Lockdown

by Drauzio Varella

  She was so extroverted that she became the star attraction there. She comforted the suffering, joked and sang in the gallery, and everyone laughed at her saucy ways. ‘The cons need us in this place, Doctor. It’s too many men locked up together, without somethin’ feminine to give ‘em support. I listen, I give advice, I’m affectionate with ‘em, and later they thank me with a packet of cigarettes, a sweet, some jewellery.’

  Two men had left a mark on her heart: a jealous drug dealer in jail and a Frenchman on the outside, who had initially thought she was a woman. She was married to the dealer for one year; to the Frenchman, eight months. He gave her a gold bracelet, clothes, money and a pearl necklace, which she hocked. ‘There was also a hairy Arab, father of three, who fell in love and wanted to put three bullets in me when he found out I was havin’ an affair with a police sergeant.’

  Veronique was always squabbling with the other transvestites in Five but once she had calmed down, she would forgive her companions.

  There’s a lot of competition between us, because everyone wants to be better than the next. If one says she’s goin’ to Italy, her friend who doesn’t have a pot to piss in says she’s been invited to do catwalk work in Japan. If one buys a chicken, the friend who doesn’t have a pot to piss in will even sell her body to show that she’s chic and eats chicken too. They want to make themselves out to be better in everythin’. That’s what causes the knock-down, drag-out fights and the hair pullin’. Then they calm down and make up, ‘cause we don’t hold grudges like them criminals, who’ll kill their friends. Deep down, we’re united because we need each other to survive.

  Rumour had it that years ago in Pavilion Five, late at night, the entire gallery heard a threat from Veronique. ‘It’s Christmas time. Veronique here would like gifts from certain cons so that she won’t tell anyone about the shameful things they ask her to do to them. Verô is very upset. They’ve got twenty-four hours to calm her down, if they don’t want to sully their reputations!’

  The next day, a snoop was astounded by the quantity of expensive presents scattered across her bed.

  It was true, discretion wasn’t her greatest virtue, and many of her problems stemmed from the fact that she didn’t possess this quality, which was fundamental in prison.

  Once, security director Jesus was consulting with inmates in his office in Pavilion Six when Veronique walked in, all effeminate, and said, ‘Help, Jesus, things are gettin’ ugly.’ She crossed the room as she spoke and left through a side door. Immediately behind her came an inmate holding a knife to a warder’s neck, threatening Jesus: ‘If you make a move, he’s dead. I want a transfer to Avaré!’

  Days later, Jesus humorously referred to the incident. ‘She did warn me, grassing at the speed of light like that, but there wasn’t enough time to do anything.’

  In one of the many misunderstandings she got herself into in Five, her cell companions kicked her out. She gathered up her belongings in a huff and said: ‘I’m glad to be leavin’, ‘cause you bitches are so common. Without Verô here to bring you treats, you’ll have to wallow in the prison food the way it is. I’m classy and popular and I’ve got invites to live in any pavilion. You lot are gonna rot on the fourth floor of Five, you east zone scum!’

  She did indeed spend the night in an inmate’s cell in Seven. The fellow was a gentleman and gave her his bed while he slept at her feet, on the ground. Big mistake! The next day, the cleaners saw the scene through the window in the cell door and took the matter to the head cleaner, who expelled the gentleman from the pavilion: ‘Have you ever heard anythin’ so absurd? A respectable criminal puttin’ a faggot in his bed and sleepin’ on the ground! Is everythin’ back to front now?’

  Veronique’s boldest play, however, was duping the director of correctional services, a man who had started his career decades earlier opening and closing the door to Pavilion Nine. A rumour was going around that there was a revolver in Eight. Talk about firearms in the prison was always taken seriously, because if it was true, everyone’s lives were at risk. The director of correctional services locked the pavilion and had it searched cell by cell. They found nothing. He put his network of informers to work and waited, impatiently.

  The next day, Veronique showed up in his office, mysteriously, like a cat.

  ‘Lopes, I know a certain con who’ll give you the owner of the shooter in exchange for a transfer to the Penitentiary. Except that he’ll only talk once he’s been transferred; he’s afraid he’ll die if he opens his mouth first.’

  Once the director had accepted the proposal, Veronique came back with the alleged informer, a wavy-haired guy with a mole on the tip of his chin. She walked over to his desk, while the guy waited warily at the door.

  ‘Lopes, tell the guy here that if he gives you what you want, you’ll give him his transfer to the Penitentiary.’

  ‘It’s true, you can trust me; Veronique’s already spoken to me.’

  ‘See, scaredy cat, didn’t I tell you?’

  Lopes kept his promise. On the Tuesday he transferred the fellow and told his colleagues at the State Penitentiary to pass on the information as soon as he’d talked. Wednesday and Thursday passed without a phone call. On the Friday, the director of correctional services woke up irritated and went straight to the Penitentiary to see what was happening.

  ‘What’s going on? Are you trying to pull a fast one on me? I transfer you and get nothing in return?’

  ‘What do you mean nothin’, Lopes? I sent your 200 reais through Veronique.’

  Lopes later told me that a lifetime wasn’t enough to fully know a prison. At the time, however, he was angry, took the false grasser back to the Casa de Detenção and, to pre-empt any attempts at revenge, transferred Veronique to Yellow, where I went to see her that night, crying from the pain in her inflamed thighs.

  Black Guy

  When I got to the consulting room, Arnaldo wasn’t there. Without him, consulting was complicated because of the bureaucracy with medical records and the release of medications. I enquired about him.

  ‘He’s resolving a little issue in the infirmary and he’ll be right back,’ I was told.

  Arnaldo was taking a while so I decided to go look for him. I found him in the corridor arguing with a group of patients. The conversation was tense; they were accusing him of not delivering the medication that they had been prescribed. A prisoner with burns on his body turned to me.

  ‘Sorry Doctor, we’re sortin’ somethin’ out with our friend here who’s fucked up.’

  To calm everyone down I said that Arnaldo had been working in the infirmary for three months and that I didn’t have any complaints about him. A frail fellow, one of the most worked-up, answered:

  ‘And that’s why he’s gettin’ the opportunity to defend himself. Because there’s already guys sayin’ that when he goes to deliver the medicine down at the back of the gallery tomorrow, he won’t be comin’ back.’

  At this moment, a dark-skinned fellow came walking through the gallery and stopped a metre from the group. Everyone fell silent as he approached.

  ‘I don’t believe you’re debatin’ a problem like this in front of the doctor. Where do you think we are?’

  His interference put an end to the argument. One by one, the group dispersed.

  When I had finished consulting I called for the fellow who had put an end to the fight. ‘Black Guy at your service,’ he said. I asked him to intervene to avoid any violence against Arnaldo. He told me I could rest assured the situation had already been resolved.

  After that, he would always show up to chat. He’d tell me about things that had happened in the prison and how he was worried about his family, especially his oldest boy, a reckless teenager who didn’t obey his mother.

  Black Guy’s past was similar to that of many other inmates: a childhood spent in the unpaved streets of a poor district on the outskirts of the city, lots of siblings and the wrong company. In the 1970s, his father was sentenced to nine years in the Casa de
Detenção, and when he got out he wasn’t the same. ‘He was disturbed in the head.’

  Black Guy wound up in prison after events starting with a hold-up in a jeweller’s in downtown São Paulo. ‘The three of us arranged to meet on the corner near the shop. At nine o’clock, I left the favela and went to get a car with my shooter. Marlon, my neighbour, stopped by Big Brush’s place.’ It all went quickly. The shop assistants handed over everything that glittered, plus the money from the safe. They left without running, turned the corner, got into the stolen car and took off. They abandoned the car before they got to the favela and entered on foot.

  In his shack, they had barely begun dividing up the takings, when Black Guy had an unpleasant surprise. ‘So there I am, head down, and I glance out the corner of my eye and what do you know, Big Brush’s hand is on his shooter! But he was a bit nervous, lookin’ from side to side, so I took advantage of his distraction and took him out. It was a matter of survival. If I hadn’t, I’d have been the one coppin’ it.’ He fired three times. Big Brush didn’t have time to react; he stayed where he had fallen. Black Guy immediately pointed his gun at Marlon’s chest. ‘He might have been plottin’ with Big Brush or taken the liberty to disagree with my actions.’ It was neither; Marlon just sat there, frozen, with startled eyes.

  ‘Why did you just sit there while I blasted him?’ asked Black Guy.

  ‘’Cause he’d already called me and told me he was gonna take you out so we could split your part.’

  His answer left Black Guy perplexed.

  ‘Jeez, you knew he was gonna waste me and keep all the takings, considerin’ we’re all in on this together and if one gets busted the others do too! You could’ve avoided this shit and talked him out of such an ugly idea.’

  Black Guy says he only escaped with his life because he was systematic. ‘When it’s time to divvy up I don’t sleep on the job. It’s eye for eye, tooth for tooth, ‘cause partners are partners and money’s the Devil’s curse.’

  Marlon’s excuse was that Big Brush had a number of homicides to his name and might have killed him if he had said something. Black Guy didn’t accept his justification.

  ‘Jeez, man, so you were scared, whatever; but you don’t kill your friends. If you’d’ve said somethin’, no one would’ve died, ‘cause we would’ve talked it out. This business of shootin’ friends isn’t my thing.’

  ‘Sorry, my friend, I guess I was a bit weak on that point,’ replied Marlon.

  ‘Then let’s let it go. Plottin’ to double-cross someone’s the ugliest thing. A guy who acts like that is a Judas, the person who spat in Jesus’s face!’

  They dumped the body in a brook and the incident was kept a secret. ‘In the favela, people have eyes but they don’t see, ears are deaf and no one talks.’

  A few days later, the body showed up in the Rio Tietê. ‘All swollen, Doctor, ugly, decomposin’.’

  Black Guy attended the burial. ‘We’d grown up together. If I hadn’t gone it would’ve looked like I was to blame for what had happened.’

  To deflect any suspicion, he spent the entire wake next to the body. Leaning against the coffin, memories came back to him like in a film.

  ‘Jeez, man, you really ballsed things up. That’s not nice, wantin’ to hog everythin’ for yourself! You shouldn’t have done that! ‘Specially ‘cause we grew up together, flyin’ kites and pinchin’ guavas from the old lady’s house. See what happens when you get selfish? You end up with nothin’. The only thing you’ll be takin’ with you from this earth are those white rosary beads wrapped around your hand.’

  A few months later, Marlon robbed a two-storey house in Pinheiros. He was unlucky: it belonged to a police detective. He was caught and the police hung him upside down to get him to give them the location of the things he’d stolen, which by this time had been sold. ‘At a drug den in the favela of Mimosa, to a guy known as Good Hair.’

  To escape the pau-de-arara without informing on Good Hair, who belonged to a heavily armed gang, Marlon decided to give them the name of the person who had killed Big Brush.

  Black Guy wound up at the DEIC, where he found his informant friend.

  ‘Marlon, did you give ‘em my name for the job too?’

  ‘No, not the job.’

  ‘Shit, man, but did you have to go and give me up for the homicide? It would’ve been better if you’d given me up for one of the jobs.’

  ‘I gave you up for the homicide ‘cause Big Brush’s brothers were thinkin’ it was me who killed him. After all, we left his place together that day. I come back and he shows up deceased.’

  Once again Black Guy was magnanimous.

  ‘Jeez, my friend, that makes me sad! I could involve you in the homicide, but that’s not how I do things. Since you gave me up, I’ll back you up: that I killed him myself, threw him in the river and you’re clean.’

  Truth be told, his benevolence also served less altruistic interests; if he’d told the police everything, he’d also be tried for car theft and holding up the jeweller’s. Besides which, getting Marlon off could be advantageous in the future. ‘I’ve got a copy of everythin’, showin’ that he gave me up but I didn’t grass on him. If he ever crosses paths with me in prison and tries to take advantage of me, it’ll be my turn to say: now you’re the one who’s gonna get it, ‘cause you owe me!’

  Nevertheless, Black Guy claimed he wasn’t in the habit of getting even like that, because of his principles. ‘I don’t operate that way, so as not to destroy the con’s reputation, in which case he’d be beaten, robbed and kicked out. It’s not my way. I prefer to have eyes but not see, have a mouth and keep it shut.’

  The judge didn’t believe his story that he’d killed his accomplice in self-defence. He also found him guilty of hiding a body and, as an aggravating circumstance, he deemed the fact that Black Guy had gone to the funeral and positioned himself thoughtfully in front of the coffin to be a cold-blooded act. He got nineteen years and six months.

  One afternoon, as I was crossing the pavilion courtyard, I saw him having a serious conversation with a young fellow, whose skin was lighter than his. It was his oldest son, who had just arrived in the Casa, sentenced to three years and two months for armed robbery.

  Eye for an Eye

  Cigar walked in with his finger buried in a cooked onion. His left hand was supporting his right hand, the fingers of which were bent, with the exception of his index finger, which was knuckle-deep in the steaming-hot onion.

  He sat down in front of me, with an expression of pain, and unsheathed the hurt finger. It was very swollen; just beneath the start of his fingernail there were two deep symmetrical cuts, in the middle of a pseudoaneurysm8.

  ‘Rat bite?’

  ‘Yeah, Doctor. It hit the bone.’

  The prison was infested with various breeds of rats. In the dark, they scampered through the galleries, corridors and the insides of cells. In the general kitchen, after dinner had been distributed, the cleaners would have barely finished mopping the pot-holed floor when the army of rodents would invade the territory and raid the pantry. When the new day dawned, they would hide in the drains until night fell again. They were invincible.

  ‘It happened half an hour ago.’

  ‘A rat bite during the day?’

  ‘I was workin’, Doctor, clearin’ out that drain that gets clogged up in Two.’

  Cigar had removed the iron cover of the drain in front of Pavilion Two. The hole was filled to brimming with gunk and old food floating in it. He climbed down into the filthy water, knee-deep, and started emptying it out with a bucket. When the thick drainpipe emerged Cigar stuck his hand down the side to remove a plastic bag that was in the way. At that moment he felt a stabbing pain. ‘It started as a fine, stinging pain in me fingertip, and spread like an electric shock down me arm. It was horrible; it even gave me a bitter taste in me mouth.’

  He pulled his hand back in reflex and the rat came with it, hanging from his fingertip, biting hard. It was black, eno
rmous. ‘I even thought it might be one of those little dogs that posh ladies like.’

  In his desperation, he swung his arm through the air and hit the rat against the cement, but its grip was so strong that it didn’t let go. Tormented by the pain, with the rat dangling from his bone, Cigar lifted his arm as high as he could and slammed the animal onto the ground with all his strength.

  ‘Then the wretched fucker, excuse the language, finally let go. It lay there writhin’ with its paws in the air.’

  ‘Did it die?’

  ‘It didn’t, Doctor. It was the Devil himself!’

  That was when Cigar, blind with rage, grabbed his enemy with both hands, held its mouth shut so he wouldn’t get bitten again and took his revenge.

  ‘I sank my teeth into the miserable thing’s mind. I bit hard, until he stopped thrashin’. Then I brushed my teeth, and that was that.’

  Head Over Heels

  Cigar had a white smile and perfect teeth, a rarity in the prison. He was a villain through and through, however, in the way he walked, talked and looked. An incorrigible thief, this was his second time in prison, with a sixteen-year sentence.

  Two years after his run-in with the rat, he convinced Squint, a cross-eyed thief interned in the infirmary with scabies all over his body, to sell his own mattress to buy crack. Then he tricked his friend, smoked the rocks of crack on his own and, when an infirmary employee found out about the sale, Cigar kicked up such a big stink that Squint not only took the blame for everything, but also got thirty days in Solitary.

  Two weeks later, Cigar appeared in the consulting room with a ceremonious air, accompanied by a big-nosed, Fellini-esque inmate.

  ‘Doctor, do you think you could have a look at my friend here? He’s got a pesky itch.’

  It was the unsuspecting buyer of Squint’s infested mattress.

  After that, I didn’t see Cigar for a while. One day, he returned with a bad cough, fever, laboured breathing and sunken eyes: pulmonary tuberculosis with fluid on the right lung.