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Lockdown

Page 18

by Drauzio Varella


  At the end of one year, I noticed that his behaviour had changed. His spontaneous laugh had disappeared; he was agitated and tense. He glanced around suspiciously in the galleries. He would sometimes disappear when he was supposed to be working. He grew thin and his face marked.

  One morning, I saw him in the corridor.

  ‘Lula, I’d like to talk to you in private,’ I said.

  We entered a room in the surgical centre. He locked the door and put the key in his pocket.

  ‘You’re smoking crack.’

  ‘What, Doctor? I can’t afford to, especially doin’ all these operations.’

  ‘Lula, that wasn’t a question: you’re smoking crack, every day, and lots of it.’

  He denied it again, but I insisted that it wasn’t good for adults like ourselves, family men, to muck around making fools of one another.

  ‘Yeah, Doctor, I started about six months ago. At first it was every now and then. I’d go for a whole week without smokin’. But for a while now it’s been every day.’

  ‘All day long.’

  ‘Truth be told, it is all day long. I wake up just itchin’ to go down to Eight to get some rock. Sometimes I say, this ain’t doing me no good, I’m gonna give it a rest. But it don’t last. After one or two days, I’m off to Eight all neurotic. I spend about twenty or thirty a day on the bloody stuff.’

  ‘How do you pay for it?’

  ‘It comes from my surgeries. Nothing’s free in here, Doctor.’

  ‘But you operate on people and then smoke that poison: you’ll lose your dexterity.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but that’s where you’re wrong. I don’t smoke crack after I operate. I smoke it before.’

  ‘You’re crazy, irresponsible. Crack takes away your control over your movements.’

  ‘Wrong again, Doctor. Sometimes I have to do a big, difficult suture. I go to my pad for a smoke. Then I come up, inject the anaesthetic and wash the wound with soap and water, just like you taught me. I wash it slowly. Sometimes I spend up to fifteen minutes under the tap scrubbin’, lots of suds, and I don’t worry about the blood. I dry it well, and when I operate, it’s amazing: I can see the blood vessels glowin’, fluorescent. I tie them off one by one, my hand steady on the forceps, and I don’t let nothing escape. And when the wound’s dry, without a drop of blood comin’ out of it, them subcutaneous stitches holdin’ the edges close together, I suture the skin. I’m so precise that if you measured the distance between the needle hole and the edge of the cut, it wouldn’t even be one millimetre, on both sides.’

  Crack was Lula’s undoing. A few days later the pavilion director fired him from the infirmary and had him transferred to Eight. He didn’t stay there long; deprived of his private clinic, he had no way of supporting his habit, got into debt and lost the respect of his companions.

  One day, he was found dead in his cell. Next to his body was a bloody syringe. The rumour that spread through the prison was that it had been an overdose. I thought it was very strange; the guys in the infirmary, who had worked with him for years, didn’t know that Lula shot up.

  Margô Suely

  Margô spent three months in a police lock-up, in a cell with thirty-two men, and no one abused her. Despite her tight skirt, bustier and silicone implants in her thighs, everyone treated her with great respect. When she was transferred to Carandiru, she met a gangster and fell in love. He was frank with her. ‘If you want to be mine, fine, but you’re mine only, got it? I’ll put you in a pad and I’ll make sure you’re comfortable, but you don’t double-cross me. Keepin’ a wife in here costs a fortune. Cheat on me and you’re fucked.’

  Margô’s cell had a bunk-bed, a beige curtain and a rug with two swans and a little house embroidered on it, so she wouldn’t have to put her feet on the cold floor. A blue sheet hung directly behind the door to ensure privacy, and a chequered curtain covered the window. There were clippings of famous artists all over the walls. Under the window, a crude little cupboard served as a table for the cooker, on top of which sat a coffee pot with a crocheted cover in the shape of a chicken. Next to it was a television set with steel wool on the antenna.

  Cigarettes, tasty treats, afternoon joints, pills for her breasts and the other cons’ respect, all provided by the gangster. On her part, just total fidelity. She never went out into the corridor. Her place was in the cell, with the door closed and the blue sheet and chequered curtain pulled to in order to avoid flirting and the spilling of blood. She was allowed out to get some sun occasionally, though never alone; three of the gangster’s bodyguards would escort her down to the courtyard.

  The top bunk belonged to Zizi, an older transvestite, whose face was asymmetrical because the silicone she had had injected in her cheekbones had slid out of place. She was the maid; she took care of the cooking, cleaning, washing and ironing. When the gangster visited, she would discreetly make herself scarce.

  Margô fell in love because in the beginning he was good to her, protective, demanding, and made sure she had everything she needed. As for her, she spent her days watching TV, reading women’s magazines and painting her nails. The other transvestites envied her.

  One Sunday, when the inmates were busy with their visitors (except the transvestites, who had been estranged from their families for a long time), the gangster burst into her cell with furious eyes.

  ‘You’re gonna have to learn to shut your fucking mouth!’

  And before Margô could work out what was going on, he punched her in the chin so hard that she lost her balance, hit her head against the cupboard and with her elbow knocked over the pot of fennel tea which Zizi drank to calm her nerves. The gangster’s wife, mother of his three children, had told him at her visit that she knew everything and would only come back when he dumped that degenerate.

  The incident shook Margô’s relationship with the gangster. Things were never the same again. The crisis came to a head when she developed a painful, moist sore in her private parts. The gangster refused to accept it.

  ‘No sex, no luxury!’

  He cut the lipstick, pills, joints, stocked pantry and, worst of all for her and Zizi, cigarettes.

  When the infection got really bad, Margô Suely came to the infirmary. She spent some time there with us. The first day, the gangster came to visit and was understanding; then, never again, in spite of all the messages she sent.

  Late one winter afternoon, having recovered, Margô was discharged and returned to Pavilion Five. She arrived in time for the head count. She was still a little weak and climbed the stairs with difficulty. In the fourth floor gallery, only two light bulbs in a row of eight were holding out. Poorly dressed for the cold, Margô headed down the corridor, turned right and ran straight into a warder.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve just been discharged from the infirmary. I spoke to Valdir downstairs and he said I could come up.’

  ‘What’s your cell number?’

  ‘417-E.’

  ‘Off you go then, I still haven’t locked it.’

  The door was pulled to, though not locked, and light, sounds from the TV and the smell of fried garlic were emanating from inside the cell. Inside, she could feel the heat from the cooker, on which Zizi was busy frying something.

  ‘Zizi, look, I’m back!’

  Zizi swung around with a start, her eyes bulging as well as lopsided, and the spoon splattered hot oil on the wall.

  That was when Margô realised that there was someone else there. Lying on the bed, wearing Margô’s wool socks, was Lady Di, a fair-skinned whore five years younger than her, whom the cons all secretly admired.

  ‘Take my socks off and get out of my bed, slut!’ said Margô, shocked at the intruder’s cheek.

  ‘What’re you talking about? I married your ex. I’m where I belong, you old bag.’

  Humiliated, Margô turned to Zizi, who was still holding the spoon, petrified.

  ‘Zizi, you back-stabbin’ bitch! I’m gonna kill
you both!’

  She grabbed Lady Di’s hair and slammed her head into the wall several times.

  The shouting was infernal. Snoopers stuck their heads out of their cell windows. Zizi took advantage of the ruckus and ran to the gangster’s cell, all worked up.

  ‘I had to leave. Margô Suely’s smashin’ Lady Di’s head into the wall as hard as she can. Good God, you should see the blood! You have to do somethin’!’

  ‘Me? Do somethin’?’ said the gangster. ‘Like what? Get involved in a catfight?’

  Chico

  Chico had killed his brother-in-law, a shifty sort. He had also killed a guy who had worked his way into the gang’s good books with the ultimate objective of turning them all in to the police. And he had killed a third one whom he refused to talk about. ‘He didn’t deserve to live, Doctor.’ The deaths brought him no remorse. ‘If they were worth remorse, they wouldn’t have died.’

  Chico was the father of two girls and a boy whom he hadn’t seen in many years. He had been abandoned by his ungrateful wife, the daughter of a family of low-lifes, who was responsible for his going into crime, according to him. He was serving a 44-year sentence. He missed his children terribly but accepted it, thinking it was probably a good thing that they didn’t see the inside of a jail.

  He didn’t look his fifty years. ‘An incarcerated man needs to exercise so he doesn’t lose his dignity,’ he once told me.

  Ever since he had been arrested, his wife had intercepted his correspondence with the children, as revenge for the death of her brother. She told them their father had died in the penitentiary.

  Standing there with his arms folded, head shaved, a tattoo of a skull with two daggers underneath it on his right forearm, the weight of his body evenly balanced on parallel feet, his posture betrayed his past in the merchant navy. It had been a time of hard work in the engine room, distant ports, knife fights and unforgettable women.

  In the galleries, from the most hardened lag to the lowest thief, his name was pronounced with respect. ‘Chico said so . . . If Chico finds out, there’s gonna be trouble.’

  When an inmate wanted to consult Chico, he would stand nearby and wait for an invitation to approach as he finished whatever he was doing. When the moment came, he would glance at the inmate: that was his cue.

  It would always be the inmate who spoke and gesticulated; Chico remained quiet, staring off into the distance or occupied with some small task. He would then turn to the inmate, utter a few words in the low volume of serious conversations among prisoners and stare off into the distance again. The conversation was over.

  The General Kitchen

  Zelão, Flavinho and Anorak ran the general kitchen with an iron fist. They were a scary trio, not so much for their long c.v.’s, but for the ferocious expressions on their faces. They had all been incarcerated for at least ten years and had each been sentenced to more than thirty.

  They only spoke to one another when it was absolutely essential. Words were useless compared to the agility of the looks they exchanged when decisions had to be made. They shared the same cell and claimed to be willing to put their lives on the line to defend the other two, should circumstances require it. No one dared challenge them as leaders of the seventy-something cooks.

  They were responsible for all of the material in the kitchen. One day, before lunch, a meat cleaver disappeared. They searched everywhere, but couldn’t find it. At two o’clock in the afternoon, Anorak gave an ultimatum: ‘From five o’clock on, one cook a day is going to die until the cleaver shows up!’ Fifteen minutes later, the cleaver mysteriously fell from a window in Pavilion Nine and was returned to its rightful place.

  The kitchen was, perhaps, one of the most vivid examples of the old prison’s deterioration. It was large and leaky, on the ground floor of Pavilion Six, and water formed puddles in the floor where the blue tiles had come loose, making it impossible to keep it dry. There were eight pressure cookers, each with a 200-litre capacity. The exhaust fans above them had stopped working years earlier, so when they were all in use the kitchen had steam from eight industrial-size cookers spewed into it.

  In the hours preceding meals, there was so much steam that the kitchen looked like Dante’s Inferno. One could barely make out the men moving about the kitchen in rubber boots. They would wear a cloth over their hair that fell over their shoulders, making them look like the Foreign Legion soldiers in films. The steam was so intense that, for safety reasons, it was imperative that anyone walking anywhere with a knife in his hand held it with the cutting edge turned inward and the tip pointing down.

  The cookers sat on a cement slab designed to keep them above ground level. This wide L-shaped platform was covered with the same grimy blue tiles. Between it and the rest of the floor was an open channel, where run-off water gushed towards the drain next to the entrance.

  In the corners of the kitchen were the wooden trolleys with metal frames and the large pots used to transport the food to be served in the cells. Rice and beans were tipped straight from plastic bags into the pressure cookers and served as the basis for a mixture of chunks of meat with potatoes and carrots. Flour was also added to give the dish a better consistency.

  Kitchens are a delicate issue in any prison. The director of correctional services told me that in a place as overpopulated as the Casa de Detenção it was even worse. ‘If there’s a food shortage, the prison will explode in less than twenty-four hours.’

  To avoid tragedies, the prison administration let the inmates themselves run the kitchen, one of many examples of the self-management that made up for the chronic shortage of employees.

  The successive administrations were never naïve enough to imagine that the system would stop supplies from being pilfered from the pantry and sold into the black market, with the inestimable collaboration of certain warders, since it happens in every prison in the world. What they intended when they handed the running of the kitchen over to the inmates themselves was to create a mechanism for controlling the amount stolen, so as not to jeopardise supply.

  That was why those charged with imposing order in the environment and guarding the chopping knives couldn’t be just any prisoner; they had to be men who were feared and respected by the prison population, like Zelão, Flavinho and Anorak, otherwise the pantry would have been pillaged by the more audacious inmates.

  Zelão had committed over two hundred robberies and killed two members of his gang; he was thin, short-haired, cordial in manner and had a reputation for violent reactions. Flavinho had arrived in the prison at the age of eighteen with three deaths and a number of escapes from juvenile detention on his c.v; short and thin, his physical stature didn’t inspire respect, unless he was crossed and his black eyes would stare into those of the person who had offended him. The third, Anorak, who had earned his fame and lost his front teeth for resisting successive police interrogations without informing on his companions, swore he had matured in jail and regretted having stolen from the poor. He intended to turn over a new leaf when he got out, and promised he’d only hold his revolver to the heads of corrupt politicians. His greatest desire was to hold up two former state governors of São Paulo.

  Because the carpentry workshop in Pavilion Six was on the same floor as the old cinema where we held the talks on AIDS, from a distance I often observed Zelão, Flavinho or Anorak chatting with the head carpenter, Chico – the old sailor who had killed his brother-in-law and two others who hadn’t deserved to live. The dynamic of these secret conversations respected the ritual described earlier, when the inmates would go to Chico for advice: the heads of the kitchen would wait for Chico to give them permission to approach, then they would speak quietly, listen to his advice and leave. It was clear that it was Chico who ran the kitchen from the carpentry workshop.

  In 1995, the prison administration deactivated the kitchen and hired an outside company to supply meals. The era of takeaway containers had begun. ‘It’s hard to stomach, Doctor,’ the inmates told me.

&n
bsp; Reunion

  One rainy afternoon, the telephone in the Incarceration office of Pavilion Eight rang. An employee answered and took the message in a low voice to Pires, the pavilion director:

  ‘There’s a phone call for Chico. It’s a woman.’

  Because outside calls to inmates were against regulations, the director went to see who it was.

  ‘Who wants to talk to Chico? We don’t take outside calls in here!’

  On the other end, he heard a timid voice:

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I’m twenty years old and I have a sister who’s eighteen and a brother who’s seventeen. We’re Chico’s children. The last time I saw my father I was five years old, and my brother was so small he doesn’t even remember his face. We thought he was dead. When I found out he wasn’t, I got together with my brother, sister and the pastor of our church without our mother knowing, and we decided to look for our father. It was really hard to speak to anyone here, but today I managed to explain it to the telephonist, who felt sorry for us and put the call through.’

  Her voice was filled with fear. The director sent for Chico, who entered Incarceration warily. He glanced around; everything seemed to be running according to routine, with employees and a few prisoners busy with bureaucratic work. Pires, with grey hair and a pencil behind his ear, was sitting at his desk reading a report.

  Facing the window, with his back to everyone, Chico took the phone, said hello and then fell silent for a long time. From where he was sitting, Pires noticed the tears in his eyes.

  For several days the pavilion director observed Chico’s solitary behaviour. Unaware of the reason, the inmates kept a respectful distance from their saddened leader. A few days later, Chico went to find him.

 

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