La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams Read Online Free

window, another large room with a staircase leading up to the restaurant. The maître d’ points us to it, but we only want drinks, and he leads us to the bar. The bar is very long. It is shaped like an S. On the other side of the counter, several large young men, athletic types with crew cuts, are playing dice on a round tray that they seem to be supporting on their knees. The bartender hands us drinks. Someone asks if the dice players are from the university, but they respond by shaking their heads no and they seem to find the suggestion very amusing.

No. 27
October 1970
     

Change
    I’m supposed to fly to Venice, and later go to Toulouse to pay my taxes. Tricky money-changing issues. By going through Italy I save a great deal of money. But obviously I can’t declare it.
    Great confusion.
    I am carrying a check (for 5,000, 30,000, or 50,000 francs) and a single 500-franc bill.
    I’m supposed to pay 6,000 francs, which seems exorbitant to me. Moreover, I realize that, although it’s Thursday, I can only be in Italy on Saturday and all the banks will be closed. I should have left the same night.
    All of this is happening in transit from counter to counter, in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of a major airport.
    I realize that this trip is completely useless in any case, since this banking operation could have been done a bit later during my trip to Germany.

No. 28
October 1970 (Neuweiler)
     

The epidemic
    The dreamer (this whole story is like a novel in the third person) has sat down at a little bistro. He is foreign, but they quickly come to treat him like a regular. The boss and some of the customers are discussing the epidemic. The Chinese cook of the restaurant enters (the dreamer thinks he looks like someone he knows); the Chinese cook says they need to find a replacement for him, because he can no longer continue to man the stoves and cook for the girls. On this note he cites a Shakespearean proverb:
    “They died not all, but all were sick!”
    Stunned, the owner of the café looks at the dreamer: he’s the one who taught him the proverb. At that instant the dreamer understands that he is no longer a stranger at some table and that he is now the “central character”; at the same time, he recognizes the Chinese cook; he knows only him; he’s the one who comes from time to time to volunteer for the girls.
    There has been a great cholera epidemic. Everyone wants to be examined. The symptom is spitting up blood. The dreamer and two of his friends walk around the town. They arrive in front of a stairway blocked by a mass of young girls, surely a boarding school. They pretend to have priority, like one of them has been stricken, so that the doctor has to look after them first. The doctor has to clear a path through the girls.
    A bit later, in a crowd of girls splayed out, sick, the dreamer picks up a piece of earth (and not a piece of trash or of feces) from the ground. And he discovers, behind a door, his friend J., laid flat, dead, turned into earth, turned into a block of earth that is missing the piece the dreamer just picked up.

No. 29
November 1970
     

London
    I am in a foreign city. It’s London, an outlying neighborhood, far from Waterloo or Victoria.
    I’m in a group of tourists wandering around a large drugstore. We meet another group, whom I’m supposed to know. Indeed, everyone seems familiar, looks like or could look like someone I know. I’m quite embarrassed. I offer a lot of vague smiles.
    In any case, it’s clear that one of my old friends, Jacques M., is in the second group. He has grown a beard. There are also friends of his, whose last name is Fried. On the other hand, Jacques’s wife, Marianne, is in my group.
    I realize then that Jacques and Marianne are separated.
    The next morning, I run into Marianne and tell her that Jacques is there. She heads toward him, then suddenly veers off. I follow her.
    We pass in front of a group of girls. One of them recoils in horror at my