City of God

by Paulo Lins

  Hammer whistled a song by Paulo Sérgio and thought about Cleide again – he was going to tell her that he’d get a sucker’s job, come what may. Peace, peace and quiet for the rest of his life. He didn’t allow dismal thoughts of packed lunches and crowded trains and buses to dampen his resolution. He felt sorry for Hellraiser, who would one day come to the same end as Squirt or rot in the slammer. Boss of Us All thought he was on a roll, because on his last shift he’d arrested two dope heads and killed a bastard who had fired at him when he told him he was under arrest. He was feeling good about himself, and went around punching people in the face for whatever reason he saw fit. He was less than fifty yards from Hammer.

  Cleide had already searched high and low for her husband. Now she was looking over the fence at the street, where she saw carts passing, kite strings being coated in crushed glass and glue, women gossiping, no-goods on street corners and a honking gas truck.

  Hellraiser had already woken up and counted the money. He was smoking a joint while he waited for his pal to arrive so they could split the dough.

  Staring at the ground, Hammer was imagining Cleide making him breakfast and a packed lunch when he passed Boss of Us All without noticing him, lost in thought. Boss of Us All didn’t see Hammer go past on the opposite pavement either. He trained his eyes on a boy he had noticed at the end of the street. Thinking it was Hellraiser, he sprinted after him. When he saw the policeman coming after him, the boy pulled his gun, fired and fled. The shot hit him in the arm. Boss of Us All kept running in spite of it, but he stopped when he noticed he was losing a lot of blood. He swore by the Devil that he’d kill Hellraiser the first chance he had.

  Hammer walked calmly home.

  ‘Deliver your soul to the Lord and you will live forever. Only Christ can deliver you from suffering and free you from the fires of hell. Repent your sins because Paradise awaits you! Hallelujah!’

  Hammer listened in silence to the man in the navy-blue polyester suit clutching a bible. It was only a few minutes after he’d arrived home and revealed his plans to Cleide. When the man finished talking, his followers all uttered words of similar logic, with the eloquence of those who repeat the same text day after day.

  ‘What do I have to do to get all that?’

  ‘Just accept Jesus into your heart!’

  ‘What …?’

  ‘May we come in for a minute, sir?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  The man in the polyester suit sat on the sofa next to the other three Baptist missionaries. Hammer stood in the left corner of the room with Cleide by his side. Both listened while they preached the Gospel.

  ‘Now let’s hear the words of the Lord:’

  Psalm 91

  He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.’ Surely He will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you will find refuge; His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.

  You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday …

  Everything in Hammer became bubbling, jubilant emotion when he heard these words. The speaker’s sincerity was to Hammer as visible as his eyes. His very core had opened to the words of Christ. From his eyes – two bright celebrations – silent tears sprang and smiled in the wind rustling through every nook and cranny of the room. Each verse was a road tugging at his soul. A smile spread across his face. It was divine goodness beckoning him. The branches of the guava tree, the flowing river, the sea breeze, Cleide, the child he’d have with her, the stars in the firmament, the kites in the sky, the moon, the sad song of the crickets, everything, everything was created by God. Outside, the sun was blazing on street corners and all things were already different. Accepting Jesus was being able to be reborn in the same lifetime. His goal was to be happy so he could change the world with the teachings of the Lord. The miracle of conversion changed the metaphors of his face. Peace was present in all things. Cleide’s feeling of happiness was also absolutely pure. The future had arrived to lodge itself in her heart.

  ‘Love, God is love …’ she stammered.

  Hammer moved, without saying goodbye to his friends, one month after the visit from the missionaries. He gave up cards, his pocket-knife, his gun, his vices. He stopped struggling against destiny once and for all. He told Cleide over and over that he had indeed hit the jackpot. He got a job at Sérgio Dourado, where he was exploited for a long time, but he didn’t care. Faith shielded him from anger when he was discriminated against for being black, semi-literate and not having all his teeth. The prejudice he suffered came from people who didn’t have Jesus in their hearts. He had two children with Cleide and returned to City of God to preach the Gospel whenever he could.

  ‘How can a man just piss off like that without sayin’ nothin’ to his pals? I always thought he was a bit of a joke, you know. He was always chickenin’ out of things, a wet blanket, scared of everything … The biggest wimp!’ Hellraiser told Lúcia Maracanã when he found out that Hammer had moved.

  ‘They say he’s turned into a born-again.’

  ‘Yeah … I know. Night Owl told me. No way am I ever goin’ in for that stuff …! Accept everythin’ the pastor says, be poor for the rest of your life and not care … That’s for suckers, ain’t it? But each to his own; if the guy’s turned into a born-again it’s ’cos he really wants to go to heaven, right? That’s why he took off without sayin’ nothin’.’

  Hellraiser left Lúcia to her household chores and headed Up Top to find Luís Sting, his new friend. A twenty-year-old mulatto with reddish hair and thirty murders under his belt, he was strong, lanky, tight-lipped and mean-looking. He was known for his perversity throughout the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. He shot at residents for no reason, mugged them or threatened them just for the sake of it. The only reason he didn’t know the Tender Trio was because he’d been in the slammer for five years. He told his friends he’d escaped one night during Carnival after overpowering two drunk prison guards. He was cleaning his gun when Hellraiser arrived:

  ‘What’s up man? Come in,’ said Sting when he opened his door.

  ‘I was talkin’ with Lúcia Maracanã.’

  ‘I was sittin’ here wonderin’ if you’re actually gonna get rid of that pig. There’s people sayin’ he’s goin’ around shoutin’ on street corners that he’s gonna do you in. Whenever he lays into someone, he asks if they know you, if they know where you live … You gotta get rid of this pig. If you don’t …’

  ‘I’m gonna take him down. If he was on duty, he’d die today! But leave him to me … Hey, wanna buy us beer?’ said Hellraiser.

  They walked to the Bonfim without checking their backs. Along the way, Hellraiser said Pipsqueak had shown up loaded, but had quickly disappeared. Pipsqueak was sharper, had more attitude. He’d make an ideal partner for them.

  ‘I gotta meet this kid.’

  ‘He said he’s gonna show up again; you might already know him.’

  ‘Uh-huh … So there’s these guys, right? And they landed themselves a heap of dough in just one day …’

  ‘You know that friend I was talkin’ about?’ interrupted Hellraiser.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘He’s turned into a bible-basher, man … The biggest wimp! Now he’s gonna go round sayin’ Jesus is the only saviour. Makes you wanna pull the trigger on him …’

  ‘What was I sayin’?’

  ‘Those guys that landed a heap of dough …’

  ‘Oh yeah … But hey, these guys landed themselves the biggest bundle of cash real fast. They get a car and do three or four petrol stations in one shot. The best day’s Friday. All we need is a driver, ’cos it’s much better than shops, bakeries and houses.’

  The following Friday, they left before midnight to hold up two petrol s
tations on Bandeirantes Motorway and one on Taquara Square. Carrots had to toss a coin with Night Owl to be the driver of the operation. Sting wasn’t easy on any of his victims. Even when they offered no resistance, he shot them in the arse, hit them with the butt of his gun and punched them in the face. The only one who tried to retaliate got a bullet in his head. Sting didn’t like well-dressed whites. He thought they took the place of blacks in everything. First in the Baixada region and now in the estate itself, whenever he saw well-dressed whites, he mugged and abused them to avenge the Negro, whose place in society they had stolen. He didn’t run from the police. He thought that was for wimps. ‘I’ve already bumped off loads of pigs that crossed me,’ he’d say whenever he had the chance.

  They repeated the hold-ups at a number of petrol stations in Jacarepaguá and Barra da Tijuca for a good while. Hellraiser only came out of hiding on days when Boss of Us All wasn’t on duty. He hoped that as time went on the policeman would forget about him. One night, he left Dummy’s Bar half-drunk. He thought about picking up a slut to screw. He took a stroll around Block Thirteen, headed up Middle Street, drank a Cinzano-and-cachaça and lit a cigarette. His feet were all over the place and he decided to go home. He took the same route back. When he lay down, everything was spinning and he felt like vomiting. With the help of a finger down his throat, he threw up the Cinzano-and-cachaça, beer and chicken gizzards. He put his mouth under the tap, slowly turned it on, rinsed out his mouth, splashed water on his face and lay down again. Within a few minutes he had fallen asleep. He slept well, even in the intense heat with the mosquitoes rattling in his ears, but suddenly Squirt was walking on fire, dressed in red and black and holding a pitchfork. Hellraiser tossed and turned in his bed. The place he was in looked like Block Thirteen, Block Fifteen, São Carlos. It was at once familiar and strange. The fire beneath Squirt’s feet died down and leaped up towards him, then became blood, from which Niftyfeet, Pelé and Shorty emerged, wearing the same clothes as Squirt.

  ‘What do you all want?’ he asked.

  ‘We’ve come to give you a warnin’ so you won’t get kicked outta life like us,’ answered Squirt.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘It don’t matter now, but if you don’t wanna come hang out with us you’d better take out Boss of Us All,’ said Squirt, while he and his pals slowly turned to smoke. The smoke hung there for a few moments, then became a new pool of blood, in which Hellraiser saw his own body writhing.

  He woke up shouting. The neighbours were frightened, but no one dared go and see what was happening at Hellraiser’s place. It might be the police or an enemy. They stayed quiet under their covers. Hellraiser realised it had been a dream and went looking for Berenice. He remembered that she was at a friend’s place helping with an abortion. The fragile early-morning light came through the curtain at the living-room window. His thoughts were completely focused on his nightmare. He got the coke from the bottom of the wardrobe and snorted it straight. He was so determined to get high that he didn’t warm the plate in order to chop the coke out into lines. He did it all in one go, then rolled a joint to calm his spirit.

  ‘What a fucked dream – I wonder if it’s a warnin’?’ he thought aloud. He’d never had a dream like that. It could only be true that it was going to happen. He had to kill before he got killed. He got his two revolvers, which he’d left warming behind the fridge so he could clean them down with kerosene. He noticed that he was low on ammunition and that the revolvers weren’t in a good state. ‘A gangster without a gun is like a whore without a bed.’ He remembered the dismal but simple lesson he’d learned at a tender age from his mother when she didn’t have a room in the Red Light District and his father didn’t have a gun to rob with. He tried to control his body, which kept on shaking. But that bastard of a cop would have to light lots of candles to the Devil to get rid of him, because he was a tough nut to crack – he’d give him what he had coming.

  Outside, morning brought life to the alleys, breadsellers, milk carts and school children. The noise of the day made him calmer. The threat of death makes any silence suspicious and every sound sinister. He heard the kitchen door handle turn, threw himself behind the wall between the living room and the kitchen, and cocked his guns. It was Berenice.

  He told her about his dream before she’d even had time to sit down and relax. Seeing how strung out he was, Berenice tried to calm him:

  ‘Let’s go to the terreiro to talk to the pombagira, ’cos you’re a bag of nerves and you haven’t been there for ages.’

  ‘That’s true!’

  On Monday night, Hellraiser went to Osvaldo’s terreiro for a cleansing.

  ‘ ’Fraid of dyin’, boy?! ‘Fraid of turnin’ into an exu?!?’ cackled the pombagira. ‘How long’s it bin since ya last come to see me? I don’ ask fer more than wot’s agreed. I protect the boys and the boys don’ give a damn ‘bout me. When things get better the boys forget wot I asked fer. But it wos me that showed up in yer dream,’ she chortled. ‘Ole Black Boots wants to get rid of ya, but don’ worry, ’cos I’ve got him on a string!’

  Then she asked her apprentice to write Boss of Us All’s name on a piece of paper, ran a dagger through the paper and placed it in a glass of cachaça. She puffed cigar smoke into the glass, cackled and continued:

  ‘Go and bury this at Calunga Grande Cemetery on Monday and leave the rest to me. After twenty suns Ole Black Boots’ll meet his end at the seventh crossroad he come to. Then ya come back to see me. Now drink a bit of this and in yer mind ask fer wot ya want.’

  Hellraiser asked for protection from bullets, luck with money, lots of women in his life and health for himself and his wife, who, on the way to the terreiro, had told him she was pregnant.

  He dreamed the same dream several times. Even with the protection of the pombagira, he was constantly on guard – he wasn’t going to play into Kojak’s hands. In one week, he had the dream seven times in a row and, to add to his desperation, that Saturday he heard from Sting that Wilson the Devil had been killed on the pitch next to the Doorway to Heaven. He had been surprised while playing footy by Boss of Us All in civilian clothes.

  ‘He could’ve thrown him in the slammer, man. He had him by the balls. But then he ordered him to the ground and pulled the trigger.’

  ‘Was he alone?’

  ‘Yeah. He swore with his foot on the stiff that you’re next. And from the way he said it, it looks like the shit’s really gonna hit the fan. Your days are numbered!’ joked Sting.

  ‘Give me a lend of that rifle there!’ begged Hellraiser in a worried voice.

  ‘I don’t lend that to no one. But I can help you out with a forty-five. Know how it works? It’s dead easy and whatever it hits, it kills. It takes dumdum bullets. C’mon, let’s go down to the lake for a practice. We can swing by my place for a smoke first.’

  Only Sting talked while they smoked two joints. Hellraiser remembered his dream. He paced around his friend’s living room. He didn’t know why Boss of Us All was so eager to kill him. He did everything at speed, and even drank a glass of water with the swiftness of a thief. They set off for the big lake. Before the lesson began, Hellraiser ordered the children playing there to scoot.

  ‘This shooter doesn’t have a cylinder. It takes a magazine. Just press this lever here, see, and it comes out; to load it just stick it in here. To cock it, hold it here, underneath, and slide it back like this. If you just pull the hammer back, it doesn’t cock, right? I’m givin’ you a lend of this magazine here ’cos I trust you, otherwise I wouldn’t. But keep your wits about you and don’t let the pigs get it, OK man? Let’s see if you got the idea.’

  Hellraiser turned the gun over slowly in silence. He visualised his pombagira, looked at the almost cloudless sky, two butterflies coming and going between the almond trees, the kids heading away to the Eucalypt Grove. There’d always be things to get perfect in no time at all. He thought about asking his friend to help him ambush Boss of Us All, but he didn’t feel comfortable
about extending the invitation. Sting was a good pal, but they hadn’t been friends long enough for him to help kill someone unless it meant he could rustle up some dough. If it were Squirt, he wouldn’t even have to invite him – but if he could just stop dreaming about him for Christ’s sake! He could always slip away from the estate, but the pain of chickening out would be endless. Berenice would like it, but deep down she’d think he was a wimp. Only the wind could be heard at that moment; it rustled the branches of the almond trees, the eucalypts, stirred the riverside grasses, made it hard for the herons to fly, and blew across his skin. The pombagira returned to his thoughts. She’d have to work some strong magic for him. He’d already buried Boss of Us All’s name on a piece of paper in the cemetery. Faith moves mountains – it would move Gávea Rock and place it over Boss of Us All’s head. Now everything depended solely on his strength, his presence of mind. All he had to do was practise shooting with this thing he was holding. He took out the magazine, put it back, cocked the gun as Sting had taught him, took aim at the trunk of the most distant almond tree and fired. Bullseye, and satisfaction on Sting’s face. He only missed two out of ten shots. He said that he’d already got the hang of it and that he wouldn’t waste more bullets on the tree. He’d save the rest to pump into Boss of Us All’s arse.

  ‘Go ahead and practise some more – there’s stacks of ammo back at my place,’ Sting assured him.

  Hellraiser spent the rest of that Saturday at home, but in the evening he felt like taking a stroll. He didn’t think Boss of Us All would still be prowling around that day, because whenever he killed someone he didn’t show his face. He left home with the .45 cocked. Everything in his path was suspicious. He ran into the cool guys smoking a joint on the corner in front of the nursery. He heard Green Eyes saying Dirty Dick’s death was a shame:

  ‘Dirty Dick was a good man. He wasn’t cocky, always minded his own business …’