São Paulo Noir

by Tony Bellotto

  Edu promised to take her out of that life as soon as he found work. He didn’t want to see her with all those men and was consumed by jealousy at the mere thought of her in bed with someone else.

  The nights when he went to pick her up, they would have dinner at the Planeta on the corner of Rua Augusta, which stayed open late, and end the night in her small apartment on Teodoro Baima. At the nightclub, she prayed for the time when she could go home and watch a film on TV, holding hands with her boyfriend on her new sofa.

  After two months, they were practically living together. She took care of the household bills, as well as his expenses—only until he got a job, he insisted.

  One night Edu showed up agitated, extremely talkative, his eyes bloodshot and his nose itching from cocaine. She removed her makeup and went to bed without saying a word.

  The next day he apologized, wept, said he was depressed about not having work and being obliged to live off his companion, like a gigolo. This was why he’d snorted the line his friend gave him. He asked her to trust him, swore he wouldn’t disappoint her.

  “A false promise—in reality he was already doing crack.”

  She did everything to get him off the drug, even tracking him down among the crackheads on the sidewalk at the Estação da Luz. When she managed to bring him back, he would sleep for two days and two nights, waking up well-behaved, affectionate, committed to kicking the curse that was destroying him so they could live in peace . . . promises kept until the next time he disappeared.

  It was raining the night that Margot screamed in horror when she opened the door to the studio apartment. Everything had been stolen—the TV, the sound system, the clock on the wall, silverware, pots and pans, clothes, sneakers, and the transistor radio from the night table.

  “He even took my açaí necklace. So cruel! How much could that be worth?”

  In desperation, she wandered around Cracolândia until daybreak. No sign of the thief. At home, she sat down on the sofa and cried as she hadn’t since childhood.

  Night after night, she searched among the crackheads sleeping under the marquees at the Estação da Luz and among the groups who gathered in the vicinity where Rua Helvetia crossed Dino Bueno, near Coração de Jesus Square, asking about her boyfriend. But she wasn’t seeking revenge.

  “I was so in love that all I could think about was pulling him out of the gutter, bathing him, making him hot soup, and putting him to bed.”

  Time took on the task of consoling her.

  “People like me are born to be alone. It does no good to dream.”

  Her work at the nightclub helped her overcome the pain of disillusionment. She was popular among the regulars and enjoyed a good relationship with Mr. Gino, the Italian who owned the house. The difficulties began when Mr. Gino hired the services of a new bouncer, Bentão 45, thrown out of the civil police after a scandal involving the extortion of a bank robber whose young son was held hostage until his father paid the ransom.

  Bentão was pushing fifty. He circulated among the brothels, to which he provided protection, wearing a black coat over an abdomen that spilled over his belt. On his wrist gleamed a gold watch, around his neck a chain with thick links visible under his half-open shirt; three rings of wrought silver adorned the three middle fingers of his right hand.

  The arrogant and authoritative posture that he made a point of displaying since his time on the police force, the reputation acquired from deaths he was rumored to have caused, his uncertain relationship with the police, and the inseparable .45 pistol he carried imposed respect among the rowdy customers who tried to hit on women, and those who refused to pay for services rendered or started fights with rivals, upsetting the calm atmosphere. A phone call from the proprietor was all it took for him to be there in five minutes.

  Burned by her earlier experiences with the police, Margot kept a prudent distance after meeting him. She would greet him with a lowered head when they crossed paths at the entrance and would find a reason to move away every time he approached.

  The antipathy was mutual.

  “He wouldn’t look me in the eye. When I said good evening, he almost didn’t answer. He would walk right by me on the floor of the club like I didn’t exist.”

  Upon entering the house, Bentão would drag his massive body to the bar, grab the glass with a double shot of cognac served before he even asked for it, and run his gaze over the customers. When he was irritated with someone, he would set down his glass, walk over to the table, and whisper a few words into the person’s ear—the customer would immediately ask for the check and leave.

  It was said that in the houses under his protection, he only admitted the traffickers who bribed him; those who dared to act on their own were gently invited to vanish, unless they preferred falling into the hands of the drug enforcement agency.

  After a few weeks, the disdain that Bentão demonstrated toward Margot changed its form: he continued not looking at her when they crossed paths and didn’t respond to any timid greeting she gave, but at the end of the night, invariably drunk: “He would look at me as if tearing off my clothes with his eyes.”

  Like the majority of women, she could recognize libidinous male gazes a hundred yards away. Despite her years in prostitution, she still felt intimidated when she encountered them in the street, the supermarket, at Sunday Mass, and other settings alien to the exercise of her profession. The fact that they were now coming from a violent former cop frightened her.

  The fear that took control of her made Margot lose her natural rapport with clients and work companions. She spent nights awake, anxious and constantly looking at the door.

  “He could appear at any moment, and I didn’t know in what state of mind: looking at me with hate or with lust.”

  At five one morning, as she was retouching her makeup in preparation to leave, Bentão blocked the bathroom door.

  “He grabbed me and kissed me on the lips before I could resist. He had a drunk’s tongue, tasting of cigarettes, forcing its way into my mouth. I started to scream. He pushed me hard, I hit my head on the mirror, and glass went everywhere.”

  The next night, he went back to his routine of ignoring her and not responding to her dispirited good evening.

  “It was as if he was ashamed and sorry. He never looked at me that way again.”

  Free from police harassment, Margot recovered her spontaneity. She became increasingly calm. “Freedom tastes different when oppression stops.”

  One night, Mr. Gino called her into his office.

  “You’re the only one in the house who doesn’t do cocaine or cause trouble—just the opposite. I want to offer you a job as manager. You’ll control the coming and going of the employees, the percentage charged by the girls when they go to the rooms, drinks at the bar, the cleaning staff, and you’ll resolve any disputes the women are always creating. In exchange, I’ll give you a room, a salary of 1,800 a month, and a signed work card.”

  It was less than she made as a prostitute, but she went away jubilant. She wouldn’t have to sell her body, wouldn’t have to go to bed anymore with stupid, unpleasant, ugly, potbellied men who suggested the most extravagant sexual acts. Finally, she had succeeded in life.

  “A professional work card, manager of the business, and a room with a desk full of drawers, just for me.”

  She bought a bouquet of roses from an itinerant vendor who hung out by the door, and she went down the street singing. When she entered Roosevelt Square, two buzzed adolescents crossed the square beside her, repeating the refrain of a popular samba in slurred voices.

  Entering her studio apartment, she placed the roses in the vase of the small center table, glanced around, and felt proud of herself. The place was prettier and more orderly than before the robbery: flat-screen TV, picture holder on the bookcase, two little angels with open wings on the wall, the statue of St. Sebastian with pious eyes, riddled with arrows, on top of the dressing table.

  She opened and closed the refrigerator. She wen
t down to the corner bar, sat on a stool at the end of the counter, and ordered a sirloin, rare, with two fried eggs, mashed potatoes, and rice—her favorite dish.

  She was waiting to be served when Bentão appeared at the door and ordered a cognac. He was drunk, as was usual at that late hour. At the other end of the counter, she lowered her head in an effort to remain unnoticed.

  She had barely begun to eat when he came her way. She kept her head down. The ex-policeman stopped beside her, silent.

  After a few interminable seconds, he grabbed her by the chin. “Listen here, you cross-dressing son of a bitch. You goddamn degenerate. I never did like your cocksucking face, you low-life faggot.”

  The punch came with such force that blood from an eyebrow spattered onto the counter.

  Even stunned, she managed to turn her face away from the next blow and dash outside.

  At home, she got a towel to stanch the blood, sat down in bed, and fell into convulsive sobbing.

  “I should have anticipated it. Precisely today, when I was so happy.”

  Absorbed in his glass of cognac, Bentão only realized what was happening when the knife penetrated his back for the first time.

  24-HOUR SERVICE

  by Fernando Bonassi

  Morumbi

  Adviser is a masculine noun with its origin in the Latin assessore, which signifies helper, assistant, counselor, because he is someone who advises an individual or organization in a certain area or task. An adviser’s function is to offer his knowledge, orienting and clarifying issues related to his specialization. There is a common error as regards the spelling of the word: the preferred form is adviser and not advisor.

  It begins at two a.m.

  The senator in question here is a man respected throughout the national ideological spectrum: democratic, religious, advocate for growth; concerned by the political threat represented by his youngest son calling at this hour of the night—Daddy, I fucked up!

  The senator immediately calls the governor of the state and appeals to their mutual family sentiments, of their party and whatever the fuck! He relates what he heard from “his” little boy, passes along an address, and hangs up. It’s well known that the governor of this state wouldn’t be worth a crap without this senator, to whom he owes his first nomination to a post bringing visibility and money: director of public works. A civil engineer from a for-profit university, lousy at math, he was incapable of building the smallest project that wouldn’t collapse. Still, he did know finance and percentages and trends. Uncomfortable with the possible politico-financial repercussions of what was happening, the governor immediately calls the secretary of government (whom he calls “his,” like his wife, free of all awkwardness), reiterating the commitment they have to the others, what they all owe to the administration, to governability—and my, your, our future, goddamnit! He relays what he heard from the senator, gives the name of the son, the address, and hangs up, panting.

  It’s one of the hottest October months since they started keeping records. Secretary of government is a position enjoying the governor’s confidence. The absolute greatest confidence. Without the governor, in fact, “his” secretary of government would likewise not be the big shit he is, whether naturally or by his own efforts, all of them erratic and worthy of limits: a jailhouse lawyer in the most violent area of the northeast, he paid 1,500 US dollars for a competent man to take the bar exam in his place. He passed with flying colors. He was elected president. Startled, lacking intellectual resources or the power to formulate answers on his own, he doesn’t hesitate to call the deputy secretary of government, his person of course, whom he personally appointed when he was nominated by the people of some other somebody . . . The deputy secretary of government didn’t have a pot to piss in when he went to work for the secretary of government, it’s good to remember. It was said he was a violent man who had lost prestige in the area of security thanks to an incident involving the sale of transfers and promotions of civil service employees followed by deaths, many deaths, about whose well-known culpability nothing was ever proven, nor were there living witnesses to testify against him. The secretary of government relates to the deputy secretary of government the case of the senator’s son: Spoiled-rotten little queer! And son of that tremendous whore! What did he say?! He said, “Listen to me, listen to me”! And he repeats what was narrated by the boy’s father to the governor and came to his knowledge through these tortuous calls with cordless telephones, in a dialogue of the blind, the deaf, and the cowardly, and he dictates to him the address he noted down without asking questions. He hangs up not believing he has rid himself of the problem. Fucking ass-kisser like me! That’s what—without saying it to anyone, not even to himself, officially—the deputy secretary of government thinks too, understanding the gravity of the facts, calling at once “his” private adviser, a man selected, nominated, and controlled by him. Somebody under me will take care of it!

  3:10 a.m.

  When the telephone rings, the adviser to the deputy secretary is actually already awake. It’s those guys’ number . . . Lying on his back, water drips off his belly. His desiccated scrotum glued to his legs. The mattress is soaked. It’ll lead to mycosis. Nothing good happens at 3:10. He needs to write himself a reminder to buy cream. For his sunburned thighs. In this heat. What can you expect? That telephone never brings good news either. Besides which, it’s an election year. He answers the phone. I need you. Is it urgent? It’s a fuck-up! What do you think? No room for argument. Write down the address. He leaves his wife grumbling, sleeping naked from the waist down. A beautiful married woman’s ass. Oh, my cazzo. He sticks his hand down his undershorts. His dick responds to the contact, but it’s contained. The couple has a schedule for screwing. Shit . . . Adviser grabs the following day’s clothing, set out in an orderly fashion on a chair. Through the blinds, a sliver of dark night. He leaves before he forgets. He gets dressed in the living room. Still half-asleep, he almost falls. Trips. Jumps. Fuck me! He survives with a bruised shin. The gun, on top of the empty bookcase, he puts in his waistband. The window covers the living room wall, with no view. A few meters away is the neighboring building, and looking, without even wanting to, looking, he sees that behind the curtains several rooms are lit. There is no movement. Many are sleeping. Others are quietly dying. It’s a neighborhood of old people. Retired Italians and Brazilians. A bunch of bums, perverts! They spend the day jerking off and dreaming about what they never were, the pathetic losers . . . Adviser of all trades, he washes his face in the guest bathroom. He’s on his way out. He looks at the door from the outside with his family (a wife and two kids) sleeping inside and runs down the stairs to avoid the hateful creaking of the elevator. He has chills and is sweating when he arrives in the basement. The smell of cement from the remodeled garage is more suffocating than the smoke that lodges in the irregular ceiling. Everyone’s going to die from that, from breathing it. One of these days, at the condo owners’ meeting—his car, at least, didn’t get cold. That helps. And it starts on the first try. It turns out, though, that the battery for the remote control to open the gate is dead and it takes him awhile to wake up the doorman. Bum! Illiterate! Foreigner! The tires squeal on the slippery ramp. He manages to leave. A cry accompanies him: Concha tu madre!

  Four o’clock / Sleep, wake up again . . .

  His eye continues to burn. When he stops at the traffic light, a few birds are already singing as if it were dawn. What the hell is that? It’s way ahead of time, as if the animals are in a hurry for the night to end. What do they know that I don’t? Adviser is melancholic. Tonight’s going to last a hundred years, I think. This is more or less what he feels, or thinks, when he thinks however fleetingly of the service he provides, or doesn’t provide . . . It’s confusing, but obscure, certainly. He ponders this while waiting at the green light, waits at the green light, at the green light he waits . . . Fils de pute! Someone honks behind him. He awakens with a start, vulnerable. Then he becomes frightened of the emptiness
in which he was plunged at that moment. He accelerates, alarmed, pulls out in third gear. The car chokes and lurches along the road. It’s ridiculous. When he enters the lane for the center of the Radial, en route to the West Zone, he nips the median that separates the lanes. He slaps his face—he’ll have to be careful not to do something stupid. On the radio, neosermons (Repent, asshole!) and slow black music (“Let’s blow, baby, let’s blow”). To keep from falling asleep, he drives draped across the steering wheel, his neck stiff and stuck out ahead, both shoulders folded back like a chicken. Suddenly, just past the whorehouse area, the air-conditioning sputters and conks out. He rolls down the windows to the sweetish and nauseating exhalation of the Higienópolis district. He foresees that the lack of sleep is going to catch up with him tomorrow morning. The whole day’s going to be shit, of course. He thinks the car’s AC is still under warranty, maybe, but nowadays it’s really hard to set up an appointment that works with his schedule. The little that he manages to sleep is between the problems that have to be solved. At this time of morning, at least, driving is easy. The road is unoccupied. He steps on the gas. Best to get there fast. He arrives at Rebouças like someone trying to get a dying man to the emergency room, but it’s nothing like that. He goes straight through. Radar hidden in an unlit lamppost under a viaduct in the Butantã registers a fine at 4:43 on this new day. Speeding, six points on his license. At this rate I’m going to reach my limit before vacation!!

  A few minutes past five

  It’s still dark. Continue for three hundred meters . . . It’s a hidden favela of black earth that winds its way down that side of Morumbi. Sharp turn to the left . . . A place that belongs to who knows who, but it faces the Marginal. Sharp turn to the right . . . Down below, waters stagnant for many decades reflect the intelligent, ecologically sound buildings, sold with subsidized financing. Sharp turn to the left . . . The country is experiencing a historic moment of prosperity. Everyone can buy like never before in this land of the needy. It’ll end soon, but who cares for now? Sharp turn to the right . . . The river is dying too, but who worries about something reaching its end? Sharp turn to the left . . . A dog crosses from one side to the other, on top of the water, as if it were a miracle of Christ, placidly leaping over garbage. He’s even pretty! And lame in one leg. Continue for 124 meters and—suddenly it’s dawn. Before the sun appears, brightness emerges on the horizon like a blind lifted for spying. It becomes golden amid the detritus. All of that is democratic. Even if no one wants to see it. And from there rises the stench of a living being rotting slowly, slowly, slo—turn left. The pavement stops. It’s inside the city, but everything is as precarious as if it was the back of something that came to an end. An old earthquake too. The buildings, the parked cars, the trees, everything turns its back on his transit. Continue fifty meters and turn right . . . Up there the hum of traffic long past, a braying of protest from the population, suspended in air, surely. And the street of black earth, greasy, that fades away in a square where light doesn’t enter. The place belongs to the rats. Calmly, promenading. Disgusting animal! Twenty-five of them died and forty-seven more were seriously injured by the approach of the vehicle. Adviser does it on purpose, driving in a zigzag pattern, increasing the contact surface and death by crushing. Damned rodents! Brute force, however, isn’t enough to defeat the quantity of animals available to die until they exhaust the genocidal motorist: You fulfilled your destiny.