Authors: Rodrigo Souza Leao
I swallowed a chip yesterday. I forced myself to talk about the system that surrounds me. There was an electrode on my forehead. I don’t know if I swallowed the electrode with the chip. The horses were galloping. Except for the seahorse, who was swimming around in the aquarium.
He has mental problems, you know. Will there be any after-effects? Deep inside this world of mine, in my room darkened by doses of Litrisan, a psychiatrist came and bayoneted some chemical into my left eyebrow. Another, meanwhile, grabbed a lump of flesh, stretching it more and more so that I wouldn’t feel the Benzetacil injection.
Benzeta.
Benzeta.
A searing pain in my bum. Everything around me spinning and I’m spinning, too. I pick my nose and wipe the bogey on the table in the corner, far from the darkness in the room. The darkness is clinical. Only the people in white can visit that impure line. They hold me down again. I receive a kiss from my mother. It must be visiting day. I wake up and eat a sliver of guava jelly with the tuna sandwich Mum brought me. I’m listening to a song so loud that I can’t get into my thoughts, I’m on the outside, now the cocaine can’t get in. The connection’s been broken.
Mum’s just come and she’s off again.
He still thinks he’s swallowed a
chip.
She says it all started about ten years ago, when I thought I’d swallowed a cricket.
The things I’ve had to swallow because of you, my
son.
My mum stroked my lips and gave me a kiss on the cheek as she said this. For a few seconds I remembered something that had happened the day before. I had wrecked the whole house in a massive rage. I’ll never take Haldol again.
You only got like that because you didn’t take your Haldol in the first place, says the chip. And I start to say: It’s only Tupi in Anhembi.
It’s only Tupi in Anhembi
1
.
A sword swallower downs a flame all in one gulp. Everybody is swallowing something at this very moment. It’s dinnertime. Mum’s gone. The music sends me out of myself again.
I go into my room. I pull out my dick and start to have a wank. Funk me, funk me, you’re my motorbike. Funk me, funk me, you’re my motorbike. I swallowed a cricket when I was fifteen years old. It was the first time I’d managed to live more intensely with myself. I saved a house from the wicked termites that wanted to destroy it. They were giant termites. I’m sure I saved that house. I’m sure that for a few seconds I was Jesus Christ.
I’m still in the cage. My mouth has been gagged shut. My feet are
tied.
The music leaves me and returns, I can’t do any harm, except to myself. Everything started with a cricket. There was a cricket that first day. There was also a gene. Not in the same way, but in a different way. I’m swallowing everything, all the time. In the dark corner of my room, where only the rats go. I’m rotten. A pig. Filthy. I’m
wild.
The things I’ve had to swallow because of you, my
son.
I look at the newspaper and I can’t read any of it. They must have put me on some high dosage. Because I’ve not even turned forty yet and even close up, I can’t read it. I roll up my sleeves and go play snooker with a street cleaner committed for drinking too much on the clock; the asylum’s answer to national champion Rui Chapéu. But first, a born-again Christian asks us to form a circle and says someone should pray. No one here knows how to fucking pray. They’re all souls with no heaven in sight. I start: Our Father, who art in heaven. At least I know how to pray. The Christian says hallelujah. She takes my hand. I take out my dick and can’t play snooker. I go back to my nine-by-twelve cubicle, where they put me to smile bayoneting my veins. Grab the flesh, stretch the flesh, shove another injection
in.
It all started when I swallowed a cricket in São João da Barra. I was fifteen years old. I was coming or going. I was always coming or going. I only stopped to fly. That’s what it was like when I was fifteen, and how it all started. No woman ever came out of me. Ever. It was always me entering my mother. There she was, pretty as you like, having sex with Dad. And I saw, and it was only 1970. It wasn’t traumatic. I used to go around with my blue dog, my cuddly toy. Just because he was blue doesn’t mean he was gay. Just blue. Anyway, it’s not like I had thoughts on what was feminine or masculine at that age now did I? The truth is I had already started masturbating, and Dad would ask me very delicately to take my hand off my willy. I remember a psychiatrist I went to at that tender age of fifteen. She told me that I was a man because I masturbated, that there was no reason for me to have an identity crisis. I didn’t have an identity crisis, because I spent all my time in our sessions chasing after that woman. She went as far as threatening me, telling my dad that if I carried on trying to grab her, I would have to quit analysis. She said that I was too much for her and complained that I wouldn’t draw or make anything with the playdough. I pretended I was a dolphin, lying on the couch. My dick went hard and I rubbed and rubbed while the dolphin swam inside
me.
Once I turned into a plant for one of our sessions. The woman thought I’d gone catatonic. She got upset. I did the same thing with a girlfriend once and she had the same reaction. I didn’t speak or move. As if I’d swallowed a whale. For an hour, the whale that was inside, was outside, and I was stuck inside an insane asylum. Insane asylums are really nice places, with lots of flowers and trees. I didn’t stay in a five-star place, but it wasn’t a dive either. I saw all sorts of things when Alfonso told me I was going
to Paracambi. This is Paracambi
2
.
Mostly, they only wanted you to keep your mouth shut all the time, like no one deserved to hear you say anything noble or important.
What did all those people in white have to do with the fact that I was throwing up blood? They took me to Miguel Couto. They thought I had TB. Miguel Couto was the hospital where they sent dengue patients. There was an outbreak of dengue in the city. There were a lot of hippos lying around. Some turtles on four wheels. I passed through the doors of the asylum. I wanted to get up and run away. But where would I run to? Who was going to believe I had a chip implanted inside me? There were so many people around that if I said it was like a home game for Flamengo at Maracanã, I wouldn’t be exaggerating.
They stuck tubes in me and started suctioning. I was abducted by aliens.
I saw a light shining through my five-year-old body and held on tight to my blue dog. I passed out for a few seconds. Then Fronsky was there.
We’ll be back to get you when you’re eighteen.
A whole field of stretchers. People walking around with drips in their arms. Tubes coming out of the mouths of real wrecks. It was all Acneton there. They drew blood from my vein. Now I was going to get a chest X-ray. What kind of a problem can a fat guy like me have other than obesity? I should be at a fat camp, not at Miguel Couto with that dengue crisis. A fern sprouted up next to me, like a beanstalk. I climbed the stairs, held up by two doctors as strong and fat as me. There were all these poor people, really poor people: this was Brazil. A total mess. People lying on the floor. People dead on arrival. People dying. A row of bodies with tagged feet. All armed with their charts. And those spotty-faced doctors who don’t know much more about biology than I do, making fun of
you.
Look at fatface!
What a fatty!
What a whale!
I did a triathlon once and I was one of the first to cross the finish line in my category. Now I’m fat and sleeping like I did on the day of the triathlon. Constantly sedated, my veins pumped full of meds. All this for a song to invade me; all this to keep a state of order. We’re the minority, but at least I say what I
want.
The good thing about the blue dog was that he didn’t grow old or die. The deal was that I’d take care of him, so that he wouldn’t grow old. In the year 2000, I’ll be thirty-five. I’ll be so old it’ll barely register. I used to comb his fur. I liked the blue dog’s company more than anyone else’s. And what if a blue dog really existed? It would be fucking amazing to have one. And if it had a puppy, would it be born blue, too? If it could bark and eat, what would a blue dog eat? Blue food? And if it got ill, would it take blue medicine? A lot of medicines are blue, including Haldol. I take Haldol to be under no illusions that I’ll die mad one day, somewhere dirty, without any food. It’s the way every madman ends. A feebleminded woman in her seventies, in a uniform, appears in front of me and kisses me on the mouth. I see pink stars. Elephants carrying Rimbaud across Africa. Verlaine screwing his wife, but thinking of Rimbaud. I’m thinking of Nastassja Kinski and her tiny budding breasts. I’m on the dark side and can barely move, just enough to masturbate really slowly. I come and my hand goes all white, covered by the semen. My hand turns into a white glove. I wake up at five in the morning with a nurse giving me the rough edge of his tongue. I don’t sleep well. I don’t wake up well. I don’t know which of the nightmares is worse: waking or sleeping. I come out of the cage. I’ve been in the cage for a long time. When will they take me out and let me stay with the others? I join the queue for breakfast. It’s watered-down coffee and a piece of bread with a single swipe of butter. I pay to be in this place, but that only covers the knife’s one-way journey. Today I woke up wanting to say beautiful things. I took advantage of the little time they left me alone outside and picked a flower in the garden. I took the flower to my little room. The nurse made a fuss about the flower. He gave me the rough edge of his tongue again.
Have you gone gay? What the fuck is that? Fat and
gay.
I just wanted to see something colourful back
here.
I’ll communicate your wish to a psychiatrist and he’ll talk to you. I’m just a nurse here. I look after you, the sick people. My blue dog didn’t have a name. Nothing I like has a name. Everything dangerous has a name. Names aren’t given to differentiate people. If they were, no two names would be alike. Names are given to make people alike or to set you apart from the others. He flies. He travels by aircraft. He is my blue dog. Another good thing compared to fur-and-blood dogs is that he doesn’t poo or pee in the house. All I have is my blue dog. I hadn’t played with him for a long time. Until the time I smashed up everything at home. I hadn’t even looked at him for ages. Not brushed his fur. And what if, instead of being a dog, he were a real, live elephant? Imagine the amount of shit that would pile up in my room. I’d sleep in shit. But at least there’d be a stronger shower than the one back home. His trunk would soak me right through. Like the kids’ song goes, one tame elephant can annoy a lot of people. Two tame elephants can … what if I had two? That would be the best. I’d annoy tons of people. I’d smoke joints inside the elephant and blow smoke out the trunk. Because I’m all those animals. Except for the blue dog. The blue dog is the colour of Haldol. He’s my friend.
Do you want to see something more colourful?
Yes.
What do you want to
see?
The
sun.
Tomorrow we’ll go to the beach and play football and eat bugs and drown sand crabs. Let’s go to Ibicuí, to some friends’ house. They’ll be friends for life. I had a friend who got AIDS, but the guy was strong and he dealt with it, and I have to deal with all this shit
too.
We only do electroshock therapy under sedation. The patient doesn’t feel a thing. Perhaps a few little shocks will make him normal again? Perhaps everything will go back to normal? I live with a ninety-year-old woman. I like her. She craps on everything. She licks fucking everything, too. But I like the old woman. One day she started eating polystyrene and plastic. She got ill and had to go into hospital. Nurse! A piercing scream coming from deep within one of the patients. Why don’t they hospitalise women in the same place as men? Would it lead to complete sexual chaos? I don’t think lunatics have time to think about sex. You can see some of them just standing there, rubbing themselves. But that happens mostly in the street. I’m here without my blue dog, stripped of who I am. In reality, I’m no one. It’s no use shouting for help. Here everyone’s being taken some place worse. And hell isn’t the worst place.
My father shows up on one of the visiting days. He’s the one who put me here, but I don’t have any hate in my heart. I like the man. He gives me a
kiss.
How are you,
son?
I want to get out of the
cage.
He says I’ll get out when I’m better. I move towards him and kiss him on his face. Is it the kiss of Judas? Will I betray my father in my madness? And what if two men came now and crucified me upside down? Could the cross bear the weight of this lard-arse?
I’d been admitted once before this long stretch, and had stayed in solitary that time, too. My mum lied to me, telling me I’d been in that clinic’s better wing. Like hell I had. It was like Carandiru Prison in there. The worst place in the clinic. Where the hopeless cases go. But I thought there was hope. There were only a few people out to get me, and what if those people decided to throw me a party that day? On that day when the rain poured down, the Fearsome Madman was admitted. When the Fearsome Madman was little, he had psychopathic tendencies. He’d already killed a lot of people, so the story went. Fearsome Madman kissed me on the right side of my face and walked around me twice. He said he’d be my friend. That was during my last stay. I don’t know if he remembers
me.
It was lunchtime and all the lunatics were queuing up when Fearsome Madman showed up. He spat wherever he wanted, pissed wherever he wanted, crapped wherever he wanted, challenged the nurses to fights; the only reason he wasn’t our leader is because crazy people are wrapped up in their own paranoia. Lunatics aren’t community-minded.
I had one really wild paranoia. A kind of compulsion. Every time they gave me three medicines I had to take a fourth. I’d give them such a hard time about it they’d just hurry up and give me four. If I took three, horrible things might happen.