This is my place in the Mile End neighbourhood
in Montreal, Canada.
Everybody thinks I am French Canadian.
Because I dream, I'm not.
People 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'm 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.
Best ones are in the front.
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 have fought to be called Léolo 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 6889 kilometres.
Between my room and Bianca's place,
there are 5 meters 80.
And yet,
she is 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!
Léolo!
Léolo Lozone!
My name is Léolo!
Shut up, bozo!
Shut the fucking door, it's freezing.
Leo, go to your room!
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 that there is more 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 here.
It was thick.
The words were pushed together,
requiring 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.
When I sit anywhere but in my solitude
I sit in exile
I sit in Fakeland.
Because I dream, I'm not.
Because I dream, I'm not crazy.
I'm not, because I dream.
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 keeps 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 keeps 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 also was a turkey
that my mother had won at a movie theatre.
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.
Don't cry, my darling.
Do like mama.
And then there was the word tamer.
The tamer spent his nights digging in the garbage of the world.
Only letters and photographs interested him.
He carried every smile,
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 verses to be reborn
in the imaginations of men.
You have to dream, Léolo.
You have to dream.
It took me a long time to understand
he was the reincarnation of Don Quixote
and that he'd finally decided to fight isolation
and protect me from the black hole of my family.
Because I dream, I'm 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 the beauty of its cover.
Leo, I'm payin' you to work.
Pick up the rest, Leo, and put it in the car.
Kid's a good worker, isn't he?
Fernand... 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 all 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.
Awaking from the kingdom of dreams is brutal.
I sleep with Fernand, I always have.
A large bed. My grand-parents' bed,
worn out by my parents and abused by us.
My hand scratches wads of gum 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 I will 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 remember the whiteness of that light
that I saw for the 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
ploughing through troubled water.
Albert, let go!
Try to be nice, this time, Leo.
Léolo, Ma! Léolo Lozeau.
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...
Léolo Lozone.
And you don't talk about people you don't know.
Edged 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 so many others.
A dog that bit his bitch of a life.
He was a small, stout, jowly, 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 noon, pricked by a silver 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 lunacies harmonized.
And it was easy to visit them in the main hall 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.
Leo...
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 bestiary.
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.
He was 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 a swarming of the flies to calm her down,
my fragile little sister,
Queen Rita,
drifted away.
When he was younger, Fernand had problems in school.
<1>In gr4d3 5,</1>
he was put into a class of retards with schizophrenics,
psychopaths,
a set of epileptics twins, a transvestite and an albino.
Even there, he'd failed his exams three years in a row.
Madame Lozeau.
One day, a visiting counsellor
asked him to draw something.
After an hour, Fernand gave a blank page.
He insisted 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 did they think they were?
They shoved me in a class full of dildos.
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 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 fetal position,
his little night-shirt barely guarding his decency.
He rests, oblivious as usual.
200 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 balloon.
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.
Léolo!
Léolo! Come...
One night, I finally understood
where that light came from.
It was Bianca who'd been singing to me forever
from the back of the closet.
All I had to do was to take the time to write.
Bianca, my love, my beautiful love,
my only love,
my Italy.
"John" and "Mary" were our guides through English,
models of propriety.
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 or the French word for this thing.
And for a long time, I believed the Anglos didn't have one.
Casablanca.
Capital?
Dakar.
Country?
Senegal.
Dammit.
I'm coming!
Open the door or...
I'm coming!
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.
Drawn to pleasure, I forgot about Tintin,
and about the Belgian Congo becoming Zaire
in 1960.
I was obsessed.
Fernand couldn't wear himself out doing his push-ups.
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 neighbour
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 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 her or envy him 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 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 this 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 hallways. Sir?
Are you Mr. Deguire, Léolo's teacher?
- Leo who? - Leo. Leo Lozeau.
Oh yes. Are you his father?
No. Just a friend.
Have you read Léolo's writings? You should have a look.
I've got forty 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 speciality isn't French, it's fucking judo.
And I plan to get through the year.
Leo, come to dinner.
Léolo!
Léolo Lozone!
I loved Fernand for his sweet ignorance.
Because I dream, I'm not.
It's too tight, dammit!
I don't wanna ride a bus again to pick you up in hell and gone.
I haven't 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 I 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.
Okay, I'll take it.
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.
Let's go, Leo.
Fernand?
Come on, Fernand!
Fight me, you fuck!
Drop your bike.
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.
Tired 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 a small desk,
unless Fernand needs it to count and recount the 42 bucks
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 riffle 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 fucking 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 Sainte-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 boats sail away
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 over the place.
The bastards!
It sure would shock'em to see me blow myself up before I retire.
Although instinct would have lead me directly,
I still asked for her room number.
I felt strange after I said her name...
'cause it was also mine.
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 scene 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 youse man enough.
Not you, not you. None of you. Put 5 bucks on the table and I'll do it.
Tonight, the Godin kid will be late for home.
His mom will check his fingers.
She's really worried her son might be smoking.
No, Madame Godin! Your son fucks anything that moves.
His dick is eaten up by bugs.
He swallows any pill he can just to forget you.
The bath you make him take before church,
he uses to trick 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
that money was just a pretext,
and that he'd do it anyway.
The betting just defanged the fear.
The poor cat didn't defend herself.
She'd been declawed.
Madame Ouimet took good care of her curtains.
How lucky you are, Milou!
Tintin didn't have the Godin kid for a neighbour.
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 going.
Faster, faster...
Sometimes I spent entire nights
reading and writing dozens of pages without seeing her.
Bianca had become very demanding.
She knew I cheated on her with Regina
and she decided to punish me.
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.
Léolo!
Because I dream, I'm not.
Because I dream.
I dream...
Because at night I abandon myself to my dreams.
Before I receive the day...
Because I don't love...
Because I was afraid to love...
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 receive the day...
Because I don't love...
Because I was afraid to love...
I no longer dream.
Reduce the Largactil chlorpromazine to 100 mg. Intramuscular.
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 no longer 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 no longer know which way my life should go,
I have paid you back a hundredfold.
The embers of the dream
Left behind the ashes of a shadow of a life 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.