CHAPTER VI

By professional deformation, the dreamopath imagines speech bubbles teeming with words prowling around Nielle’s photo. A disorienting comic strip. He can read there, as in a photo-Damien, the description without onomatopoeia of his manner of acting; and he conceives, while reading certain chapters, that deceit can be born of the effect…

His days amounted to getting out of bed only to stretch out afterward on his divan, in order to transcribe his impressions in his journal. Simplicity, Damien dissected it, stirred it, analysed it to the point of complicating it. Learnedly, he studied the slightest sound and changed its context.

— Strange! I do not grasp the expression of the moment. Completely indecipherable. What is she expressing through her steps, at that rapid cadence? — Damien! You are an idiot! — There are two people up there.

It must be Nielle’s new neighbour. The subtenant of Jonathan’s apartment.

Pretty and simple. She has the kindness to converse with me, somewhat, without being exasperated by my outdated hippie counter-current. Sympathetic, unlike the object of my desires…, she addresses me without showing value judgments. Is she trying to bait a new customer? She owns a business near the state television tower. A restaurant. Its name is so unusual that I have difficulty memorising it. I never know whether I should say "Gula Lupus" or "Lupus Gula". — Of no importance! — This redhead is a fine girl who adores cats. Hers answers to the name "Minouchka".

A few days ago, her feline was peacefully stretched out at the very bottom of the staircase. Purring instinctively, the beast let itself be stroked without moving. My coaxing overflowed all the more with sincerity since I was convinced she belonged to Nielle.

Without embarrassment, in a voice carrying all the way to the third-floor windows, I launched: "You have eyes as beautiful as your mistress’s!" Raising my head further, I caught sight of this stranger, who understood from my stupefied and embarrassed air that the compliments were not addressed to her.

By the time she came down from the roof, where she had just perfected her tan, I concluded that she was the animal’s true owner. Far from being intimidated by my mistake, she introduced herself with simplicity.

— Hello! My name is Rachelle. You must be Damien? Jonathan told me about you. — My cat is beautiful, isn’t she? She loves caresses so much she collects them. " Then she turned toward the animal. "What are you doing outside, my darling Minouchka? Mmm! … Come on, come, we’re going in. Bye, Damien.

— See you next time, Rachelska, uh… Rachelle. "

Nielle drives me completely mad! She makes me capsize. She has turned me into a blunderer who stumbles into his own mistakes, as if I were playing leapfrog with my own idiocies. I distinguish myself in clumsiness before her, and because of her. My daily blunders and the curious misunderstandings in which I perform draw their sources from my emotion, which takes fright at the most succinct thought directed toward my muse.

At every instant, I bring everything back to her. At every opportunity, I provide myself, without outside help, with proof of my extravagant obsession. — At present, three people are at her place. Out of pure oneirism, for one second, I considered that she had become hexapodal!

What dizzying fascination leads me to follow Nielle’s story?! … I am the only narrator and the sole listener of a fairy tale of which she alone is the heroine. She is, in my imagined cosmos, like a living monument; the most exotic and fantastic that could exist. She is a fountain of youth immortalising a single dream. Mine. That of my love for her. Her presence in my life compares to the accomplishment of a miracle erasing all traces of an incurable illness. Strange, too! … Like a delicious affection that helps me survive and even “over-die”.

Yes! “Over-die” through the inspirer! Each poetic instant, even the briefest, is like a life. When the next idea arises, it is the death of the previous one. From every burst of light my muse arouses, another emerges. Each “mother-flame” already breathing its farewells to every particle engendered from the moment of advent. It is the very idea of death that permits the consciousness of life. — Nielle, I over-die through you!

Paradox of my existence! You are the source of my illusions and their exterminations; the control of their flow and their maddening and unpredictable emergences.

Good heavens! Where am I? Here I am travelling again in the ether. Fortunately, those steps in the inner staircase brought me back to reality. — Shit! Nielle is leaving with them! — Quick! "

The distance is short. The door was already open; in summer, he almost never closed it. It gave him the impression of breathing better. In the time it took to pronounce the verb "to dream", he reached the threshold. Nielle, Rachelle and a man with frizzy, almost curly hair were already beginning the descent of the outside staircase.

— Hi, Nielle! … Are you going out for some air? " This cavalier way of accosting them clashed with the elegance of the three people’s clothing.

— Yes…, we are going… to a tasting at Rachelle’s restaurant. — A Middle Eastern special. — Besides, the occasion is ideal for introducing you to Lou Jobim. He is a cook at the "Gula Lupus" and…

— And I thought the restaurant’s name was the Lupus Gula! " This joke remained without consequence; not a smile, not even a faint one, came to encourage it.

Perceiving Damien’s discomfort, Nielle finally completed the sentence interrupted by her admirer’s impoliteness.

— Lou is moving in next week in Rachelle’s place.

— You’re leaving already! Don’t you like the neighbourhood?

— That’s not the question, Damien. I invested my savings in buying a house in the country. I prefer the open air, that’s all. But don’t worry, Lou is kind. He will undoubtedly be a good neighbour.

— You’ll see, Damien, we’ll get along very well. — But excuse us, we have to leave. — I am head chef and I must supervise the presentation of the dishes. I even have one left to prepare… Bye! " the newcomer concluded politely.

Watching all three of them go, happy and excited, he wondered whether the cook, his future neighbour, was not preparing to simmer him.

***

The dreamopath sweats. The uglier yet more vital the events are, the more his forehead wrinkles under the turmoil, sending out tiny cascades of sweat. Forced labour comes with headaches. The worst is yet to come.

It is noon. The Angelus rings like a death knell on his eardrums. Halfway to his healing or his loss? Outside, everything is quiet; the company of welfare recipients and other poor people force themselves to eat expired bologna sausage. The rest of society feasts on their misfortunes.

A little more nervous, more fearful and even shocked, he sniffs out the injustice enthroned upon his slave memories. He no longer needs to read the journal. Touching it, brushing against it, recalls the story of his sentimental epic. A current is established between the two. These pages, incontestable witnesses of his decisive hours, first gently continue their own stories.

— I bring you my assistance. You will have only to suffer and forget your muse. Incredulous? … Do you not trust me, your journal, your unfailing confidant? Why be so independent, so fierce, to the point of shoving aside my help? This attitude has always harmed you, did you know?

— No, on the contrary! Entirely salutary.

— You think so? Are you truly certain? … You remember that cook well, don’t you?

— And how! He even cooked the people around him.

— Those opportunities to speak directly to Nielle. Those openings he presented to you on a silver platter, have you already banished them from your memory?

— Mention just one!

— Nielle wanted to sell her old car. He informed you of her intention to get rid of her heap of scrap metal. He simply suggested that you buy the car, you who had none.

— Only to make himself look good!

— Was it also to enhance himself that he informed you Nielle was without work, that she was receiving unemployment benefits? — Having noticed that you yourself were creating that class difference you abhorred, was he not pointing out a common point between her and you, … similar financial difficulties?

— Perhaps, but how can one grieve over another person’s misfortune when the message drools beneath a mean little smile!

— All the same, was he not offering you the opportunity to draw closer to this woman who has continued to haunt your existence for more than a decade? — At each of these chances he presented you with, you slipped away. You changed the subject, hoping your beauty would have the decency to come offer herself to you without invitation. — It must be said that your marginality makes you live against nature. Does it not?

— I have always found bland the idea that pursuit is only a man’s game, that woman sketches through her gaze only a simple suggestion.

— To the point of asking yourself what mechanism allowed you to hook Mylène, the one you still call the angel? — You are nothing but a consumer of ready-to-wear love, ready-to-serve love. If such a thing existed, you would buy your emotions at frozen-food counters! "

A tear slowly runs down the dreamopath’s cheek, then crashes onto the journal. As if the tormented man had found no other way to silence his confidant. These revelations, which until now he had tried to hide from himself, prove more unbearable than the story of his odyssey toward liberation from his ailment. The dreamer realises that, despite other evidences still to come…, he was more at fault than he had imagined.

With the tips of his trembling fingers, he retouches the parchment. This road map forces him to continue his analysis, already laid out. His document, just like an old friend, begins once more to scold him all the more.

— Following a request formulated in a compressed and cold manner, do you still wonder about Nielle’s refusal to collaborate on the text of your comic strip? … You let her feel that you mistrusted her! Were you so afraid she would steal the spotlight from you; she beautiful and intelligent, you ugly and stupid! — Yet today, the evidence proves that your work is insipid, that it signals your complacency and that an implied narcissism is its true guiding thread. What result do you have? … You remain an unknown, an artist badly breeched.

You were so paranoid that every time you had to leave home, you lugged your originals in that old suitcase you still keep. Do you truly believe Nielle was so foolish that she failed to notice the incongruity of that mania? The fear of having the originality of your creation stolen from you or of being plagiarised led you to provoke the collapse of a second chance! "

Nielle’s only photograph joins the journal’s blame.

His supple imagination is a double-edged weapon. Without discernment, he does not hesitate to use it. By projection, it will help him rediscover a parcel of the “dormancies” of his memory. The dreamopath makes cinema for himself…

Disappointment! This is not fiction, but a documentary. A short sequence, like all those of his life. He will learn it again. The narrator remains the same. Cold, dust-covered and almost human, his journal relates. Pushes the description down to technical details…

— Wide shot: the living room; nothing will have changed. The same divan. The same lamp hung over it. — In the evening, it was neither too early nor too late.

Again, or still stretched out, idle, you were lounging. Striving to ignore Nielle’s absence or presence in her apartment, you were listening distractedly to music.

Your doorbell rings, as if someone wanted an official meeting. Slowly, you rise and go answer without conviction, for you wished to see no one; you were acclimatising yourself to solitude. No more cautious than necessary, you release the latch. Pulling sharply on that cord that allows you to open lazily, without having to go down the stairs. You note with pleasure that you had just opened to a beautiful stranger.

High-angle shot: an amber light magnifies the importance of the yellowed surface of the already ochre walls of the staircase. Hesitant, the stranger nevertheless prevented the door from closing behind her. Your revealing eyes seemed to make her uneasy.

— Good evening, sir! I know it is a little late…, but… I am Mia, Nielle’s sister, your neighbour. The one who lives on the third floor. We had an appointment. But as it happens, she does not answer me! — May I telephone? …"

You could not refuse. Out of politeness? Humanism? Certainly not! The desire, the joy of observing her, nothing else. Was she not ravishing? Did you not consider her an ambassador?

Medium shot. Low angle: the camera directed toward the dreamer, the figure is disgraced by imprecise, shifting shadows. The bulb suspended from the ceiling fixture by a long electric wire was still swaying.

— Certainly, I have no objection. You may come up! …"

Wide shot of the living room. Lighting: same. Sound? … None. The telephone, dull with a thin film of dust, as if unbalanced by the uneven levels of the table on which it sits, complicates Mia’s task as she dials for a third time.

— She is surely not at home. Thank you all the same.

— You can use “tu” with me. "

You were not going to miss such an opportunity. Trying to charm her as best you could, skilfully, you learned that she studied cinema. In addition, she informed you that certain arrangements concerning her future lodging at her sister’s had been the configuration of this failed yet planned visit.

To embellish time…; you invite her to cross into that other room that was your studio. With the volubility of a tourist guide, you cite to her the anecdotes attached to each element of the decor. The ceiling, draped with numerous multicoloured fabrics from a celebration, was merely an original way of storing them. On the wall, cinema posters, all advertisements for Marilyn films. There, lost in a corner, a light table, the sole vestige of your professional period in animated film.

On your drawing table, like a wink, two boards in progress. Your famous comic strip, your ambitious project.

To hold time back…, you tried to seduce her by presenting these images in the manner of a collector of Japanese prints. Fluttering over the details, you whetted her appetite with the ordinary intention of impressing her. For all this showiness had as its only objective to convince Mia of the graphic quality of the work. This, so that, weakening in admiration under this manoeuvre of seduction, she might slip her sister the idea of collaborating on the text.

Close-up on Mia. Your hope could be read in the newcomer’s eyes. Carefully turning over the last completed board, she commented calmly.

— Magnificent work. So many details… I will suggest to Nielle that she collaborate on the text. That is what you want, isn’t it? … — On that note…, I shall leave you. Thank you for your hospitality. "

Medium-wide shot: Damien facing the lens. Mia backlit. Your trained ear perceives a creak above. This clue becomes the ideal element of persuasion to prolong by a few instants the learning of your strange personality, for which Mia pays the price.

— Your sister is at home!

— How do you know?

— My little finger is tingling! — My back door leads directly to hers, if you wanted to make another attempt.

— Why not! "

Moving camera: exterior scene. Standing, as if balancing on the threshold of the door, arms crossed to protect yourself from the cold, you observe Mia.

She rang once, twice. No answer. She knocked once, twice, three times. Nothing. The "3297 A" does not answer.

Sweeping away all restraint, you presented her with a broom, then invited her to come back inside. You seized the retractable handle of an old mop.

Without a word, you sketched a smile at Mia while pointing to the ceiling. Feminine perspicacity: she understood at once. Amused by the idea, she followed you to where the rats would carry the most resonance. Then blows rained down as much as laughter. It was no doubt the only moment when, in a certain form of camaraderie, the two of you sympathised.

These blows, somewhat as in theatre, were in reality designating a long and final act. Like improvisational actors playing blindly toward an unsuspected finale, the intensity of one’s expression suggested the other’s performance. Drum beating, the final line was taking shape.

— Open sesame! "

The third-floor door opened a crack. Nielle, who had been holed up at home, succumbed to the insistence of the percussionists.

Change of shot and atmosphere. (At intuition’s choice.) The setting: the inner staircase leading to the third floor. You had accompanied your accomplice in order to explain to Nielle that you were the cause of the racket. The intention was lovely, but it was vain.

Your beauty was furious with her younger sister. Politely, Mia suggested that you leave. Did she dread Nielle’s reactions? The reproaches awaiting you? Deep down, you could not have cared less. That abruptness in which you had both committed yourselves allowed you to humanise the ideal woman you saw in Nielle through that colourful facet which is anger. "

***

The sun is no longer at its zenith. The search has not reached its apogee. The dreamopath has had enough. The taste of vomiting on his past keeps him from breathing. He envies simple people, is jealous of their normal hopes.

This observation, making him aggressive, enriches the ire that his journal stimulated through a morality scattered between the lines. Impulsive, Damien projects the confidant-biographer against a wall of this dwelling that is beginning to suffocate him dryly. Being sermonised by what is imperfect has gone to his head. This sudden aversion allows him to understand that he is reliving these elements of the past with present energy.

To guarantee the outcome of his emotional journey like an insurance contract, grasping paper, pen and spleen, he writes a poem he will spare himself from criticising or analysing. Letting the sequence of words rest upon a continuous movement of the hand.

(Travel on this stranded ship?

Risk my skin, my dreams and sins?

Quick! Set it afloat again, let it take to sea.

To live again from those bitter hurricanes.

Hoist these fears, tears, ailments and nausea

Pitch along the road so dreaded…

With soul adrift and a galley life

To drown love there, fire of my hell.

Sail toward this treasure of worn-out times.

Instinctively find it, then transport it…

Onto virgin lands, white with light.

Trace upon them in ink a thousand and one borders.

Rediscover nights and days these territories,

Those sad countries that let themselves be watched.

They, whose spring is only a black winter,

Will console my existence of yesterday.

Merge into these places, images of the past.

Drink the ocean, she who forgot me,

Thanks to this ship of precarious mood

That is my dark memory, more than backwards.)

Satisfied with having convinced himself not to let go, he closes his eyes. As in a dream, he sees himself again in that period following the encounter with Mia, impatient. Like his journal or the photo, he perceives himself as a third party; as if he were remembering someone else.

— "I hear you, Nielle! Yes, you are there! Your sister too.

Damien hesitated to present himself at his muse’s home, the morning being too young for that social contract. The effrontery of the telephone, that ferret of intimacy, would grant him a tolerable access. One ring…! A second!

— She who now shares your spaces, a little of your life. — Has Mia taken care to give you her impressions of my comic strip? I so much desire you to collaborate on the text. I do not know whether the charm deployed had its repercussions, and this curiosity irritates me. If I could reach one or the other… — Yet they are there! … I hear steps, even their voices. "

The dreamer was shaken. Air circulated poorly in his trachea. He contracted, he trembled. That day, his perfect knowledge of morning silences made him distinguish every word of a brief exchange between the two sisters.

— If it is Damien, please tell him I am absent! All right, Mia? …"

Sixth ring! … Last signal? He did not dare hang up, seized by the intuition demonstrated by his muse. How did she know? Why did she dare?

— Nielle, you have no right to boycott me! What has become of your trust? … Have I reassured you so much, through my tireless calls after that theft of which you were the victim, that I am now of total uselessness to you?

— Hello! … Hello! … Who is speaking…?

— …Mia? … It’s me, Damien! May I speak with Nielle? …" To the detriment of his pride, this futile question was asked. He could have revealed that he had surprised them prattling on about him; but protecting the advantages of this sound system, propitious to stealing Nielle’s sweetest secrets, was the priority.

— "… she is absent at the moment. Is there a message? "

As he expected, Mia confirmed her solidarity with her sister. Perhaps out of pity, she did not hang up without mentioning to the artist that she had praised his merits and those of his project.

Unexpected evolution or sudden regression? The dreamopath, hypersensitive to the memory of this rejection, seems inert. Salutary shock? Often double, he again feels his personality fragmenting. He auscultates the ego in search of the wholeness of the self.

As an ordinary being, without being normal, without being pleonastic, he cheapens a consecrated cliché, the famous Shakespearean excerpt: "To be or not to be… or to be only non-being? … I? … He? … Or We? … There, the question lies hidden! " Why this question? — He is searching for himself.

— Where have I gone? Who am I? What are Damien’s true qualities? His greatest flaw? …

— Seeing double without consuming!

— Who is speaking?

— Me, Damien!

— But I am Damien.

— If you are me, who am I?

— The two of us, that is to say me, Damien, the little dreamer. The one who, in his death, will drag yours along. And vice versa.

— You are proof enough that we must get out of this.

— Yes! Both of us get out of these chains Nielle has braided around our necks. "

Turning about upon himself.

— He must put an end to it!

— Who is “he”? — You? … or us?

— Come now, where were we? I mean where was I?

— You mean where are you! For I am “he” and you are “I”.

— Yes, that’s it! I am Damien. And you, “he”, have nothing to do with reality. You are a product, even a by-product of my imagination in perpetual delirium. You enrage me! I sometimes dare to wish I had never had this faculty of dreaming everywhere, under all conditions. Through this illusory phenomenon of which I am no longer the origin or even the witness, but in which I participate directly with basely natural ease. I demand your exile into ineptitude, subsidiary alter ego!

— No! Now it is I who shall tell your story! For I will hide nothing! "

Sharp recovery of the shadow. Always unfaithful but truer than he is. Both tied to the same life buoys, memories to be brought back up like a Chinese puzzle.

That forenoon, saddened by rejection and depressing in its raininess, was not going to end without bidding higher in astonishment. — Lou Jobim would be housing a young student. — Bruce Brouillette, passing through like a gust of wind, having smoked a hashish joint, briefly informed Damien. The dreamer would have liked to know more, but Bruce vanished with the blue smoke as it dissipated. Chance nevertheless allowed the son of the Brouillettes’ exit to coincide with that of the cook, who was leaving to earn his crust, already whistling his affection to his pots and pans.

Damien, enveloped in utterly simple innocence, an air of childishness, hurried out of his home and ran toward Lou, skipping as he went. Somewhat transformed by his morning absorption, he forgot, in soul and body, a few neighbours who were shooting him, from a distance, with nourished and satirical reproaches.

— Hey Lou! How are you? You’re going to work, aren’t you?

— Indeed, my dear fellow, but I am pressed for time.

— You have a boarder, it seems?

— News travels fast in this neighbourhood!

— Yes, it almost precedes events. — Joking aside, I would like to talk to you about something else. A dream.

— A dream! … Hurry up, I can see my bus turning onto the boulevard. " He sighed in exasperation, while turning his head away from Damien’s muddled gaze, as Damien gesticulated more than he described.

— … around a table, there is Nielle and three other people. From behind, a voice proclaims: "Girls who go to restaurants have already eaten a great deal!"

— Is that all?

— Yes, but I dreamed of Nielle!

— How interesting, and what a funny coincidence: the end of your story coincides with the arrival of my bus. — Bye! "

Eyes fixed on Lou, marked by the same mischievous smile that settled the line, Damien wished him not to find a free seat on the crowded bus. Then, worried, he wondered about the relevance of having blurted out in haste only that first part of a dream. How could he have revealed everything to him? Lou held a major role in it, the signifiers more troubling, captious and almost incriminating?

(Los Angeles. I am walking on Sunset Boulevard. — On the pavement, footprints. They are blue. Strangely, they are mine. I move forward in their direction. The mysterious trail ends in an agora.

Delimiting the space, large diaphanous veils barely soften tall columns with Corinthian capitals. A few metres away, on a broad platform, a long wide table covered with a white tablecloth. On it, appetising exotic dishes, mounted pieces presented on golden plates. Standing behind this gargantuan presentation, Lou in head-chef attire.

At the centre of this scene, Nielle in an evening gown is discreetly courted by four men. I am part of this quartet of suitors. No more favoured by my height than in reality, there I am the little funny man who amuses the others.

Then Lou invites us all to taste his fabulous dishes. After generously serving the other guests, he throws a few crumbs into my flat plate with a disdainful gesture.

Nielle then dances with one of the suitors, as if she had made her choice, elected her prince, on the recommendations of Lou’s “non-verbal”. I sadly envy the dancers. I am alone and rejected even in this dream.)

The bus disappears on the horizon simultaneously with the end of this one-sleep tale. Without plagiarising the cook: "Funny coincidence!"

The cold that was beginning to make Damien shiver brought him back to reality. Returning home, walking with his head high, more than lifted, scrutinising one of those third-floor shuttered windows, he imagined there a silhouette making him languish. That of Nielle, who must have taken advantage of her unspeakable downstairs neighbour’s outing to clear out.