I looked at myself in the fountain, I don't know how, and I was startled to see a bird, tired out by the wind, and high grasses that had collapsed under the rain, on my face. I wanted to put out my tongue to read the course of my health in its colour, but what was my amazement to see a blue helicopter coming out of the mouth of my image which parted from my lips like a smoke-ring. As I contemplated this phenomenon, I returned slowly to my house and my eyes fixed on the gleaming snail tracks were no more than dead granite under my eyelids, when suddenly - was it the storm in the skiffs of sulphur or the Greek fire over the sea? - I was less conscious than an orange peel and there was a man in from of me.
He must have been about thirty. He looked the very images of those Messmers in which liquid steel is covered with an incandescent scoria. His green tie protected him from flies. Nonchalantly leaning on a boxwood cane, he waved his free hand. "Kind sir," he addressed me. "Give me your hand." I was unable to hide my fear and felt my hair turn into columns of water, while a heavy sweat flowed over my face. The stranger was still smiling: he transformed himself into a rose-bush and entwined me.
My Christian education meant that ever since childhood I've had a horror of vice and it was not without a quite understandable terror that I discerned the pleasure I felt in the embrace of this vigorous bush whose branches gradually mingled with my limbs, my hair and my looks. When one of its flowers came apart in my mouth, I could feel myself grasping the sorcerer in my arms in my turn. He was transferred into a torrent and I was a barge, into the desert and I was smoke, into a car and I was a road, into a man and I was a woman. "What we are doing is very wrong," he said and was off.
How did a house with six floors come to be in the forest with an advertisement for Parlo on the back, a small wicker balcony on the fourth floor and my mother, who is a saint, on the balcony with a small yellow dog at her feet? In her left hand my mother had a finger biscuit and in her right hand an opera glass, that's what I can't explain. She had still not lost a mouthful of the performance nor of her biscuit which was pink inside, just like certain kisses. "Jacques," she called out, pretending she had to tie herself to the convolvulus which crept up the wall, "do you want to make me die?" At the same time the ball of pink wool I thought was a biscuit fell through the bars and unwound as it fell. The dog said, woof, woof, and I realised that my mother's house was forever closed to me.
I had the idea of finding something out about my loathsome seducer so I could complain and ask him for some money. But he had left France and some days later I found myself alone with an elderly woman who cooked up mysterious plans. I'll leave you to envisage how I escaped from that scrape.
Passing in front of a mirror, I praised the Lord for overwhelming me with his gifts and took a room in a sort of squirrel's cage whose landlady was exactly a fifty cent stamp for overseas postage. While looking out of the window, as I had been taught to, the setting sun set and I was fascinated by the comings and goings of a middle-aged individual crossing the road in all directions, two steps to the right, four to the left, three back, and so on as he pleased. He had properly placed his bowler beneath a tree on one of those grills I am assured serve as water outlets. On his head he had a binauricular telephone head-set which would have allowed an observer from above to notice his incipient baldness. The head-set was linked by a thread to a wooden frame the man held in his left hand.
His right hand seemed to be used as a counterbalance to stabilise his progress and beat in the air like a wing. You might have said that this odd character was dancing on a tightrope. The passers-by did not seem to notice his performance. I went down and asked the strange stroller for a light. He nimbly twisted round, took off his head-set and politely asked me to hold it for a moment. As he prepared to kindle a match a gust of wind blew his bowler away. He ran after it. I was unable to resist the desire to put on the telephone head-set and no sooner had I done so than everything under my feet became transparent and I saw a land completely different from the home of King Dagobert and Tambour d'Arcole.
It was a difficult kind of town to describe. The surprising thing one first realised was that the stone houses were naturally formed, while the trees, rivers and so on were the work of man's hand. The inhabitants walked around naked, with gloves on their hands and veils on their faces, so that for a civilised young man like me, whose mother had kept him in ignorance of the marvels of nature, it was almost impossible to work out the sex of the charming marionettes with fresh skin who evolved around under me.
In a romantic courtyard where some tall agricultural machines and garden hoses had rather haphazardly been left to grow, one group chatted at the foot of a large dandelion which served as a statue. The conversation floated up and I could even smell the odour of each of the speakers. "Oh," said a very white body as it threw a wrist watch to the ground which broke without attracting anyone's attention, "Oh, how can anyone not love poetry, natural machines, large white houses, the brilliance of steel, crimes and wild passion? Must there be people today so complicated as to prefer these stupid ornaments that the municipal authorities entrust to artists unworthy of the name to the delightful oscillations of pressure-gauges." And the woman (I think it was a woman) pointed to the dandelion. Another spoke in turn ardently: "How can anyone go into ecstasies faced with the foolishness of nature with its phonographs and roller skates? Especially when we make such pretty little fur animals which, if you'll pardon the expression, I am unable to refrain from placing to my lips." At this last word the whole group went into a concert of protest: "How dreadful! Don't use such words, my good chap. Where do you think you are?" "I am amazed," he went on, "that you still use the word poetry to talk about something other than the wind, the oaks and the blue sky. How much longer are you going to cry after reading the idiotic story of the gyroscope lost at the bottom of a naphtha well. Is it still necessary to teach such inanities in government schools?" The woman who has spoken first declaimed:
Secret decor on wheels
my paper money body
plays bingo in the fireplace
like a crank
"No, but you don' t know anything more ridiculous? I'll suffer you not to speak ill of Pierre Serin, who was a great poet." "Then it is in the name of poetry..." "And what do you know about poetry with your flowers and all this Saint-Frippery?" "I see," a third voice interposed, "that you agree only about your love of poetry." "Who wouldn't love it," said a fourth "it's like the yeast for beer and the salt for celery." "Me," said a fifth. It was a fine how do you do. Ernest, of course, always Ernest, the paradoxical Ernest. "One can," said Ernest "remain unmoved before a cloud as before an automatic ticket machine. I don't like poetry, I don't like flowers, I don't like machines, I don't like sugar, I don't like pepper, I don't like what you like." This was addressed to whoever attacked Ernest. A woman (to judge from the voice) cried out: "Pervert, Pervert! I will say everything, everything, everything. What can one expect from a man who has shown his eyes to men, my dear?" I think she said, "His eyes, yes, his eyes, the word is shameful, to men, to my lover." I couldn't hear any more: the cries went up around Ernest like swords, and I moved away, passing over strange parades, where the odd veiled and gloved people walked with bodies that I began to watch carefully without dreaming of doing them ill. I went from one discovery to another, but one questions obsessed me: why the devil do these men have breasts? I've always been told that divine providence does nothing without reason. The only response I could find seemed to me to be whispered by hell and I didn't give it a second thought, any more than these forests, these avenues, these ports, these mountains, which unravel in the world below. Suddenly there was a fault in the apparatus, the earth became opaque again and I had to throw the frame and head-set to the side of the pavement. I found myself in a part of Paris I didn't know.
A woman came to meet me. She was young and healthy on her right side, old and wrinkled on the left. Her left side had abundant silver hair, while on her right side her hair was not so thick but was of a fine blackness. She wore a dress of grassland velvet gathered at the waist. There were no less than eight darns in brown cotton on the front of the dress. The woman held a sugar bowl in her right hand while with her left she pretended to lift up her skirt. On the side of her hat perched a robin which held in its beak a bunch of cherries. The lady's stockings were of a thousand colours. The following story was printed on it, illustrated by a member of the Institute:
My young friend Jean Dubonnet
Was eating his breakfast.
He heard in the clearing
A gunshot and then nothing more
He then gave free rein
To his imagination.
It is a horse or a lady
A priest or a king of diamonds
It is a crackling oriflamme
A wolf, a zouave, a brazier
Tired of dipping bread fingers
in an under-cooked egg
he put on a spangled robe
and went out. His dog Fanfan followed
In the meantime
A cloud in the form of love
Above the ballroom
Came to kneel down in its turn
Oh my Lord give me I pray
Everyday my cafe au lait
The woman bowed and asked if my name was Rene. When she discovered my name: "Jacques," she said crying on her left side. "That was the name of my beloved son who died at fifteen in tragic circumstances." She sighed. "Jacques." She said smiling on her left side. "Aren't you the handsome hussar who spent a single night at my house, long enough to make me see stars?" Then she showed me her stocking suspenders which were of an ingenious make patented by a cabinet-maker who became an employee at Printemps. She asked me to accompany her home, and it was at that moment that her words became obscure and she started to put in doubt the land of dreams and the false Elizabeth.
Poor young man, who could you ask for advice? I've seen too much of it recently to know on which side good and evil were, something I've been told was a primordial and unique occupation of the Good Lord's creatures. So I followed the lady and rubbed my knees a bit in perplexity. As we came to a house of modest appearance, two buses racing through the boulevard at breakneck speed stopped at the corner of a street as though each wanted to let the other pass. The two vehicles moved aside and retreated, then elegantly wagged their tails. "Its quite alright," they paid their respects, "not at all," then rushed headlong with one bound together into rue Traversiere, hustling each other energetically. "So kind." "Oh," murmured my companion. "Two buses that are so polite to each other - it's a bad sign." And then in a loud voice: "Enter, Jacques, and don't be surprised at anything."
