CHAPTER 4

He gurgles. He says nonsense words in the most absurd moments. The more you expect him to shut the fuck up, the more he speaks and burbles in a logic on its own.

Dark eyes, dark circles around them, dark hair, the dark shadow of an unshaven beard on his face. His lips perpetually wet with froth. That dumb smile, those absent looks.

He takes his medicines quite easily, he lets the nurses sit him up on the bed, his long and skinny fingers grasping something invisible, trying to clutch to something nobody can see. Nobody but him.

He eats whenever they want him to eat and whatever they want him to eat. It’s like seeing a preemie in the body of a 34-year old. His forearms are full of healed up holes.

“Gaah…Gahh…You knew that, you knew that Lucy….”, he says, “…is in the sky with diamonds. You knew that, everybody kneeeeeew that”.

An endless, monotonous singing. He is so into that old song and now I hate the Beatles. I just hate them, whenever I hear one of their songS, the only thing I would like to do is to rip my ears off. And make everything silent again.

“Cellophane flowers of yellows and greens…”, and his voice sounds like he’s constantly gnawing a rock. Looks like somebody put a rock into his mouth and he’s constantly, perpetually sucking it.

“A girl with kaleidoscope eyes…”, and his eyes roll and twirl around like flipper balls. I have no idea of what he sees, probably he’s really high in the sky with diamonds as we’re all stuck down here, dense, completely clueless. Staring at him mouth agape like he’s everybody’s fool.

“Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain…”, and I let him sing. He can’t go anywhere. Whenever the nurses try to make him get up, to make him stand up straight, he just opens wide his mouth like a drawer and stares at the ceiling, maybe looking for Lucy or the diamonds, who knows. He stays motionless for a while, his dark circled eyes transfixed on the white ceiling of the room, a wire of froth dangling from his mouth and that idiotic expression.