City of God

by Paulo Lins

  ‘You came earlier, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yeah …’

  ‘I went over to Vila Sapê to try and rustle up some money, but the guys there didn’t have any.’

  ‘But is our deal still on?’

  ‘Fuck, man! I’m really skint …’

  Mango stood there for a while in silence, ran his hand over his head and said:

  ‘Look, I’ll try and talk to the guys, OK, but keep tryin’ to get it together.’

  ‘You goin’ over to Mangueira?’

  ‘No, I’m goin’ to Fogueteiro, ’cos I’ve gotta pick up some money there. But I reckon the guys’ll be there.’

  ‘Hey, put in a good word for me, man!’

  ‘I will, don’t worry.’

  When Mango got to Fogueteiro, an errand boy told him that both Tião and Coca-Cola were in Morro do Alemão in a meeting that had been hastily called by the leaders of the organisation. Mango turned around and headed for Morro do Alemão. He wanted to know what was going on. He liked hanging around the big bosses; he hoped to throw in some ideas, move up in their good books.

  ‘Where’s the money?’ asked Coca-Cola as soon as Mango arrived, looking concerned.

  ‘The guy’s skint. He didn’t manage to sell …’ argued Mango.

  ‘Kill ‘im, kill ‘im!’ ordered one of the leaders.

  Mango didn’t have to go to his friend’s house, because he found him in Main Square.

  ‘Hey, the guys wanna have a talk with you, OK?’

  ‘OK, I’ll nip over to Fogueteiro tomorrow …’

  ‘It’s gotta be now, man. Go get your car. I’ll wait for you here.’

  Mango drove the car in silence, his friend next to him making small talk, but after a while he also fell silent. Mango thought about Aristóteles’ family – after killing him he wouldn’t be able to look any of his relatives in the eye. He remembered the days when they spent the afternoons together listening to rock ‘n’ roll, drinking wine and smoking dope, the mornings on the beach, the dances, the drag races up in Alto da Boa Vista. He remembered the times Aristóteles had stuck his bum out of the car window and told him to beep the horn, Aristóteles imitating Raul Seixas singing, certain that the Devil was the father of rock ‘n’ roll. He was going to kill his friend, but far from there and without anyone knowing about it.

  The night was hot and Mango drove at a high speed. When they passed through Mato Alto, a secluded place, he thought about stopping the car, ordering his friend out and shooting him in the back, but he decided to take him to Morro do Alemão, believing that with some persuasion the leaders might spare him. Cautiously, Mango started to talk again, secretly hoping the car could be sold to pay off the debt.

  Mango told Aristóteles to wait for him on a corner, and climbed another five hundred metres to the shack where the leaders were still gathered.

  * * *

  ‘Man, the guy’s saying he borrowed fifty thousand from him and paid it back on the date they’d agreed. When the shit was good he sold loads, so he was able to put somethin’ away, know what I’m sayin’? So look: get rid of ’im … No one told you to bring ’im here. Get ’im out of here and get rid of ’im … We gotta send money for the guy’s breakout, right? This dickhead takes the dope then says he’s skint – so get rid of ‘im!’

  Mango wanted to argue more on his friend’s behalf, but he was afraid. After all, the man talking was one of the top leaders in the organisation. He really needed to show them he could be cruel; he couldn’t say no. He left with his gun in the back of his waistband.

  ‘We’ve gotta go over to Fogueteiro, ’cos the guys headed over there.’

  While he drove, Mango thought about where to kill his friend and regretted not having taken him out in Mato Alto. It suddenly occurred to him to kill him right then and there, to put an end to his suffering. He stopped the car before they got to Irajá.

  ‘Get out!’ he said, pointing his gun at him.

  ‘What’s goin’ on, man? We’re friends! You lost it?!’

  From inside the car he fired twice into Aristóteles’ incredulous chest, put the car into gear and took off. He drove for a few minutes, returned to the place where his friend’s body lay bleeding, and put him in the boot. He was sweaty, cold, and thought that if he got help in time he’d be able to save him. He stopped the car, checked to see if his friend’s heart was still beating but couldn’t tell if he was still alive. He decided to leave the body right there and started pulling it out of the boot again, then gave up and got in the car. He didn’t have a clue where he was, numbness paralysed his soul, his heart beat wildly. He pressed his hand to his chest, took a deep breath and drove through the heat of the night.

  In the streets, people were sitting at the gates to their houses, children were playing dodgeball, teenagers were getting ready for potluck parties, bars were full. Mango only saw the road and didn’t notice the traffic signals. Then it occurred to him to stop in front of a clinic, leave the body and take off. He shook, stepped on the accelerator of the Opala, remembered Aristóteles over in the abandoned mansion trying to save a girl from drowning in the pool. He had a good heart, and he didn’t deserve to die like that. He heard a police siren behind him and went even faster. He crossed over onto the wrong side of the road, drove on the pavement, and regretted not having got rid of the body sooner. He went over the Madureira viaduct, spun the car around underneath and headed for Cascadura. Looking in the rear-view mirror, he saw he was no longer being followed and slowed down, although he continued running traffic lights for another ten minutes. He drove up Grajaú Range, stopped the car halfway up, threw the body into the forest and went back to the favela, his thoughts scrambled.

  ‘What’s up, Old Pal? Seen Orange around?’ asked Mango near Batman’s Bar.

  ‘I’ve been here for ages and I haven’t seen him.’

  Mango decided to go to his friend’s house.

  ‘Hey, Orange …?’

  When Orange shouted that he was coming, Mango opened the gate and the door and, without a word, hugged him, sobbing, his body still shaking.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Mango couldn’t speak; he just sobbed. Orange sat him down on the sofa and fixed him a glass of sugar water. Mango drank it all slowly, then confessed:

  ‘Aristóteles, Aristóteles – I got rid of Aristóteles!’

  There was a mixture of disgust and pity in Orange’s eyes.

  ‘He told me he owed you money.’

  ‘Not me … He owed the organisation, know what I mean? I had to get rid of ’im, because it was me that got ’im in with the guys, but I didn’t want to kill ’im …’

  Orange turned his back on his friend. Silence invaded the room. He stared into the street trying to understand the absurdity of the situation. His mother came through the gate.

  ‘My mum!’

  Mango dried his eyes, pushed the butt of his pistol a little further into his shorts and greeted his friend’s mother. She looked at him suspiciously and sniffed the air to see if the two of them had been smoking marijuana.

  Mango said goodbye to his friend and headed for Fogueteiro, where he smoked five joints, drank a bottle of whisky, vomited, washed his mouth out and slept only a little, because he dreamed horrible things and woke up shouting, frightening the neighbours. When he realised he’d been dreaming, he sat up in bed. And there he stayed until dawn.

  ‘It’s like this: set up a den there, OK? Put some dope and coke Up Top ’cos I’m sayin’ so, right? Tiny and Slick had no right to take your den Down Below! Go ahead and get it up and runnin’! If anyone tries to give you a hard time, talk to me and I’ll stick a bullet in their arse!’ Sparrow told Carrots, when he ran into him in the Rec, downcast, asking a barfly for a cigarette. It was a year after he’d packaged drugs for the first time with the Boys.

  ‘Want some money?’ continued Sparrow. ‘Hey, take this! And when you’re back on your feet again you can pay me back, OK man? I’m sayin’ it’s OK!’

  Wit
h a laconic smile, Sparrow watched Carrots leave. He told Breno what a nice guy Carrots was, and said Tiny and Slick had ‘distreated’ him. Sparrow went on his way after Carrots had turned the corner. He was going to the Katanazaka household to eat gnocchi, for which he’d bought the ingredients.

  When he arrived, he asked Álvaro Katanazaka where the rest of their friends were; he and the Boys had become inseparable over the last few months. They’d spend three days in a row together snorting coke and camping out in towns along the Green Coast until they tired of camping. They went to the beach, disco and cinema together and visited the South Zone of Rio from time to time. Some of the Boys had started carrying dope and coke from the Flats to the den Up Top and vice versa, and held Sparrow’s gun when he was out of it. Sparrow got them to run errands for him as a favour, claiming that because they were white the police would never stop them. The more daring Boys became familiar with the daily chores of the gangsters and even shot rivals and troublemakers – as the playboy dealer called them – in the feet. They walked with a swagger, like the gangsters. Sir Paulo Carneiro, who hung around with Sparrow the most, had become his partner in games of cards and prided himself on having learned all the tricks of the game in just one lesson from Russian Mouse, who, along with Bicky and Tim, had also started hanging around with the Boys, dressing like them and imitating their style. Even Tiny started going to the dance with them. Sparrow had managed to bring together the Boys and the gang from The Flats.

  Business in the dens grew steadily, and the use of cocaine increased by the day. Craving the drug, junkies from the favela and elsewhere showed up at the den with chains, rings, bracelets, TV sets, watches, revolvers, electric mixers, blenders and innumerable other household appliances to exchange for cocaine. The intersection of different worlds made it possible to trade anything. Tiny had bought a chest for the gold pieces that found their way into his hands at a low price, as the thieves from the Alley only sold their stolen goods to him now. Each day someone new joined his gang, not for money – because the only ones on salaries were himself, Sparrow, Carlos Roberto and his three assistants – but for fear of him and his men, and in order to gain respect and be able to pick on anyone they didn’t like the look of. Even the Boys started picking on whoever they wanted. They were Sparrow’s friends and, as such, considered themselves Tiny’s friends too. They had influence. Up Top, the abuse became more frequent when Tiny decided he didn’t like anyone who hadn’t come from Macedo Sobrinho. He only liked people from the old days, the cool guys.

  Slick had been locked up for six months. Even when he was being beaten up by five policemen at the Thirty-Second District Police Station, he didn’t confess to the crimes the police wanted him to. While he was being beaten, he said he’d only sign a confession in the presence of a lawyer, because he knew that as soon as his brother found out he’d been arrested he’d immediately hire one to defend him. And that’s what happened. The lawyer prevented the police from committing the crime of making him pay for offences he hadn’t committed. They charged him with possession of a firearm, his only offence. Tried and found guilty, he was to serve his sentence in Milton Dias Moreira Prison.

  Sparrow quickly devoured the gnocchi so he could go and buy some fabric with the Boys; he’d decided that the whole group should dress alike. He was, in fact, trying to look more and more like the Boys. They were going to Botafogo to buy the fabric – only the poor shopped in the city centre. After their shopping they were going to see a film in Copacabana and have dinner at a restaurant in Gávea, where they’d have a laugh and plan a camping excursion or a night at Dancin’ Days, because the big thing now was discos. The rock ‘n’ roll dances were already on their last legs. The media was investing in this new trend and everyone had to follow it – otherwise they’d be left out, uncool, tacky, square, and any other adjective of the genre.

  They ate dinner and had Kibon ice cream mixed with orange-flavoured Fanta for dessert, which was all the rage. It couldn’t be any other brand of ice cream – only Kibon. The only thing that remained in their minds of Raul Seixas was the concept of an alternative society, the utopia amidst so much nonsense that he represented. It was Sparrow’s dream to buy a plot of land with running water, good soil for planting and little wooden houses for him and the Boys to live in. That’s what he had to do in order to live among people whose faces glowed because they didn’t live side by side with death. They never thought about killing anyone, although they liked dope as much as he did. That was his dream – to find himself a beautiful girl, live among beautiful people and disco-dance his days away without a worry in the world. No more toothless niggers with angry faces.

  Sparrow looked at Russian Mouse with a certain disdain when he said he wanted to go to Botafogo with the Boys. But he gave it some thought because he was also white and fair-haired. He just didn’t have the physique, but he’d get there if he started working out and bodysurfing. His vocabulary wasn’t promising (he used a lot of slang and too many swear words), but that didn’t matter much, because neither was his own. They left Katanazaka’s place soberly, had a smoke in a quiet alley, and took off for Botafogo on a high they wouldn’t have been able to explain.

  Tiny wanted to throw a much bigger party than any of those thrown by the lottery man, China White-Locks, around his lottery locations in São Carlos and Tijuca. He sent for dozens of presents, expensive sweets, and hundreds of crates of soft drinks to make the kids happy. The lottery men had in fact been the first to invest heavily in the population of neighbouring areas, but now that trafficking had fully taken root in the favelas of the Rio Metropolitan Area and the Baixada Fluminense region, the dealers also decided it was a good idea to invest in the areas they operated in. By pleasing the children, they not only ensured good relations with Saint Cosmas, Do Um and Saint Damian, but also with the locals, who did them favours and warned them when the police were around.

  All of the sweets were top notch: the coconut sweets, for example, were made by Lúcia, an old black woman who cooked like no one on earth. Sparrow thought it would be a good idea to throw money into the crowd, on the condition that no grown-ups mingled with the kids. If they did, they’d get a bullet in the arse.

  On September 27th, Tiny and Sparrow won the admiration of the locals for the party they threw in the square of The Flats. They looked up to Tiny and Sparrow, flattered that they’d remembered the day of Saints Cosmas and Damian with festivities appropriate to the occasion. They had made the children happy.

  Over the next few days, Tiny and Sparrow began to get the impression that the residents looked at them with gratitude, because the benefits the duo had brought to the favela were considerable; they’d put an end to theft, muggings and rapes, and were now handing out sweets. Spent-ballooning was allowed, as a way of punishing the drunks. Many barflies started drinking less, much to the delight of their wives.

  The composer Big Voice wanted to meet Tiny and Sparrow. He’d heard of the gangsters through Zeca Composer. He knew that if he invited the two of them, many people from the favela would go to Portela Samba School to cheer for his samba, and this might be what he needed to become champion.

  Zeca Composer wouldn’t be competing for best samba that year, and was giving full support to Big Voice and Little Bird’s samba for Portela. If Big Voice won, the record he was going to launch in the middle of the year was bound to be a success, and Zeca had already been promised two tracks. Zeca sent an errand boy to The Flats to tell Sparrow and Tiny that a friend wanted to meet them.

  It was no accident that he’d mentioned Sparrow and Tiny to Big Voice. The gangsters were always singing his songs and had all his records. He was careful to tell the errand boy not to mention the singer, as he wanted to give them a surprise.

  It was a Saturday morning and Tiny picked up Sparrow to go to their friend’s house. Zeca Composer’s wife Penha would no doubt serve oxtail stew – it was her speciality. Tiny held a great deal of respect for Composer who, in addition to writing music, also paint
ed, drew and conceptualised the school’s parades. It was he who’d given him shelter in São Carlos when he was still a boy. He’d introduced him to his friends and now got him in to watch rehearsals without paying. He didn’t like it when he started handing out advice, but apart from that, Composer was a good guy. He always had his wife prepare top-quality grub for his friends, and took him to the other samba schools’ rehearsals and the bars where he played live.

  ‘Powerful Voooice! Wow! Fuck me dead!’ exclaimed Tiny when he saw the musician.

  Big Voice laughed at his enthusiasm, hugged him as if he were an old friend and said:

  ‘Composer tells me good things about you … I came here especially to meet you.’

  ‘D’you like gettin’ high?’

  ‘Well, now that you mention it …’

  ‘Dope, coke, a bit of everything? Hey, Composer, tell somebody to go fetch a stack of weed and coke for our friend here. Hey, this is Sparrow, he’s a good guy! He’s my business partner … Shake the man’s hand, Sparrow! See our reputation? … This is Big Voice, man!’ he said.

  ‘Here’s the story: Composer tells me everyone likes you guys, right? And Portela’s picked up one of our sambas … The samba’s good. Me and Little Bird are singin’ it … I was wonderin’ if you guys could invite a nice crowd to get behind us, know what I’m sayin’?’

  ‘It’s a deal! And don’t worry, everythin’ll be fine.’

  ‘I’ve already arranged with Composer to send three buses over, OK? There’ll be tickets for everyone …’

  ‘Sing us the samba, sing us the samba …’

  They hung around talking while Penha cooked stewed tripe, her other speciality. Tiny got a boy to fetch some musicians so Big Voice could sing his hits. It was a happy day with Big Voice’s gravelly voice singing sambas of love, accompanied by those present, who knew his songs off by heart.

  The buses arrived Up Top at around 10 p.m. on a suffocatingly hot Saturday, and stopped near Composer’s house. Afraid of disappointing Big Voice, Tiny sent the gang out early to spread word in every corner of the favela that he was inviting everyone to go watch Portela, and those who weren’t going would have him to deal with. Then he invited everyone he bumped into. His strategy got out of hand. Tiny himself had to get off the first bus, where the gangsters, the Boys and the cool guys were, to stop people destroying the other two buses. He punched them in the face, shot them in the foot, and kicked them in the arse, especially the guys from Up Top.