AJ Mirag - Clippings

by Clippings (lit)

  Daniel's ill humor faded slightly, and he let himself smile. “Do you believe they'll be successful?”

  “It's risky. People who shouldn't know are already knowing or, at least, suspecting. I won't tell you anything else; it may be dangerous for you to know. I'll be informed of the day of the escape, and then I'll warn you, because things may become ugly and the best we can do is to keep as far from them as we can.”

  _________

  Two days later, in the middle of the afternoon, Mephisto arrived in the shack with a message from the Professor. That very afternoon, after the dinner distribution, Daniel and Mephisto should remain inside their shack. No matter what happened, they shouldn't go out.

  The day had come. Daniel didn't even have to ask. He knew he shouldn't ask.

  Tension seemed to fill the air. When dinner arrived, Mephisto didn't want to eat, and Daniel decided not to eat either. They could have a clipping later, when things had gone back to normal.

  Everything seemed calm. Too calm. Mephisto locked the door with the latch. “When everything is quiet like that,” said Mephisto,

  “you can be sure something bad is going to happen.”

  Soon the counting would start. But before any officials could appear at the hatch of the shack, someone screamed in the gallery, and many other screams followed.

  “Keep cool and act as if nothing has happened,” said Mephisto.

  Easier said than done. The screams got louder, and through the hatch slot, Daniel could see people running through the corridor. For about half an hour they stood there, doing nothing, just hearing the noises coming from the gallery and outdoors. Thick smoke started to come in through the window. Suddenly, barking dogs and volleys of shots were heard.

  Mephisto stood up immediately, pushed Daniel behind the cupboard and pulled the bathroom curtain shut to cover them.

  From the window behind them, smoke, screams and the sound of shots continued to enter. Mephisto embraced Daniel from behind, pressing him against the side of the cupboard. Daniel could hear both his heart and Mephisto's hammering wildly.

  “What's happening?” whispered Daniel.

  “The Military Police invaded our block.”

  Daniel froze. He was barely three years old when the Military Police had invaded Carandiru Prison, in São Paulo, and he hadn't watched Hector Babenco's movie, but his parents always talked about that fateful day with horror. One hundred and eleven deaths. The idea that a slaughter like that one could repeat itself now terrified Daniel.

  The shots seemed to be coming closer and closer. The roar of a helicopter got louder, and then started diminishing, as if the helicopter had got closer and gone away again. Suddenly, the bathroom curtain was pushed back by one, two, three bullets.

  Mephisto squeezed Daniel against the cupboard. They were shooting inside their shack through the slot of the hatch.

  When the shots stopped, Mephisto, without ever letting go of Daniel, loosened his grip. Daniel turned back and saw the curtain and the walls riddled with bullets. One of the bullets had hit the sink, cracking it.

  “Shit. Are they killing everybody?” asked Daniel, nearly hysterics.

  “Keep cool.”

  “I'm freezing, man.”

  “I know. But hold on. They may come back.”

  Many minutes passed by; the helicopter got close again. The smoke was getting thicker and darker.

  Finally, a strong, grave voice echoed in the shack. “If there's anyone alive, come out naked and put your hands on the corridor wall.”

  Mephisto released Daniel and started to undress. He took off everything, even his briefs, and walked out of the bathroom. Daniel imitated him and followed him across the shack. Mephisto opened the door. Two policemen were waiting for them at the door. One of them had a machine gun in his hand; the other one was holding a German shepherd by the collar.

  “Put your hands on the wall, assholes!” shouted the policeman with the machine gun.

  Mephisto obeyed, and Daniel too.

  “Hey, Carlão, look at the faggot here,” said the policeman to his partner. “Isn't he the one who killed one of our fellows at a student protest? I'm going to beat the shit out of him.”

  Daniel felt his knees weaken.

  Mephisto turned around to talk to the policeman. “Leave him alone.”

  The policeman violently kicked Mephisto's buttocks with his boot. “Shut up, cocksucker.” The policeman shoved Daniel against the wall, hit Daniel's shoulder with his nightstick and kicked his legs.

  “Leave the boy alone,” repeated Mephisto, struggling to face the policeman again. “He's a protégé of the Professor. He knows important people. If you don't stop now, you'll be in trouble.”

  The policeman holding the dog said, “Leave the faggots alone, Silas. We've got to take the rest of the scum from their shacks.”

  Silas kicked Daniel in the middle of his back. The pain was so intense that Daniel howled and doubled over, falling on his knees.

  Mephisto knelt beside him and embraced him.

  “Let's go, Carlão. As for you,” said Silas to Daniel and Mephisto,

  “you've got to go to the courtyard downstairs. If you're still here when we come back, I'm going to rip the guts out of you.”

  Mephisto helped Daniel to stand up as the policemen walked to the Professor's shack.

  “I'll help you. Come with me,” said Mephisto. Daniel stumbled through the gallery, leaning on Mephisto, who kept murmuring words of encouragement. “The worst is over. Let's go, Daniel.”

  Going down the stairs with that terrible pain in his back was the most difficult part. Mephisto practically carried him through most of the way. On the fourth floor, a prisoner who was riddled by bullets, bleeding profusely, fell down before them. Dark clouds of smoke came from the galleries. On the flights of stairs from the third floor to the first floor, corpses were scattered and cascades of blood flowed down the steps.

  Some wounded convicts tried to run through the galleries, tripping and stumbling all over the place. One of them slid on the blood and fell down. A policeman pointed his machine gun to a group of prisoners and fired at them. Mephisto laid Daniel on the floor and covered him with his body, pretending they were dead.

  When the policeman walked away, Mephisto stood up and helped Daniel to get up again.

  Finally, they arrived at the central courtyard, where the surviving prisoners were being kept naked in the cold wind and seated in lines, with their arms crossed beneath their thighs and their head between their knees. The slightest move was violently punished by the policemen, who either hit the transgressors with their nightsticks or allowed the dogs to savage them.

  They stayed there for more than four hours, with the policemen and the excited dogs circling around them. A policeman kept hitting Daniel in the neck with his nightstick to force him to keep his head down. The only thought that comforted Daniel was that Mephisto was behind him, but the idea that the horror they had just gone through could start again terrified him.

  A police officer began to shout at a prisoner because the latter had moved. Out of the corner of his eye, Daniel saw the officer stick the bayonet in the prisoner's foot. The prisoner screamed, blood gushing from his foot.

  Darkness fell. The hot spots seemed to be under control, and the screams coming from inside the block became less frequent.

  At about 8 PM the prisoners were given permission to go back to their cells. The smell of burned and rotten flesh filled the air. Daniel dragged himself upstairs again, leaning on Mephisto. He needed medical care, but he knew there was no use in complaining: the Infirmary would be overcrowded with patients in a much worse state than he was. He just wanted to be back in their shack, go to bed and sleep it all away.

  As soon as they entered the shack, a policeman locked them inside.

  “I'll take care of you,” said Mephisto.

  “I need to go to the bathroom.”

  The shack was all messed up. The policemen must have searched the place for
weapons and drugs. Everything was scattered around:

  the dinner they had stored to eat later; the food, clothes and books they kept on the shelves; their sheets and blankets. Mephisto moved things out of their way as they walked to the toilet.

  “I'm okay, I can do it alone,” said Daniel, embarrassed.

  “All right, but if you need help, just call me. I'm going to look for your pajamas.”

  When Daniel finished washing his hands, Mephisto had already found his pajamas and helped him to put them on.

  “The sink cracked, but luckily it's not leaking,” said Daniel.

  “Don't worry about that, I'll fix that later. Hold on a little longer.

  I'll find you a painkiller. Eat some cookies, while you wait.” Mephisto rescued a packet of chocolate cookies from a pile of things on the floor and handed it to Daniel. “We didn't have dinner.”

  “I'm not hungry.”

  “Eat them anyway.”

  Daniel was too drained to argue. He took a cookie and bit off a corner. Mephisto quickly located a pack of painkillers in the middle of the mess. He picked up a glass from the floor, washed it and filled it with water. As Daniel took the pill, Mephisto fumbled in the pile.

  Mephisto's bedspreads had been stained with bean broth, but Daniels sheets and blankets were apparently intact. Mephisto made the lower bed and helped Daniel to lie down.

  His back hurt so much when he lay down that he howled in pain.

  Mephisto covered him with the sheets and blankets; Daniel was shaking.

  “What ab-bout you?” Daniel managed to ask. “D-did he hurt you badly?”

  “It was nothing,” answered Mephisto as he dressed himself, putting on a pair of briefs and a jogging suit, and squatting beside Daniel's bed.

  “Come to bed,” said Daniel.

  “You'll be more comfortable if you stay alone in bed. I don't want to hurt you. Besides, I have to clean and sort this mess.”

  Daniel struggled to crawl closer to the wall so that Mephisto could fit beside him in bed. “I'll feel better if you lie here with me.

  You can fix things later. What it matters is that we're alive.”

  Daniel didn't have to insist.

  “All right,” said Mephisto. “I'll join you in a minute. I've got to go to the bathroom.”

  Less than two minutes later, Mephisto was slipping under the blankets beside him and carefully resting his arm on his waist. Daniel saw tears in Mephisto's eyes, and frowned.

  In reply to the silent question, Mephisto murmured, “I couldn't protect you. I'll never forgive myself for that.”

  “You did what you could. You're not Superman.”

  “I'm going to get you out of here, Daniel. Mark my words. I'm going to get you out of here or my name isn't Vladimir Antunes de Souza.”

  Daniel was surprised to find himself laughing, in spite of the hell they had just gone through. “I had never heard your full name before.”

  “It's not a cool name like Mephisto, but it's the one on my ID.”

  They stayed embraced in silence, eating chocolate cookies. Only then did Daniel venture to ask, “Do you know what happened to the Professor? And Julinho? And the Oldie?”

  “No. I could only think of your safety. Tomorrow we'll know.”

  10. Convalescence

  In the morning, Mephisto prepared tea and helped Daniel to get up and sit on the stool. The shack was still a mess.

  “Having breakfast in bed would be easier for you, but not in this bunk. You’d feel uncomfortable,” said Mephisto.

  “No problem. I think I didn't break any bones.”

  “I’d take you to the Infirmary if they had an X-ray machine. As they don’t have one, that would only cause you more distress.”

  “Can't they send me to take an X-ray some place outside the prison?” asked Daniel.

  “They can, but you would need permission, and you know how bureaucracy is. That kind of permission never takes less than four days to be issued.”

  Daniel lowered his head, feeling defeated. “So that's it. They want us to die.”

  Mephisto put the tea cup in front of Daniel. “Drink your tea.

  You'll feel better.”

  Daniel sipped his tea and bit into his buttered roll. Mephisto was right, to a point. The mere act of doing something routine like eating made him forget a bit about his personal problems. But he didn’t feel any better, because he remembered the horrific slaughter they had witnessed. “Did you know what happened to the others?”

  “When they unlocked the cells, you were sound asleep, so I went to the Professor's shack.” Mephisto took a sip of his tea. “He's feeling depressed, but he didn't suffer any physical injury. His shack was left untouched, too. When the cops saw his shack, they probably realized the Professor's not the kind of guy you should mess with.”

  Mephisto held Daniel's hand. “I'm sorry I couldn't prevent what happened to you. The Professor has a few contacts in the Military Police, but those cops who bullied us had probably never heard of him before. We should have thought of that before, you should have stayed in the Professor's shack and not with me, we...”

  Daniel interrupted him. “Vlado, it's okay. It's over. Feeling guilty won't do us any good. Tell me about the rest of the people. How is Julinho?”

  “Julinho's fine, but Alfeu caught a bad flu because of yesterday's cold wind. Julinho is taking care of him. One of our neighbors, Weasel, was shot in his shack. His cellmate, Top Secret, was bitten by one of the dogs and taken to a hospital. Thirty prisoners were killed and twenty prisoners were seriously injured. The Oldie fortunately managed to escape, along with Carrion and a lot of convicts from the fourth floor, and even some prisoners from other blocks. More than forty prisoners escaped.”

  “How did they manage to escape?”

  “Some people out there dug a tunnel from a house about 500

  feet from here, using the existing sewer tunnels. The tunnel passed under the wall and ended in the back of the soccer field. The prisoners who knew of the plan pretended to be playing a match. The first convicts to enter the tunnel were the organizers of the escape, who were positioned at the edges of the field pretending to be watching the match. In the beginning, some prisoners formed a human wall so that no one could see what was happening behind them. But then an official figured it out, and the commotion started.”

  “Fuck...”

  “The official was hit with a board, and everyone ran to the tunnel,” continued Mephisto. “The convicts whose shacks had windows that overlook the field saw what was happening and ran downstairs to try to escape too. Umbelino and the officials tried to hold back the prisoners, but it was like trying to stop a tsunami. The number of people who escaped would have been bigger if people hadn't tried to enter the tunnel at the same time and two prisoners hadn't got stuck in the tunnel.”

  “Oh, my God! They must have been slaughtered.”

  “They were stabbed to death, but that was to no avail. The Military Police arrived before anyone could remove their corpses from there,” said Mephisto, in a low, charged voice.

  Daniel squeezed Mephisto's hand between his. “They were your friends?”

  “No. I have no friends here besides you and Lucifer. I liked the Oldie, and I like Umbelino and Garapa, but they aren't truly my friends. It's just that...it's a horrible death.” Mephisto sighed. “The Military Police arrived and... You saw what they did. The galleries and the staircase were covered with corpses. They shot everyone who was in their way. Some prisoners set fire to their shacks. Then the policemen started shooting everyone who was inside the shacks.

  They only stopped the massacre because the Professor used his cellphone to call the press and some politicians, and they pressured the Military Police to stop.”

  Daniel pondered on the events Mephisto had just told him. “You and the Professor knew what was going to happen. If you had warned the press and the politicians before...”

  “That would mean betraying the Oldie and the other convi
cts.

  Unacceptable.”

  Daniel sighed. Mephisto was right. “Shit. We're damned if we do and we're damned if we don't.”

  “That's how it is to be in jail. That's why you have to get out of here,” said Mephisto determinedly.

  _________

  The fear that the horror they had experienced could be repeated haunted Daniel. He couldn't sleep without painkillers. To make things worse, he also caught the flu that spread through the Detention House in the days that followed the massacre. His body and spirit were broken, and the hours he had spent naked in the courtyard under the cold wind had rendered him more vulnerable.

  For almost a week he had a high fever and stayed in bed. Besides sorting and cleaning the shack alone, Mephisto prepared special broths for him, gave him the medicines, and took care of him in every possible way.

  The Professor came to visit him every day, and Julinho would leave Alfeu for some minutes every afternoon to see Daniel. Other prisoners came to see him: Garapa, Vanessa, Lando (who was closely watched by Mephisto during all the time he spent in their shack) and, to Daniel's surprise, Master Bumblebee, who brought him some herbs that Mephisto used to make teas.

  The guaco tea was disgusting, even with honey, but put Daniel on his feet again, and Mephisto could leave the shack for some minutes to tend to the Professor's business. Mephisto came back at dinner time and told Daniel that the block was as silent and gloomy as a funeral. With thirty deaths, forty fugitives, twenty seriously injured convicts and dozens of sick prisoners, the galleries were deserted.

  Mephisto handed Daniel some papers he had brought with him:

  two medical certificates, signed by Dr. Lopes, attesting that neither Daniel nor Mephisto were HIV-positive.

  “Oh, great!” Daniel was happy for Mephisto and, although he had never really believed he could be HIV-positive, for himself, but he also became tense.

  Mephisto gripped his shoulders tightly. “Don't feel forced to do anything, Daniel. Everything's fine between us as it is, and it doesn't have to change.”