by T. R. Ultra
I fell into a coughing fit. My arms and legs waved, longing to hook themselves on to whatever might help reduce my speed toward the end of the line. The lights came in closer, and I figured that at the end of that channel, instead of a flat terrain over which I would be able to slow down to a stop, I would take off and plunge into a sea of roof tiles and red bricks.
Then I felt it. A steel chain across the ditch. One of my legs clashed against it, a flash of pain. My body swiveled around the chain, I was sliding headfirst down the trench. Headfirst into rooftops.
I bent my knee out of instinct. It gripped the chain but I continued to slide—past the last barrier into an iminent free fall.
But the chain went taut. It snapped, steel against bricks, and tugged on the back of my right knee. Everything went white. After a whip-like effect, my body swung like a pendulum and got pitched at soaking wet terrain. I was finally out of that ditch. And I still had the pistol in my hand.
***
I opened my eyes at dawn. The storm passed, the sky less laden with clouds, but it left behind a fresh smell of morning dew. A violet horizon painted the sky opposite the rising sun, and a dog snout sniffed at my cheeks.
I wiggled away from it. The dog yanked back, a scruffy mutt with a black and white bristle that seemed desperate, even more lost than I was.
He smelled the pain in my flesh, the fear of losing it all, the thirst and hunger in my stomach. I heaved up and pulled my feet out of the bog into which I had been thrown, the dog lowered his head, as if a moving human were a threat. But then he wagged his tail.
“Hey, little boy. Do you have a name?” I said.
I looked around and saw no signs of officers Pinto and Rôla, no signs of the men in SWAT uniforms. A few paces away, the cliff from where I would have fallen led directly onto the rooftops of a wooden house—the first non-brick one I had seen—that for whatever reason hadn’t been carried away by the force of water. There was a sinkhole at the end of the gutter to protect the houses below, but it was not sufficient to the amount of rain that poured over the city last night.
I tucked the pistol in my pants. My jeans had been threadbare in many spots, my skin bruised in most of them. I found myself under a thick coat of brown mud. But the dog didn’t notice, or didn’t mind. I briefly pet his head, he jumped up at me, barked, and asked for more.
His happiness was like a piece of paradise in this hell called Gloria Santa.
“I’m calling you Barkley. What do you think?”
He barked again and wagged his tail. The happiness from that little animal was almost unknown to me. I had been away from cheerful moments for a long time, despite the fact I had only been in Rio for, what, five days?
I smiled deeply, truly, wholeheartedly.
Then I cried.
Chapter 27
The sun came up and before long it was boiling hot. I waded out of the bog, Barkley followed after me, we entered into a new alleyway as seedy as the others. I headed straight for the bottom of the slum. The Gloria Santa jigsaw now seemed easier. From up top I could see my way out. I just needed to go down. Down to the bottom.
Looking up I saw the cable car support cables stretching themselves down to the foot of the hill. No trolleys were moving. Maybe they were waiting for Renato’s body to be picked up. Or for the police to resume their search for me.
People leaving their crooked homes for another workday stared at me. Freshly baked bread teased my nostrils. I didn’t fret. I threaded my way down ragged, dirty, unrelenting.
“Emily!” someone shouted. I heard it clearly. A female voice, soft, tender. Who was calling me out?
I looked down a dark alleyway, one that forked sideways between buildings from the slope I was coming down. Its interior still a dense black hiding the sun poking out from the horizon. Was someone in there, hidden, searching for me?
“Joanne?” I shouted.
No one replied. A door slammed shut, already frightened early in the morning. I pricked my ears. Someone was around, someone looking for me, willing to help.
Barkley waited, staring at me, his tongue hanging out, thirsty. How come? A hailstorm had just fallen over Rio, yet the dog didn’t drink?
I continued on. The quicker I reached the bottom of Gloria Santa, the better.
“Come on, Barkley, we’ll find water for you along the way,” I said.
Down we went. Down the slope, steeper on each step. The whole slum seemed to be tilting up, as though vertical to the ground, willing to fold itself up, munch itself down, and spread brick crumbs all over Rio.
“Hey, sweetheart.” That voice again. No, not that voice. A man now, with the tone of someone that wants to hump me. Oh, wait, was it . . . ?
“Marlon? Where are you, Marlon?” I uttered.
I swept my surroundings with quick eyes and held my breath. Did Marlon fly into Rio to help find me? Was he inside Gloria Santa? If so, he loved me, he most definitely regretted cheating on me. I needed his heat, his arms to curl myself into and hide away. I could almost smell his cologne, musk and peppermint, coming into my nostrils, engulfing my body, taking me away. I forgive you, Marlon.
But he wasn’t there. Nobody was there. There were only lies woven into those walls.
I felt my strength leaving me. My knee buckled, the one that had been injured when I went down the gutters of that favela. Then a strong hand tugged on my shoulders.
After that, my next recollections are like pictures scattered over black chalkboard: my face bathed in water streaming out from a hole in the wall. My body slumped into a mattress, covered by light blue sheets. A piece of bread in my mouth. The bedsheet yanked aside after yet another nightmare haunted my nap.
In all those memories, there was the faithfulness of the dog that had tagged along with me, and the care provided by Fátima.
“Have they come for me?” I asked her, still half awake, half dreaming.
Fátima replied with a wavering body and a mouth shut. Then the nightmare took over. The nightmare of being awake. I was back inside a building, walls ricocheting with despair and wails. In which I wasn’t shackled by grip of iron, but by the frailty of my joints.
“Where’s my gun? Where’s my gun?” I said after recovering the sharpness of my conscious mind on what seemed to be hours later. “I need it, Fátima. They’ve killed Renato. Renato is dead,” I continued.
Fátima listened to my words with waving hands, uneased by the invisible barrier that separated our worlds. The great wall of language.
I hoisted my torso up. A certain dizziness, a certain numbness, attacked it. I sat with crossed legs over the mattress on the ground of the house. The floor was bare bricked, asbestos roof tiled like the others. Barkley came in to nestle between my doubled up knees.
Then I gestured for her. Arm outstretched, fingers curled around an imaginary barrel, index finger wavering to and fro as though pulling the trigger.
I aimed at her.
“Gun,” I said. “Where is it?”
Fátima suddenly halted. Obviously she understood what I meant. I knew I had carried the pistol on my hip all the way down to the very moment someone had tugged at my shoulder outside. So, her halt was not to consider whether she knew where the gun was, but whether it would be smart to hand it over to me.
And she decided against it.
There weren’t drug soldiers anymore, not that I could see, and that was a good sign. Fátima walked out the door and returned quickly after, along with a man. He came into the room, daylight seeping in through a crack on the ceiling, as we eyed each other.
He was a tall man with a white shirt and black trousers, a waiter in uniform ready to serve.
At that moment I figured that yet again Fátima had taken care of me. She had done all but find me on the street. The one who pulled at my shoulders had been that man. Yeah, now I remember him. But who had bathed me, dressed me, checked for wounds over my body and offered me bread? Fátima.
I should have been thankful for their hospita
lity. I should have paid my respects for their taking care of me. But after so many tragedies, I could not help but become self-absorbed.
“Where’s my gun?” I asked the man. I didn’t even bother asking his name.
“You’re free to go,” he responded with a rough accent, but with surprisingly accurate grammar. “But I cannot let you have the gun, Mrs. Emily Bennett.”
I pursed my lips. “I don’t expect you to understand me. I’m being tracked down by the police and drug factions. I’m an asset, a moving target, a bargaining chip, a—”
“Calm down, Mrs. Bennett,” said the man, stiffened. “You’re safe now.”
“I don’t want to be safe in this building. I must get out of here. And I need my gun for that.”
I hoisted myself up after a long struggle. My body was clad in a thin white gown that seemed to belong to an old woman dwelling in a mental health hospital.
Fátima and the other man talked to each other. Then he looked back at me.
“Mrs. Emily Bennett, you’ve threatened Camila with a handgun,” he said, staring at me as if I was a threat to everyone in the slum. Which also meant he would never give the pistol back to me. “Your face is stamped on the front page of every major newspaper. As I said, you are free to go. But you’re clearly weak, undernourished, and even going down Gloria Santa can stress your muscles.”
As he spoke, my head leaned sideways, as if most of my weight had shifted to the right half of my body. I held myself up against the wall.
“I have to get out of here,” I mumbled.
Fátima scurried in closer to me, offered her soft touch to help with my sitting back over the mattress. I accepted it only because I didn’t feel able to react otherwise.
“I’ve already phoned the police. They’re coming up Gloria Santa undercover. Yesterday’s uprising has calmed down, but a man in uniform will only stir up emotions around here.”
“Wait, you’ve called the police?” I said.
The man nodded.
“I knew I shouldn’t trust you. I shouldn’t trust Fátima either, nor Camila. You’re all . . .” I said out loud, but the words were only meant for myself.
Fátima looked at me with eyes gaped open, I could clearly see a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The man sighed.
“Try to get some sleep. Fátima will watch out for you. They’ll be here in half an hour,” he said. Then he turned his back, heading outside.
But he didn’t step out without hearing my words.
“Are you associated with Flávio Beirario’s faction?” I said.
“I’m sorry?” said the man, facing me again.
“I’m asking if you want to see Flávio Beirario released from jail,” I said, dryly.
He frowned.
“We’re working people around here, Mrs. Bennet. Most of us. I couldn’t care less about what drug lord is arrested or released from prison. I gotta go now.”
He seemed anxious to leave. His responses had been prompt and unwavering, although I sensed I could get the truth from him if I insisted.
It only required a minor slip on his part.
“Is it about money, then?”
“Do you mean my being late for work? Yes, it certainly is about money,” he responded.
“I mean your calling the police. The use of my life to barter the release of a drug dealer.”
He blinked excessively. Than he and Fátima exchanged new words. The woman now seemed nervous, shaking her hands, hitting the air, pointing upwards as though to the higher parts of the slum. Their masks were being taken off.
He returned his gaze to me.
“I don’t know what you’ve been told, Mrs. Bennett. But nobody is going to use your life for anything. Just remain calm. You will be rescued in less than an hour, everything will be okay.”
So he refused to go straight to the point.
“I know it,” I said. I lowered my eyes down to the cement floor. “Renato has told me everything. About his job. The murdering of his uncle. Flávio Beirario’s faction plan of kidnapping and using me as a bargaining chip. Renato even warned me about officers Paulo Pinto and Robert Rôla being on the take.” I raised my eyes toward the man next to Fátima, my vision veiled by a thin layer of tears. “You may keep me captive inside this building, but I know the truth. You all work with the devil.”
Chapter 28
The man didn’t respond to my revealing of the whole scheme, probably too ashamed to face the dread of his deeds. In his eyes I saw he didn’t consider my life worth squandering any further drop of saliva. Before leaving the building, he exchanged some additional words with Fátima, who listened attentively and replied with gestures that accompanied her speech.
I laid back down on the mattress and stared at the roof. It resembled the makeshift clinic that I had been put into. The holes scattered along the asbestos roof tiles reproduced the same patterns, the walls the same bricks, and the room the same crookedness of those found in the clinic.
I heard a noise, a muffled groan coming from my left. When I yanked my face around, in hope of finding someone familiar, I found only red bricks riddled with holes.
Of course I hadn’t been taken back to the clinic. Because then Renato had been shot but was alive, and now he was dead.
Fátima had sat down on a bench next to the door. A few minutes after the departure of the man, when all went silent, she started making gestures, shaking her head, and even outpouring whole sentences as though in the middle of an argument. But her gaze was hooked to the ground.
Sweat drops rolled down her temples, glimmering against a light shaft passing across her face, as she argued against a stranger in her head.
She didn’t look at me. Not even once.
It was difficult to look over Fátima’s stout features. Her gentle touch and nursing practices opposed the idea of someone who intended to deliver my life to the worse kind of people in Rio. And now, next to the door outside, she had placed a guard on me, safely away from my crippled body, but close enough to keep watch.
Then it occurred to me that she might not be so certain of the result of my captivity. As someone who dwelled in Gloria Santa, she might have been obliged by local, unwritten rules to obey corruption calls in Rio—just as Renato had done—and help manage its affairs, because otherwise it would be her life at stake.
If that was the case, I might have a chance to change her mind.
She pursed her lips and shook her head, waving as though wiping off an idea, and went silent again. Outside she had readopted a calm posture, even though her intense breathing, followed by eyes flicking side to side, gave away the quarrel inside her head.
She shifted, yet again, over the bench.
It was my chance.
“I need water,” I said.
Fátima stared at me, eyes glazing, and swallowed hard, back to reality.
I pushed myself up to sit straight and motioned my hands, but instead of pretending to hold a gun, I waved it closer to my mouth so as to simulate a sipping.
She looked across the room towards a small freezer, which had just hissed on. The freezer had a brownish tint where the white paint bloomed into rust.
“Please,” I insisted.
Fátima uttered in Portuguese, jerked her hands in the air, and handed me a jug of water.
I gulped it down.
“Let me go, Fátima. Let me run away. I know you have a good heart,” I said in earnest, looking into her eyes. Not so much on the intent of actually establishing a conversation as to fulfill my own desire of speaking. Besides, messages can be also told through signs. Even though she didn’t understand me, I was certain she would be able to capture the desperation in my voice, and the calling for help in my eyes.
She stepped away from me, flared her nostrils, and held her breath only to suddenly dish out a torrent of sounds and hand signs, which combined to her face sprinkled with sweat drops, produced the image of a woman in panic.
From her pants’ back pocket, Fátima pulled out a ph
one.
She swiped its screen, her face glinting against the gadget. Through the light reflected on her cheeks I saw all the possibilities contained inside that small piece of plastic and metal, that small window, by which I could make my word of despair reach US authorities.
Fátima gave me her back as she gazed at the phone. She stepped even further away from me, heading for the door. She sensed my longing for it. Her fingers rapped over the screen, typing in a message to someone who might come rescue her from the abyss where she teetered. The abyss that set us apart.
The recipient of her message was unknown, but after getting to know her by her acts and reactions, I felt capable of foreseeing who they might be. Drug dealers or the police, both faces of the same corrupted medal.
My knees had been injured, my body had gone faulty and dry and lacking substance, but as I observed the glint of the key that could release me from all cuffs and set me free—first virtually, and second physically—I felt the specks of my resolve mustering around my feet and climbing up my bones, offering the last remnants of fuel to spur myself.
I lurched forward to perch upon Fátima’s back, my hands grasping the phone after going round her swollen belly. She shouted, startled, but then concentrated her strength on getting rid of me. She wiggled and jerked and wavered back and forth, her elbows jostling through the air to find my ribs. We battled for the treasure she had in her hands.
I lost the fight for the phone. Fátima, even though shorter, was stronger and better fed than I was. But I didn’t give up. I still had a war to win, the last one, the last chance, before the grand finale.
Still perched on her back, I curled my arms around her neck, my jagged nails scratching her collarbone like claws. Over Fátima’s shoulder I could see the bright screen scrawling the air as she fluttered her hands in emptiness. She endured the pain as she stepped closer outside. Her body was focused on exposing herself to the alleyway, to sunlight, from where she would be in a better position against me, the stranger in the slum.