No. 64: March 1971
Bone
It must be P. who, while stroking my head, which is bald — my hair is only a sort of wig or mask — notices that my “frontal” bone (that is, a bone that covers the top of the skull like the cover of a soup tureen, but flatter, barely rounded) is moving.
This frightens me at first.
Mind the fontanels, which might not be fully bound yet even after so long!
Then I check for myself. Passing my thumbnails along the edge of the bone, I barely need to apply pressure for the bone (like the case of my alarm clock or the battery cover on my radio) to come loose and go rolling around on the floor.
I can see my cortex.
I pick up my bone and put it back in place. I begin to worry again, more and more, about the chance of infection.
Later, I dare to move my head and my bone does not fall, which is reassuring.
I’m glad to know it’s just a dream.
/ /
I am in Dampierre, in my old room. There are spider webs everywhere.
I begin to suit up to leave on motorcycle. I pick up my shoes. They’re full of spider webs and tiny droppings, like little grains of wheat or lentils. On the sole is a large spider, which I eventually crush.
No. 65: April 1971
Planks
1
Dampierre. I go into the bathroom on the second floor. It’s a little room where you can see without being seen. I think I see C. but it’s a little girl in a red dress.
2
There are three of us. We’re stealing various things, then two planks of wood from an empty storefront next to the department store near Ledru-Rollin.
Nobody is watching us, but I ask a nearby artisan whether we can. Even though he didn’t want anything from me! Obviously, he answers that it doesn’t matter for one plank, but he’s not allowed to give up the other. We return both to him.
I am with J.L. in a narrow alley — it looks a bit like the passage Choiseul — near the Bastille.
There is a “New Order” demonstration, with parachutists.
At the end of the alley, a small door with a gate. The lock is not in the middle of the gate but at the very top.
We have to return to this narrow alley to pick up the packets J.L. and I left there.
I run into my boss; he introduces me to several American friends whose names I already know (they turn up frequently in my file).
We watch a baseball game.
We realize that cops are gathering behind the players.
Back in the alley. Suddenly I’m afraid. No doubt we should run, but there are too many — decidedly too many, far too many bags.
No. 66: April 1971
The triangle
During a meal, we are exchanging good crossword clues, particularly a film title.
J.L. takes me aside to give me a word of advice: I should stop working at the laboratory; I should get up at noon, go to the movies each day from 2 to 4, and make my crossword puzzles afterwards.
“But I can’t make a living off my crossword puzzles,” I tell him.
Yes I can, he tells me, I’ll be able to place them and everything; I just have to spend two hours, not three days, on each.
A bit later, J.L. puts a record on the turntable: it’s barely modern music, more like modern music aping its classical influences. Everyone says it’s lovely.
“These are,” says J.L., “ ‘Musical recommendations to the Radio Luxembourg Orchestra,’ by Lolita von Paraboom.” Someone makes a crack about the fact that it’s a “commissioned work”; someone specifies that it’s from 1968 or 1969.
There are three of us in the room. J.L. on the stairs in the back, near the record player; me standing near a long wooden table, and a stranger (male or female?) who is equidistant from me and from J.L. We trace between the three of us a right triangle whose long side is J/me, whose short side is J/the stranger (m/f), and the hypotenuse the stranger (m/f) and me …
No. 67: May 1971
The stolen letter
I think I have woken up. There are lots of maids in my room. But is it really my room?
I’m by a body of water. To cross it, I take a footbridge that becomes a suspension bridge over the Seine. At the middle I see the date 1953.
Someone has stolen the letter I had in my pocket.
I am running a sprint with a black woman.
No. 68: May 1971
I-words
There seem to be — really? — three words in my file that begin with the letter I:
Impedance
Inhibition
I?
Wasn’t there something else before? At the theater? Three sketches?
No. 69: May 1971
Othon
Jean-Marie Straub’s film, Othon, inspired by the Corneille play, has a different name.
Maybe it’s the Corneille play that has a different name?
Actually, there’s another text too, hidden beneath the first, which I try in vain to decipher.
No. 70: May 1971
The two-way switch
I agree to take in a cat.
Who is this cat? (complicated genealogy…)
Where will he relieve himself?
On the street major public works are being done; they’re installing a two-way switch system for cars.
Actually, it’s only a question of cuts to make to a text (A man asleep?)
No. 71: May 1971
The bus
… first there’s the frightfully complicated consultation of a restaurant menu, which ends with going up and down staircases, perhaps in pursuit of indifferent maîtres d’. All we want to know is how long this or that dish will take to prepare.
It seems the waiting times are so long that we have time to go play a game of Go somewhere fairly far out of town.
We get on a bus.
I’m sitting in the middle of the bus, on the left side. Jacques R., his wife and his daughter are in front, on the right, near the door.
At the back of the bus (so I can see only if I turn around) is a sort of display stand, which I find at once elegant, practical, and banal; by banal I mean that someone should have thought of it long ago.
At one point the bus stops and Jacques R. gets off. We seem to be right by Notre-Dame de Lorette, where he lives. His wife is no longer there. But someone makes a comment to the effect of:
“Why is he getting off when his wife is here?” to which someone else replies:
“No, idiot, that’s his daughter.”
Anyway, the bus leaves. It has become a passenger car. At the wheel is Pierre L. or Jean-Pierre P. It quickly becomes clear that they’re driving very badly; for starters, they go the wrong way down a one-way street.