City of God (2 page)

Rocket and Stringy stumbled home.

It was the first sign of the war to come. The war that imposed its absolute sovereignty and came to claim anyone who didn't keep their wits about them, to pump hot lead into children's skulls, to force stray bullets to lodge in innocent bodies and make Knockout Zé run along Front Street, his heart pounding like the Devil, holding a blazing torch to set fire to the house of his brother's killer.

Rocket arrived home afraid of the wind, the streets, the rain, his skateboard, the simplest things; everything seemed dangerous. He knelt by his bed, threw his head on the mattress, clasping his hands together, and in infinite supplication begged Exu to go and tell Oxalá that one of his sons felt doomed to eternal desperation.

In the past, life was different here in this place where the river, carrying sand, innocent water snake heading for the sea, divided the land on which the children of the Portuguese and the slaves trod.

Soles of feet grazing petals, mangos swelling, bamboo thickets shredding wind, a big lake, a lake, a pond, almond trees, myrtles and the Eucalypt Grove. All this on the other side. On this side, the hills, the haunted mansions, the vegetable gardens of Little Portugal, and the cows on both sides living the peace of those who don't know death.

The branches of the river, which split over near Taquara, cut diagonally through the fields. The right branch cut through the middle, while the left – separating The Flats from the houses and crossed by a bridge over which the traffic of the neighbourhood's main street flowed – cut through the lower part of the fields. And, as the good branch returns to the river, the river, branching off, zigzagged along its watery path; a stranger who travelled without moving, carrying away loose rock crystals in its bed,
allowing its heart to beat on rocks, donating water to the bodies that braved it, to the mouths that bit its back. The river laughed, but Rocket knew well that every river is born to die one day.

This land was once covered in green with oxcarts defying dirt roads, Negro throats singing samba, artesian wells being dug, legumes and vegetables filling trucks, a snake slipping through the grass, nets set in the water. On Sundays, football matches on the Dread pitch and drinking wine under the light of the full moon.

‘Mornin', Lettuce Joe!' Cabbage Manoel had said one day at dawn. But Lettuce Joe had not answered; he had just watched the first flight of the herons to the sound of roosters crowing and cows lowing.

The two Portuguese descendents tended the Little Portugal vegetable gardens on the inherited land. They knew that blocks of flats were to be built in that area, but not that work was to begin so soon. They worked as they did every day, from five in the morning to three in the afternoon, talked about nothing, laughed at everything, whistled impossible
fados,
loved the different types of wind, ate dinner together, and together then heard the men in the car with the white licence plate, in first gear, say:

‘We intend to build a new place on your land.'

‘Come, good wind! Put another smile on my face!' Lettuce Joe was to think later. ‘Another wind, without homeland or compassion, has taken away the smile this soil gave me, this soil where men with boots and tools arrived, measuring everything, marking the land … Then came the machines, destroying the Little Portugal vegetable gardens, scaring the scarecrows, guillotining the trees, landfilling the marsh, drying up the spring, and all this became a desert. All that is left is the Eucalypt Grove, the trees on The Other Side of the River, the haunted mansions, the
cows that know nothing of death, and sadness in the wake of a new era.'

City of God lent its voice to ghosts in the abandoned mansions, thinned out the flora and fauna, remapped Little Portugal and renamed the marsh: Up Top, Out Front, Down Below, The Other Side of the River and The Flats.

Even now, the sky turns blue and fills the world with stars, forests make the earth green, clouds whiten landscapes and mankind innovates, reddening the river. Here now a slum, a neoslum of concrete, brimming with dealer-doorways, sinister-silences and cries of despair along its lanes and in the indecision of its crossroads.

The new residents brought rubbish, bins, mongrel dogs,
exus
and
pombagiras
in untouchable bead necklaces, days on which to get up and struggle, old scores to be settled, residual rage from bullets, nights to hold wakes over corpses, vestiges of floods, corner bars, Wednesday and Sunday street markets, old worms in babies' bellies, revolvers,
orixá
pendants, sacrificial hens, sambas, illegal lotteries, hunger, betrayal, death, crucifixes on frayed string, racy
forró
to be danced, oil lamps to shed light on saints, camping cookers, poverty to want to get rich, eyes to see nothing, speak nothing, never the eyes and guts to face life, to sidestep death, to rejuvenate anger, to bloodstain destinies, to make war and to get tattoos. There were slingshots, photo novels, ancient floor cloths, open wombs, decayed teeth, brains riddled with catacombs, clandestine graves, fishmongers, bread-sellers, seventh-day Mass, smoking guns to erase all doubt, the perception of facts before acts, half-cured cases of the clap, legs for waiting for buses, hands for hard work, pencils for state schools, courage to turn the corner and gambler's luck. They also brought kites, arses for the police to kick, coins for playing heads
or tails and the strength to try to live. They also brought love to ennoble death and silence the mute hours.

In one week there were thirty to fifty new arrivals a day; people bearing the marks of the floods on their faces and furniture. They were put up in the Mario Filho Football Stadium and came in government trucks, singing:

Marvellous city,
full of enchantments …

Then people from a number of
favelas
and other towns in the state of Rio de Janeiro came to inhabit the new neighbourhood, which consisted of rows of white, pink and blue houses. On the other side of the left branch of the river, The Flats were built: a complex of blocks of one- and two-bedroom flats, some blocks with twenty and others with forty flats each, all five stories high. The red shades of the beaten earth saw new feet in the hustle and bustle of life, in the stampede of a destiny to be fulfilled. The river, the joy of the kids, provided pleasure, sand, frogs and eels, and was not completely polluted.

‘Look at the bag of myrtle berries I got!'

‘I've already picked mangos and jabuticabas. Now I'm gonna get some sugarcane from The Other Side of the River!'

The children discovered marbles, and themselves in the process:

‘Bags I go last … if I getcha I'm king!'

‘Everythin' goes!'

‘On four fingers!'

‘I'm throwin' it!'

‘Clear the way!'

‘It moved! You're dead!'

‘I'm next to the triangle!'

‘Obstacle … go round!'

‘Nothin' goes!'

Flying kites:

‘Don't go, your line's too short.'

‘I'm gonna try and tangle him.'

‘No way! Go for his tail and line.'

‘I can't. The glass on my line's not sharp enough.'

‘You've gotta pull him up.'

‘I'm gonna drag him.'

‘He'll hitch you up.'

‘Here goes!'

Playing games:

‘One hit, 'cos there's a new It!'

‘One hit!'

‘I hit him and everyone else does too!'

‘I hit him but no one else does!'

‘Jump the graveyard wall!'

‘The graveyard's on fire!'

‘Every monkey on his branch!'

‘Send a letter to your girlfriend.'

‘Out of ink!'

‘Freeze!'

‘One hit, 'cos there's a new It!'

‘One hit!'

They found one another in hide-and-seek and tig, had castor-bean wars on The Other Side of the River, swam in the pond and played boats and Journey to the Bottom of the Sea. They headed into the fields, competing for ground with snakes, toads and cavies.

‘Wanna go to Red Hill?' asked Rocket.

‘Where's that?' asked Stringy, holding a bucket of water.

‘Down where you were, near the spring. We can climb up and run down like in cowboy films.'

‘OK!'

They headed off from behind The Flats, having invited a couple of friends. Rocket's brother, seeing the kids getting ready for a new adventure, thought about putting his bike away to go with them, but then decided to take it at his pals' insistence. They crossed an area of dense bush, where new blocks of flats were later to be built, and found themselves at the left branch of the river.

‘I'm goin' for a swim!' said Stringy.

‘Let's go straight to Red Hill. We can swim later!' said Rocket.

‘We're better off swimmin' now, 'cos our clothes'll dry and our mums won't know we were in the river,' argued Stringy.

‘Scared of mummy?' asked Rocket.

Without listening, Stringy threw himself into the water and his friends followed suit. They waded out to a certain point and swam back with the current. Stringy wouldn't come out of the river, and swam into and out of the current. They dunked one another and played American submarine and Captain Hurricane. The morning had reached its peak, invading the branches of the guava trees and bringing in its wake a land wind that swept away the rain clouds one by one. The finches sang.

It was as if they had moved to a large farm. As well as buying fresh milk, picking vegetables in the garden and collecting fruit in the wild, they were also able to ride horses through the low hills along Gabinal Road. They hated night-time, because there was still no electricity and mothers forbade their children to play outside after dark. Mornings were cool: they caught fish, hunted cavies, played football, killed sparrows to barbecue and broke into the haunted mansions.

‘Let's get a move on and go to Red Hill!' insisted Rocket's brother, already on his bike.

They didn't take Moisés Street in case they bumped into one of their mothers fetching water from the spring; instead they went behind the houses and scrambled up the hill.

Red Hill had been mutilated by excavators and tractors when the houses and first blocks of flats were being built. The clay taken from the hill was used to landfill part of the marsh and to roughcast the first houses. When it was still untouched, the hill had stopped very close to the riverbank. It now ended at one end of the council estate, where some of the Short-Stay Houses were, on the road connecting the blocks of flats to Main Square. From the top, one could see the big lake, the lake, the pond, the river and its two branches, the church, the Leão supermarket, the club, the Rec, the two schools and the nursery. You could even see the clinic from that distance.

‘I'm goin' down on my bike!' announced Rocket's brother.

‘You crazy? Can't you see you're gonna smash yourself up down there?!' warned Stringy.

‘Don't worry, man, I'm a pro!'

He got on his bike, leaned over the handlebars and took off down the hill. After a while he stood on the rear brake, put one of his feet on the ground and spun the bike. His friends clapped and shouted:

‘Cool, cool!'

He repeated the feat several times, to the spectators' delight. His eyes watered with the speed, but he didn't stop showing off. He got so carried away that he took off downhill once more, pedalling ten times to pick up speed. It went wrong. He hit a hole, lost control and came tumbling off: bloody nose, body skidding across the ground, dust in his eyes … But the subject here is crime – that's why I'm here …

Poetry, my teacher: light the certainties of men and the tone of my words. You see, I risk speech even with bullets piercing
phonemes. It is the word – that which is larger than its size – that speaks, does and happens. Here it reels, riddled with bullets. Uttered by toothless mouths in alleyway conspiracies, in deadly decisions. Sands stir on ocean floors. The absence of sunlight really does darken forests. The strawberry liquid of ice cream makes hands sticky. Words are born in thought; leaving lips, they acquire soul in the ears, yet sometimes this auditory magic does not make it as far as the mouth because it is swallowed dry. Massacred in the stomach along with rice and beans, these almost-words are excreted rather than spoken.

Words balk. Bullets talk.

Squirt, Hellraiser and Hammer ran through the Rec, went into Blonde Square and came out in front of Batman's Bar, where the gas delivery truck was parked.

‘Everyone quiet or I shoot!' ordered Squirt, holding two revolvers.

Hellraiser positioned himself on the left of the truck, Squirt on the opposite side. Hammer went to the corner to keep an eye out for the police. Passers-by sidled off; when they got further away they quickened their step. Only the two old ladies who had gone to buy gas at that exact moment did not budge. They looked as if they were glued to the spot, trembling, saying the Creed.

The delivery men put their hands up and said the money was on the driver, who at that very moment was trying in vain to hide it. Hellraiser watched him. He ordered him to lie down with his arms out, frisked him, took the money, and gave him a kick in the face so he'd never again try anything smart.

Hammer told everyone the gas was on him and they didn't need to bring empty gas bottles to exchange for full ones. The truck was empty in minutes.

‘C'mon, let's head up this way,' suggested Squirt.

‘No, let's go through the Rec – it's more open. Then we can see everyone … and let's get Cleide to take the shooters,' said Hammer.

‘Noway, man!' answered Squirt. ‘Real gangsters've gotta stay tooled up. I'm not going round without nothin'. You never know if someone's gonna show up and try to grab our money. We don't know who's who round here, man! You think we're the only gangsters in this place? Everyone here's from the
favelas!
There's even guys from out of town holed up round here. And what if the pigs show up? How you gonna deal with them? Fists ain't gonna do the job!' concluded Squirt without slowing his pace.