by Paulo Lins
Tried and sentenced, he went to do time in Sector B of Lemos de Brito Prison, where he had several enemies. They didn’t say a word to him and left him alone the first time they were let into the courtyard to take some sun. The second time they stabbed him in the stomach forty times.
Right after Israel’s death, the Empty Pockets attacked The Flats four times in a row. The fourth time, they arrived shooting at everything in sight and established themselves as top dogs in the area. They’d killed Black Stump, Tiny’s last henchman, and the only reason they didn’t kill Blubber and Otávio was because they’d both fled the favela. However, the pawns who’d given up crime during the police crackdown, and who thought they wouldn’t be harassed by the Empty Pockets because they hadn’t given them a hard time in Tiny’s day, were mistaken. The Empty Pockets told everyone that they weren’t going to kill anyone, but the pawns were killed one by one, and whenever one of them was found dead, they invented lies to justify the murder so the others wouldn’t leave the area. Even those who had never been on the wrong side of the law were killed because they’d argued or fought with one of them.
Rapes and muggings gathered new momentum. The cool guys were also being harassed, even though they hadn’t been involved in the war, but there were no casualties among them. The dens in The Flats began to lose custom because the Empty Pockets didn’t know any other suppliers and those who had dealt with Tiny disappeared when they didn’t get paid.
Carrots was under constant attack from Messiah’s gang, the Block Thirteen gang and the police, and he lost five men in less than a week. With no alternative, he took his den’s takings, rented a shack in the Baixada Fluminense region and left Mousetrap in control of drug sales. He claimed that the police wouldn’t rest until they’d caught him.
‘Tell everyone I’ve gone clean … Tell’ em I’ m a sucker now and I’m drivin’ taxis, OK? We’ll split the den’s takings fifty-fifty, right?’
Mousetrap was happy. Now he was in charge of the den on Block Fifteen. Even though he had to fight off two gangs with only a few men, the power was seriously exciting.
With the poor management of the den in The Flats, the ongoing war Up Top and the difficult access to Leaky Tap’s den, the Block Thirteen gang was now selling more drugs than anyone else. My Man and Earthquake took to drinking only soft drinks, because water was for the poor.
The gang grew, while the attacks Up Top became fewer and farther between. They’d wait until they’d all killed one another, then try to take over the dens in that area.
‘K plus i is ki, plus t is k-i-t, kite. Fuck! It’s kite!’ said Tiny, spelling it out next to his new friend’s wife in Realengo.
The same week he got out of prison, Tiny spent time with the pals of his new friend from prison. He went on hold-ups with them fifteen days in a row. His cunning in the hold-ups and the shrewdness he demonstrated when they took the dens in Realengo earned him the position of second-in-command: he earned forty per cent on the sale of the drugs. Now he was realising the dream he’d nourished in jail, because he always had to ask someone to read out the letters he received and that could be dangerous; someone might find something out about him. He already knew how to sign his name, and if he managed to track down that lawyer, Violeta, who could solve any problem, he could have an ID card and a cheque book, something he’d always dreamed of.
One Friday, a pawn brought the news that the Empty Pockets had splintered and were at war. Highwayman didn’t want to share the command with Tube and they were fighting that very moment. This first battle went on for three days. The police, who had been more concerned with the war between Messiah and Mousetrap, once again stepped up their activities in The Flats and killed four Empty Pockets in ten days.
One Saturday morning, five Empty Pockets showed up in Block Thirteen looking for Butterfly and Tiger. They wanted Block Thirteen to help them take The Flats.
‘Is it just you guys?’
‘Yeah, man. The others’ve split … But we’re here to join you all!’
‘Then what?’ asked Tiger.
‘You guys keep the dens in Block Seven and Red Hill and we keep the ones in the shops and the Old Flats.’
‘It don’t work like that, man! The dens are all gonna be ours, but you can join us!’
‘OK!’
‘So you’re with us then! I’ll rustle up a house for you guys to crash in!’
‘Hey, we know where they’re stayin’. Where they meet … It’ll be easy!’
‘How many of them are there?’
‘Eight.’
Up Top, the war was practically over, Messiah’s men had killed most of their opponents, Mousetrap had been arrested and the rest had managed to flee the favela. The residents of the New Short-Stay Houses were thankful the saga had come to an end, because Messiah and his men had made holes in the dividing walls of their tiny houses to escape from their enemies and the police. They entered the houses at any hour of the day or night, went through the holes and left again, far from their pursuers.
To take the dens in The Flats, the Block Thirteen gang divided up into groups often, who took different routes in. The fighting lasted two days. In this battle eight Empty Pockets, two gangsters from Block Thirteen and a police officer were killed, and several more were shot.
Although they were greatly outnumbered, the Empty Pockets didn’t run, and fought to the death.
Messiah sent a message to Butterfly and Tiger saying that if they didn’t attack Up Top, his gang wouldn’t raid Block Thirteen, and if Carrots showed up, they’d kill him themselves.
‘Agreed!’ said Butterfly to Messiah’s errand boy.
Peace reigned once again, and the only man who, for a time, continued to kill those who stole, mugged or raped in the favela was Otávio, who put thirty bodies in a single hole, and when he didn’t kill them, chopped off their hands with an axe. Then, out of the blue, he became a Protestant and started preaching near the dens, saying he’d committed those murders because he’d been possessed by the Devil. The gangsters left him in peace because they always left the evangelists alone. He was arrested one night on his way home from church and spent two years in jail. After he was released, he got married and had children. Every Sunday, he visited prisons to try to convert the inmates. The police didn’t believe he’d converted, however, and when they saw him they beat him up, even in front of his wife and children.
One day Otávio tore up his Bible, burned the suit he wore to church and went to the den to ask Butterfly for a pistol just to kill policemen with.
Jackfruit, Orange and Acerola, now married, still got together to smoke a joint and remember the old days. Their meetings had been rare during the war.
Old Teresa went back to working as a domestic for rich housewives, but only to keep herself occupied, since she no longer needed the work. Her eldest daughter had married a Canadian, who had taken her to Canada, and every month she sent her mother a decent sum of money.
* * *
After several years of fighting for rights on the Residents’ Association, Rocket got married and moved house. He managed to establish himself as a photographer, and returned to the favela from time to time to visit his mother and friends.
Leaky Tap was caught during a bank robbery in Copacabana and his assistants gave up dealing. Some time later, Leaky Tap’s den became the headquarters for a new gang, whose bosses were Carrots’ cousins. Carrots started frequenting the favela again and fighting the villains Up Top, but was arrested early on in the conflict.
One rainy Christmas Eve in Blonde Square, thirty men got out of several taxis, all armed with machine guns. Only Tiny was carrying a pistol. Fat, wearing linen pants and a silk shirt, he told his men which path to take. They arrived at Block Thirteen, where there were no lookouts on duty because it was Christmas and the gangsters always started drinking early on such dates. He searched high and low until he found Butterfly, who tried to run, thinking Tiny’s men were policemen.
‘We’ve come to talk … It�
��s me, man, Tiny!’
Butterfly stopped behind a wall, recognising his voice.
‘Here’s the story, OK? I want The Flats back because that area’s mine!’
‘Sure, OK!’
‘When you guys wanted to keep this den, I didn’t say nothin’, right? We fought side by side and there was never any back-stabbin’. Bicky was the only one who tried somethin’ smart, but that was it, right?’
‘We only took The Flats ’cos the Empty Pockets were givin’ everyone a hard time, yeah? Go ahead and take it – just let us sell the merchandise we’ve got there and we’ll be out.’
After they had talked, they drank from the same glass, Tiger fired shots into the air, they snorted coke, drank wine, whisky and beer, and Tiny left, certain that he’d return for good on December 31st.
Tiny’s sense of self-importance was renewed and he had plans to be the boss of City of God once more. To this end, he and his friends from Realengo had already planned a surprise attack on Block Thirteen in the very first week of his new reign in The Flats. Then they’d attack Up Top. He believed everyone there was afraid of him, because he’d always been mean – that was the best way a gangster could be respected. For Tiny, there was no peace or remorse, he never did anything he couldn’t get something out of later, and he rubbed every good deed in the face of the person he’d done it for, because he suffered when it wasn’t returned, thus destroying everything that didn’t feature in his cruel understanding of the world, of life, of relationships. He had the ability to bring out violence in anyone and multiply it at will. He talked to himself in the corners of the living room, the bedroom, in prison and at liberty, and anything he perceived as aggression towards him was returned in the guise of death. He was lord of his own disillusion, and it was his evil fate to be unable to forgive, to annihilate everything his villainous mind was unable to grasp, to invent what others hadn’t done to justify his own cruelty. He was vermin born under the sign of Gemini.
The almost-dead moon above the clouds showed signs of life from time to time, the stars were faint and only the New Year’s Eve fireworks lit the night, Tiny’s night, the night he’d be the boss of City of God again. He stopped by Block Thirteen, but didn’t find any of the bosses, so he left a message for Tiger and Butterfly saying that he was already back in The Flats and that if anyone was still dealingin the area, he was ordering them to stop. He headed for The Flats, driving a blue Corcel. He went straight to the shops, where he slapped the cool guys on the back and bought sweets for the children, saying he’d learned to read and drive, that he was boss in Realengo, but this was the place where he most liked to be in charge.
At 11.30, a boy told him that Tiger and Butterfly were over on The Hill waiting to have a talk, but for him to go unarmed because a talk was just a talk. No fighting.
‘What do they wanna talk about? Hey? Hey?’
‘They said it’s for your own good.’
He was quiet for a minute and considered not going, but if he didn’t they might think he was scared of something. He was Tiny – he was afraid of nothing.
‘OK, OK, tell ’em I’ll come as soon as I finish my beer … Off you go, off you go, go tell ’em, go!’
He waited for the boy to move off, looked around and saw there was no one from Block Thirteen watching him, took a pistol from his waistband, and put it in a holster strapped to his ankle. His friends adjusted their own weapons and they headed for The Hill.
The square in The Hill was empty, except for Tiger and Butterfly crouching between a post and a wall. They’d ordered some of their men to hide in the buildings and join the fight at the sound of the first shot.
Tiny and his friends walked up to Tiger and Butterfly.
‘We’ve decided we’re keepin’ the den, know what I’m saying? This story that the den used to be yours ain’t right, you know. We didn’t take the den from you, we took it from the guys that took it from you, OK!’ said Tiger.
‘What’s all this, man? Didn’t we agree that …’
Butterfly cut him off, reiterating what his pal had just said. Ignoring him, Tiny subtly raised his hand to his forehead, glanced at one of his friends and made the sign of the cross. Tiger, who was watching him intently, whipped his pistol from his waistband, shot Tiny in the abdomen and took off running with Butterfly. The sound of this first shot sparked off a commotion and the pawns, who had been hiding, disbanded in disarray. Tiny and his mates took advantage of the confusion and headed downhill, firing in all directions. During their escape Tiny shot a pawn right through the head.
The quartet crossed the square in The Flats, ran into the first building, and entered a flat where a family was celebrating New Year’s Eve. The gangsters ordered them to shut the door, then Tiny sat on the sofa, his eyes rolling back in his head, went into convulsions and died as the New Year’s Eve fireworks began.
His friends went up another three flights of stairs, entered another flat and aimed their guns at the owners. At daybreak they calmly left the building, caught the bus and headed back to Realengo.
Over on Block Thirteen, early in the morning, Tiger had a boy grind up glass and pour it into a tin together with wood glue. When it was ready, he stretched a kite string from one post to another and coated it with the mixture. He waited for it to dry, made the bridle, the tail, and hoisted the kite into the air to tussle with others in the sky.
It was kite-flying time in City of God.
Author’s Note and Acknowledgements
This novel is based on true stories. Part of the material used was taken from interviews conducted for the project ‘Crime and Criminality in the Lower Classes’, by anthropologist Alba Zaluar, and articles in the newspapers O Globo, Jornal do Brasil and O Dia.
More specifically, the first part of the book was written during the studies ‘Crime and Criminality in Rio de Janeiro’ (with support from the Studies and Projects Fund – FINEP) and ‘Justice and the Lower Classes’ (with support from Brazil’s National Council for Scientific and Technological Development – CNPq, the Rio de Janeiro State Research Foundation – FAPERJ, and the University of Campinas Development Foundation – FUNCAMP), both co-ordinated by Alba Zaluar. The idea for the novel itself arose when Alba began to write up her articles on the project. I worked with her for eight years and I thank her for her constant encouragement.
The second and third parts of the novel were conceived with the valuable support of Roberto Schwarz, Virgínia de Oliveira Silva and Maria de Lourdes da Silva. I especially thank Roberto Schwarz for his guidance and encouragement in my application for a Vitae Arts Scholarship.
I thank the University of Rio de Janeiro’s Institute of Social Medicine, which hosted the study for two years and, finally, the Vitae Foundation, which, in granting me a scholarship, made it possible for me to finish writing the novel and give the text its final form.
I thank the following people for their collaboration: Maria de Lourdes da Silva (historical research and revision), Virgínia de Oliveira Silva (linguistic research and revision), Álvaro Marins, Edmundo Gomes da Silva, Ednaldo Gomes da Silva, Eduardo Gomes da Silva, Edwaldo Cafezeiro, Everardo Cantarino, Gilberto Mendonça Teles, Ione de Oliveira Nascimento, Leonardo Gomes da Silva, Marco Antônio da Silva, Maria Cláudia Nascimento de Santana, Marie-France Depalle, Paulo Cesar Loureiro de Araújo, Regina Célia Gonçalves, Severino Pedro da Costa, Sílvio Correia Lima and Sônia Vicente Cardoso.
A very special thank you to Aloísio da Costa Sobrinho, Carlos Eduardo Cardoso, Edison Gomes da Silva, Sônia Maria Lins and all of the people interviewed.
Paulo Lins
Glossary
*Most of the characters in this book are followers of the Afro-Brazilian religion Umbanda, which contains elements of macumba, Roman Catholicism and South American Indian practices. The definitions below pertain specifically to Umbanda.
orixá (orisha) – generic designation for the divinities worshipped by the Yoruba from the south-west of Nigeria, Benin and the north of Togo, taken with t
he slaves to Brazil, where they found their way into a number of Afro-Brazilian religions, including Umbanda.
Exu – messenger of the spirits.
exu(s) – each of many entities of an inferior spiritual plane, who oscillate between good and evil.
pombagira – a female exu, who speaks through a medium and is often consulted by believers seeking advice about the future, protection and/or revenge.
terreiro – indoor or outdoor site where Afro-Brazilian religious rites are held.
A Word from the Translator
Many people have been of inestimable help in the preparation of this translation. I would like to thank Alberto da Costa e Silva for his help with African and Yoruba words and culture, Tom Wilkinson for his help with drug terminology, Glenn Johnston for his help with everything pertaining to guns and bullets, David Coles for his help with football terminology, Daniela Travaglini, Heloisa Jahn and Joaão Crespo for allowing me to constantly pick their brains about the Portuguese original, Antoônio Carvalho and Lynne Reay Pereira for their invaluable observations as my first readers, and Paulo Lins himself for his patient explanations of a world which so many of us could not even begin to understand were it not for this book.
Alison Entrekin
A Note on the Translator
Alison Entrekin is the translator from the
Portuguese of Budapest, by Chico Buarque
(also published by Bloomsbury), which was shortlisted
