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name) on an IBM 307 (let’s say).
    I remember, on that note, that Pierre G. had once spoken to me of automatic composition.
    This might take place at a cocktail party where things like this make for good conversation.

No. 55
March 1971
     

The support polygon
    I am on the street with P. and Henri G. There are buses.
    We’re talking about the elephant’s support polygon.
    Henri G. reminds me that the center of gravity is located slightly toward the front (or slightly toward the back?) of the body; no effort is required to be upright, or only a tiny effort.
    This explanation obviously applies to high heels.

No. 56
March 1971
     

Sperm and theater
    (at some point during the morning I remember that I had a dream, from which only the two following words surface: Sperm, theater).
     

No. 57
March 1971
     

The return
    Since I left her, Z. has been living with two men whom she does not love but who are incredibly rich; one is an engineer and the other some sort of Maharajah who has engaged him to build a fabulous house.
    I watch as the house is built.
    I arrive at the bottom of a high white wall; it’s run through, fairly high overhead, with a large opening (future window or bay window) at the edge of which are two tilers, a man and a woman. I think I know them; in any case, they know me, because the woman asks me whether the third printing of
Things
has come out, then thanks me for having written that book, then tells me that, while we’re at it, there ought to be a translation for people who stutter. This idea amuses me greatly.
    Meanwhile, with great difficulty, I’ve managed to climb up to the opening with the help of (in the absence of a ladder) a rather thin but extremely sturdy wooden frame, and with a painful maneuver I stand myself up at the edge of the room where the tilers are working. Though it’s forbidden towalk on freshly laid tiling (you move on little bridges made from planks and bricks), the tilers give me permission to enter the house. The tiling, which at first I think is the same as in the little house in Filagne, which is to say quadrangular, is hex- or octagonal; and the tiles vary in size, from minuscule to enormous, and the tilers’ very art consists in resolving the delicate (and impossible) topological problems created by this disparity.
    I move forward—reciting to myself, laughing, the first few sentences of
Things
while stuttering—sinking imperceptibly (but with a very distinct sensation) into the fresh cement. Some tiles are elevated above others; at first I think they’re meant to be walked on, or that they’re accidents; then I understand that they’re decorative elements, like floating islands, like the rocks emerging from the sand of Zen gardens.
    Memories of my life with the Maharajah begin to blur: I was the personal valet of the Maharajah, his right-hand man. I carried his briefcase and spent my time organizing it even though it contained nothing of importance. We had to leave for an official trip; the departure was scheduled for a certain time, but the Maharajah kept everyone hopelessly waiting. The Maharajah is a capricious man: he is never ready, he no longer wants to go, etc. I spend my time coming and goingbetween my room and his apartments, and explaining his whims in nearly Racinian terms to a confidant. Once I went to beg him to go, not for my sake but for that of the soldiers in his escort, knights with chain-mail coats, one of whom stood trembling right before me. Furious, the Maharajah threw his glass of vodka in my face (or, more precisely, over my head, like in a baptismal aspersion), then shattered the glass while cursing at me. This didn’t bother me that much; what frustrated me most was that, all the way down the long hallway leading back to my room, the soldier whom I wanted so badly to help, and his wife (who was none other than P.), wouldn’t stop making fun of me.
    Another time, on the other hand, the Maharajah awarded me a decoration. It was a