I return to the room. A second orchestra has been formed under the direction of R.K., who seems to be the only competent musician in the group and who has taken matters in hand with great authority and, for that matter, efficacy. I want to play the flute, but I notice as I’m taking it up that I’ve broken the tip: I was holding the flute in one hand, and in the other a kind of rosary made of three long olive stones, white and maybe wooden, which was supposed to constitute the mouthpiece of the flute.
A bit later, someone maybe hands me a clarinet.
3
/ /
No. 116: May 1972
The monkey
After various twists and turns, I find myself sharing an apartment with a stranger. One of the oddities of this apartment is that it has a huge entrance-hall — much larger, in fact, than the other rooms, including the bedrooms. Maybe the shared entrance causes the first problem.
In any case, I’ve written a score and this stranger, who says he is a musician, has offered to play it. But I suspect he actually intends to steal it.
Perhaps to apologize for this tactlessness, he introduces me to Adolf Hitler.
Adolf Hitler is a grotesque clown, with pale skin and long hair: he is played emphatically and exaggeratedly, and at first ridicules his aide-de-camp, General Hartmann, a good old fat ruddy-nosed German who is obviously drunk: he can’t find the right key on his keychain, and is trying desperately to put his outfit in order — shirt and suspenders untucked, shako on his ear — to present himself before his Führer.
Hitler begins by sweetly saying many nice things about Mariani. But bit by bit, as his speech continues, it gets increasingly pernicious and concludes as a torrent of foul curses.
Adolf Hitler’s eminence grise is a monkey; it has a very long tail that ends in a hand (in a black glove?) and does not stop playing with itself (exactly like Marsupilami from the Spirou cartoons) to accompany and underscore its master’s speech.
But I think at one point it loses its glove, or its whole hand.
Sudden change of scenery. Deathly silence. On a vast esplanade, a crowd of soldiers dressed in black is pushing everyone back while the monkey, at once terrible and grotesque, advances through the middle of the grand plaza. He is sitting on a little chariot (the carriage of a cannon), tail pointing in front of him like a tank cannon.
A child is running. One of the soldiers turns around quickly as the child passes and knocks him down with his rifle butt.
I am at a demonstration. We are singing “La Jeune Garde.” The song fades out slowly. The silence is oppressive. I sense the police just in front of us and know they are going to charge.
I know this is only a scene from Duck, You Sucker!, but still, why on earth do I always get myself into these situations?
I managed to take refuge in a building under construction. I’m hidden in a little square room without a door (I had to enter through the ceiling). This is where the toilets will be; the plumbing is not yet installed, but there are already footprints in the cement.
No. 117: May 1972
1
The joint
Large demonstration for le Joint Français. Threat of clashes between the demonstrators and the police. I almost panic at the idea of being arrested, brought to a police station and beaten.
These things do not happen.
2
(forgotten)
3
(forgotten)
No. 118: June 1972
The double party
I’m visiting a house with the bartender from a bar I go to often. There is a glass wall, which is trembling. The bartender explains: it’s because it’s in contact with the metallic posts of the awning. There is a clogged sink. To unclog it, you first have to fill another: thanks to some sort of system of communicating vases, the flow of the normal sink will enable the flow of the clogged sink.
There is a large party at my parents’ house. I’m sitting on a couch between P. and a young woman with whom I am flirting. P. gets up angrily; I don’t understand why. I make a date with the young woman for 11:30 p.m.
I take a train. I cross a city. Somewhere, an incline in the sidewalk is replaced by a moving walkway.
I get to Dampierre, where there is a big party. Almost everyone who was at the party at my parents’ house has come.
I meet my aunt, who is with Z.; Z. looks like another one of my aunts and has the same voice as her (a disagreeable voice); she says to me:
“There’s a concert in the garden.”
At the dinner table. P. is across from me; she’s been drinking heavily.
I didn’t tell the young lady where we would meet.
I cross the property. Many things have changed. I have a hard time recognizing the old basements, which have become large vaulted rooms; I meet people whom I have seen before in the same place, a woman, in particular, who may have been my mistress; she gives me an enigmatic smile that seems to signify that our relationship is quite finished.
I can’t get over how unpleasant Z.’s voice has become to me.
A large lunch is served on a huge esplanade looking down on the entrance to the property. The people arriving down below look like ants; sometimes they actually are ants: someone sweeps the path to keep them from entering.
The young woman comes to meet me; she’s wearing a hat that is a sort of turban topped with a tiny umbrella; I am pleased that she knew she was supposed to meet me here.
No. 119: June 1972
Rue de l’Assomption
I have rented an apartment at 10 or 12 rue de l’Assomption, beneath where Jo A. lives on the second floor.
I’m getting ready to repaint it.
I go to buy groceries on rue Fontaine, but I can’t find good cheese. I would have liked to find a very dry goat cheese.
I come back. J. has come to help me paint. But neither she nor P. wants to go back out to look for cheese.
I go down myself, furious, but my anger subsides once I get to the street.
I pass in front of the house where I lived between my tenth and twentieth years, in front of the Lycée Molière.
What a shame, I think, that this isn’t my month to describe this street!
There have been major changes on the street: just after the butcher shop at no. 52, a cinema — no, that one I remember I know, but a second cinema, brand new, and even a third, where they’re playing a movie about auto racing starring Maximilien SHELL (the name in big letters) and Trintignant (but no “Jean-Louis” and the name very small).
I go into a cheese shop on avenue Mozart. The cheeses look like fat slices of brain. Many entanglements. No goat cheese. It takes ages to get served.