All Dogs are Blue Read Online Free PDF Page A

treatment varies according to how dangerous we are.
    They haven’t done lobotomies for ages. Electroshock therapy only gets administered under sedation. There’s the movement against mental hospitals. But where do you put all the people with no family, who are lost causes?
    I was afraid of the future. Maybe this was it, living with all kinds of people. Sane people, crazy people, cops, street cleaners. I had nothing against the street cleaners. They were very clean and always wanted to clean up. But being locked up all day long, watching everything from afar. It was sad. It started raining, pouring down. I got even sadder. I couldn’t remember love. The last time I was loved, she said she didn’t love me. She’d fallen in love with the craziness in me. Sometimes lunatics are very seductive. I missed reading a good book on a cold day. On a hot day, too. I wanted to read Henry Miller.
    There were lots of slums around the mental hospital. In twenty years everything would be taken over by the favela . The slums kept swallowing up the hillside, and there was less and less green space, and more roofs and ramshackle housing. In that cubicle it was always winter. It was always cold. It didn’t bother me, I like the cold. You don’t have to take off your shirt. No fat guy likes to take off his shirt. Showing off his flab isn’t a fat guy’s idea of fun.
    I hate mirrors. Mirrors are just good for showing how we deteriorate with age. The first thing I broke at home was the mirror. I didn’t even care about the seven years of bad luck. Then I went for the booze and, seized with undeniable madness, I started throwing the whisky bottles to the floor, one by one. It turned into a dangerous place. A sea of glass shards. Some things didn’t break, like the glass top of the big table in the lounge, which proved to be indestructible. A table decoration was also unbreakable. There were things that melted away at the slightest touch, that self-destructed when I stroked them, and others that remained steadfast. My father came and asked me to stop. I didn’t stop. My little niece was screaming. My brother was screaming. My mother was screaming. My sister was screaming. Our cleaning lady was screaming.
    No, not that!
    Yes, that. I’m breaking it and I’m going to break more. I’m breaking. I’m breaking. Breaking.
    The police arrived and handcuffed me.
    They took me to Pinel, the public psychiatric hospital.
    Why did you break everything?
    I broke everything because I’m made of shards and when the shards invite me to, I wreak havoc. Everything was very calm. Except for me. I swallowed a chip. I drank a beer on the street and they slipped a chip into my beer. I swallowed the chip that’s making me do all this, even what I don’t want to do.
    But I could only hurt myself with all those shards, especially walking around barefoot on the shards.
    We’re going to move you to the Clinic. We’re overcrowded.
    I don’t want to go to the Clinic, or to stay here.
    And I started wrecking the doctor’s office, until a nurse came with a bayonet.
    Why don’t you die?
    There are so many old people here.
    You wait, I’ll survive long enough to expose this whole dirty game.
    I got close to Jesus. From my cell you could see the Christ statue. They put me there to see if I’d die a little of shame for not believing in God. There were butterflies all around. The asylum was a place full of beautiful flowers, but rotten on the inside. The asylum model had to be changed. But how could my family deal with me wrecking everything? In lucid moments, I ask myself: what could they have done? On the day of the crisis, no one could do anything. And what can you do to avoid a crisis?
    You’re a lost cause. You’re an idiot, you’re fat, and vile. You’re just saying that because I’m tied up.
    Everything went golden. The sky was golden. Christ was golden. The ambulance was golden. The golden nurses were touching me with their golden hands.
    Everything