I buy a single (fairly small) piece of cheese. It costs 8 francs 70. That’s highway robbery! Moreover, it takes ages to pay too: the merchant makes a long series of little signals to the clerk, who passes them on to the cashier. The cashier asks me for 8 francs 65.
I go back to pick up my parcel. The merchant initially gives me a lovely one, large and beautifully wrapped, then changes his mind, because that one’s not mine; but he can’t find mine. He looks for another bit of cheese to give me, but the only pieces he can find are rotten. Meanwhile, he has begun make — extremely slowly — a Tunisian delicacy: making it the traditional way is an art unto itself; the gherkins are cut lengthwise in extremely fine slices, the different sizes applied just so.
A conversation about Tunisia starts up among the clients. Someone asks me if the climate is good for sinus infections. No, I say, it’s too humid. (but) Marcel C. goes there to take care of his rheumatism. He goes to Djerba. He has friends there, which lets him get away from the tourist frenzy that, as they say, rules the Island.
To get back to rue de l’Assomption, I will take the other half of the rectangular perimeter formed by
No. 120: June 1972
Hypotheses
… was I rolling along at a good clip, backward, on the road that was supposed to lead us to the highway? It was a large road, more reminiscent of an esplanade, and crisscrossed in all directions by vehicles bearing down at full speed …
There were four of us in a rented car, P., J., a strong tall Englishman we didn’t know, and me. The Englishman was driving. We were going to join the front, to go fight …
“No, that was in a Truffaut film …”
Near Auxerre, we reach the highway. We can see it in front of us, beyond a wide gate: it’s a wide, straight road that an uninterrupted tide of whirring cars is crossing from right to left.
For the moment, we’re in some sort of drugstore; we don’t have time to stop to eat. At most, I manage to steal a few bits of sugar.
No. 121: July 1972
The rent
Just as I’m paying my rent, I realize that the last three bills in a 1000-franc roll (ten 100-franc bills) have been replaced with pieces of paper from restaurant tablecloths I once wrote on.
I find myself in an immense restaurant, so big they’ve put a sauna in the bathroom.
No. 122: July 1972
1
The wedding
In Blevy. Bernard comes to pick me up. We’re supposed to film a minute of A Man Asleep. First I have to feed the cat and change its litter (the litter bag is quite full).
Bernard is accompanied by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 children.
We are filming (in Orly).
We come back. I’m not particularly happy; we pass, with difficulty, among second-hand shops: they are on the bare ground, selling heavily ornamented wooden plaques.
2
I meet S.B. For lack of money, she has not gone on vacation; she’s planning to go to Dampierre. I suggest that we go together: I could easily borrow the house in Villard (our old family home), or the one in Druyes, or others still.
We go, surely just for an hour (with the implicit intention of sleeping together), into Henri C.’s apartment on rue L. Henri C., who is not in Paris at the moment, has, in the same building — not at all a modern building, quite the opposite, an old building — two apartments: a flat on the ground floor (where I lived for a while) and a large studio at the top.
The doorman doesn’t recognize me, but proves to be very friendly. The key is in the mailbox and the mailbox is open. The key is thin and twisted; it doesn’t look at all like the key for a lock, but rather like the key for a deadbolt.
In the apartment. Large sheets of paper are spread out on the floor, with chalk marks on them. Then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, many young people: they’re Americans, dancers. I understand immediately that my niece has given them the key, which they confirm. They eat, and hand us plates with compartments for avocados, tomatoes, and?. They’re not the ones who were there (or in Villard) the previous week, but they’re from the same university. We talk about various things, and soon about Dampierre, which they know well.
The ballet begins, a marriage pantomime. Gags. The groom’s costume: yellow socks, white pants that go down to mid-calf, green shirt that hides his arms completely. He looks not so much like a one-armed man as like a bust.
The whole marriage procession passes in front of us, but, from time to time doubles of the wedding characters pop up: it’s very funny; there are more and more of them, and at the end it’s the same procession as it was at the beginning, but there is no longer a single dancer from the original lineup: all of them have changed.
Applause, like for a sports play.
The three main characters (the groom, the bride and the priest) are fake-decapitated, like in the
“Mysteries of the Organism.”
3
Thérèse and Marcel C. arrive; Thérèse is dressed like a lunchlady; she comes in through the door and sings. Marcel is at the end of a hallway. He is holding a guitar and singing too. I remember that they used to live here. But I didn’t know there was a secret passage between Marcel’s and Henri C.’s.
Next to the large room that we’re in, a long windowed hallway leads to a narrow room that’s probably a workshop or a storeroom for house painting equipment.
While wandering in an unknown room in his own apartment one day long ago, Marcel found himself at Henri C.’s.
No. 123: August 1972
The workshop
Major changes are being made in my lab. During a meeting, my boss asks me to devote my time solely to writing manuscripts and to leave the organization of the documentary filing to a young woman he has just hired.
The young woman is not very pretty, nor particularly pleasant, but she proves to be remarkably efficient; in particular, she uncovers an official document that allows each member of the lab (1) to have regular interviews in room B1 or B2 with a confessor of his or her choice and (2) to visit the painter.
It turns out that, like all universities (be they of medicine or fine arts), ours has a “functional workshop” and the young woman takes me there. Sure enough, I was wondering where this door led.
I enter, expecting to find that the painter is nothing but a dirty penpusher.
“Wait, I recognize this!” I exclaim.
It is, in fact, none other than the workshop of the painter Bizet, and you can immediately see all his major pieces covered with gridded patterns. The workshop is an immense room with a very high ceiling; the painter is a very tall old man; he shows me around his workshop graciously, but you can tell he’s annoyed about it (but he can work here only on the condition that he gives tours). He makes mostly tapestries, but he also shows me some drawings, many done on graph paper.