Lockdown

by Drauzio Varella

  The bodies belonged to Deusdete and Mané, who had grown up in the same neighbourhood and had been inseparable friends until they were fourteen, when Mané got a job at a junkyard and left school. At around the same time, Deusdete’s father was killed when he fell off the back of a train on which he had hitched a ride. Deusdete started working during the day and studying by night. But Mané became involved in crime and lost interest in his hard-working friend’s life.

  One night, Deusdete’s middle sister Francineide was hounded by two criminals on her way home from the bakery. One invited her to sit on his face. ‘Ask your mother to sit on your face, you sleaze,’ she replied, insulted. They beat her and she arrived home with a torn dress and swollen mouth. When he saw his sister in that state, Deusdete hurried down to the local police station. He waited over two hours, only to hear the clerk say that he’d go crazy if he had to file a complaint for every case of aggression in the district.

  A week after the incident, on the bus, a neighbour warned him that his sister’s attackers knew he had gone to the police and were after him. Deusdete asked for an advance on his pay and went out to buy a revolver. It didn’t take him long to find one.

  Although he was now armed, he changed his route to school anyway. It made no difference; they found him on his way back, alone, on a dark street.

  ‘Where does the grassing pupil think he’s goin’?’

  ‘I don’t want to fight. Let me go home.’

  ‘You’re going running to mother, you faggot, but first we’re gonna give you a bit of lovin’, like we did with your little sister.’

  The first to approach him was holding an iron bar. He was so sure of himself that he didn’t notice that Deusdete had pulled out the revolver. He took two bullets and fell down dead. His companion, who was holding a knife, took off running. Deusdete fired, missed and gave chase. Three or four corners later, the fugitive ran into a street bar. Deusdete waited crouching behind the fence of a house, until his enemy came out, looked around suspiciously and crossed the street, coming right towards him. The man took the last three bullets in the barrel, to the surprise of two fellows who were playing snooker in front of the bar and who later testified against Deusdete in court.

  When Deusdete arrived in the Casa de Detenção, he was taken in by Mané, who was doing eight years and six months for cargo theft and conspiracy and who owned a cell in Pavilion Five. With the help of his friend, Deusdete, sentenced to nine years for double homicide, found his feet among the inmates. He taught at the pavilion’s school, wrote letters for the illiterate and typed up appeals for fellow prisoners.

  This harmonious existence, however, was shaken when Mané discovered crack. His friend’s advice was useless; Mané smoked away everything he had.

  On the night of the tragedy, Weasel appeared at the window in the cell door.

  ‘Mané, I’ve got some rocks for us to smoke.’

  Deusdete lost his patience.

  ‘Enough! You’re not smoking with me in here. If you want to kill yourselves, be my guest, but do it tomorrow, after I’m gone!’

  Weasel didn’t stay.

  ‘Forget it, Mané. Talk to you tomorrow.’

  Mané felt diminished in front of Weasel, but didn’t say a word. That night, while his childhood friend was asleep, he filled a large pot with five litres of water, a tin of oil and a kilo of salt and lit the cooker. When the mixture was boiling, he poured it over his cellmate.

  Deusdete died in the infirmary of Pavilion Four early the next morning. At midday, his angry friends met with the cleaners from Five, for a ‘debate’, as they say, which involved more than forty people. They decided that a group would wait near the pavilion entrance and another would block the stairs on the first floor. When Mané entered, the group near the entrance came up behind him.

  His body was taken to Four on a food trolley. There, one inmate took him by the arms, and another by the legs and they laid him on his side in the corridor between Deusdete and the wall. Mané’s inert arm fell on his friend’s waist.

  Mother Dear

  ‘Jail is a place where a son suffers and his mother doesn’t see it.’

  Night had fallen. I was in the consulting room, anxious to leave, when a tall, strong man slowly entered, walking with his legs apart and holding his testicles with his hands. He needed two nurses to help him onto the table.

  The guy had a reputation as a fearless robber, with illegal lottery connections and a scar on his right eyebrow, and he was the second-in-command of the cleaners in Eight, the repeat offenders’ pavilion. He had an abscess in his scrotum the size of a large peach. Red as fire, its contents were liquid, and the skin was so taut in the middle that it actually shone.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘this needs to be lanced to drain the pus. I’m going to refer you to Mandaqui Hospital.’

  ‘Doctor, I’ve been sufferin’ for eight days now,’ he replied. ‘I’ve already been referred to Mandaqui three times, but they haven’t had a van free to take me. They ended up takin’ me yesterday after I begged ‘em, ‘cause I was desperate, but I didn’t even get out of the van ‘cause the cops said it was gonna take too long and they weren’t nursemaids for scum like me. Isn’t there any way you could do it here?’

  ‘We’ve only got the most basic material here. Besides, you’ve got no idea how much it hurts. It’s hard to take without an anaesthetic.’

  He tried to smile.

  ‘C’mon, Doctor. You’re talkin’ to a man with four bullets in his body. I’ve been strung up more than twenty times. I got beaten with a metal pipe for two hours and didn’t give the cops what they wanted. If it’s just the pain you’re worried about, forget that: I’m your man!’

  In terms of suffering, I thought, perhaps he was right. Referrals to outside hospitals were complicated, as the regulations required inmates to be transported in vans that weren’t always available, with a military police escort to deter attempted escapes or attacks by gangs to rescue the prisoner. The long wait when they got to the public hospitals only made relations with their police escorts even tenser. And I had seen many a death in the infirmary while the patients were waiting to be transferred.

  On the other hand, doctors could find themselves facing legal problems when somebody pretending to need outside treatment, referred by them, escaped. It had happened to me twice. The first time, a former mechanic with AIDS-related cachexia had managed to get his shrivelled hand out of the handcuff attached to the bed and disappeared. The other time, Romário, a crack user with advanced tuberculosis, had jumped the fence of the Central Hospital, situated behind the Casa de Detenção, while the guards were watching Brazil play Germany on TV, spent fifteen days on the streets smoking crack and was brought in again; he died two months later in the infirmary.

  If the patient was willing to undergo the procedure in the prison without a general anaesthetic, why not? Because there was no surgeon present I called for Lula, a bank robber who often performed small operations in the infirmary.

  When Lula arrived with the material, I positioned four inmate-nurses around the table, to hold the cleaner’s arms and legs. I carefully lifted the swollen testicle and placed a wad of cotton underneath it. The slightest movement of the inflamed region was intensely painful. Sweat was beginning to run down the man’s forehead. When everything was ready, I showed Lula where to make the incision.

  Wearing gloves and holding a surgical knife between the forefinger and middle finger of his left hand, Lula made a deep cut in the inflamed skin and in the same movement tossed the knife onto the tray and squeezed hard, from the outside of the abscess towards the centre. He kept a firm grip, without letting up. The pus squirted out yellow and thick.

  The incision itself appeared to be painless, but the compression elicited a deep howl from the cleaner. His body stiffened like an arch supported by his head and heels. If it weren’t for the determination of the four nurses, the table would have overturned. Lula continued squeezing impassively.

  The cle
aner’s guttural spasm only ended when he had exhausted the air in his lungs.

  ‘Aahh, for the love of God, get off . . . Aahh, mother . . . Watch over me, mother dear.’

  Lula continued squeezing pitilessly until the yellow secretion stopped flowing and blood stained the cotton. He let up the pressure, and then gave it another three hard squeezes to be sure of a job well done. When he finally let go, the convict’s chin was trembling like a leaf. Pale and dripping with sweat, he was still obsessively repeating: ‘Aahh, mother dear . . . Aahh, help me Blessed Virgin . . . Watch over your son, mother.’

  A few minutes later, relieved, the cleaner humbly thanked everyone.

  ‘Thank God, it’s better. God bless you all. God bless you, Doctor. God Watch over you, Lula.’

  Professionally gathering up the instruments with a scowl on his face, Lula interrupted him.

  ‘OK, enough! Leave Him in peace now. Too much God in a con’s mouth ain’t right!’

  In slow motion, the cleaner climbed down from the table and hobbled back into the gallery with his legs apart. When the door closed, Pedrinho, who was washing the table with a soapy cloth, muttered quietly, ‘Christ, a big-time bank-robber like that, who’s held up armoured cars, second-in-charge of the cleaners, begging for his mother like that!’

  Edelso

  Of all the inmates who worked in the infirmary, Edelso was the one who had the most talent for medicine. He was the inmates’ favourite when it came to giving injections, bandaging up wounds and, when they were suffering in the middle of the night, for prescribing the best treatment for their symptoms. With his experience, he learned to diagnose tuberculosis better than many doctors. He would bring the patients in with treatment already under way:

  ‘Doctor, this guy here has a fever, pain in his chest and night sweats. He was prescribed a drip with vitamins and ampicillin, but I’ve already started him on the triple therapy.’

  Pleasant-mannered, with well-cared-for teeth and clothes, he stood out in that environment of poor men and bodies marked by violence.

  Edelso had been in and out of jail for vehicle theft. He came to the Casa sentenced to eight years and seven months, having been found guilty of a number of crimes: receiving stolen goods, conspiracy and misrepresentation. He was arrested because he had assumed the identity of a recently deceased doctor in the city of Mogi das Cruzes. With fake documents, he rented a two-storey house in a neighbouring town and set up a medical practice, with a sign on the door, a prescription pad and a medical licence number.

  ‘I used to buy stolen cars at a chop shop in São Paulo and would re-sell them on the Paraguayan border.’ As a disguise, the role of doctor fit like a glove for Edelso, who had studied to be a nursing assistant. ‘It’s normal for doctors to always have new cars.’

  He moved into the residence-come-medical practice by night. His neighbour even helped him carry in the furniture. The next morning, he awoke to the doorbell ringing. He looked out of the bathroom window and saw the police officers, a tall one with a greying moustache and another mopping the sweat off his forehead with a handkerchief. ‘I’d barely moved in and things went south!’ said Edelso.

  He thought about escaping on foot through the back. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d left his belongings behind. He hesitated, while the doorbell kept ringing. In the end, he decided to pretend he didn’t know what it was about and calmly went downstairs, with his revolver stuffed into the waist of his trousers. Through the little window in the door, he asked what the police officers wanted.

  ‘Doctor, there’s a child in a bad way down at the public health clinic and the doctor hasn’t arrived. Can you help us out?’

  When Edelso arrived at the clinic, there were several people standing around a seven-year-old girl who had a roaring fever and sore throat, lying on a stretcher. They looked poor. A woman in black who appeared to be the girl’s grandmother explained that she had been complaining of an intense headache. Edelso thought it was odd.

  ‘A small child with a headache?’

  He placed his hand behind the girl’s neck and tried to bend her neck to make her chin touch her chest. She cried out with pain.

  ‘A stiff neck!’

  The neurological symptom was enough for the fake doctor to make a diagnosis.

  ‘Meningitis! You need to get her to Emílio Ribas Hospital. This place isn’t equipped to deal with it.’

  At that moment, as Edelso was telling her family what to do, the real doctor arrived, described by the charlatan as: ‘A weird sort, chewing gum and dressed in white, with a hairy chest. He walked in, didn’t speak to anyone, only looked at the little girl’s throat, prescribed Keflex every six hours and turned his back.’

  Edelso kept quiet, looking for an excuse to leave. His business was something else and he didn’t want to take any chances. As he was leaving, the girl’s father came after him.

  ‘Doctor, you think it’s meningitis and the other doctor said it’s just tonsillitis, but he didn’t even examine her. What should I do?’

  ‘If it were my daughter, I’d take her to Emílio Ribas.’

  The father’s common sense prevailed. The diagnosis of bacterial meningitis was confirmed at the hospital, where the girl was admitted and cured.

  Edelso’s reputation grew and the clinic prospered. He charged only small fees or nothing at all, according to what his patients could afford. He didn’t depend on medicine to survive, as he made $2–3000 for each car he took to Paraguay.

  ‘Those trips are hard, Doctor. You have to do all your driving by night to avoid being picked up, and you’re alone, because you can’t involve friends or an innocent woman in a scheme like that. What if the cops pull you over? Do you drive through their barricade, stop and get arrested, or hand everything over to them?’

  One day things really did go south. A general practitioner in Mogi das Cruzes treated a patient with a prescription given by Edelso in the name of the deceased physician and reported him to the police.

  Edelso’s career in the infirmary ended one weekend. The director of Pavilion Two had him transferred to Seven, because when a drug dealer’s cell was raided his name was found on a list of debtors, with ten reais against his name.

  Months later, I ran into him on the path between pavilions. He looked well, having had a rest from his work with the patients. He was making plans for when he was released. ‘I’m getting out of this business of cars, chop shops, and Paraguay, because there’s no future in it. With the medicine I learned from you, I can’t wait to set up my own practice in a simple place and live a peaceful life looking after my patients.’

  Lula

  I was introduced to Lula in the consulting room because of a freckled inmate with a knife wound in his buttock. The guy, who had a tattoo of an eagle with its wings spread on his back, was brought in lying facedown on a stretcher, with his trousers down and underwear torn from the stabbing. The knife had reached his deep muscles but had spared the most important nerves and blood vessels; it just had to be washed and sutured.

  With a queue of patients to see, I thought I should send him to an emergency room, which Edelso immediately warned me off.

  ‘At this hour, forget it, Doctor. He’ll have to wait ‘til tomorrow. Why don’t you authorise Lula to stitch him up?’

  Lula was a thief with a long history. He had arrived in the prison after his photograph was shown on the popular TV variety show Fantástico, having been shot down in the foyer of a branch of the Banco Itaú, in a robbery in which two of the other thieves were killed. He and the gang leader, a short fellow by the name of Ferrinho, arrived in Carandiru amid great admiration.

  Bandeco, a popular character in Five, who spoke like a machine gun, said that nothing was as satisfying as that. ‘Arrivin’ in jail and your mates treatin’ you with all the respect in the world is the most beautiful thing in a criminal’s [robber’s?] life.’

  Less than a month later, Ferrinho, tortured by depression, hung himself with a sheet from his cell win
dow. In his trouser pocket was a photograph of a small boy and a blonde woman wearing bright lipstick.

  Edelso had just left when Lula walked in, wearing white shoes and a shirt unbuttoned at the top showing a silver chain with a crucifix against his chest. He was in a hurry. Without paying me much attention, he examined the wound and pushed the edges of the cut together several times.

  ‘It can be done, Doctor. It hasn’t damaged any nerves. Stabbings in the rump are just to rough the victim up a bit.’

  That was our first contact. I impressed upon him that the secret was to anesthetise the wound and wash it well with soap and water. When he was done, he called me over to discharge the patient. The suture was excellent, the distance between the stitches perfect, and the blood had been carefully removed.

  I don’t know who had trained him, but he was truly talented. With the most basic of instruments and thick cotton thread, he made delicate sutures which left imperceptible scars, drained abscesses, extracted projectiles from bodies and, with great skill, removed flecks of dirt from eyes with the tip of a hypodermic needle.

  Lula once brought me a patient with an enormous lipoma on his back. It was a soft, fatty tumour, fifteen centimetres in diameter. He wanted me to authorise its excision. I thought an operation like that would be difficult without a general anaesthetic. I told him both he and the patient were crazy. He replied that he had already done bigger operations, in less accessible places.

  Months later, I ran into the patient in the courtyard of Seven and, smiling, he lifted up his shirt to show me the scar. It was perfect, in the shape of a Z to relieve tension in the skin that was pulled over the cut. I asked him who had operated on him.

  ‘It was Lula. It’s good, isn’t it?’

  ‘How, if I didn’t authorise it?’

  ‘He asked another doctor.’

  Lula and I worked together for many months. I taught him the principles of asepsis, notions about the lines of force in the skin to guide him when making incisions and I lent him an anatomical atlas, which he leafed through with eyes shining with curiosity and never returned. I came to admire his surgical ability and the delight he took in learning. With time, we became friends.