City of God

by Paulo Lins

He thought about the Boys again; he felt like one of the gang, but only when they were bodysurfing. In fact, he didn’t dress like them, wasn’t the least bit attracted to the dances, and he’d never liked music. He only liked their love of the sea.

  He stayed there alone trying to drown out what had happened. He needed to be alone and liked it. It was in his nature to seek solitude. The waves turned to foam on the sand. The wind blew the clouds. The next day would be sunny.

  It was early morning. Rodrigo, Thiago, Daniel, Leonardo, Paype, Marisol, Gabriel, Rocket, Álvaro Katanazaka, Sir Paulo Carneiro, Lourival, Vicente and a bunch of other Boys met at the start of Motorway Eleven to hitch rides to the beach. They chatted about the bodies floating in the river. Marisol said it was the work of Tiny, Night Owl, Russian Mouse, Bicky, Sharky and Marcelo Baião.

  The favela now had a boss: Tiny. He was the only one who could deal in the favela. He gave one of the dens to Carrots out of friendship, but the rest were his and Sparrow’s. Teresa continued selling, but she only earned ten per cent of each sale, like any other seller.

  Marisol looked happy as he opened the bundle of grass he’d bought from Tiny himself. He said he’d never scored such a generous deal. He took the paper lining from his packet of cigarettes and rolled an enormous joint right there on the edge of the motorway. When cars driven by young people went past, he held up the joint with one hand and asked for a ride with the other.

  His strategy worked: the Boys climbed onto the back of a lorry, expressing their gratitude in rowdy euphoria. The driver sped along and they smoked the joint, singing rock ‘n’ roll. White, long-haired and smiling, some were students, none of them worked, and most were waiting to serve in the Army. Off went the Boys to spend the day at the beach, bodysurfing, smoking dope in the sand. That’s why they stuffed their faces before leaving home. They’d spent their lunch money on dope.

  Before hitting the water, they smoked another joint, took the piss out of the soul crowd and talked about designer shops and labels and how much they wanted to wear them. The coolest thing was buying the sports brands, but they were really expensive, and, perhaps for this reason, the smartest. They dreamed of wealth, and wealth meant living across the road from the beach, having ferns in your living room, wearing designer labels and having a car with tinted windows and wide tyres (not to mention a Kadron exhaust to give the machine a mean rumble), having a pure-bred dog to walk on the beach every morning and afternoon, and buying eight pounds of dope in one go so you didn’t have to keeping making trips to the den all the time. If they were rich, they’d only buy imported skateboards, Caloi 10 bicycles and waterproof watches; they’d dance on the best dance floors and screw the hottest chicks.

  As soon as Stringy arrived, the bodysurfing championship began. Flippers were not allowed. From time to time Stringy missed a wave on purpose. It wouldn’t be any fun if he won everything.

  Dusk fell slowly, the beach was already deserted. The Boys sat in the sand. It was time to smoke one for the road. Marisol remained standing, saying they’d have to arrive earlier at the dance the next Sunday to surprise their enemies. The trick was to spread out around the club until the Gardênia Azul boys got there. They’d wait a bit, then when their enemies thought everything was OK, they’d move in. They had to give those bastards from Gardênia Azul a thrashing so they’d learn not to try to feel up the girls from City of God, and especially not the girls that hung around with them.

  As Marisol spoke, everyone was thinking about Adriana: brunette, perfect body, long hair, chiselled face and those thighs capable of giving any guy a hard-on. She was currently Thiago’s girlfriend, and Thiago listened suspiciously to Marisol’s plans. He guessed Marisol was taking up the cause just to win points with Adriana. You can’t trust the next man when your girlfriend is beautiful and sexy. ‘What I’ve really got to do is keep him as far away as possible,’ he thought. As soon as Marisol paused for long enough, Thiago gruffly cut his friend off, said it was his business because the girl was with him, and he’d teach the bastard a lesson himself.

  He got up after a silence and went for a dip. Marisol looked uncomfortable. He then said Thiago was right, but made it clear that it would be better if they were all together when he went to flog the dickhead. If the enemy tried to get heavy with him, they’d be around to step in. Marisol did, in fact, have his eye on his friend’s girlfriend. If Thiago broke up with her, he wouldn’t even wait an hour before putting the moves on that doll.

  They sat around talking about past fights. They were respected over at the Cascadura Tennis Club because they’d smashed the shit out of the Pombal boys, winning the fight on enemy territory. The fight had started when one of them had stepped on Vicente’s foot. Even though he apologised, the Pombal guy copped a left hook, alerting his pals, who came to his rescue. Reason enough for the City of God kids to go around laying into whoever they wanted at the dance. Even the security guards got a beating.

  Pipsqueak had been born in the favela of Macedo Sobrinho. He was the second of three children. When he was four years old, his father drowned while fishing on Botafogo Beach, leaving the family in dire straits, as he had never had a secure job with benefits. Pipsqueak’s mother was forced to go out and work and left the children in the care of relatives. He was brought up by his godmother in the house in Jardim Botânico where she worked as a maid. She wasn’t firm enough, however, to insist that he remain in school. He hardly went to school in his first year; he would go back to Macedo Sobrinho, where he spent his days playing in the streets, still wearing his school uniform. The neighbours would tell his mother, who would in turn speak to his godmother about the boy’s lifestyle, but none of it had any effect. She claimed that she had already asked her employer for permission to fetch him and take him to school, but she had refused, throwing it in her face that that she’d already been extremely generous in allowing him to live in her house, and she couldn’t do any more than that. His godmother didn’t have time to keep watch over him during the day, when he immersed himself in children’s games and ran errands for gangsters. His mother complained: ‘The rich never help you see things through!’

  Pipsqueak liked carrying guns to a point near a place that was going to be held up and delivering them to the gangsters. But his six-year-old mind didn’t understand what he was doing. He knew it was wrong, but always having change in his pocket to buy sweets, football cards, kites, string, marbles and spinning tops made it worth it.

  ‘Yes, it’s wrong for a child to be involved in crime, but even worse is not having anyone to give him a little money to satisfy his childhood desires,’ said the Chief Inspector of Gávea when he wouldn’t let the detectives beat him up the first time he was caught with a derringer in a paper bag.

  The boy was still living at his godmother’s employer’s house and wandering the streets of Rio’s more affluent South Zone when he started mugging people. He already stuck his neck out carrying weapons for gangsters to use in their jobs, so he might as well risk the lot. He started mugging old ladies with blue hair in Leblon, Gávea and Jardim Botânico, pretending to be armed. With the money from his first muggings he bought a .22-calibre revolver from a friend in the favela. And so young women also became his victims, as well as men, shops and whatever the fuck was around at the time.

  He made a point of killing his victim the third time he mugged someone with the revolver, not because they’d shown any signs of resisting, but to feel the rush – and he laughed his quick, shrill little laugh for much longer than usual.

  As he grew older, his life of crime intensified. He did hold-ups morning, afternoon and night, but the older gangsters from the favela often stole his takings. Even though he was armed, Pipsqueak didn’t dare stand up to them: they were seasoned murderers, infamous enough to intimidate any beginner. Instead he swore revenge; a promise that he kept to himself, in the deepest possible corner of his spirit. While he worked hard to establish himself among the gangsters, his mother got herself a house in City of God almost a
s soon as it was founded, after passing herself off as a flood victim at Mario Filho Stadium.

  She was going to City of God no matter what. Having a house with electricity and running water for cooking and showering would make her life easier, even though she’d have to rise before daybreak to go to work: she’d leave food ready for her children and prayed that Our Lady of the Sacred Heart of Jesus would take care of them. Yes, she’d leave Macedo Sobrinho, the place that had made her life a misery, a place of heartless thugs who gave children guns so they could go around getting into trouble. She trusted in God, and believed Pipsqueak would settle down if she could get him out of that hellhole.

  She moved to a house Up Top, taking with her dreams of peace, the will to face life alone with her three children, and the determination to make them good people, even if she had to stop sleeping and eating and just work. Life was hard but, being merciful and just, God was compassionate with the poor, which is why He gave her health and the ability to wash clothes, iron and cook very well. With this kind of faith, people were absolved of blame, and everything depended on God, the Holy Virgin and her own determination. She managed to get Pipsqueak’s gun from him after talking, talking, talking, with teary eyes and a wavering voice, and so much listening, listening, listening finally coaxed the voice of redemption out of his mouth: ‘OK, OK … I’ll work as a shoeshiner ’cos there’s money in it, but I ain’t goin’ in for this business of learnin’ to read!’

  His mother set aside part of her wages and hunted high and low for a shoeshiner’s stool, all of which cost much more than she had set aside. OK, then she would keep saving until she could make up the difference. After all, if everyone got their own way all the time the world would not be one. If she couldn’t buy it that month, then she’d just have to wait until the following month, because that was God’s will and she wouldn’t complain, because God was too kind. For this very reason, before she had received the following month’s wages, she heard the good news that over on Block Twenty-Two there was an affordable carpenter. She went after her good fortune as soon as she found out he was there, so close to home.

  ‘Cheap!’ answered the carpenter Luís Cândido when she asked him the price.

  He promised to deliver the stool that very week for half the amount she had set aside. He liked to talk, said he had made shoeshiner’s stools for boys who were now well-placed men and told a number of other stories about shoeshiner’s stools. Pipsqueak’s mother smiled and felt comfortable enough to pour her heart out. She told him most of what was going on with her son, her eyes welling up with tears. She kept a grip on herself. The carpenter Luís Cândido remained serious, because he was serious and always had been, because the lives of the poor were serious, social inequality was serious, corruption was serious, as was racism, the American invasion, cold capitalist propaganda … Serious man, serious woman, serious son, serious gunfire, serious poverty, certain death. Everything was very serious for the carpenter Luís Cândido, who spoke seriously:

  ‘My good lady, you can come get the chair tomorrow and you needn’t pay.’

  ‘But, sir … it’s already so cheap, I … I … I …’

  ‘You can come and get it, and if you’re not afraid to walk the streets late at night you can even come tonight around midnight because your son’s livelihood will be ready.’

  ‘You’re so kind, sir! May God reward your kindn …’

  ‘My good lady, I’ll have you know I am not kind, much less do I believe in God. I’m a Marxist-Leninist. I believe in the power of the people, in grass-roots movements, in uniting the proletariat, and – what’s more – I believe in armed struggle! I believe in ideology and not in the God of the Catholic Church, who’s used to keep the people quiet and to make lambs of workers. I bet your son’s godmother’s employer is Catholic, but why didn’t she let your son’s godmother take the boy to school? Why not help properly, as you said yourself? You must learn about Marxism-Leninism and help raise awareness so we can seize power … Don’t you see what they’ve done to us? They put us here at the end of the world, in these little doghouses … This shoddy sewer system that’s already clogged, no buses, no hospital, no nothing … nothing. What we’ve got are snakes coming up through the drains, and centipedes and mice wandering over our roofs. We must unite!’

  The carpenter Luís Cândido gesticulated, put on his black hat and took it off again, his eyes sparking, glued to Pipsqueak’s mother, who had never heard of Machoism-Leninism, or the proletariat. She only knew that the carpenter knew how things worked, had a good heart and was going to make Pipsqueak’s shoeshiner’s stool. She stayed a little longer watching that thin old man in a black suit, who from time to time taught his carpentry students a new secret of the profession through hand movements, without missing a beat in the conversation.

  In his first few hours as a shoeshiner on São Francisco Square, Pipsqueak really did try to make his way in the profession. On a sunny Monday, he went with Sparrow and Slick – friends he had made the day he arrived at the estate – to make a living shining the shoes of the white bastards in ties in the city centre. They took turns at the job. The boy stared out the first customer the whole time he sat on the chair. The hatred of poverty, the marks of poverty, the silence of poverty and its excesses were hurled through his retinas into his customer’s face. He did try – he gave a special shine to the three pairs of shoes he polished. The fourth customer was suddenly pulled from the stool, whacked across the back of the neck and had his shoes, money, chain, bracelet and watch stolen. Before running away, Pipsqueak turned to a drunk lying on the ground vomiting.

  ‘Keep the chair!’ he said, laughing his quick, shrill little laugh, and took off through the streets of the city centre.

  Later, Sparrow went back to retrieve the chair, along with the cloths and shoe polish, and took it all to another point in the city so they could repeat the operation. They spent almost two months mugging customers.

  The best place in the world was Estácio, where the Red Light District and São Carlos were. When they left the city centre, the three would disappear into the depths of the Red Light District, where they sold the things they’d stolen, smoked dope and drank beer. It was there that they had their first sexual experiences. Then they’d head for São Carlos, where Slick had spent his early childhood and was well known. There was always a place to sleep whenever they arrived. City of God was too quiet, too far out in the sticks, too dark, everything finished early. São Carlos was cool; there was always drumming at the Unidos do São Carlos Samba School rehearsal square, someone improvising a samba on the slopes of the favela. When there was nothing going on in the favela, they’d head for the Red Light District. None of this wanking in the bathroom business for them; they had sex with three different women in a single night. That was the place to live and spend money.

  Pipsqueak managed to deceive his mother for quite some time, saying it was quicker to get to the city centre from his friend’s place, and lugging that stool home every day would make him very tired. At first his mother believed him, then she started noticing Pipsqueak’s nervous face whenever he came home. His manners, his way of speaking, that quick, shrill little laugh, the wads of money in his pockets. And the mates who came looking for him she swore looked like thugs. Her mother’s intuition – together with the evidence – was spot on. When she eventually found a .32-calibre revolver hidden in the backyard, she decided to leave things in God’s hands. First, however, she woke Pipsqueak up with a boxing about the ears. Holding the revolver and crying, she asked:

  ‘What’s this for? What’s this for?’

  ‘It’s for muggin’, killin’ and bein’ respected!’

  From that day on he never returned to his mother’s house, staying either in São Carlos or with his godmother, who had also managed to get a house in the estate. On one of his visits to City of God, he made friends with Night Owl, Carrots, Hellraiser, Squirt, Hammer and the other gangsters, who liked hearing about his adventures in the city centr
e, São Carlos and the Red Light District.

  The day they held up the motel, Pipsqueak ran to Taquara, stuck his revolver in a taxi-driver’s face and made him take him to São Carlos, where he tried to set himself up for good.

  After serving for two months as a snare for muggings, the shoeshiner’s stool became known to the police, so they started doing pedestrians instead. From Estácio it was easy to go and mug people in the city centre and the neighbourhoods of Tijuca, Lapa, Flamengo and Botafogo. Pipsqueak went out to make a living every day. He didn’t like being skint – that was for workers and shoeshiners. He squandered money on his friends in São Carlos: almost every day he bought several wraps of cocaine, beers for the prostitutes and ate at what he considered to be the most expensive restaurants.

  Sparrow, Slick and Night Owl, who had started hanging around with them, led the same life. Ari Rafael, a dealer in the favela, was jealous and began to hassle the new gangsters. Whenever the boys went to the den, he took their things, asked for money, and didn’t pay them back. He started beating them up for no reason at all and charged a toll to enter the favela. Until one day Pipsqueak refused to sell him a gold chain for the ridiculous price he’d offered. Because of this he copped a thrashing and had all his belongings taken before being thrown out of the favela along with Slick, Sparrow and Night Owl. The four of them returned to City of God penniless and unarmed. It occurred to them to do a hold-up on the bus ride back but Pipsqueak, who was depressed, thought better of it because it was an unlucky day.

  ‘You skint? Why didn’t you say so, you fuckwit?! I was gonna give you some money, but you been racin’ through so quickly lately and haven’t stopped to chat. All you been talkin’ about is São Carlos, São Carlos … Remember that motel you tipped us off about?’ said Hellraiser after listening to Pipsqueak.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, man! I’ve got a bit of dough for you, but I haven’t got it all on me now.’