"This is my place in the Mile-end neighborhood in Montreal, Canada." "Everybody thinks I'm French Canadian." "Because I dream, that is not what I am." "Because I dream, that is not what I am." "Those who trust only their own truth, call me Leo Lozeau." "They say he is my father, but I know I'm not his son." "Because this man is crazy and because I am not." "Because I dream, I am not." "SOMEWHERE IN A VALLEY IN SICILY." "Because he was partly hidden," "I never saw the face of my real father." "What are you doing to my tomatoes?" "I'm giving life to your fucking tomatoes!" "Stop it, asshole, you're gonna ruin them!" "Who gives a shit?" "This load is going to America." "A FEW DAYS LATER, IN AMERICA." "Faced with my mother's panic, the doctor didn't dare tell her she'd been impregnated by a contaminated tomato." "Since that dream, I've demanded to be called Leolo Lozone." "No one has the right to say I'm not Italian." "Italy is too beautiful to belong only to the Italians." "Between my room and Sicily, there are 6 889 kilometers." "Between my room and Bianca's place, there are 5,8 meters." "And yet... she's so much farther away from me." "Bianca, my love..." "It only takes three words to write:" "Bianca, my love." "I took the shortest way." "Leo!" "Go to bed!" ""Leolo!"" ""Leolo Lozone!"" "My name is Leolo!" "Shuddup, bozo!" "Shut the fucking door." "It's freezing." "I don't try to remember what happens in a book." "All I ask of a book... is to give me energy and courage... to tell me there's more to life than I can take... to remind me of the need to act." "It was the only book in the house." "I never wondered how it got there." "It was thick." "The words were pushed together and required enormous effort and concentration to yield their secret." "At home, I never saw anybody read or write." "Television and billboards cluttered my brain." "At the beginning, I read the underlined passages without really understanding." "I remember wanting to give up because there were no pictures." "I find my only real joy in solitude." "Solitude is my castle." "That's where I have my chair, my table, my bed, my breeze and my sun." "I sit in exile." "I sit in fake land." "Because I dream, I am not." "Because I dream, I am not." "I had started writing down everything that crossed my mind." "My family had become characters in a fiction." "And I spoke of them as if they were strangers." "As far back as I remember, it was the smells and the light that solidified my first memories." "My grandmother had convinced my father a shit a day kept the doctor away." "Don't cry, my darling." "Do like mama." "Push, Leo." "Push, my love." ""As far back as I remember it was the smells and the light that solidified my first memories." "My grandmother had convinced my father a shit a day kept the doctor away."" "So, every Friday, we got a laxative shock treatment to purify us from all the diseases of this world." "Leo!" "Come, Leo, come to Daddy." "Come, my boy, it won't hurt." "Shit had become a family obsession." "As far back as I can remember, there was a rat in the bathtub." "And then, one night, there was also a turkey... that my mother had won at the movie theater." "It was fat and filthy." "Its remaining feathers were damp and stinky." "Don't cry, my darling." "Do like mama." "Push." "Push." "Push, my love." "Don't cry, my darling." "Do like mama." "Do like mama." "Don't cry, my darling." "Do like mama." "He was the worm tamer." "The tamer spent his nights digging in the garbage of the world." "Only letters and photographs interested him." "He carried every smile, every glance, every word of love every separation... as if it were his own story." "The tamer believes that images and words must mingle with the ashes of the worms to be reborn in the imaginations of men." "You have to dream, Leolo." "You have to dream." "It took me a long time to understand he was the reincarnation of Don Quixote." "And that he decided to fight isolation and protect me from the black hole of my family." "Because I dream, I am not." "Just the paper." "Leave the trash." "You can't do anything with this, it's broken." "Even if the record was broken," "I remember I kept the album for its cover." "Leo, I'm paying you to work." "Hi, Mo." "Hey, Mo..." "You still buying from the little frog brothers?" "Listen." "Listen, Mo." "I can get you all the paper you need at a better price." "No." "I'm serious, Mo." "Pick up the rest, Leo, and put it in the car." "Kid's a good worker, isn't he?" "You don't listen." "Paper is my business." "You can't go on hurting me like this, you know." "Deal?" "Lozeau..." "Listen to me, Lozeau." "You'll have to pick another alley, 'cause this one's ours." "Fernand!" "Since that day, fear had given my brother Fernand a reason for living." "Kid, put some more rock." "It's gotta be heavy." "Pour it on." "It don't matter if it spills over." "Fernand would no longer fear anyone." "And when my brother becomes a mountain," "I too will no longer be afraid." "And I shall walk the alleys of the world and tell the wretched of this earth what I think of them." "Cursed be those who will not bow as we walk by." "Even the Arabs and the Jews will fear me, so tall will I be on my brother's shoulders." "I'm an early riser." "Awakening is brutal as I crash-land from the kingdom of dreams unto the runway of reality." "I sleep with Fernand." "I always have." "A large bed, my grandparent's bed," "Worn out by my parents and abused by us, my hand scratches wads of gum underthe mattress, from the time when my father was afraid to wake my mother with his boozy, beery breath." ""Cursed be those who will not bow as we walk by." "Even the Arabs and the Jews will fear me, so tall will I be on my brother's shoulders."" "If you wash your hands, you can sit down and have some pie." "Don't worry." "It's like brand new." "Still wrapped in plastic." "My grandfather was not a mean man." "Yet, he'd already tried to kill me." "Children, be careful not to splash grandpa." "Come eat some chips." "Grandpa!" "I remember not being afraid." "And dreaming about the beauty of the treasure." "Perhaps because I knew I was already dead." "I mostly rememberthe whiteness of that light that I saw forthe first time." "Albert!" "Let go of the kid!" "Let go of him, Albert!" "You're gonna kill'im!" "It was a frightening cry, a huge "I love you" that resonated from the depth of her soul." "I love you, Ma." "My mother had the strength of a frigate plowing through troubled waters." "Albert!" "Let go!" "Try to be nice, this time, Leo." ""Leolo", Ma!" "Leolo Lozone." "Sure, Antonio." "But talk to the doctor, it's for your own good." "Sometimes, at the hospital, there were also my sister Nanette... my sister Rita... my brother Fernand... and my father." "As if my grandfather's legacy had exploded within the family, and that little extra cell had lodged itself in everybody's brain." "Good morning." "Who talks first today?" "Why not you, Leo?" "Because my name is..." "Leolo Lozone." "And because you don't talk about people you don't know." "Egged on by her mother, she cried for Sicily." "Her plaintive voice was close to good." "At the time, the few years between our ages seemed to me an impassable frontier." "And I lived my desire... in silence." "We were rarely together at home." "And we looked like a real family." "Will you stop day-dreaming?" "You're better off studying than scribbling." "My father was a man like many others." "A dog that bit his bitch of a life." "He was small, stout, jolly, with red cheeks." "Wrinkles line his face but reveal nothing but the age that dug them." "Somewhere between good morning and goodbye, an eternal, untouched moon pricked by a sliver of time, a forehead that stretched beyond his chin into a neck that clung desperately to bulging shoulders." "Nanette..." "My pretty Nanette." "I'm not mad at you." "At times, their lunacy is harmonized." "And it was easy to visit them in the ward on Sunday morning." "At other times, you had to go everywhere to see everyone." "And the corridors were immense." "Sometimes, it took an entire day." "They stole my baby, Leo." "They stole my baby." "Those were our beautiful winter Sundays." "Strange... harrowing... stinking... with no friends... and no light." "Hidden in the bowels of the earth, my sister, Queen Rita," "had become the curator of my bug collection." "Rita." "Rita." "Trois fois passera" "La dernière la dernière" "Trois fois passera" "La dernière y restera." "I'm keeping your jar of bugs." "Oh no, Rita." "Not my deerflies." "Here, take this, but not my deerflies." "Leo!" "Wait, 'pa!" "Don't push, pa!" "Don't push!" "You'll be pleased!" "My father was as gung-ho as a baseball coach." "My turd made him as proud as if I'd come back from war." "My love!" "My beautiful love!" "She was warm and loving." "My only love." "I loved it when she pulled me into her fat." "The smell of her sweat soothed me." "One night, my father discovered our hideout and barred the door to the cellar." "Trapped in the daylight, alone... without a kingdom, without the teaming bugs to calm her down... my fragile little sister, Queen Rita, drifted away." "When he was younger, Fernand had problems in school." "In grade 5, he was put into a class of retards with schizophrenics, psychopaths, a set of epileptic twins, a transvestite and an albino." "Even there, he'd failed his exams three years in a row." "Mme. Lozeau." "One day, a visiting counsellor asked him to draw something." "After an hour, Fernand gave him a blank page, insisting he'd drawn a white rabbit in the snow." "In the snow." "On both sides." "But it's here!" "Can't you see?" "Right here!" "But, Mr. Principal..." "Counsellor, madam." "Not Principal." "Mr. Counsellor." "Then counsel me about a 14-year-old who won't go to school." "I'm sorry, madam, it can't go on like this." "Sorry." "Come, let's go home." "Three days later, he started working at Dominion Glass." "Asshole!" "You went to school but you shit and stink like me." "I could've gone till I was 40." "If the old man hadn't fucked me 15 bucks for rent." "Who'd they think they were?" "Shoving me in a class for dildoes." "Didn't think I was normal." "Anyone hassles me today," "I'll hit'em between the eyes." "Don't get smart, punk." "We come from the same shit hole." "And I got here before you." "Don't play with the food." "It'll soon be spring." "The birds are endlessly bitching about winter." "Fernand pipes in with a snot-filled snore." "My stomach turns every time he breathes." "He lies in the fetal position, his little nightshirt barely guarding his decency." "He rests, oblivious as usual." "Two hundred pounds of muscle, a beautiful little baby got too big." "The room is split in half." "My side, and Fernand's." "His side swells as his biceps bloom." "There's his radio and my record-player." "Fernand's radio has priority since he pays rent." "And his muscles mute my music when he gets angry." "Bianca my love." "My beautiful love." "My only love." "My Italy." "No..." "Not that." "Not like that." "I don't like that." "You know what I want." "One last time." "No." "Please!" "No." "Bianca..." "Bianca..." "For me." "Leolo!" "..." "Leolo!" "..." "Come..." "One night, I finally understood where that light came from." "It was Bianca who, for a long time now, had been singing to me from the back of the closet." "All I had to do was take the time to write." "Bianca my love." "My beautiful love." "My only love." "My Italy." "John has one nose." "John has two ears." "John has two legs." "John has ten fingers." "John has two arms." "John has two legs." "John has ten fingers." "John and Mary were our guides through English." "They were models of propriety." "John has one mouth." "At school, I thought I was the only one upset..." "The only one anxious because some details were missing on John's and Tintin's bodies." "At 12, I knew what nose meant in English." "And that the Congo was a former Belgian colony in Africa." "But nobody talked about that tail that swelled between my legs." "It was absent on the chart of John's organs." "I didn't know the English nor the French word for this thing." "And for a long time, I believed the Anglos didn't have any." "Casablanca." "Capital?" "Dakar." "Country?" "Senegal." "Dammit." "I'm coming!" "Open the door or..." "I'm coming!" "Wait!" "Wait!" "Enough!" "I'm coming!" "Now!" "Just a minute!" "I'll bust the fucking lock!" "Open the fucking door!" "Open up!" "Coming!" "What's going on?" "Nothing." "I was taking my bath." "The water was hot, I fried myself." "Smells funny in there." "No..." "Well..." "Anyway, shit, or make it shoot!" "I stopped seeing pink." "Dirty pink, dead pink." "I don't feel my flesh." "I'm not there." "Submerged more and more in pleasure," "I forgot about Tintin," "I forgot about the Belgian Congo becoming Zaire in 1960." "I was obsessed." "Fernand couldn't wear himself out doing his pushups." "So he paid me to sit on his shoulders." "That's how I began to enjoy reading." "You don't want it?" "No." "I don't like dead animals." "Look at your brother, he likes it." "And it's got iron in it." "He's strong." "What's this?" "I don't know." "Maybe the pig had gallstones." "As far back as I remember having a hard-on," "Bianca was there." "It was the name of a beautiful Sicilian neighbor who'd never seen Italy and occasionally baby-sat me." "My grandfather helped her make ends meet." "Not with scissors." "Do it with love." "I told you no." "I don't want to." "Here." "Take everything you want." "It's all yours." "But do it one more time." "No." "Please." "Just once." "Do it one more time." "Do it to me." "When I was small, I liked to hide under the water." "The bottom of our pool was sky blue." "There was a pirate's treasure in a gutted wreck." "I started stealing to buy my first diving mask." "Your titties." "Show me your titties." "I never knew whether to puke or jerk off." "Hate the girl, or envy my grandfather so much I'd want to kill him." "Do it one more time." "No." "Yes." "They're old, and yellow and dry." "Even washed, they stink." "Do it." "Bastard!" "Pig!" "My mother offered us a beautiful rose made of plastic." "Supposedly to brighten up the room because a flower is an image, or rather, an idea of nature." "The scarlet red is muted by the dust that buries it more and more every day." "If only someone in the family would realize" "How unnatural this flower is with its little golden "made in Hong Kong" tag glued under a petal." "Yet, all it takes is an effortless gesture from me to take off the tag and begin to believe in the illusion." "But I refuse to touch it." "I don't want to rest in the cemetery of the living dead." "And now, my toes remind me I'm still here... sticking out a hole in the blanket." "Day after day, without realizing" "I've slipped one toe more than the day before." "Tomorrow, it'll be my whole foot, then, my leg, and soon, my entire body." "I feel I must leave this life before the rip becomes a noose." "Hey, don't run in the hall." "Sir?" "Are you Mr. Deguire, Leolo's teacher?" "Leon who?" "Leo." "Leo Lozeau." "Oh yes." "Are you his father?" "No." "Just a friend." "Have you read Leolo's writings?" "You should have a look." "I've got 40 pupils." "If I gave each an hour more a week," "I'd never leave this place." "And he's like all of them heading for tech school." "The brains'll write parking tickets, if they're lucky." "Poetry won't fix a piston." "But you're his teacher." "You could tell him what to read." "I'm the third teacher this year to take Lozeau's class." "The first two were beaten up." "My specialty isn't French, it's fucking judo." "And I plan to get thru the year." "Leo, come to dinner." ""Leolo!"" ""Leolo Lozone!"" "I loved Fernand for his sweet ignorance." "Because I dream, I am not." "We'll make money, Leo." "We'll catch tons of fish." "And big fat eels." "Hiya!" "Look at those idiots!" "The nerve of those guys." "Hey!" "Scram!" "This is our spot." "It's too tight, dammit!" "I don't wanna ride a bus again to pick you up in hell and gone." "I haven't even finished my sandwich!" "You're never gonna buy a bike sitting on your ass eating and watching boats go by." "Gimme a hand?" "Listen, if your prices were better, I'd take'em all." "You always break my ass over 25 cents!" "As if should give it away!" "It's 3 bucks for the pail." "It's all rusty, Fernand." "Fucking expensive." "Have you ever worked in your entire life?" "Got one." "Rewind and pull." "Shit, I lost it." "I told you to rewind." "You said "pull"." "I said "rewind and pull"." "You said "pull" first." "It's great you don't feel the cold." "You'll soon be able to buy your bike." "Gimme a good deal, Fernand, 3 bucks is too much." "He could catch pneumonia diving in this fucking shit and it's "too much"?" "2 bucks." "And I'll throw in 2 eels." "Deal?" "Okay, I'll take it." "Okay, let's see your cash." "Aw..." "Now get the hell out of my sight, okay?" "Go!" "Go on." "Well, if it ain't the frog brothers themselves." "Hey, Fernand!" "Ben Weider's been good to you, eh?" "It still pays to put little Leo to work." "You won't scare us today." "Want him to smash your face and have you eat the street?" "Hold this, Leo." "Is this for real?" "Took your nose vitamins?" "Oh, that's beautiful, Fernand." "Can I touch?" "Wanna see something really great?" "Check this out!" "Now that's gorgeous!" "Come on, Fernand, come and fight me." "Come on, Fernand, fight me." "What are you, chicken shit, Fernand?" "Come on." "Let's go, Leo." "Fernand?" "Come on, Fernand!" "Fight me, you fuck!" "Drop your bike." "Fernand!" "Stand up, fight me!" "Fight me !" "That day," "I understood fear lived in our deepest being... and that a mountain of muscles or a thousand soldiers could not change a thing." "Tried and found guilty for all the problems in my family, in a moment of utter despair," "I had decided to kill my grandfather whom I liked." "Leo, come to supper!" "Leo?" "Albert!" "Leo!" "Leo!" "Do you know what "attempted murder" means?" "You were never violent." "You'll destroy yourself if you keep thinking your grandfather is totally to blame for the family." "Your mother is strong." "Very strong." "She's a force of nature." "She never caved in." "In spite of everything she went through." "You're a lot like her, Leo." "I know your fear." "But there's nothing I can do if you refuse to talk to me." "To do my homework," "I use half of a small desk unless Fernand needs it to count and recount the fortitude box he makes at Dominion Glass." "Twenty-seven." "Expenditures." "Movies..." "Two bucks." "Had some fries." "Fries:" "Ten cents." "Bus..." "All I had to do was read or write, and she'd come back and sing for me." "The tamer was right." "There was a secret in words strung together." "Bianca my love my only love" "my sweet love." "Bianca my love my sweet love my only love." "A peddler shouts in the void." "There's enough blood this morning to stain a hundred pages." "And enough people to buy them, to appease their rage." "I pull out my rifle and shoot at cars." "I look down the barrel and aim at my father." "I want to stick a firecracker as big as the universe up his ass." "Just because I'm waiting for the bus, and I'll be waiting next week." "I'll still be waiting." "Every Sunday, we take the bus to picnic on Ile Ste-Hélène." "As my father doesn't have a car, it's our bit of the country in the city." "At the docks, we get bored watching ships sail away." "Ships we will never sail on." "And we eat cucumbers on the grass." "Maybe I should stick the barrel up my nose and blow my thoughts all overthe place." "The bastards..." "It sure would shock them to see me blow myself up before I retire." "Although instinct would have led me directly," "I still asked for her room number." "I felt strange after I said her name because it was also mine." "Trois fois passera la dernière la dernière" "Trois fois passera la dernière y restera." "Rita." "Here, I brought my flies." "You can keep them." "Rita?" "That was the only time I dared caress my sister." "And all I could think of was a wonderful seen in a movie." "And as always," "I was a spectator of my own life." "Leo Lozeau, I don't want to see you bring live animals in the hospital." "Don't keep that in your room, it stinks!" "Coward!" "Coward!" "I wouldn't dare?" "!" "Put 5 bucks on the table and I'll do it." "You guys don't have the balls." "5 bucks on the table and I'll do it." "None of you're man enough." "Not you, not you." "None of you." "Put 5 bucks on the table and I'll do it." "Tonight, Buddy Godin will be late for home." "His mom will check his fingers." "She's worried her son might be smoking on the sly." "No, Mme. Godin." "Your son fucks anything that moves, his dick is eaten by bugs, he swallows any pill he can just to forget you." "That bath you force him to take before church on Sunday, just serves him to prostitute himself with his hockey coach." "White meat sells better." "But no, don't worry, he doesn't smoke." "It makes him choke." "Sex I discovered between ignorance and horror." "Deep down, we all knew money was just a pretext... and that he'd do it anyway." "For betting just defanged the fear." "The poor cat didn't defend herself." "She'd been declawed." "Mme. Ouimet took good care of her curtains." "How lucky you are, Milou," "Tintin didn't have Buddy Godin for a neighbor." "I didn't have the courage of my love for Bianca." "So I settled for getting it off with Regina." "I'm coming..." "You smell good..." "Keep on." "Faster, faster." "Sometimes I spent entire nights reading and writing dozens of pages without seeing her." "Bianca had become very demanding." "She knew I'd cheated on her with Regina... and she decided to punish me." "Bianca!" "Bianca!" "Leo!" "Ma!" "Leo is sick!" "Leo!" "Don't do this to me!" "Not you!" "You're too strong!" "Get up!" "Don't go!" "Leo!" "Don't do this to me." "Leolo!" "Because I dream, I am not." "Because I dream..." "I dream." "Because at night, I abandon myself to my dreams... before I'm left the day." "Because I don't love... because I was afraid to love..." "I no longer dream." "I no longer dream." ""Because I dream, I'm not." "Because I dream." "I dream..." "Because at night I abandon myself to my dreams, before I'm left the day..." "Because I don't love..." "Because I was afraid to love..." "I no longer dream." "Reduce the Largactil to 100 mg. intramuscular." "I no longer dream." "I no longer dream." "Tomorrow put him in the ward with the rest of his family." ""You my lady" "Bold melancholy" "Solitary cry piercing my flesh," "Offering it to ennui," "Haunting my nights when I don't know" "Which way my life should go," "I have paid you back a hundredfold."" "You my lady" "Bold melancholy" "Solitary cry piercing my flesh," "Offering it to ennui," "Haunting my nights" "When I don't know which way my life should go," "I have paid you back a hundredfold." "The ambers of the dream" "Left behind the ashes of a shadow of a lie you told me to hear." "The white serenity" "Minute of eternity was a dark-haired wicked waif who pierced my sorrow with a sharp and sacred breast leaving only the remorse of seeing the sun rise on my solitude." ""And I shall rest my head between two words, in the Valley of the Vanquished."" ""Leolo.""