When Souza Leão was completing this book, he deleted words and paragraphs, structured the pages, pasted and copied and redrafted. Like all writers, he read his manuscript through and made decisions. He knew what he had to do to craft this unforgettable novel. His title suggests that we will encounter a stretch of writing in which reality slips and slides, yet always returns to something recognisable. As for the magnificent last line in this most valuable book (but don’t look now) — I’m still thinking about it.
Deborah Levy
London 2013
All Dogs are Blue
It all went Van Gogh
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 Anhembi1.
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 Paracambi2.
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.