We are somewhere in the favela, and Milton has found some friends—at least two good, strong pairs of arms brought me here. The process of disorientation was deliberate, they marched me down so many tight alleys and round so many corners that it was like stumbling round a never-ending Escher staircase. I am smothered by dirty heat, maddened by this crawling skin and by the buzzing of flies. Escape is out of the question.
I wonder if I still have it in me to pull all those facial contortions I did as a child—rolling my eyes back in my head, teeth chattering, as if performing a Macumba ritual—the performance that saved Melissa. The one that might save me now.
‘Please—give me some air,’ I say, taking laboured, rasping breaths. ‘I think I may be about to have an epileptic fit. Take off the bag.’
There is laughter. ‘Having a fit, are you? Shame.’ Milton brings his mouth in close to my ear so that I can feel his breath even through the bag. ‘You don’t fool me, brother. I’m the conman, don’t you re-mem . . . ber? So be sensible, and stop the theatrical shit. If you try anything like that again you’ll make things much worse.’
He pulls away, and raises his voice. He wants to appear in charge, to assert his ownership of the situation, and of me, to the others—whoever they are. ‘Now. This flimsy little guy is on trial.’
‘You don’t need to do this,’ I say. ‘I came here to apologise.’
‘And bring my sister little love gifts. And pose for pictures with my mother.’
‘I didn’t know she was your sister,’ I manage, fighting nausea, trying to get my breath back.
‘Half-sister. And I’m very protective of her. Which means that you, my friend, are in trouble.’ His friends laugh.
‘You can’t be serious. Just because I brought her some camera film—’
‘I’m very fucking serious, playboy. If you speak to her again, I’ll cut off your tongue. And if you try to see her, I’ll poke out your eyes. Understand?’
‘You always were a tough talker. Take this bag off so I can see your face.’
Another kick, this one to my ribs. The pain explodes in my chest. I scream.
‘Keep making jokes and see what happens. No, friend, the bag stays on, so you can’t see how terrifying we are to look at. So you can imagine the worst thing in the world, and then double it, and then shit your pants. Stand up.’
‘If you want me to shit my pants I would rather stay seated.’
‘Do you want another kick? Because I’ll do it. I’m all ready to hurt you, brother. Just like you hurt me. You should be impressed. Even with this busted collarbone I can still kick you round the floor like a rag football.’
‘Don’t. I can’t move as it is.’
I am still rolling on the floor from the second kick. Inside the bag, I am drooling, and I can taste the salt-rust tang of blood. My chest is on fire. Two pairs of hands grab me by the arms, haul me to my feet, guide me backwards and push me down into what feels like a flimsy plastic chair.
I feel as if I have been duped, as if the girl were nothing but bait, a juicy decoy left hanging for me inside the gaping jaws of a flytrap. It isn’t like that, of course. The boy is not nearly as in control as he pretends. He is scared and confused. He is also, as I am beginning to realise, extremely paranoid.
I can make him out through the sack—a heavy-breathing, anxious shape. He wants to start hurting me properly, but if he does he might never find out how I came to be here, paying visits to his sister, and how there came to be a photograph of me with my arm around his mother on the wall of his kitchen. I tell myself, These are just children. They’re boys. Don’t be afraid.
Milton is certainly afraid of me. He can’t imagine how I infiltrated his life like this. I mustn’t let him know that it happened entirely by accident. If I demystify myself he will remember nothing more than that I got him shot, and I will end up dead.
‘What shall we call you? We’ll call you bag, seeing as that’s what you are. You are just a bag, right?’
‘Right,’ I say, settling in the chair, trying not to topple over.
‘Just a bag that we can use how we like, right? For example, we could fill the bag with shit and chuck it in the street. We could piss in the bag. Couldn’t we?’
For the first time, I hear a voice other than Milton’s. ‘Why are we doing this? Why don’t we just rob him and get out of here?’
‘Because I found a picture of him with my mother.’
I speak quickly. ‘I can explain that. We work in the same building.’
‘Did I tell you that you could speak, bag?’
‘About the photograph. It’s very simple. I work with your mother, and we became friends. That’s it.’
‘You work in that building? The Beehive?’
‘Yes. Check my wallet if you don’t believe me.’
‘We’ll be taking that anyway, my friend. You needn’t worry about that.’
A set of hands pats down my pockets roughly until they find my wallet, and remove it.
‘Do you see? Please, just take off the bag, and let’s talk. For God’s sake, I’m like you. I come from somewhere just like this.’
‘You are not like us. Look at you. Look at your clothes. Someone like you is never going to be friends with my mother.’
‘I swear I am. I was born in Heliópolis.’
There is much laughter at this, which enables me to guess how many there are in the room. Three, maybe four.
‘Born in Heliópolis?’ says Milton. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘I was adopted. By this guy. He owns supermarkets. You know MaxiMarket? He owns them all. Understand? So he has plenty of money. Whatever you want, he will pay it.’ Pause. They smirk. They start laughing again.
‘I can’t believe you’re jumping in offering a ransom. You rich guys—you think we just kidnap people all the time? That kidnapping is just what we do?’
A third voice chips in. ‘I don’t need your money, brother. I got all the money I need. I got the latest Nikes. I got enough to snort. I got enough to smoke. We’re doing this for personal reasons, understand?’
‘There’s no point in doing this,’ says the second voice. The one belonging to the guy who just wanted to rob me and have done with it. ‘This fool would say anything to get out of here. He’s no playboy. I say we kick him down the hill. Or leave him here to die.’
‘No!’ I say. ‘If you don’t believe me then look it up. I bet one of you can get to a computer. Find out about Zé Fischer Carnicelli. He’s my adoptive father. He’d pay all the money you want.’
A pause. I can sense them looking at each other, thinking, What the hell? In my terror of being hurt, I’ve turned this into a kidnap situation. Ingenious.
‘You better be right about this.’ My arms are lashed crudely to the plastic chair at the elbows with what feels like electric wire. A door opens, and I hear retreating footsteps.
‘Wait!’ I say. ‘Can you bring me some water?’
‘Don’t bet on it, bag,’ says the last of the retreating voices. I am alone, tied to the chair with a bag over my head, with nothing but the sound of a lively Carnival classic from a distant, tinny radio: Mamãe eu quero. Mamãe eu quero. Mamãe eu quero, mama . . .
Saturday night on the farm. I am eleven.
Unusually, there are no weekend guests, and in their absence Zé is even more relaxed than usual. He played water polo with Melissa and me this afternoon, and is embarking on his fourth caipirinha of the evening.
‘Tell me a story,’ he says, leaning back in a huge white armchair. ‘I wish to be entertained.’
‘What would you like it to be about?’ Rebecca says, a glass of wine in her hand. She is relaxed, too, and enjoying her drunk husband.
‘How about the story of when you came and found me and my mother in the favela?’ I ask, emboldened by the intimacy of the atmosphere.
‘Found you?’ Zé says, not thinking, staring at the ceiling. ‘You found us, more like.’
Rebecca jumps in, cutting
off his sentence. ‘That’s enough from you. I’ll tell you a good story if you shut up.’ She speaks so quickly I almost don’t have time to register what he said.
But I do register it. And the flash of panic in her eyes.
The bag, the solitude, the pain—it’s all taking my head to unfrequented places. I don’t know how long I have been here, alone with my mind. But it is dawning on me that I may be here for some time. And because I’m me, the fear has made me hungry. So hungry that my groaning, coiling stomach feels like it might digest itself.
I can tell it’s getting dark. Not just because of the change in the light—the atmosphere is changing too. We are probably in a quiet corner of the favela, but I can hear activity, and voices, as workers return home, and food is prepared, and drinks are poured, and cigarettes lit.
A thin strip of flesh, salty with blood, hangs from inside my cheek where I have bitten myself during the struggle. I work my teeth around it, chewing the tiny morsel a little before swallowing.
Suddenly, they are back. I can smell cachaça fumes, and one of them is smoking a joint.
‘Water,’ says a voice, and a plastic bottle is held to my lips. It barely contains a mouthful, but I try to swill it round as much as possible and swallow gratefully.
‘So, bag. We did some research. This father of yours is a pretty important guy. So we’re going to feed you up. Got to keep you in good condition if we’re going to get a nice, fat ransom. I got you something special.’
There is pressure on my head. I can feel them tying a bandanna round my eyes. It cuts out the light altogether. Then they lift up the lower part of the sack and fold it up and over the blindfold, so that my mouth and nose are exposed, though I can see even less than before.
An object is wafted under my nose. The smell is ripe and tropical, sweet yet spiked with something more fundamentally delicious. It’s mango. Luscious mango. The smell of childhood. The smell of freedom. Saliva springs in my mouth.
‘Like the smell of that, do you?’ says Milton. ‘Want me to cut you a piece, “Ludwig”?’ They have been looking through my wallet.
‘Ludo. People call me Ludo. Yes please,’ I say, trying not to gasp it.
‘Get ready, because here it comes.’
‘Are you ready?’
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘Open your mouth then.’
Something passes between my lips. Something wet and fibrous. Something that is not mango. The taste of putrefying, rotten meat blossoms in my mouth and too late the stench reaches my nose. I spit and retch simultaneously, and a bitter jet of vomit shoots down my shirt.
They laugh. I moan, trying to expel images from my head of what it might have been. My imagination is running wild though I am desperately trying to suppress it. Who knows what it was: flesh, a decaying creature.
‘What was that?’ I manage, after another dry heave.
‘I’ll tell you what that was,’ says Milton. ‘That was a lesson in trust. You lied to us. You abused our trust. So we fucked with yours. And that’s the way life is.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that we looked up your Zé Carnicelli—and there’s nothing about you anywhere. It says he has a daughter called Melinda, and doesn’t say anything about you.’
‘Melissa. She’s called Melissa.’
‘And the name in your wallet is dos Santos—and so I think your little scheme has fucked up, “Ludo.” What are you going to do now? Now that we know you are worthless. Now that we know you are nobody.’
‘Believe me, it’s true. They made me keep my name for protection. So that kidnappers wouldn’t know about the connection.’
‘Is that right?’ More laugher. ‘I have to hand it to you,’ Milton says, ‘you improvise well. But I seem to remember you being somewhat rude about the story I told you when we first met. Remember that?’
‘I remember.’
‘So I won’t trust you either. That seems fair. I don’t think you were born in Heliópolis, and I don’t think you have any connections with this Zé guy. I think you are nothing at all. You’re just a bag. A dirty bag covered in puke that we need to hose down and throw away.’
I hear a zip being undone and even though I don’t want to, I know what’s coming next. A thin stream of liquid hits my chest as the boy urinates on me, not much, no more than a token effort—something symbolic.
‘And now we’re going to make you wish your nerves were dead.’
A kick to the jaw, so hard I see a flash inside the bag. My head snaps back. The pain is a bomb in my face.
And now the fear is real. These people wouldn’t care if they killed me. Why should they? I am fighting for my life.
‘Jeitinho,’ I say, through a bubbling mouthful of blood. Even saying the word sends a jolt of agony through my jaw. ‘Jeitinho.’
‘What?’
‘Jeitinho, from the Shadow Command. I know him.’
‘What did you say?’
‘A friend of mine—my brother-in-law—does business with him. So you have to stop this now. He won’t be happy. His name is Jeitinho. Do you know him?’
A hot, anxious, heavy-breathing silence ensues.
‘How do you know that name?’
‘That’s what you should be asking yourself. How do I know that name?’ I speak quickly, through the pain, through the blood.
I can understand his confusion. ‘One minute you tell us you are from a favela. The next that you are so wealthy that we could ask for any amount of ransom money for you. Now you’re saying you’re best friends with a Shadow Command traficante. Just who exactly are you?’
‘It’s all true. The first two things might not matter to you, but this one does. Are you prepared to take the risk that I might be telling the truth? Is Jeitinho the kind of guy you want to piss off?’
‘You mean it?’ His voice has changed completely. ‘He’s a foot soldier. He wouldn’t fool around with you like us. He’ll kill you. He’ll quarter you and burn the pieces in a ditch so the cops have to rake through the ashes to identify you from bits of bone. He’s done it before. I’m serious, man. You don’t want us to get him.’
‘I think you’re afraid to get him. In case I’m right,’ I say. Panicking. Bleeding. ‘And he finds out you pissed on me, and hurt me. And decides to put one in your head.’
That dangerous pride of his again. ‘You’re killing yourself here—you know that? Calling someone like him to the room changes everything.’
‘So get him,’ I say, breathing hard, heart thumping. ‘And mention MaxiMarket.’
The door opens and closes, and the steps retreat again. And I suspect that this might be the last time I hear from them. Or from anybody else.
I sit lashed to the flimsy chair, trying to avoid the pungent smells and cloying sensations of vomit and urine cooling on my front, and to come to terms with the fact that I am about to die. I struggle pointlessly against the greasy, chafing electrical wire on my wrists, and try to make the chair legs buckle in the hope that this might somehow help to free me.
The vacuum in my stomach begins to shout louder, especially now I have been sick. With every move I make, I am squandering priceless energy and fuelling further pangs of hunger. Food parades before me when I close my eyes: legs of roast pork dancing in theatrical chorus lines; cobs of corn spinning like the dials of a fruit machine; collapsing kaleidoscopic polygons of chops and steaks. At first I encourage the visions, but then I stop, because they’re making things worse. I imagine I can hear my mother’s voice through the radio that booms somewhere nearby, saying, ‘Avoid your favourite foods. There will be a time when you can’t have them—and the more you eat them now, the more you will yearn for them then.’
And then, because I’m trying so hard not to think about food, all I can think of is sex. Visions of Melissa’s deep-red nipples, of those succulent nuts and berries, of my thumbs shaping the slope of her back as she sleeps, of her warm, scented skin. I find myself wondering whether in spite of the restraint
s I could contrive to masturbate. Then I fear that if I did I might lose vital minerals and vitamins. I used to be afraid to do it. My mother told me when I was very young that my father’s ghost would be watching if I so much as looked at myself. It was a near-perfect deterrent. Even now, as I contemplate the idea, and feel tingling constriction in my underpants, his spectre rises before me. His face is in shadow, as always, but I sense the leering expression, and his hands are reaching towards me out of the darkness, proffering dollar bills in my direction as he urges me on like a pervert in a lap-dancing club.
An insect has bitten or stung my leg in several places, and there are two or three inflamed knots in the muscle of my calf where the venom is travelling, as if my captors had cut my skin and slipped peanuts into the gaps. Reaching down behind my back, pulling hard against the tightening, cutting plastic wire, I can just reach the bites. They itch maddeningly but pierce with pain when I touch them. Contorted in the chair, I play with them idly, enjoying the extremity of the sensation, rubbing sweat into the inflamed areas and vaguely imagining that by working the venom into my system in this way, I am making some kind of roux, a poison sauce. The pain should provide enough of a distraction to banish the thought of sex, but something about the inflammation, the concentrated blood, means that it has the opposite effect.
My thoughts about Melissa expand to encompass the whole family. Why did they have to adopt me? To own me in that way, without even declaring it to the world? From where I am sitting now, the answer is clear. Zé took me in to use me as a decoy, to protect his darling daughter, and stop her from being taken ever again—and here I am, in her place. That insurance policy they bought has finally paid out.
‘Insurance policy,’ I say out loud, and for some reason it makes me laugh.
And still the hunger shouts. Louder and louder. The churning in my stomach becomes so acute that I imagine myself capable of an equal kind of force. So I waste more energy struggling uselessly against the electric wire.
They had better leave me here to die, or kill me themselves.
They had better do that for Melissa’s sake.
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