City of God (34 page)

Green Eyes thought it odd that Whiskers was holding a gun, but he put in the gate as planned. All he had to do was wait until late at night, remove it and sell it to another dickhead.

Green Eyes went off to buy dope. He'd heard someone say there was some good stuff at The Flats, so he headed over there feeling the friendly sun, his seventeen-year-old's happiness borne along on a gentle breeze. He'd buy three bundles so he could share them with his friends and laugh all the harder. The sky would be more velvety, the light would be brighter, and everything he said or heard would be funnier and funnier. Among
friends – it's always the best way. The gate scam would work out all right, but if Whiskers suspected anything at all, he'd give him his money back, roll him a joint, and everything would be fine.

Half an hour later he was smoking a huge joint with Orange, Acerola, Jackfruit and Mango. Green Eyes was enthusiastically telling them about the X Scorpion 1 scam, as he himself had named it. He waved his arms about as he showed them how he prepared the mixture to set the gate and how he stole it on Monday nights, which were always quiet. He'd sold the same gate to the same person on many occasions and, to throw people off the scent, he and his trusty sidekick, Valentin, painted the gate after every second sale so they could pull the X Scorpion 1 scam on another dickhead. He was the only person he knew who sold the same product to a number of customers. He called himself a successful businessman. His friends laughed.

‘If Whiskers finds out it's you, he's gonna be really pissed off!' said Orange.

‘He won't give a shit if he finds out!' argued Mango, as they rolled their second joint.

They hung around until dinnertime. Orange and Acerola were the only ones who still attended school. Mango had dropped out of secondary school and started snorting coke, against the advice of Orange, Acerola and Jackfruit – friends his mother was always telling him to drop, because she preferred him to hang around with the rich kids from Freguesia, who were white and good-looking like he was. Mango's father, a Military Police lieutenant, had already disowned him for doing cocaine and stealing his parents' money and valuables to get money for drugs. But instead of kicking his son out of the house, he moved out himself.

Mango invited Jackfruit and Green Eyes for a snort at his place after Orange and Acerola had gone.

* * *

As soon as he got off the bus in Main Square after school, Acerola heard that Leaky Tap's den had received some good shit; Leaky Tap's assistant Victor had been handing out dope near Batman's Bar at around 5 p.m. to advertise the product. He decided to pick up some weed to smoke after dinner. He smoked a joint with Victor, then said goodbye. He wasn't sure whether to cross back over the State Water Department bridge or the big bridge, then decided to take the former, where he saw Tiny, Marcelo and Bicky dragging along Whiskers, who was crying and asking for more time to come up with the money. Acerola asked Tiny what was going on. Tiny told him half the story and said he was going to kill Whiskers over in the Cowshed. Whiskers cast looks at Acerola that were desperate pleas for mercy. At the outset Tiny was unbudging, but little by little he softened, until Acerola managed to convince him to give Whiskers another week to come up with ten million cruzeiros instead of five – for extending the deadline.

That same day, Whiskers went out and held up two businesses, five pedestrians and two buses. He stole a car and stripped it himself in order to sell the parts, but only managed to raise one hundred and fifty thousand cruzeiros. Although he was nervous, he thought he was onto something good and he'd make it if he went out every day with the same attitude as he had that first day, but come to think of it, if he managed to come up with more than one million cruzeiros, he'd leave the
favela
for good. That's what he had to do.

The second time he went out to strike it lucky, he only got a third of what he'd got the previous day. He spent the day in silence, desperately snorting cocaine, in a depression he'd never before felt in his life. He only left his bedroom to buy more cocaine, always with his gun cocked and flinching at the slightest noise.

The third time, he had to make a run for it because the security
guards at the petrol station he'd decided to hold up opened fire on him and he almost got killed. He arrived at the
favela
barefoot and limping covered in scratches.

It was late at night and, although his thoughts were scattered, Whiskers happened to see Green Eyes just at the moment he ripped out his gate. He waited in ambush in an alley. What Green Eyes was doing angered him deeply – perhaps he was only doing it because he'd heard through Acerola that he was the next to go, his number was up. He was a real bastard, and depended on Tiny's protection in order to operate his scam. He waited for Green Eyes to get as close as possible so he could corner him.

‘I'm takin' it so I can fix it, man! I even left a message with your wife,' said Green Eyes, putting the gate on the ground and getting ready to jump at Whiskers. Whiskers lowered his gun, trying hard to control himself.

Valentin, his trusty sidekick, trembled like a leaf in the wind and tried to hold his bowels so he wouldn't shit himself in front of Whiskers, who jumped when his wife and children came running up, saying that those two had stolen the gate. He fired at Green Eyes without batting an eyelid. He tried again, but the second bullet didn't leave the gun. It wasn't even necessary, because Green Eyes's heart had been blasted to shreds, and his trusty sidekick had already hotfooted it out of there, even before the first and only shot was fired.

News of Green Eyes's death spread fast. Acerola went with his friends to tell his mother and organise the funeral. At the wake, while smoking a joint, he told his friends how he'd saved Whiskers' life just days before. After the funeral, he went home thinking about the irony of what fate had dished up. He stopped to buy a cigarette and lit it. When he turned around he saw Tiny
sitting on his bike with one foot on the ground, the other on the pedal and a look of disgust on his face. Acerola looked into his eyes, lowered his head and listened to Tiny's words:

‘You see? You didn't let me kill the guy and the guy goes and kills your pal! But I killed 'im today!' said Tiny, and moved on, without waiting to hear Acerola.

Slick had been caught red-handed on his eighteenth birthday while he was mugging a couple in the city centre. He had gone with Carrots, who'd taken off and left Slick behind when he noticed the police approaching; he sensed his partner wouldn't leave without trying to take the couple's belongings.

Slick was held at a police station in downtown Rio for a while. After he'd been tried and found guilty, he went to serve the sentence he'd been given: five years for the crimes he'd committed and for others he'd been forced to confess to under torture at the police station.

He arrived at Lemos de Brito Prison quiet and tight-lipped. He made himself a place to sleep in the cell, and he didn't leave it for a week.

On the tenth day, at around midnight, he was woken by an inmate who told him that the chief wanted to talk to him immediately. He got up calmly, opened the cell and saw five men playing cards at the end of the corridor. Slick looked at the inmate who'd brought the message, then walked at a normal pace in the direction he'd indicated. The men kept on playing, pretending they hadn't seen him. Slick stood there for a while. When he was about to open his mouth, he was suddenly cut short:

‘Where you from?'

‘City of God.'

‘What you in for?'

‘Theft.'

‘What rogues d'ya know in City of God?'

‘C'mon, pal, let me sleep …'

‘What's all this “pal” crap? We friends by any chance?

From the chief's tone of voice Slick realised the shit was about to hit the fan. He got ready for a fight.

‘Got any money?' continued the man, who was wearing a Flamengo Football Club T-shirt, while the others continued playing as if nothing was happening.

‘No.'

‘How is it that you show up in the slammer and go for ages without findin' out who the chief is? You don't talk to no one, you don't share nothin' with no one. If you're skint, how come you've got smokes? You're gettin' off on the wrong foot! Look, there's these guys over in City of God that did this thing once, you know?' lied the chief. ‘And it's you that's gonna pay their debt, know what I'm sayin'?'

He was quiet for a moment, then continued:

‘From now on, you're gonna be Bernadete, and you're my girl!' he finished in a voice loud enough to wake all the inmates in the corridor.

Slick flew at the chief, who dodged and stuck out his foot, tripping him up and making him hit his head on the bars of a cell. Dazed, he was kicked and punched for a considerable time, then, covered in blood and without the energy to pick himself up, he was carried back to his cell, where he stayed for a week. He received cigarettes, toothpaste and food brought in from outside the prison while he was recovering, and imagined that some friend had recognised him and was helping him out because he wasn't well. On the seventh day, however, he also received a bouquet of flowers that made him leap out of bed in a fury. He threw the roses on the ground and asked who the bastard was that was fucking him around.

‘How come you accept everythin', then freak out when the flowers come?' answered the chief from the end of the corridor.

Slick positioned his still-aching body in the middle of the corridor. With his hands he signalled that he was ready to fight the chief, who gave him another flogging. After beating him, he ordered the other inmates to take him to his bed.

‘Take ‘is clothes off!'

While three held him down, another inmate pulled down his trousers without much effort, despite Slick's attempts to stop him. The chief saw that he'd soiled his jocks and ordered them to let him go. With a knife at his neck, Slick washed and, without drying himself, was placed belly-down on the bed. He still tried to resist, but stopped struggling after he received a cut on his neck. The inmates held him down again so the chief himself could shave the hairs off his legs and buttocks before inserting his penis into Slick's anus.

From that day on, Slick had sex with the chief on a regular basis and behaved like a prison wife: he washed his jocks, folded his sheet every morning and set out the food from a cafeteria near the prison for them to eat together. Whenever he said or did something the chief didn't like, he was beaten. As time passed, he saw he wasn't the only one in his situation; other inmates belonged to the chief's friends, who were in fact a gang that dominated the whole row. Suffering is more bearable when you're not alone, and this eased his hatred somewhat, but he swore one day he'd get revenge. Life as the chief's woman guaranteed him good food, cocaine, sheets, a pillow, blankets, drinks, dope and chilled water. On visiting days, he was allowed to dress as a man to receive his family. In day-to-day prison life, however, he went around in red knickers – red was the chief's favourite colour – and had to wear lipstick and earrings. The first time he had diarrhoea in prison he was forced to use menstrual pads.

‘A faggot's diarrhoea is his period!' they said.

When he was released, he was much more hardened, and pissed off at life. He remembered many occasions when he'd been woken by a slop bucket being tipped over his face, or the prison guards' truncheons thumping his arse for no reason. When the chief didn't have enough money for meals from the outside, Bernadete had to eat the prison's watery beans, rancid rice and unseasoned, dirty slabs of lard. When the chief lost interest in having sex with Slick, life went downhill, as he no longer had the perks of being a prison wife. All he had to eat and drink was prison food and dirty water. As for drugs – he only got them when a visitor smuggled them into the prison in their arse or snatch. The flu that settled into his body lasted the whole time he was there and his body was often oblivious to his head's commands.

But he was lucky to be alive and in full possession of his faculties, unlike Prawn, his cellmate. Prawn had never committed a crime until one day, tired of watching his family starve, he decided to steal a hunk of cheese at the supermarket, was caught red-handed by security guards and handed over to the Civil Police, who tortured him until he signed documents confessing to a number of crimes. Prawn was tried and found guilty, and did time in the same prison as Slick, where he lost the sight in his left eye as a result of a beating he received for resisting rape. His body was a parchment bearing many scars, stricken with tuberculosis. After a long period of beatings and illnesses, Prawn lost all notion of things and was first abandoned by legal aid, then by his family, as he had lost his sanity. When he was released, he took to begging in the city centre. After six months he died in broad daylight without help or compassion.

Slick was afraid of going mad as he witnessed several cases of insanity, leprosy in the bodies of some of the inmates and
venereal diseases that spread throughout the prison. The many faces of death that kept vigil even in his dreams. He hated the guards who brought drugs for some prisoners to sell, because in addition to charging extortionate prices, they also wanted to take commission. He was shocked when he heard the chiefs say that that place was their home. They were going to take holidays when they were released, but that was home. That was where they felt good. And those prisoners who didn't receive visitors, and consequently didn't even have the money to buy toothpaste or a fork to eat with, found themselves obliged to work for those who lent them these most basic items: they poured water over them so they could wash at leisure, cleaned their cells and, if they had smooth legs and tight buttocks like Slick, they had oral and anal sex with the chiefs. Slick had visitors who brought him money and his own toiletries, but the fact that he hadn't tried to find out who the chief was as soon as he got there had made him a prison wife.