São Paulo Noir

by Tony Bellotto

  6:15, more or less

  The senator’s official car is locked, its windows fogged, and inside the boy sobbing. The fragile sound can be heard from outside. Open this door, open this piece of shit, boy! Adviser shakes the senator’s car, but the lock doesn’t yield. Goddamn faggot! He returns to his car. He opens the trunk and, in it, the toolbox. He finds a piece of wire, which he twists into a hook. He tries to use it on the door of the senator’s official car, but now he sees that the doors are impervious to his cheap trick. I’m getting too old for this. Many would agree. It happens that Adviser has bills, obligations, desires, and vices to sustain despite the final decadence that is already showing signs of having installed itself in his middle-aged body. My knee! My kidneys! My stomach! Hell . . . Everybody knows the frying pan in which he lives, but it shouldn’t be this hot. This summer, after four years of suffocating weather, will still be the worst of the decade, marked by a volcano out of control in the Andes. At least I’m not Paraguayan or Panamanian or Peruvian! It’s a consolation that vanishes in an instant: here, the pollution and humidity are greater, the rain is acidic, and the tomatoes and onions are full of pesticides. Us spaghetti-lovers are gonna get fucked, that’s for sure! Down below a speeding ambulance turns on its siren, but nothing happens. No one moves. I’m gonna have to break this window. Adviser doesn’t want to damage government property. An automobile means a lot in the culture of movement of these people. Especially a luxury vehicle. And even more the official car of a senator. He calls his immediate boss, the deputy secretary of government. The official answers, but paralyzed with doubt, with any doubt that presents itself, he decides not to take responsibility and calls his superior, the secretary of government. The secretary of government doesn’t know how to answer either, also doesn’t like to make decisions, and much less wishes to risk making his situation worse: I don’t want to get involved, my Father in Heaven, I don’t want to get involved! And so he consults the governor: I should be taking care of our public interest, colleague! The governor, really, is the one who has the most assets and bank deposits abroad to lose through denunciations. There is, of course, the authority of the representative position, but the authority doesn’t belong any longer to the man elected. It’s like a modern soccer player: 29 percent of his passes are as stockholder, 20 percent belong to another minority partner, and the majority are of that “friend of his,” the godfather, the boss, the nervous senator there in his official residence, in the living room, on his third whiskey, in a robe, with his wife yakking hysterically from the living room to the kitchen, from the kitchen to the living room, to the kitchen, to the living room, to the kitchen: Use the hammer on the door of my official car, Governor, everyone’s worried about this son of a hooker! And he hangs up. The senator’s wife asks for respect from her husband. The husband tells his wife to fuck herself and her need for respect. He says he pays her bills for her to keep quiet. The woman cries a little and goes up to the bedroom. It is not a generation of statesmen. The governor doesn’t even hear the end of the conversation, but the necessary information, urgent to convey, delays in getting back to the private adviser, to them all, three calls on the congested telephone system later.

  And so it’s only 7:30

  Not with a hammer but with the South African stainless steel tip of a German screwdriver, in the corner of the door of the Japanese vehicle, a small twist, a sharp blow, and that does it. Everything shatters. The pieces of glass fall on the boy, the urchin, the—they’re in the backseat. There are two. Mucus is coming from the nose of one of them, the senator’s son. Beside him, someone of the same size. Black. Fainted? The unconscious youth’s pants are open, his penis out, large, flaccid, fallen on his thigh. There’s a lot of glass, and cocaine. The effect of the drug depends on user, quantity, concentration, method of use, ambient conditions, and the activity exercised (wake, party, sports, etc.). Did he vomit? I’m also not Colombian or Romanian or Estonian . . . and they’re not the most violent people in the world. Only the most hypocritical. Yes, he vomited, on his chest. A pig. And a queer. What did you say? Nothing, my boy. The low flight of a helicopter that continues to the dead river, broadcasting news of traffic along its banks. Toxic dust that has settled onto the muddy ground rises. We were talking and . . . he stopped. Suddenly. It happens. Adviser checks the unconscious youth’s heartbeat, first the wrists, then the throat. He quickly understands that his immobility and languor are merely the beginning of rigor mortis. Died of a heart attack. Poor guy. The city is waking up, believing it is just another day, but many will be laid off when they arrive at work. My father is going to kill me. Adviser is there also to calm things down. There’s no sickness without remedy. Or pain without end. Someone is coming down the hill on the other side of the field and pretends not to see the nakedness of a corpse lying on the backseat of an official car. My mother is going to kill me. Dona Iolanda doesn’t have to know everything that happens to you. Do you think so? I’m sure. The telephone rings. In the photo on the screen, Adviser’s daughters at the beach, without his wife. But it’s she who wants to know why he left. I can’t now, dear. Ah, is that so? I call because of love and this is how you treat me! She hangs up on him. In itself, love is a second family to provide for, he philosophizes. And cowardice too . . . But it’s good, who can understand? So, without anyone below and less important to appeal to, Adviser turns to the senator’s son: Give me a hand with your—Adviser grabs the body by the hands, the senator’s son by the legs, to move the cadaver to the other vehicle. It’s not easy. The head dangles grotesquely. The dead man’s pants descend to his feet. His penis shakes in view of a bystander. What’re you looking at?! You’re still gonna be president of the republic someday, so listen to what I’m telling you, boy! Adviser is there also to instill confidence, self-confidence, distrust . . . You think so? For sure, every indication’s there. The body must be folded and turned on its side to fit into the trunk. Three hundred liters, huh? So skinny, so dead . . . It appears the senator’s son is praying. O Lord God . . . no. And God doesn’t appear either. The toolbox spilled its contents into the space where the spare tire sits. It’s gonna be one helluva job to reorganize that shit. How? Adviser points to the dead man: What’s his name? Now you got me. I don’t know, but they always use the same name, don’t they? Adviser is sorry he asked: I understand, you little son of a bitch. What did you say, hireling? You’re young and I understand your behavior, you’re somebody rich, was what I said, boss. Adviser has to guide the senator’s son to the steering wheel of the official car in which he was found. The youth is bewildered. The official car is switched every other year by the same senator for more than six congresses. My father is a success. True, you can go home now, there’s a football game tomorrow. I don’t know how to thank you, I’m going to talk to my father. Money wouldn’t be too bad, thinks Adviser. They say the economic situation is going to worsen at any moment, and his job, though one of trust, doesn’t offer great stability. Thank you, young man (you faggot, for the opportunity to help you, and do recommend me!), yes (I want money, goddamnit!), to your father (that infernally powerful cuckold)! See you later (fucker, see you never!).

  Almost 9

  When the boy, the senator’s son, virtual heir to his father’s democratic vote (it’s predicted it’ll be two congresses before he’s recruited for the first time), descends the hillside in the late-model official car, man and machine disappear in the traffic along the Marginal highway, headed for the old South Zone. Something stirs with fear and haste, but it’s invisible. No one breathes the contaminated air. They speed by, armed, with their fingers raised and their noses upright. For sale. For rent . . . Free! Even the most recent initiatives are abandoning the place. I’m not from Ecuador, or the Dominican Republic, or from Paraíba. Glory, Lord!

  10 o’clock

  Adviser takes the road back. Accelerates. He remembers he hasn’t had breakfast, then begins to feel hungry. His vision darkens. It’s rapid. Hypoglycemia? That’s all I need! The sun bea
ting down on the viscous river delivers a slap in the face to anyone who looks at it. I don’t have health insurance. What will he say when his daughter asks again, in English, What the fuck did you do, Daddy?! He thinks about his cargo, the cadaver: No one has “health insurance” . . . And laughs. At the sadness of the thing, of course: a War with capital “W”! He retraces his route over the dry asphalt, now from south to west and from west to east. There’s a bakery in Mooca that makes grilled bread pressed flat and covered with melted butter, so greasy it smells bad! That’s where I’m going! Traffic and lost time. Two delivery boys on scooters on 23. They’re all cheap. What do you want to eat? Your mother, you Portagee! What’d you say, asshole?! A grilled sandwich, brother, a grilled sandwich, that’s all. Besides, the orange juice and the special treatment are both sugary. Afterward he accepts a chicken thigh. On the house . . . Two. Toasted and crispy. This crap is from last week and there’s a lot of flour in it, you tightfisted Portagee. Go fuck your mother’s twat, nigger! It’s very good, thank you! Both he and the owner of the bakery are going to die from heart attacks. But it won’t be from love or hard drugs like the cadaver in Adviser’s trunk. It’ll be from those truncated curses and bad cholesterol, the LDL that clogs veins and arteries, leading to heart attacks and vascular accidents with high fatality rates. And it’s not easy to get rid of a dead body nowadays! That’s the truth. The exploding city eliminated vacant lots and the walls came down, replaced by iron bars (safer), exposing to the indiscreet gaze of passersby areas formerly used for dumping the victims of vigilantes. The sites now are in locations more and more distant from the center of the city and hidden, increasing the costs of transportation and the logistical necessities. Also, there are lots of cameras spread out in the streets, people pretending to be speaking on their cell phones when in reality they’re filming everything that goes on: Smile, you’re being caught in the act.

  Between 11 and 12, he’s in the middle of the East Radial

  Telephone: Forgive me, but the girls drive me crazy! They left now, thank God, for the van to school that will keep them far from me for a while, amen! I love you. I love you too. Me too-too . . . One, two, three! Hang up! You hang up. One, two, three. Go . . . One, two—line dead. He hangs up. Since parking is more expensive than gasoline, vehicles remain in perpetual motion. It’s not that, properly speaking, they move about in space, in the congested streets. The “elevated highway,” for example, is at a standstill at the moment. The drivers spy upon the intimacy of the new apartments. There’s nothing you can do to get away from it! And Adviser racks his brain, racks his brain, the cadaver in the trunk getting stiff (best answer I: rigidity of the body occurs close to seven hours after death), and him racking his brain, racking his brain until he remembers a doctor beginning his career, a resident in psychiatry, if he’s not mistaken, the son of a cousin of a seamstress who once asked him for a favor, a recommendation for a position as an aide at the Tatuapé Municipal Hospital, a sad memory, since most of those who enter there half-alive end up dead, like a death camp for the poor, given the gravity of everything that happens in the region, the difficulty of being attended to, the unavailability of doctors, medicine, plasma, and replacement organs. The telephone rings: his wife wants to know if he’s coming for lunch: Don’t bother me! What did you say? I’m sorry, sweet—she hangs up.

  12:45

  A Korean beggar mistaken for a Bolivian panhandler was lynched on Avenida Liberdade. Many cars ran over the body. Ahead, the East Radial is bloody. Isn’t there a rush hour anymore in this shithole inferno? And Adviser misses those days when things that went wrong had known languages, scheduled days, and set hours to happen. We could escape ahead of time! And now we have highway police roadblocks on top of everything else. I’m gonna die of sunstroke! Police cars machine-gunned by private militias and by the mafia of private security syndicates. The smell of burned metal and flesh. He shows his membership card for a gun club and quickly passes through the checkpoint, accelerating, closing his eyes: Have a good day, sir!

  Only 1 p.m.

  He arrives at Avenida Celso Garcia, where the businesses show signs of failing once again: doors closed by legal decisions, walls covered with socialist protest graffiti, private buildings without maintenance, mustn’t-be-missed clearances, idlers, drunks, cripples, and unattended buses occupying the sidewalks and passageways, blocking even ambulances from approaching. Many die from being run over, others involved in far-off accidents waiting for some driver heading in the opposite direction (Penha/Lapa right-hand lane) to yield to the rescue vehicle (Lapa/Penha left-hand lane).

  Police presence is common to guarantee the right of passage for citizens with special needs, doctors, and patients.

  The Dr. Carmino Caricchio Municipal Hospital has beautiful photos on its apps, but in reality its state of preservation is deplorable—the outside plaster cracking; tiles on the inside coming loose, trying to flee from the walls at the earliest opportunity, preferring suicide, disemboweling from the concrete, the hardware eaten away by obscene infiltrations; windows fracturing under the weight of toxic dust from the Sapopemba district; and the niches in the facade, which now serve to merely collect corrosive materials, bird fleas, and young pigeons. Adviser goes to the old PBX, asks the operator to page the doctor he names: Celso . . . or Carlos . . . He doesn’t remember. Attention, Dr. Celso . . . or Carlos . . . The person looking for you is at the entrance to the ER and wants something . . . Adviser takes out his small notepad. At least I’m not some stable hand from Jardim Pantanal or Recife . . . He consults the notepad, which lists on one side (front, normal, in blue) those he helps, and on the other (back, upside down, in red) those who help him, in a systematic network of suspicion, with feedback resulting from small influences at various levels. I don’t like owing anyone, but I can’t help it, I need to take care of this, so fuck it. Adviser waits, in the resigned silence characteristic of his generation, standing in a line of kidney patients (transplants, dialysis, etc.), only to urinate in one of the most fetid bathrooms of the public hospital system: the one for the cleaning staff.

  2:50 p.m.

  In the hospital parking lot the cars are more or less new but already rundown, with patches of plastic putty, stickers, and compulsory safety items fastened with wire, beneath a thick coating of soot. Neglect . . . Gray from the ashes of some volcano, perhaps. Or faulty engines. Many vehicles are covered with tickets, past-due bills, and police notices, some of them involved in kidnappings, skirmishes, and obscene incidents, among other criminal activities, and they remain there abandoned until the Department of Transportation tows them away. In the meantime, the car watchers hired by the city (the most stable in their career) rent a reclining bench for thirty reais a night and an entire stall for eighty, to the foreigners who live in the vicinity. There’s no bathroom—businesses only allow paying customers to use them—and bottles of urine and bags of feces are deposited on the ground. Where they ferment—like cadavers! A guy in a lab coat approaches. Remember me? More or less. Son of a bitch! What? Adviser adjusts his shirt inside his pants, allowing the butt of the gun to show. You don’t remember that you owe me? The doctor is a coward, and he decides to stay alive: Maybe I do remember you, yes. But what can I do for you? While this is going on, the dead and wounded from daily combat, with all the difficulties of the drug trade and locomotion, are arriving at the emergency room, many of them half dead, the way the ER doctors like, grotesque and hunchbacked with twisted members, bones exposed through the flesh, snorting: Is there a rush hour anymore in this shithole inferno or isn’t there? The telephone again: Who are you talking to? He’s . . . “a friend,” dear. Someone I recommended. I’ll call you later. You bastard—he hangs up.

  3:30 p.m.

  Adviser looks around, makes sure they’re not being observed, that the surveillance cameras in the parking lot are broken, or missing, or were never activated, and with repeated gestures, silently, motions Dr. Celso (or Carlos?) to come closer. He opens the car’s trunk. The s
eminude body of the young black man remains doubled up, however much space there was for it to relax and expand near the toolbox. The tension in the fibers of the upper members is evident. And screwdrivers. And scattered screws. Glass, cocaine. His penis down there is still wilted and inert (best answer II: rigidity occurs owing to muscular hardening, which disappears in a period of one to six days, when decomposition begins). The physician, Dr. Celso or Carlos, takes a used surgical glove from the pocket of his lab coat, reluctantly pulls it onto one hand, and pokes the corpse with his fingertips, visibly disgusted, looking for signs of life. But this man is dead! Adviser reminds him (he shows the gun again) that time of death is in itself a matter of dispute: even among doctors! And what may have happened is so-called “brain death,” and therefore a “lesser death.”