All Dogs are Blue (7 page)

My friend wanted to have a drunken orgy. I wasn’t really into that. I was a bit of a prude. Maybe today, after many orgies with Rimbaud and Baudelaire, I could have one with my friend. But I was barely in my twenties, just a kid. I wanted to have the whore all to myself. I wanted that whore with the feather touch. We got in the car. How many rooms does your house have? What does your mum do? I had my eye on the hotel maid,
too.

While the hands of the least pretty whore ran up and down me, in my friend’s Ford Landau, I got paranoid, because her hands were rough. I started to think she was a transvestite. What had happened to the feather touch? Pure paranoia.

Paranoia. My psychiatrist at the time had given me Melleril.

But I didn’t like the colour of the pill. A sort of peanut brown,
‌
a shit brown. Roberto Carlos
¹⁴
used to dress in brown, then he started wearing blue and his luck changed. What had he done to lose his OCD? I have my own. I don’t like three, I prefer
four.

When I told Rimbaud that story about Roberto Carlos and the one about my numbers, he recommended two books of poetry
‌
to me:
Trilce
and
Quaderna
¹⁵
. One for three, another for
four.

For God’s sake, Rimbaud, don’t put me in a bind. I’d rather use numbers for Kabbalah, not for poetry.

Unfortunately he only taught me what he knew, and he didn’t know much. That was when he told me about maybe going back to Africa, for his leg to get better.

Let’s get back to the hotel.

My friend told me that I had to vacate one of the rooms and stay where the staff sleep.

Tonight you’re going to sleep here in the same room as Stallion. He’s going to hang you up by your little tits. Stallion was a big black man standing over six and a half feet tall. Rumour had it that Stallion had a dick so big he could have been a porn star. I just dabbled in sex with my little 15-cm-edition, PG-rated knob. I trembled the first time I saw Stallion. I wasn’t going to sleep next to that guy. He could easily rape me. When I saw Stallion again, I thought about getting out of there. I told myself: I’m not waiting for the third time, or else I won’t see anything ever again, just the spirit of the god of evil moving upon the face of the waters of Lake Guaíba.

I left the hotel and went to the bus station. I was possessed by a fertile spirit of modern madness, one that had helped twentieth-century poetry many times and had put contemporary literature in its rightful place. My persecution complex had reached the pinnacle of its glory. I ran through the streets of Porto Alegre. The police saw me running. Police are automatons. They’re like scarecrows. Scarecrows with no eyes. And ravens peck at scarecrows. I was a solitary raven that night. Cops are the same all over the world. They shot at me. Mint bullets, peanut bullets, soft bullets. And rubber bullets.

Stop, for fuck’s
sake!

I stopped. There was a police station close to the bus station.

Own up, you piece of shit. You got drugs on
you?

What’s the problem? None. I was embarrassed to tell the police about the god of evil. I was embarrassed to tell them the truth about the fertile spirit of modern madness, the one that had already written a very important chapter in that century’s literature. I still had a drop of discretion at that point.

You’re not from around here. I’m from Rio, but I’m a big fan of Getúlio Vargas’ southern accent.

Are you a poet? For fuck’s sake! Out with it! Or are you too delicate to
talk?

Sir, I was going to be raped at the love hotel.

The police called the hotel. They quickly saw that it was unfounded. A delicate flower, said one. Anyway, they told me to go back there.

I couldn’t do it. I spent the night at the police station and went back home the next day by plane.

My first and only plane trip. The trips to China, Japan and Korea were all by television. Now I’m here to stay, I told myself.

Rimbaud appeared out of the crowd. There was a crowd behind me. I hugged Rimbaud for the first time. I hugged the world and kept quiet.

Yes.

No.

I walked on and on. Wandering. Singing. Rimbaud by my side. He missed Verlaine. I missed Marina. People often miss when the match gets tight. He tripped me up. Rimbaud really was a bastard. I couldn’t deny that he was one of my
own.

The party was still going strong.

I ate black coconut sweets. Black things are so pretty, except for Stallion. There weren’t any black pills. Black is just a lot of things. The black morning that devours me as I write my obituary. It’s better to leave everything ready. Someone might forget I died. On a rainy day, I died like Vallejo. As a matter of fact, Rimbaud really insisted that I read
Trilce.
On a sunny day, a Thursday I think, I woke up in a bad mood. Every goal is a medal on your breast. The general has lots of medals and no wars. In São Paulo one time, a really powerful woman told me I’d been a soldier in another life. Many wars to be won. A kid who loved the Beatles and the Rolling Stones like me. Vietnam. It was in his blood. Helicopters all around. Napalm. Mustard gas. Bayonets stuck into bodies. Injecting some ferocious chemical.

Onward, the Maltese Falcon says to Charles.

Attack on the left flank. It was my chance to turn into Humphrey Bogart. Troops ready.
Acugêlê banzai!

Crazy Nerd and Silver Alky were playing
Battleship
. What do I know about war? Guerrilla tactics. Silence. Who’s afraid? Surging adrenaline and the smell of manure attack me as I blink. Strobe light. Black light. Spots. Thunderclaps. Lightning and rain. It’s raining now. It always rains when I want it to. Rain? There’s no rain falling … So how do I feel one day when the sound of rain attracts my useless agony? Where does it rain, where is it sad? Tell me, clear sky. I make it rain. I’m strong enough. But I’m fragile and delicate like anyone who feels life. Not everybody knows what they want out of life. If you do know, you live life. If you don’t, you feel
life.

I miss Rimbaud. I guess I’m going to lose a friend. He’s not been around. Baudelaire never was much for having a chat. I think he really does think I’m Charles Laughton, Hunchback of Notre-Dame.

I never knew when he was close
by.

The stars are up there, Baudelaire.

They’ve gone
now.

I hope that when the Big Bang happens, a spaceship full of earthlings will be shot into outer space, taking at least one Van Gogh painting with
it.

He chewed on his ear until the end of his days. He’d been through hell. He was born to be wild and a
hero.

From white to black. Let’s be realistic.

The things we invent are all Carnival costumes. Some costumes might be better than others. Sometimes they might even be tragic. Being tragic is worse than being crazy. Only Fearsome Madman is both tragic and crazy. Could I have been the one who killed Fearsome?

I want to be promoted to someone’s hallucination, please!

To fly in a helicopter. I’m going to be a pilot, Dad. Being delicate cost me my
life.

Everything goes out. The candles go out. The matches go out. I don’t even know if it’s sunny outside. I smoke a cigarette that doesn’t go out. I drink a smoothie from back when they didn’t make me fat. She tells me I’m cute. I leave myself behind two hundred times a day and I come back. Each time I go out a little bit less. Countdown. Five, four, three, two, one. I went from infinity to infamy. From infamy to infinity. There was the smell of Mum’s orange cake in the air. Friday.

When I got home I’d never heard so much silence in my room. I’d been released just a few hours earlier. This time no one had tailed our car. I hadn’t seen Rimbaud or Baudelaire for a few days. When you have such strong ties and you shared a life together, you miss your friends. My blue dog was there, grubby with age, with lots of stories to
tell.

I walked around my house and felt free. Freedom was in the small things: reading emails, opening the fridge. Now I needed to get healthier. Open things. I opened the box of matches. I opened the gas valve and lit the flame. I opened the box of incense. I went along opening, opening, opening, as if I were opening up and discovering things for the first time. It felt like I’d spent a century away from home. Everything was the same, but different.

I was a butterfly butterflying around the minefield, the power zone, the place where all my scandals had played out. I was back to my
life.

I put a pizza in the oven. Finally I could eat something that appealed to me. I devoured the pizza like a Viking eating roast quail. Then I lay down to sleep.

The meds made me shiver and drool.

Night came quickly. I put away a plate of veg and salad, for a snack. I went to my room and slept.

Men with manes, bird manes, were speaking a language I didn’t understand. I had a strange theory: every animal on earth has a planet where its intelligence is equal to that of humans and they survive like us. So, beetles had Beetleland; ducks, Duckland. Maybe I was just dreaming about Disneyland? There was a league that brought together all the beings in the universe. But each one spoke its own language.
K d pocua besourfez biologic Todog
.

I woke up suddenly, the word
Todog
echoing in my ears. I wrote down the code and stuck it on the corkboard. The dream would recur, but always with a new word. I felt special, receiving those messages. I thought I was a clairvoyant, all-seeing. Someone who’d have answers for the cosmos. I placed an ad in the newspaper, looking for other people who had the same powers, who were working in the same field.

Ten people appeared. We decided to hold meetings called Todog. We were tasked with creating a new language that different beings would use to communicate with one another.

The meetings were delightful, each of us talking about our life with extraterrestrials. Some had had chips implanted, so we needed to join together as a congregation. We ate wind. We drank air. We fed on sunlight. I lost thirty kilos. We started to set aside some money for our photocopying expenses and supplies.

Out of the Todog meetings came the Todog religion. I was consecrated Magma I. And each one of the other ten members had a specific role. It was a small step from my consecration as Magma I to being First Todog.

Rising over other people is a funny thing. Having the power to speak and make others do exactly what you’ve asked. But I didn’t abuse my status as First Todog.

I was the First Todog, the one everyone had to respect. I was a kind of god to those people. I was responsible for making sense of the laws of the universe and turning them into a language that could be understood by the other beings in the universe.

For my father this was pure insanity.

You want me to call you Todog. Like a kind of
dog?

No, not dog. It’s Todog.

How ridiculous can you be. Look at you, wearing a robe. You don’t even put on trousers any
more.

They’re Todog robes.

And the flowers?

Todog flowers.

Everything is Todog?

Yes, I’m part of everything.
Anhamambé arlicouse proto bumba Todog.

Stop saying that nonsense.

To cantilya chamtipa cur

Tuereriçaau mandique puss

Pos polacossidrometáuio.

Todog.

My father slapped me across the face. The other members of my religion laid into my father.

They really beat me up. I’m calling the police.

We have religious freedom.

Your religion is lynching an old
man.

When they attack our god Todog we’re defending ourselves from their
hell.

My hell is all of you and this idiot son of
mine.

Todog.
We are one another’s
hell.

I’m kicking you out. Go live in some other shithole.

Todog. Absentam. Clux.

Todog.

I left and went to the streets preaching the Todog. First we had to grow and multiply the number of the faithful.

We got into a fight on the corner of Miguel Lemos with some punks who were passing by. Todog is strong and imposes itself by force. Two punks converted. The power of the word renewed the lives of those who took on the teachings.

We went to sleep in a nearby shelter. I had to name a Todog 2 to take my place. So I chose the fattest one. I called him Xuma Quizombe. Xuma consecrated himself grand master.
Bencotuzaac maarrienovic gossstumaan
. Xuma Todog 2. He was my secretary on all our works. Kicked out of the shelter, we went to an abandoned campground.

In two months there were 500 of
us.

Todog Xantipa maarlameeu
.

With time, I was feeling my body less and less. They gave me some other glasses and these new glasses gave me strange powers. Like concentrating solely and exclusively on my destiny. After all, it’s not like everyone has gone through what I have. And I needed to forget everything, remember less, not live in the past so much. Dogs were blue and what would this lead to? It wasn’t my fault that I saw the light of things. Although the light of things was disappearing and giving way to a new light: the
Todog lutz vaticerum forbid beach boys club
.

With time, I was starting to master the language. The one that would unite all beings. I knew the language so well that I was slowly giving up speaking my own language. The meetings at the campground were fruitful. I spoke to more and more people.

You need to deliver your self to Todog. The world was made for you. A calm world of love.
Fortex climberg Todog
.

There were times when I only spoke Todog and Xuma translated for everyone. The people made donations. So many that we bought the campground and built a big house there.

Go to bed. This is no hour for a child to be
up.

Yes,
Mum.

I slept with my blue
dog.

You have a very beautiful future ahead of you, the fortune teller told
me.

She read the lines on the palm of my
hand.

Our house was new. A dog always came along and howled in the mirrored night that was the lake. Every lake is a mirrored night when the moon is
full.

The furious hands of silence were falling through my childhood. The deeper I got into my childhood Todog, the more I forgot myself. Gradually I forgot that I had a family. My family became Todog. During the sermons I emphasised the need to love your neighbour as yourself. I wrote a booklet with some commandments. And I also set down rules for our use of psychotropic drugs. After a month we had over a thousand followers. We lived off what we grew in the big vegetable garden on the old campground. We built houses. Many rich people joined the ranks of Todog and donated lots of money to help make it an official foundation. Over time it became necessary to put some controls in place. Each new member had to spend one month weeding, the next one planting, and so on and so forth. Since Todog was only revealed to me, I was the one who doled out punishments.

One fine day some cops came and took me to a nearby asylum. In the asylum I was put in the ward for the most serious cases.

A crowd was shouting outside the asylum. More than a thousand. Xuma is commanding the picket line. Slowly the police start to arrive. They want order. Todog isn’t about violence. The police start to let fly. Knocking people senseless left, right and centre. The Todog retaliate. The police fire tear gas at my people.

Inside the asylum the lunatics are frightened. They put me in a skip and transfer me to a prison.

You’re leading a band of lunatics.

They’re not lunatics.

They’re following a lunatic like
you.

Surely we’re not causing any
harm.

Xuma shows up, bloodied, and gives me a
hug.

Todog
.

What the hell is that? What’s Todog?

Todog is all the forces in
one.

Spit it
out.

Todog is the language that all animals speak.

You trying to say that dogs don’t
bark?

Dogs and all living beings have a transcendent home of their
own.

The officer called another cop and had him bring in the most ferocious dog in the regiment. The dog entered, barking and slobbering, a ball of rage beside
me.

Todog ministral calipsomburguer veneran do lupsier todog
.

The dog, who was about to bite me, started licking me, docility itself. I turned to the
cops:

This is Todog. The language all understand.

Our man here is crazy. He’s screwing with us. The dog doesn’t understand that shit, no
way.

The cop pistol-whipped me and my eyebrow started to bleed. Xuma ran towards me. They clobbered him with the pistol
too.

We’re going to keep you here under arrest for
now.

And
Xuma?

The pair of you will be here for a while
now.

The officer took us to a storeroom and started laying into us. Beat us until we bled. Until our noses were bloody. I kept telling Xuma that Todog didn’t allow violence and we couldn’t react if we were truly men of faith. I asked why they were doing it and they said they didn’t know why they were beating us, but we knew why we were being beaten.

Todog stuff.

It was a way to ease our guilt and our
pain.

We were taken before the judge and sentenced to four years for sedition. The first thing I thought of was Todog. In those four years what would become of the hundreds of people who had believed in
me?

All dogs are blue? I swallowed a chip. I swallowed a cricket. What else is left to devour in this world?

Carnival only wears the colours of short-lived happiness. Dealing with lunatics or with normal people: what’s the difference? What is reality? How many pieces of wood do you need to make that canoe? How many mortars do you need to sink that
boat?

At times like these I get to thinking about my mum and the orange cake she would make every Friday. Rimbaud and Baudelaire never visited me again. Either I’m cured or even crazier. I’m more locked away than ever. No one ever does the right thing, however much they try. How is it my fault that I’m locked up? Rimbaud: why don’t you come around to cheer me up? I’ve been abandoned. Baudelaire: you’re a bore, but you write well. Drop by, both of you. Come over. You guys cut me off without warning. Some rats scuttle between my cell and Xuma’s cell.
Todog apartenum politicum est
. The rats form a circle and dance the can-can.

‌
I saw an Umbanda
¹⁶
ritual that day. A decapitated chicken. A goat was sacrificed and I was soaked in blood. I was fifteen and I swallowed a cricket, then I saved the house from the termites. Four years in
here.

Fourth of November: the day I was born. No cake and no party. Nothing.

I got a tricycle, but the neighbour already had a bicycle. I want a bicycle, a bicycle without training wheels, so I can learn how to fall. Happiness.

Hi, you’ve just received an important email: take Viagra.

Every being
–
no matter how nasty
–
had a childhood, had an adolescence. How do these facts affect adult life? Could my childhood have determined who I’d turn out to be? I was a quiet boy. Had a far-away look. Sometimes I wonder, given how many problems I’ve got, whether my parents didn’t hide something from me. I didn’t fool around with guys. I wasn’t molested. I dated a pretty girl. I had everything I wanted. Why had fate done this to me? What was Hitler’s childhood
like?

Xuma looks at me and says something in Todog. For four years we only spoke in Todog.

Four years passed quickly. We were put in with the most dangerous prisoners. But thankfully the days flew by. In the meantime, the Todogs on the outside multiplied. To the point where, thanks to the right of freedom to worship, Todog was accepted as a religion. Three days before I got out, people were already gathering at rallies to hear the few words I’d taught.

We’re heroes, said
Xuma.

We
are.

Our people out there are organised; who do you think took our places?

No one,
Xuma.

When we stepped out into freedom, a radio station immediately asked what message I’d like to give at that moment:

Todog olambolic Todog
.

What does it
mean?

We don’t usually translate. Either the words enter you or they don’t. Xuma understands me, don’t you
Xuma?

Yes, Todog.

Some familiar faces, armed with banners and posters, were outside waiting for us. The familiar faces greeted us, revered us, idolised us and showed themselves to be faithful to Todog. I was impressed when they said there were ten thousand people waiting in Getúlio, wanting to hear my prayers.