Actually, I look a bit like Charles Laughton.
Just for a while, hopefully. Why drink coffee with sugar when you’re fat? Everything with lots of sugar. I look at clocks and coffee cups. I spit soap bubbles. I turn into a train that goes along without knowing where to stop. I transform myself into a writing machine and it writes whatever I want it to write. I ravenously attack an ant, and start plucking out hairs from my armpit. A little hair removal. I pluck out footprints. Chills. Certainties. Things I should do. I pull out ferocious eels and cover my belly with candyfloss.
It’s June.
They’re having a festa junina13 in the asylum.
The square-dancing lunatics are all in a line. The ones who take Gardenal don’t speak. Others take Haldol. Others are drug addicts. Others could kill for a cachaça and play snooker. No one wants to join the line and dance. No psychotic wants to dance. No dimwit wants to stop banging his head against the wall. But Rimbaud is happy and dances without any sadness. There he is, if you pardon my bluntness, with the knife between his teeth. He’s a gypsy spirit, the spirit of an Indian. Spirit of a pig. Thorn. Leprosy. AIDS. The silence of quicklime and myrtle, hollyhocks among the garden herbs. Rimbaud embroiders frangipani flowers on a straw cloth. Seven birds in the colours of the prism fly on the grey spider. Two horsemen gallop by Rimbaud’s eyes: Baudelaire and me. Everything that kills passes by me. What is this? Cocaine or ether? What is this new sound? Drums. I can’t dance, I can’t dance. He’s my friend, finally — a friend. Acugêlê banzai! I spit up into the air and open an umbrella. Baudelaire spits as he speaks. I use the umbrella to protect myself. Spits and sputters.
I was ordered to be here. I didn’t want to come. I don’t want to stay, for fuck’s sake! Tell them I’m Charles Laughton, for fuck’s sake! Haven’t they ever seen a film? The abandoned ones would have a better life outside. Even I would. Let’s say I’m spending a season in hell, a season in my temples with my poet and actor friends. Tomorrow I’ll forget about them, but they’ll be back the day after tomorrow. I know they’ll never abandon me. That’s what friends are for, right? The street cleaner invites me to eat a box of Segredo biscuits with him. Life is a secret for me. I don’t know exactly what it means. In the outside world I look for my name in the obituaries every day. I’ve already decided: I don’t want to go to my funeral. I wonder what heaven for objects is like? Heaven for clocks, for TVs, computers, slingshots, forks, knives, spoons. We only have spoons here. No one eats with a knife and fork. They eat with their mouths open, except Granny who eats a bit like my grandmother; she’s skinny, soft, sweet. And one more very important detaiclass="underline" she gives me a kiss every time she passes by. I don’t really care much for kisses. Rimbaud forced me to kiss him on the lips once. I’ve told him, it’s no use, I can’t be what I’m not.
Who knows, Rimbaud, maybe Verlaine will come along and fix that.
Baudelaire appears wearing boxing gloves. Baudelaire is nearly always an annoying, cranky prick. And strong. I almost, almost, never say yes to Baudelaire. Rimbaud’s dirty. He needs to take a shower. Like Foucault always said, a good shower is a cold shower. Every lunatic should take a cold shower before bed. Electroshock comes from thermal shock.
The cold invites the fire. Jump over the bonfire, Rimbaud.
Jump, you bastard!
A dimwit and a bipolar woman are married by a hot psychologist. There are some good doctors. Most of the doctors are nice. My dad comes by. My sister comes by. My brother, my sister, Adélia and Anália, our sweet maids, with the strength of a thousand Haldols.
I’m sad and everyone is happy.
I’m reminded of the festas juninas of my childhood.
Because I’m fat, I dance with the fattest girl. That’s life. Fatty with fatty. Skinny with skinny. Ugly with ugly. Pretty with pretty. I’d like the prettiest girl. I want to screw the psychologist. That’s life. Lunatic with lunatic.
They made a huge bonfire out of paper and the lunatics’ dirty nappies.
That guy who dared to leap over the flames got taken up the arse by the huge blaze of shit. That’s what yesterday was like. And that’s what today is like. Nothing changes. When you’re a kid. When you’re an adult. Life drains away into the sea through a sewer pipe. Thank goodness the sea is green, the colour of my brother Bruno’s eyes. His eyes are clear, free of suffering. If you don’t suffer, you’re not alive. If you’re alive, you eat French fries. It’s a good thing there are always French fries to ease the burden. The days are all alike and keep repeating themselves. No one ever asks nicely if they can enter my life, but they always find an excuse to leave. Neon veins remind me of the signs I saw in New York with Rimbaud. Now that would make a good chapter title: the poets in New York. I can see myself lost in Columbia University or even in Harlem. Here we go: I’d be the king of Harlem. I’d screw the little Jewish chicks and kill the Irish bootleggers. Then I’d say: this is my motherfucking territory, bitch!
I take my pills with a Coke. The coconut sweets travel up my veins. The peanut brittle arrived dirty. Some idiot might think I’m lost in this party, dancing with the fattest girl in the room. I wanted to dance with Clarissa. I wanted to dance with the psychologist. But Granny lets loose, dancing down on the ground. Can she get back up? Only with a winch.
Call the paramedics, quickly, please. Actually, better call the cops.
Focus. Out of focus. I’m blind.
Deaf and dumb. My nerves are lit up but everything’s dark.
Fearsome Madman appears in my dreams. He says Rosebud killed me. My head’s exploding. Who killed Fearsome? The foetid veins in my head scan my speech. Rimbaud wants to marry me. Baudelaire is neurasthenic; he’s always distant, even at the party. He’s not going to found modernity with that perspective.
So I say to him: let’s be modern, Baudelaire.
It was only then that he saw the girl passing by him. She was the passante. Later he told me that he never saw her again. God, Baudelaire is difficult! He likes to watch the girls go by in skimpy bikinis on the beach. It was only after Baudelaire that Vínicius de Moraes wrote ‘The Girl from Ipanema’. The girl who when she passes, makes each one she passes go Ahh is the passer-by, for fuck’s sake! The sea always beats down on the rocks of illness. The Lexotan 6 green sea. The Haldol 5 blue sky. The Rivotril white clouds. Everything is illness in mental illness, even the lovely Girl from Ipanema. Why haven’t they come up with a cure for my illness?
Why are they building rockets to go into space?
I have a delusional episode while Alfonso appears and tells me he’s going to Paracambi. God, that guy should just go fuck off.
To keep repeating that ditty.
Poor thing.
I wouldn’t wish being pitied, being seen as a poor bastard, on anyone. I’m not asking to have a place in heaven because I’m a poor bastard — far from it. I want to have the same look in my eyes that a lynx has for its prey. That Rimbaud has for his Abyssinia. Baudelaire’s movement and his beautiful flowers. I can’t stand taking the role of the victim. My role is the toilet roll. I’m a child and I don’t know the truth. The truth, out there, is in the eyes of my brother Bruno, who doesn’t know or care about anything. He lives happily with his nothingness. Everyone has nothingness.