São Paulo Noir

by Tony Bellotto

  Cínthia, motionless, begins to cry softly, covers her breasts with her slim arms.

  “You rapist son of a bitch, you’ll get yours in jail, they’ll screw you in the ass every day.”

  “Rapist how? I was here with her, she—”

  “She’s a minor, you sick fuck, look at her. Calm down, girl, what’s your name?”

  “Jaqueline.”

  “Cínthia, you said you—”

  “Shut up, you old son of a bitch, the girl was raped, just look, Esteve, get a photo.” The younger one takes out his cell phone, snaps a picture, the girl lowers her head.

  “For the love of God, I have a family.”

  “Everybody’s got a family, but nobody goes to their home to rape their daughters. They’re gonna ram a broom handle up your ass, you hear? They’re gonna spread your legs and kick you in the balls till they’re bigger than your belly.”

  Odílio sits on the floor, his head in his hands.

  “Toothpaste, they stick a toothpaste tube up your nose, and then punch it and everything goes in, tearing up your guts, I seen it, the stuff busts up everything.”

  “My God, they’re gonna squeeze you, like they say in the joint.”

  “They rip off your nipples, rip ’em off with improvised tools, awful sight.”

  Odílio is crying, takes his hand from his face. He speaks in a low voice: “Can’t we come to some kind of agreement?”

  “Agreement? Just look at the girl there, for Chrissake. All fucked up, what did you do to her?”

  “I didn’t touch her, I swear it.”

  “Swear? You screwed her good, you fucked the girl and now it’s you who’s fucked.”

  The thin one approaches. “If you took her from behind, it’s a violent offense against morality, it can put your ass away for five years.”

  “Please, let’s talk, I can get ahold of some money.”

  The two men look at each other, the younger one goes up to Odílio.

  “Look, my partner is old school, the straight-arrow type, but if you can put your hands on a hundred thousand in cash . . .”

  “Damn, that’s a lot, I can’t raise that much, help me, man, for the love of God.”

  “Help me to help you—look at the girl there, you’re going to be fucked.”

  “I didn’t know, I swear.”

  “Okay, then get on the phone, goddamnit, your situation ain’t easy.”

  Odílio calls, speaks, calls, speaks.

  “I can get thirty thousand . . . thirty, thirty.”

  “I understood, for fuck’s sake.” The bearded man looks at him from a distance and shakes his head, the younger one turns to Odílio.

  “Look, there’s the precinct chief in this deal too, each one gets a cut, he’s already in on it, understand? We can’t settle for less than fifty.”

  Odílio calls, speaks. He succeeds.

  “And where’s the money?”

  “In Leste, we have to go get it.”

  “Shit, that’s too far.”

  “But that’s the only place I can get it, a friend has already left some of it at my house, we can go there and add it to mine that I was saving.”

  “I don’t know, Esteve, let’s handcuff this guy right now.” The bearded man turns his back.

  “Please, let’s go there, get me out of this.”

  The younger man makes a show of pity: “What about the girl?”

  “Fuck, what’re we gonna do with the girl?”

  Odílio doesn’t answer. What to do about the girl?

  “Cínthia, I’ve got a thousand here in my wallet.”

  “Not Cínthia, Jaqueline. I don’t want your shitty money. Can I get out of here, sir?”

  The policeman lets her don her top, and she quickly goes into the bathroom to wash her face, uses the towel to wipe the spittle from her chest, straightens her hair, and leaves without looking back.

  * * *

  Odílio arrives home, everyone is awake.

  “What happened, father?”

  “What was it, man?”

  “Nothing. I need money, did Márcio leave it here?”

  “Wait, I’ll get it.”

  “And also the money from the safe beside the bed.”

  “I’ll go, but all of it?”

  “All of it, woman, go!”

  * * *

  When he goes to deliver it, the bearded man receives a phone call. “What? The chain? Okay, fuck.”

  “Your chain there, my brother.”

  “My chain?”

  “Yeah, hand it over, or you want us to go in and explain the situation to your wife?”

  The men leave, stop at a nearby gas station, exchange their T-shirts for two regular polos.

  “Time to become normal civilians.”

  They go into the store and buy energy drinks and some snacks.

  * * *

  Jaqueline arrives into the flow that Friday, her iPhone 6 at her waist, her new piercing a platinum crucifix.

  “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

  “Cínthia. What’s yours, love?

  Coffee Stain

  by Olivia Maia

  Sé

  Black coffee: pure, strong, thick. She added five spoonfuls of sugar and stirred until it cooled, until the voices around her penetrated her thoughts as if they were part of them, as if they emerged from them. Anything else, ma’am?

  It was a Thursday and the restaurant was crowded. What juices do you have? The coffee was never strong enough, and she didn’t even like coffee, much less sweet coffee. A stupid beverage, and the stupid little sweet sitting there beside the cup, almost crumbling in the saucer. Can you bring me the check, please? It’s the sugar that gave the liquid that sticky consistency. Is this dish enough for two?

  She raised the spoon with a bit of coffee and spilled it onto the napkin on the table. Then she lifted the paper to see whether the tablecloth also absorbed any of the liquid. Is this knife enough to kill someone?

  Who was laughing?

  She called herself Lina, mainly because no one would call her anything, and she almost always forgot the name when she introduced herself to someone. She was called by a different name each day. They say it’s a butcher knife, for slicing pork, I don’t know. She didn’t like senhorita, which seemed as if they were saying she was incapable, incomplete, awaiting the man of her princess dreams. Like one waiting for life to begin without ever risking the initial steps. Would you like coffee, senhorita? “Lina” was good, it sounded like a fairy name, something taken from a fantasy book. It wasn’t the name she had heard during most of her childhood, but then she remembered almost nothing from her childhood, except an immense desire to laugh at the voices of others. Who carries a butcher knife in their pocket?

  (And leaves walking down the street.)

  At times, the voices were amusing. Lina raised the cup to her lips but stopped when she caught the sweet smell of sugar. She let her hand hover in the air for a time, then spilled part of the drink onto the saucer and the crumbly sweet, carefully so as not to splash her clothes, because no one likes clothes stained with sweetened coffee. She rested the cup on the table and tipped the saucer a bit so the liquid could escape and stain the tablecloth again. She ran a fingernail over the tacky stain and discovered nostalgia lost in memory: the touch of the damp cloth, the friction at the tip of her index finger. It’s seven centimeters, isn’t it? I think I read that somewhere on the Internet. How curious: a reduction to the metric. She had never been very good at math. She vaguely remembered the smile of the elementary school teacher—a red mouth, terribly red. Thank you, come back soon. You’re welcome. Lina, they’re calling you outside. That man who just left, gray suit, graying hair, the face of a politician. How can someone wear a mustache in the twenty-first century, for heaven’s sake. Must be a congressman. Or did he actually say he was a congressman? Come on, you’re not even going to drink the coffee. Leave five reais on the table and get up.

  Who leaves the money on top of the table
and then leaves in the twenty-first century? What’s happened to customs, the best customs? That cinematic attitude of I know how much I have to pay, I don’t want to look the waiter in the eye again.

  Let’s go, Lina.

  A breaded cutlet with sautéed potatoes, please.

  The five-reais bill and another of two, just to be sure and because it wasn’t going to make any difference. That thick wrinkled wad of money that she had in her pocket, without a wallet. She couldn’t remember where she had lost her wallet. It’s gotten cold, hasn’t it? But it’s August, what else can be expected in August? Somebody had said it was going to rain. The congressman with the mustache went down the narrow street with his hands in his pants pockets, a wide step, a lazy step, in narrow-toed shoes that looked like nineteenth-century transatlantic liners. A huge mistake, a transatlantic crossing the dirty black-and-white bricks and skirting puddles that even without rain emerge from the bowels of the earth. But it depends on the organ affected, the size of the cut. Maybe he was a lawyer, because this area is full of lawyers and what a breed, those lawyers. They’re never congressmen. A cup of coffee after lunch and back to the office to invent more bureaucracy to delay for another month any case already lost from the start. Where did you hear that, Lina? Since when do you know anything about the law?

  This place becomes impossible at night.

  The gaze of the woman, you know?, everything the cement and the asphalt and the buzz of cars. The monotonous voice that narrates a repetitive routine of signing documents and copying legal papers, changing a few dates, some names. Always the same boring task; for this she had studied six years? The salary at the end of the month and the bills to pay and the house to clean and clothes to wash and

  (but had she told all that?)

  maybe it would be better to go back to college and study something less useful like art or literature or oceanography

  (leaning against a dirty wall of some gray building after asking, Got a light?).

  Because at times she got lost. She trod paths that were not hers and followed steps that merged into the patterns on the sidewalk. Her reflection in a puddle of water: Do you still remember me? Maybe she was invisible: I nearly didn’t recognize you in the light of day, he would have said if he had said anything. What Lina saw was the spotted leopard printed on orangish paper and Please don’t bother me, I need to go back to work. Or she heard someone calling from the other side of the street, there where a group of ladies gathered inspecting children’s T-shirts priced at 3.99. Afterward, she was lost: she read the name of the street—surely the name of some baron or priest or politician from many years ago.

  Where else had she witnessed that scene, that trickle of dark liquid sliding along the wet ground and disappearing among the black stones to reemerge among the white stones and later the black ones and later . . . Where else? She didn’t remember; perhaps it was the thick coffee on the cheap fabric of the tablecloth. The green-and-white checkered tablecloth. The coffee on the edge and the drops on the floor, in the carpet; the red carpet and—

  Listen, Lina: someone is calling.

  The knife ought to be here somewhere.

  A knife like that can even kill a spotted leopard.

  Two transatlantic shoes half-covered in a puddle of water: one with the tip upward toward the cloudy sky at the top of the buildings; the second toppled and tragic. The improbable puddle in the irregular paving of the slope. The tie with blue and green stripes, the shirt stained wet and dirty, and that impossible, probably imaginary silence

  (or it was the voices that had suddenly quieted)

  the certainty that something was missing from the scene

  someone.

  Why do you get involved in that kind of story, Lina? Better to get out of there, the problem isn’t yours and someone is going to appear, following the stain on the pavement below that creeps between the square bricks. The doorman at the neighboring building pausing for five minutes for a smoke or one of those bored policemen who don’t like people using the narrow street to make their homes out of cardboard boxes. A pile of cardboard and empty plastic bags like an abandoned house, and in the silence, the congressman, his eyes and mouth open, his mustache stiff, his belly swollen

  (and red).

  And was that sound in the distance a gunshot? The military police had a habit of killing crazies with no questions asked; she had seen it on the news the previous week. At the foot of the slope was the valley and a busy avenue. Was it already getting dark? When did these passageways become so deserted? To a casual eye, the politician with the mustache looked like one of those drunks toward the end of the afternoon. This is the world, do you see? Lina enjoyed the company of that woman, though she didn’t much like the cigarette smoke. But the entire city was smoke, all the time: cigarettes, cars, buses. The constant smell of filthy wet asphalt. The woman was also the city, the paleness of the city center, the gray of buildings, the weariness of business employees. She said things like this, important things: The city kills because it devours choice. Lina didn’t know what that meant.

  The voices didn’t always make sense.

  She walked up the slope and made her way to the corner, felt the cool air of open space, the murmur of the street and the people. The knife wasn’t there, it wasn’t anywhere. How can a man die of a stabbing if the knife doesn’t exist? Because it wasn’t the first time; something told her it wasn’t the first time. Despite the crowd in the city center, the military police fired without taking names and people found a dark corner a few steps from the subway entrance to die of knife wounds.

  * * *

  Lina didn’t know the woman’s name. She was a lawyer; she had to be.

  Inconsistent punctuality, she always appeared at that spot at five in the afternoon every other day—or sometimes not. Good thing it’s Friday. At times Lina didn’t know if she was really there, her body leaning against the neoclassical construction, one arm folded over the belly, the other elbow floating in the air next to the cigarette smoke. What a shitty day. She cradled the cigarette deep between her index and middle fingers, and when she raised it to her lips it was as if she covered it with her entire hand, as if repenting something she had said; as if

  (she seemed incapable of repenting anything at all).

  A repeated figure: that desire for importance while the city passed by her indifferently. A voice muffled by the street noise and the cigarette smoke mixing with the exhaust of cars, of buses. Lina spotted the law students lined up on the sidewalk with their backpacks and rolling carts loaded with voluminous books. I haven’t studied at all for that exam on tax law. The woman said she felt sorry for those children with large egos. She spoke of her day in the office, about a missed deadline, about an irate boss and an incompetent intern.

  She said:

  They killed a lawyer yesterday in the center of the city, near here.

  Stabbed to death;

  a nonexistent knife.

  If only things could exist through force of the word, by simple syntactical placement or;

  (of course she wouldn’t think this).

  Lina wasn’t one to worry about linguistic questions, and since the elementary school teacher there was no teacher at all. My school is the street, as the voices repeated at times; sometimes the voices were downright ridiculous. The street didn’t teach anyone anything; the street was the street, literally or figuratively, a stretch of asphalt or that dirty setting in which people crossed hurriedly to and from work. A knife that large can’t go unnoticed. She smelled the suffocating smoke from the cigarette and tried to recall the expression in the eyes of the congressman who wasn’t a congressman. That’s where the answer would be. Then they say no one saw anything. She had seen the knife, she was sure of it. In the middle of the street, two blocks from a police guard post. The answer was in the memory shattered by the wrong turn that had led her to notice a pair of transatlantic shoes shipwrecked in a puddle of water. Do you remember everything you saw today? Lina didn’t unders
tand. Remember the street kid smoking crack and the couple who passed you on the viaduct? She remembered the thick texture of the coffee on the checkered tablecloth in the restaurant and didn’t understand what those people had to do with a dead lawyer.

  She wanted to know how much force was needed to make a knife blade penetrate human flesh

  and especially wanted to remember

  because there was a knife

  if the lawyer had been stabbed

  but she kept quiet.

  No one ever sees anything.

  Or they see and forget. They spend the afternoon and night trying to remember; a half-sensation that merges with the coffee stain between the tablecloth and the wooden table. Lina remembered when two military policemen shot a boy who was running away—shot him in the back and he fell as if he’d lost control of his legs. A dive onto the concrete without even time to protect his head with his hands, elbows, shoulders; thrown forward like a cloth doll and someone screamed before a totally wrong silence flooded the block and another dull thunderclap sealed the fate of the youth sprawled on the sidewalk.

  Seems like exaggeration, don’t you think?

  She shifted her gaze from the students on the corner of the law school and stared at the woman and the cigarette and the smoke. She must have made some comment about knives and spotted leopards, must have stuck her hand in her shorts pocket and shown the lawyer the wrinkled fifty-reais note as if to make sure she knew what a leopard was

  (because city people only know the animals printed on currency or)

  and they give me money when they encounter me during the day.

  The lawyer didn’t react and Lina no longer knew why she had the figure of the spotted leopard in her hand. She stuck it back in her pocket, tugged her shorts down a bit, her panties up a little; she looked at the mark the elastic made on her waist because of excess flesh or fat or a bit of each or the shorts being too small. The lawyer had on a skirt and jacket, both gray, and rather worn flats. Hair pulled back and an old green handbag; cheap leather coming apart at the seams. You shouldn’t be in the street, girl, she said. Perhaps it wasn’t the first time she ever said it.