The Skin of Dreams by Raymond Queneau

Author:Raymond Queneau
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2024-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

7

“YOU’LL do better. It’s not worth the effort.”

He was afraid to say it but finally he absolutely had to say it and so he said it:

“So it’s over?”

“It’s over.”

He grabbed his hat and with a farewell to which she did not respond, he left. He descended slowly, by way of the stairs, having forgotten about the elevator. He found himself in the street, in Rue Pigalle, in front of the door to the hotel. He looked northward, southward, not knowing where to go, which stream of the crowd to join. He had nothing important to do. No one was waiting for him anywhere, he had no desire to go here any more than there. He decided on south, but at the corner of Rue Fontaine north won out. Cocktail hour was approaching, an October cocktail hour that was already well into the twilight. Jacques went and sat on a patio at Place Blanche.

What amazed him most was that it didn’t hurt more. The stupor he was in, it didn’t feel particularly painful. This observation led him to think that perhaps he shouldn’t reflect any more on the whole thing, or at least not during those first minutes. Cravenly enough, out of the collection of feelings, happenings, and anecdotes, he only permitted to linger the abundance of minor unpleasantnesses made available to his memory by Rojana’s contempt. And so, he abandoned the irksome avenue of his love forsaken to examine in closer detail his situation as a social being endowed or unendowed with an occupation. And well, along that line, he didn’t have much to speak of. In fact, he had nothing to speak of at all, since the theater where he had been playing a part, a non-speaking part, that of a butler, had closed its doors a week after its grand reopening, and Jacques had gotten that role only thanks to Rojana’s patronage. Now he found himself alone and in Paris, without any friends, without any relatives, with barely enough in his pocket to last him two weeks.

It upset Jacques somewhat, his belonging to the nonentity class, and all the more so as he had the feeling that, though he was still young, his future was, as his clever father always said, already behind him.

His mind paraded before him all the embryos of social entities that he had nonrealized, like miniatures of perfectly formed fetuses. He made his way back from seven, eight years in the past and there he was now captain in the Royal Netherlands Army, plant manager, attaché to the embassy in Peking, banker, clown (famous), painter (famous), archivist-paleographer, midshipman (aboard the last tall ship), racing cyclist (winner of the Tour d’Europe), world chess champion (inventor of the L’Aumône Gambit and the f2-f3, h7-h5 opening), gentleman sorghum cockie in Australia (and damn if he didn’t exterminate himself some rabbits), bartender (at the Ritz), astronomer (he discovers the first planet outside the solar system, a satellite of α Centauri), legislative deputy (the youngest in France), journalist (a

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