Rodrigo Leao - All Dogs are Blue

The B Cops are after you.

Me and everyone else in here. But I didn’t kill anyone.

I know you didn’t. I was with you, said Baudelaire.

You could tell that to Rimbaud.

Lots of elephants walking round in a circle. Each one holding on to the tail of the next.

I no longer knew who to call on to keep from getting smashed against the wall by the B Cops. They had a certain verbal aggressiveness that I didn’t like. Maybe it was their tone of voice.

The family wants to know who killed Fearsome Madman.

His family never came to see him. They just dumped him here.

Do you hate your family?

I hate all of them.

As far as I know they come to see you every day. Do you hold something against them?

What does that have to do with Fearsome Madman’s death?

We think that only a very stable person could kill Fearsome. Fearsome Madman wasn’t just any madman.

Night came and I could finally go to my room and enjoy a beach holiday in Porto de Galinhas. I turned up the volume on my Walkman. I tuned the radio to rock and to hell with being here.

Rimbaud showed up as a juggler, with fire torches in his hands. He swivelled his hips with them in his hands. He ate the fire. He breathed out the fire. He was a human dragon. But I was getting better and I knew that Rimbaud was a hallucination who came to pester me. I can’t deny that he was pretty entertaining.

I want a JD.

I’m not going to drink.

After the show I gave you, you’re not going to give me a Jack Daniel’s?

I decided not to answer Rimbaud.

You’re not going to talk to me. You can’t live without my recognition.

It’s true that hallucinations are negative things. But they really could be trained in positive thinking.

Don’t do that. It’s wrong.

But how can I be so easily led by the hallucinations?

The wind cuts the midday knife. Zarathustra must be walking through the forest. How do you fly without moving? Does a noontime love exist? When she walks by me, I drool.

Daddy came alone today. He said that my brother wanted to come and see me. My brother is sicker than me. I feel sorry for my dad. Shouldering these two burdens. My brother is bipolar. He suffers from being sad. He suffers a lot. My dad studied psychiatry because of him, and then because of me. My dad was a paediatrician. Now he’s a psychiatrist.

I would like to have studied at Cambridge. So I could help my sons more.

My dad cried. We all cried.

I’ve been seeing Rimbaud since I was twenty-three. Baudelaire showed up later.

I couldn’t even bear to hear someone say goodnight. If someone said goodnight, they had to repeat it three more times.

My life in the world of colours was hell. I only wore navy-blue trousers and white shirts. I didn’t wear black or designer clothes.

The clothes walked around on their own. They walked around the bonfire on their own, like spectres. Some clothes threw themselves into the fire. They were partying it up that night.

Schizophrenics with delusional disorder have no words. They harbour a great hatred for the disease. No one values what they say. I couldn’t tell anyone that Rimbaud thought I’d killed Fearsome Madman. Not Baudelaire. He knew I hadn’t done anything.

Fronsky was supposed to come get me when I was eighteen and he still hasn’t shown up in his flying saucer. They say that seeing flying saucers is crazy. After Haldol very few people see saints or UFOs.

There was a beast roaring in my belly. I asked for food. A snack came and it had cake. It was a cake. All the lunatics queued up. The Attorney General and the drug addict were fighting over the cup of coffee.

I’m going to Paracambi. If you don’t eat, you’ll go to Caju.

The toilet was fucking filthy. That horrible chill. A night cold enough for snow. Snow fell from the sky. It was California. California gave me a kiss and brought the drugs.

California was the name of the therapist who led a group session once a week. Only the feebleminded didn’t take part. I told the story of Garnizé, who was not only gay, but had a gay son, too. They both had AIDS.

Take your hand off my tits.

Pow! Bang! Crazy Nerd and Silver Alky were going at each other.

Take your hand off my tits. Take your hand off. Take it off.

Pow! Bang! The two were rolling on the floor. Two monster nurses — strong, fat men — came and broke them up. Crazy Nerd was tied to his bed.

They’re all watching TV. No one blinks. Every two minutes you hear the sound of a dimwit’s head against the wall. He had already made a dent in the wall.

The Brazil match. Please let us watch the match.

You can watch until ten o’clock.

Rimbaud runs by, heading for my room. I’m watching the match. Brazil plays well. Goal.

We went to bed late. Daddy came to sleep at home today. Mummy made an orange cake. It was delicious. Every Friday there’s cake.

They held me down and put on the straitjacket.

Now everyone’s going to do a drawing. I drew Christ on the cross. Now everyone’s going to show their drawings.

I do a drawing of the sky and the sea. It’s when the sky meets the sea at infinity.

In mine, there’s a hummingbird putting pollen on each star in the night sky.

You and your drawings.

It’s how I feel, crucified. In the old days, anyone who was different or who appeared to be a threat was crucified. Nowadays you wind up in places like asylums, which is the best way to not get better.

The B Cops got close to me. They came over like they were buddies.

It’s all right, it wasn’t you, our apologies. We’re nocturnal animals. Images and strange sounds get us going. Here, screams are the means of communication. There’s an enigma behind every lunatic.

The man inside the milk carton slapped another man inside a Colorama shampoo bottle. He was a different kind of guy; he liked to go shopping with his mum. I always ended up with a sweet in my hand for good behaviour.

They did the same in the asylum: if everyone behaved themselves, load them up with endorphins, ie guava jelly. How can you miss a place that no one comes from, that people only go to? People only ever go to the asylum.

The Lady of All Screams sits down next to me. No one knows why or for whom she screams. They say she lost a lover and became that way, possessed by the scream. It’s a uterine scream. A horrible thing. It destroys our eardrums. She eats her meatloaf slowly, like it was fillet steak. Uses her cutlery with precision. The mistress of her own etiquette. Leaves her guava jelly and screams. With her left hand she picks her nose and wipes a bogey on the table.

Some people there aren’t crazy, they’re just old, senile, and seem to live in another time. Granny, for example, is always well dressed in a tailored suit. She’s a fine lady. She goes around made up, well preserved for her seventy years.

There’s not a lot of chit-chat. Idle chin-wagging. Here it all boils down to screams or to I’m going to Paracambi. If you don’t eat, you’ll go to Caju.

What is loneliness? It’s living without obsessions. But sometimes in life we have to choose between pounding the tip of a knife or letting ourselves get burned in the fire.

Which is worse?

A man dressed in jelly blew a kiss inside a Coca-Cola bottle.

You shouldn’t write about asylum life.

No. Everyone has an asylum nearby. Either your handbag is an asylum, or your home, or even your wallet. Lots of things can be an asylum. I’m not talking about untidiness, I’m talking about real asylums.

Rimbaud showed up dressed like an Apache Indian. He said I was turning into General Custer.

There were lots of flowers around the clinic. It was a nice place. That’s why I say asylums are such pretty places that they remind you of cemeteries. Those cemeteries with huge gardens.