Lockdown

by Drauzio Varella

  ‘Pires, I’d like to ask you a favour that I’ll make a point of never forgetting,’ he said in a serious tone of voice.

  He told him what had been going on all those years: his wife’s revenge for the death of her brother, the returned letters, being dead to his kids, and the conversation he had had with his eldest.

  ‘I’d like you to authorise me to meet them outside, at the bandstand in Divinéia. I don’t want my children in a prison.’

  ‘You’ve put me in a spot now. Imagine if the other 7000 ask me the same thing. Still, seeing as it’s a special situation, after so many years, I’ll make an exception, but you can’t stay more than twenty minutes.’

  On the scheduled afternoon, Chico headed for the bandstand with two inmates carrying a red rug, a vase of flowers, two litres of soft drink, biscuits, pastries and a small table with a chequered tablecloth.

  When it had all been arranged, the former sailor, wearing a long-sleeved shirt to hide his tattoo, crossed his arms over his strong chest and waited.

  Two hours went past and his children didn’t arrive. When Pires finally decided to bring him in, he found him sitting with his elbows on his thighs and his head in his hands. The two of them returned to the pavilion without exchanging a single word.

  The following week, at the same time, there was a call from the telephonist: Chico’s children were waiting at the entrance. All of his years working in the prison didn’t stop Pires from getting choked up. He went to the carpentry workshop to give Chico the news himself. He found him sawing a bench with a chainsaw and unplugged it.

  ‘Chico, go get ready to see your children.’

  When Chico’s incredulous eyes met his, they discovered a tenderness he hadn’t seen in Pires before. The director, in turn, saw in the former sailor’s angular face the expression of a child who has caught a balloon that has fallen from the sky.

  Chico met his children at the bandstand, which had been quickly decorated with the red rug, table, snacks and a vase of flowers taken from the Our Lady Aparecida altar in the pavilion’s chapel. The two girls were wearing long dresses and had their hair in braids; the boy was dressed in a blue suit and tie and was holding a Bible. The four of them embraced for a long time and cried.

  Thirty minutes later, the head of Divinéia approached the group to take Chico back to the pavilion, but he didn’t have the heart to interrupt the family reunion and retreated to the bandstand stairs. Pires did the same, two hours later.

  A few months after the reunion, in a surprise search, the warders found an arsenal of knives in Chico’s cell, including an enormous improvised scythe. The younger inmates never understood why he didn’t hide them somewhere else. ‘The old boy was set in his ways. He didn’t adopt the modern methods. It had to be the way he was used to.’

  As punishment, Chico was transferred to a prison in the interior of the state. At the same time, Zelão and Flavinho were sent to the State Penitentiary. I never saw them again, but I still got news about Chico from Anorak, who stayed on in the Casa waiting to be released so he could turn over a new leaf and finally be able to hold up the former governors.

  Zé from Casa Verde

  His name was Kenedi Baptista dos Santos, but everyone knew him as Zé from Casa Verde. The slang, his way of speaking, the way he’d stand with his torso leaning back, his ever-readiness to rib his mates: everything about him smacked of the world of crime.

  He had been a thief since his adolescence. On his way home from dances, when the bakery opened at dawn and the staff started filling the shelves with bread, he would pinch a sweet roll and take it to his father, who was unaware of the illegal origin of the gift. He did it to get revenge on his father, an honest man who used to fight with him to get some common sense out of him.

  Zé and I were once chatting in the courtyard of Pavilion Four, when an inmate with a bureaucratic role brought a piece of paper for me to sign. Zé fell silent and grew serious until the man had left.

  ‘What’s wrong, Zé?’

  ‘I’ve never liked dealers. They’re a devious lot. They get involved with the cops and people who rub shoulders with the pigs tend to grass.’

  His logic was Euclidean: as a thief, he would go into a bank, take everyone by surprise and make off with the money. It was the police’s problem if they wanted to come after him. If they did, he’d open fire, because he’d come to take the money and had two families waiting for him. But drug dealers didn’t operate like that.

  ‘You have to have access to addicts, own a den. And a den’s open forty-eight hours a day. It’s a fixed place, with people comin’ and goin’, like a supermarket. The cops soon find out. You have to pay for their protection so you can operate. It’s a big circus.’

  That’s why Zé from Casa Verde was categorical: ‘A thief’s place is with other thieves. Let the dealers try and see eye to eye with the pigs!’

  Zé was married to two women, Valda and Maria Luísa. ‘Valda’s skin is as white as snow. She comes from a good family, who never accepted our relationship ‘cause of my colour.’

  They had met at a dance when she was still a virgin, dancing with a guy whom Zé thought rather dodgy. The next Sunday, as his rival was playing a game of football, Zé approached her at the edge of the field.

  ‘Get up and come with me, ‘cause I’m gonna ask your parents for your hand in marriage.’

  ‘You don’t even know me!’

  He talked about how he’d seen her at the dance, her white skin that contrasted with his black skin and their mixed-race children that would all be beautiful, each one a different colour. When he had finished he went to wait for her in his vee-dub, which he had just had decked out using stolen money.

  He didn’t have to wait for long. She appeared at his car window.

  ‘Are you serious?’ she said.

  ‘I’ve never been more serious about anythin’ in my life.’

  They parked the vee-dub outside the door to her parents’ two-storey home. She was hesitant to invite him in and he tried to convince her of the honesty of his intentions. They were in the middle of this conversation when the boyfriend appeared on the corner, still in his football uniform, ready to fight. Zé didn’t think twice; he got out of the car and fired three shots at the guy, who took off running and even lost one of his football boots in his haste. Then he turned to his beloved and said persuasively:

  ‘Tomorrow, at eight, call your parents and sisters together ‘cause I’m gonna ask for your hand in marriage. Forget that guy: if he loved you, he’d face the danger.’

  The next day, at eight, her family had the worst possible reaction. Despite the souped-up vee-dub and the way he presented himself as a working man, from an exemplary family, the owner of a property officially registered at the notary’s office in Casa Verde, the girl’s father said he’d rather see his daughter dead than married to a black hooligan like him.

  Zé’s persistence caused tempers to become raised, with her father referring to his colour with increasing disrespect. When he was called an insolent nigger, Zé lost his patience. He climbed onto the table, pulled out his revolver and shouted that he’d kill the first one to react.

  ‘I locked everyone in the bathroom and took my love with me, my black hand in her snow-white hand.’

  He had four children with Valda and said they were the way he wanted them to be: ‘Each one with a different skin tone, Doctor.’

  They were extremely happy until he met Maria Luísa, a dancer with the Império da Casa Verde samba school. ‘The percussion session was really goin’ for it and there she was dancin’ up front, in a short little dress with a smile that lit up the whole rehearsal area. She looked like an ebony goddess.’

  At Carnival itself, minutes before the school was to parade down the avenue, with Zé dressed as Xangô, the warrior, and Maria Luísa in a sequined bikini, Valda together with Zé’s youngest sister, supporting her sister-in-law, appeared out of goodness knows where and began to grapple with Maria Luísa. Once again, Zé
lost his patience and pulled out his revolver. ‘I clouted each one over the head with the butt of my revolver, sent all three home and sambaed down the avenue alone.’

  In his double life, he had three children with Maria Luísa. He was later caught holding up a shoemaker’s, not far from the Casa de Detenção itself.

  On his first Sunday in prison, he received a visit from Valda. They sat holding hands on a bench covered with a blanket, by the wall. After a time, Zé heard over the loudspeaker:

  ‘Kenedi Baptista dos Santos, please come to the entrance of the pavilion.’

  He felt a shiver in his stomach. It could only be Maria Luísa! He excused himself from Valda, ran to the boiler room next door and dirtied himself with grease. He found his mulatta at the door, smiling and glad to see him. He kissed her ceremoniously so as not to touch her with his dirty hands and explained:

  ‘My love, it was so good of you to come but, unfortunately, I can’t invite you in ‘cause I’m fixing a boiler that burst and the man wants everything ready by the time visitin’ hours are over.’

  ‘Zé, you’re with that slut. You never worked when you were on the outside; do you mean to tell me that in prison, on a Sunday, you’ve decided to turn over a new leaf?’

  There was no arguing with the facts, he thought, and gave in to her female logic.

  ‘All right, it’s true, but you’re here and now there’s no turnin’ back. Today the three of us are gonna come to an understandin’.’

  It was hard to convince her to meet her rival. Sitting on the bench, Valda couldn’t find the words to express what she felt when she saw him arrive with Maria Luísa, offer her a place on the bench and sit between the two of them. There was a long silence.

  Finally, in a low voice to avoid a scandal, Valda turned to him and said:

  ‘How can you bring this whore here?’

  ‘Darling, Maria Luísa isn’t a whore. She works in a textile factory and is a loving mother to our three children.’

  He then turned to Maria Luísa.

  ‘And you said outside that Valda was a slut. That’s not true either. She’s hard-workin’, with an office job down at the City Hall, and looks after the four children that we brought into this world.’

  ‘You’d better decide now which one of us you want to be with,’ said Maria Luísa, with which Valda immediately agreed. Zé was disconsolate.

  ‘You’re going to break my heart in half like that.’

  According to Zé, the two of them eventually learned to live in such great concord that they would even take their seven children for Sunday walks together in the park. When he got out, he told me, he was going to realise his old dream of bringing his two families together under one roof, all living in peace.

  Blackie

  Blackie had a tough start in life: ‘My mother killed . . . I think it was her lover who showed up drunk and wanted to smack us around again. My dad couldn’t know about it ‘cause he was locked up in the State Penitentiary. That was when we all rebelled and each one went his own way.’

  There were six children: Blackie, four sisters and a younger brother. With the mother in prison, the children were placed in state care, with the girls in one institution and the boys in another. In contrast to his brother, who was more obedient, Blackie didn’t stay long at Asdrúbal Nascimento, an old building in downtown São Paulo where homeless children and youth offenders were kept. He escaped with some older children and disappeared into the streets.

  With all of the wisdom of his six years, Blackie lived by his wits in the city. He slept under the awnings of buildings rolled up in a blanket, with newspaper stuffed inside his clothes, stole wallets, sold bags of sweets and chewing gum and took part in arrastões7 with his older companions. ‘Every now and then, I’d be picked up again and taken back to Asdrúbal Nascimento. I didn’t even get upset. I was learnin’ on the blackboard of life.’

  One day they would get distracted and he would run away again. ‘So I made my way as a thief. A kid would go past, all cute and smiley, dressed up for a special occasion, others with their toys, and I had nothin’. I got kinda selfish, ‘cause I wanted things but couldn’t have ‘em or didn’t have any way to get ‘em, ‘cause I didn’t have a mother or father to take care of everyday stuff.’

  From the ages of six to eighteen, he spent almost eleven years locked up and one and a half on the streets. He was even sent to a jail in the city of Mogi with a category C classification, for more dangerous youths. He escaped from there too. When he turned fifteen, his father was released from the penitentiary, determined to reunite his family. He gathered up a daughter here; another there; the youngest son, who was well behaved; and then went after Blackie, who was making a living from crime. He found him at a snooker table in downtown São Paulo.

  ‘Enough of this life, son. Your dad’s back.’

  They went to live in a modest little house and all had jobs except Blackie, who would bring home a steady supply of stolen groceries, sweets and soft drinks. One day Juciléia, his oldest sister, fell in love with a worthless sort. The father, who had suffered in jail and didn’t want criminals in the family, forbade her to see him. One night, when he got home from work, he found the daughter’s boyfriend sprawled across the sofa holding half a bottle of beer. He saw red. ‘He said he didn’t want criminals in our house and the next time he’d put him back in the street with a beatin’.’

  The boyfriend took it badly. ‘It pissed him off and he shot me dad twice in the stomach.’

  As fate would have it, Blackie arrived home at that exact moment, accompanied by his .22, which went everywhere with him. He saw his father lying on the floor and the boyfriend still holding the gun, with his back to the door. ‘I just said, “What’s this?” and as he turned around I shot him in the head several times.’ So as not to leave the body in front of his family, in the living room, Blackie dragged it into the middle of the street and told his sisters to call the police, who arrived quickly, and an ambulance, which took hours. He was sent back to the juvenile detention centre.

  His father had two operations and escaped with his life, his sister forgot the boyfriend, married and started a family, like the other three, and his brother got a job with a good company. Blackie, however, continued living out his destiny.

  He arrived at the Casa de Detenção for the first time when he was eighteen. One night, he and four friends had been taking a taxi home from their samba school rehearsal, when a police car flashed its light for them to pull over. Against his passengers’ orders, the driver, who was totally innocent, pulled the car over and threw himself onto the asphalt with his hands on his head. Blackie and his friends dashed out firing their guns. ‘I was shot six times. I got two in my back, one in the belly, three in the chest and one grazed my ear, which I don’t even count. But I wasn’t left handicapped or nothing.’

  He served nine months and was released again, because the judge determined that he had acted in self-defence. After all, the police had also fired and weren’t wounded.

  On the outside, his happiness was short-lived, as always. The police surrounded the favela where he lived as they searched for him. ‘I got caught, ‘cause they took me by surprise. They handcuffed me, put me in the van and took me to a deserted forest. There, they made me get out with my hands behind my back, in handcuffs, and told me that I’d killed a cousin of theirs, who was also a cop, but nothin’ was proved in court ‘cause the witness didn’t recognise me, and besides, I’d only just been released from jail two weeks before.’

  This time his punishment left a mark. He was shot eighteen times: in the back, legs and arms. One bullet entered through his upper jaw, passed behind his eyeball and stopped in his brain, near another that had entered through his skull: ‘The two of them are in my head to this day, but they don’t affect me. Thank God, I can talk normally and think the right ideas. The only one that affected me was one they gave me in the spine, where they put the gun, fired and said, “Get up, scumbag!”’ Blackie tried, but his
legs didn’t obey him. If he didn’t die, he’d be crippled, they said. ‘Then they put the .22 in my hand, and fired three times, as if I’d had a shoot-out with them. They grabbed me, swung my body back and forth and threw me back in the van and drove off slowly. I was bleeding out, my legs dead, and they were as calm as cucumbers. They only turned on the siren when we got near the Clínicas Hospital. These days I think what they did was pretty cowardly.’

  He spent several days in intensive care, full of drips and surgical drains. The hospital didn’t even wait for him to recover fully before discharging him; they were afraid his cohorts would show up to rescue him. He ended up in post-op care at the State Penitentiary hospital.

  He spent approximately ten years in that prison, in a wheelchair, until he was transferred to a semi-open prison, where he served three months and was released.

  He only spent ten days on the outside because, according to him, he was set up by the police, who claimed to have caught him with one and a half kilos of crack, ten machine guns and a thirteen-round Taurus PT: ‘It went to court and I proved that there was no way – as a paraplegic, handicapped – I could have made contact with any criminal, ‘cause I lived in a favela and didn’t have a vehicle to get around in. Dunno why, but the judge didn’t listen to me and sent me to a police lock-up. I got shunted from one lock-up to the next, with sores on my ass, without any way of lookin’ after them and pus oozin’ out of my dead flesh.’

  When I met Blackie, he was in a wheelchair, with a urinary catheter, sentenced to forty-eight years. With a face sculpted like an African statue, he wore a permanently standoffish expression. His legs were paralysed and hypotrophic, his skin was scaly and he had such a deep sore in one buttock that two limes could have fitted in it. The wound exposed the anatomy of deep muscle bundles and part of his hip joint.

  One of the guys in the infirmary dressed the wound on a daily basis. With tweezers, he’d poke around in it with a tuft of gauze soaked in nitrofurazone ointment mixed with sugar. He had to be quite forceful in order to stimulate healing. It didn’t hurt as it had lost all sensitivity.