I have in my possession the catalogue of first editions of Kafka’s letters to Felice. There are several editions, ranging from the most prestigious for 056 francs (the 0 must be a printing error) to the most common, which are numbered all the same, for 12 francs. It’s one of the latter that I plan to order. It seems that’s not so easy to do, but at least, I think, almost happily, when I’ve received the book it will no doubt contain a card that legally entitles me to order all the other original editions: I will be kept up to date on the most recent releases.
3
The three cats
After a long trip, maybe, I return to Blevy (or is it Dampierre?). My whole family is there. My cat is sleeping in a corner of the room. I am quite surprised to see a second cat (much smaller and striped) in another corner of the room. I go to sit and I step on a third cat; this one is much larger. I don’t believe that this third cat really exists — come now, that’s impossible! — but it jumps up and scratches my face.
No. 115: April 1972
1
A general history of transportation (excerpt)
It is not difficult to imagine a particularly exhilarating parking system: a giant spiral buried underground, whose slope has been so well calculated that it requires no more effort to go up than it does to go down with, in either case, a uniformly accelerating speed.
The only condition is that there can never be more than one car at a time on the spiraclass="underline" when there are two, one going up and the other going down, they are powerless but to run into each other, with disastrous consequences. The employees who operate the tollbooths, one down below and the other up top, the exit and entrance of the vehicles, thus have a grave responsibility, but, since they’re in cahoots, they can cause accidents easily: what better way to combine the perfect crimes?
The spiral is made not of concrete but of very hard steel; its end is shaped like a screw: the energy generated by the vehicles traveling on it causes it to turn and it buries itself progressively (extremely slowly, but with virtually no cost) in the ground (a particularly hard rock that cannot be otherwise penetrated): this is how the foundations of gigantic buildings are dug out, with the assumption that there are several screws, which is to say several parking lots.
2
It’s fairly easy to go from the above to a project for a General History of Transportation, automobiles in particular. The director of the project is Alain Trutat, who was particularly enthusiastic when I suggested that we do a report on one of the least understood points — and yet one of the most important in this story: the hispanification (or more precisely the castillation, or castillification, or castillinization) of the Gascony concurrent to the rise to power of Catherine of Medici: even today, Gascon mentality, morals, and customs are completely incomprehensible if you forget that, for several decades, Gascony was purely and simply a colony, a protectorate, an appendage of Catalonia.
I begin my report in a relatively banal classroom, before a scattered audience. Quickly I realize I haven’t prepared enough and, worse, I can no longer get my listeners to understand the simple relationship between the history of the automobile and the history of Spain.
It’s going down the tubes. A total flop. I’m stammering. Alain Trutat leaves the room. To help create a diversion, someone suggests that we make music. A multi-instrument orchestra is established.
I go out to take a walk. Maybe I want to find Trutat? I walk in a large French-style park covered in snow.