for a while, something archetypal lingers marvelously within me: large, silent, indecipherable, like the stone faces on Easter Island—

then, diurnal drudgery carries me off.

•

Now and then, I tried to track down the origin of this dream in myself. I visualized the time, the days, that preceded it. For instance, a humdrum day one and a half or two years ago here in Paris (in the constellation of Gaia, whom I loved at that time, Venus ascending, Mercury in the first house): we lived sumptuously and with costly joys, spent our days sybaritically; bought our salmon and caviar (as well as vodka) at Petrossian, venison and fowl at Fouchon, cheeses at Marboeuf; the only arguments were about things like whether we preferred the vins des Côtes (Ausone) or the vins des Graves (Cheval Blanc) to Saint-Émilion (and which vintage, needless to say); we agreed about Chablis (Blanchots, Les Clots, Grenouilles, and Vendésis); with trout, we particularly esteemed a Pouilly-Fumé. We drank Burgundy less often (and if so, it was Clos de la Ferrière or Clos de Bèze-Chambertin); our selection of calvados, marc, kirsch, poire, framboise, cassis, as well as cognac and Armagnac, was considerable. In short, the days began with sensual joys, sensual feasts, and ended with sensual intoxications. Our wakening in the blond pear-wood Second Empire bed was a dove-like billing and cooing (which, to be sure, usually degenerated into a wildcat mating). Then we bathed amply, voluptuously. Floris of London supplied us with bath oils, bath salts, soaps, toilet waters, potpourris; otherwise, Madame remained true to the products of the House of Guerlain; I for my part held steadfast to Knize Ten and Knize Polo; in summer, however, I loved the somewhat vulgar freshness of Tilleul from d’Orsay. Eventually, we harnessed up: Madame très chic, très simple, assez sportive in her Balenciaga tailleur, a delightful little hat, long gloves of course (in this respect, one can always rely on Hermès), the pocketbook, however, from Germaine Guérin—everything we owned, everything we used, everything we surrounded ourselves with was exquisite, unique, at least top quality (although we often came across simply enchanting finds at the Prisunic). The Rothschilds served as our model for the soundest, most unimportunately luxurious lifestyle. Madame herself is something unheard of, inimitable, un vrai objet: a Creole (to put it delicately), super-life-sized in every respect, especially in the physical: chocolate colored, over six feet, a live weight of one hundred fifty-two pounds. Dame Africa from the Gobelin cycle The Continents: tropical, fruit-proliferating, leopard-spitting Louis XIV sumptuousness. Yet Madame had the affectionate tenderness, the lily of the valley–delicate intimacy, the entrancingly alert coquetterie of the midinette. At the same time, she was a tremendously capable business-woman (record industry). A lady with an executive’s vitality, the precision brain of a nuclear physicist. Being a Frenchwoman, Madame was naturally a housewife in the best sense of the word, an outstanding maîtresse de maison. (Only the footwear left something to be desired: this was where le côté noir revealed itself. The niggers in Madame’s family tree expressed themselves more eloquently here than in her radiant corn-golden mulatto skin.) It was sensual bliss to dress this mountain of smoked flesh in haute couture.