by Susan Lewis
Now Chambers wanted her to do the same in Rio, for Pastillano had to be brought down, or the favelas – slums – of Rio de Janeiro would almost certainly become the death camps of Latin America. As it was, armed police raided them nightly, firing randomly at the boarded-up windows and makeshift shelters that the dwellers pathetically called home. Many bullets found human targets, but few ever complained – in this town justice was for the rich, not the poor. Not even when small children were forced into canals of raw sewage and left there to drown, did anyone speak out – if they did, older children would mysteriously vanish and parents would be told that if they didn’t pay six hundred reais by Friday ‘something would happen’. It was impossible for a favelado to find so much money, unless he borrowed from the drug dealers, who would then use his son as an errand boy and probably end up killing him anyway.
There were so many terrible things going on in this city that even after five months of being here, Michelle was still learning of new and horrific methods of torture and killing. Already she knew of more than a hundred cases that had never come to trial and probably never would. The police acted with impunity, because they were tried by their own courts and because the rich still naively believed that the only way to deal with the poor was to kill them – especially if they were black.
Andréa Sabino, the Brazilian lawyer who was sitting at the table now, was a rare exception to the rule of rich ignorance and assumed supremacy, for not only did she come from one of the wealthiest families in Brazil, she had also married into another. Though neither her husband nor her father particularly approved of her work at the shelter, neither tried to stop her, nor did they object to the frequent and generous donations she made. They drew the line, however, at her becoming involved in any kind of legal action that would draw unwanted attention to the families. That didn’t stop Andréa giving out free legal advice to those who needed it, nor from directing the needy and oppressed to lawyers who could and would get involved.
It was thanks to Andréa that Michelle was now living in a spacious hillside villa overlooking the ocean at Barra da Tijuca, just ouside Rio centre. The exclusive, forested domaine in which the villa sat was part of a private community protected by security guards and cut off from the city’s rampant crime and pollution, so was perfect for Cara and the children. It also provided Michelle with much the same kind of appearance as Andréa, that of a rich woman with too much time on her hands who had decided to meddle with the poor. Tom Chambers approved of the image, for the less attention Michelle attracted to herself the better it would be for them all, particularly as he was often away. His agenda entailed frequent visits to other cities in Brazil where a Human Rights Watch director was documenting the numerous nationwide atrocities, and Chambers was filing the stories to the domestic as well as international press. His interest in Pastillano took precedence, though, it was just that he was forced to earn a living whereas, being more or less financially independent, Michelle was able to stay put in Rio and act as his person on the ground there.
Now, Michelle watched and listened as Andréa and Antônio continued to sell Márcio on all the advantages of him staying here at the shelter. The boy’s scrawny limbs were thrown loosely over his chair in a kind of two-fingered gesture. His arrogance was outmatched only by his disdain for the shelter and the people in it, but no one was fooled, for they had all, including Michelle, witnessed enough fear in this room to recognize the many defences it hid behind. Sweat was pouring down the boy’s pale-brown face, hostility glittered in his jaundiced eyes and curled his cracked lips, but the desperation in his heart was as palpable as the dense humidity in the air. He liked to think he was a man, but in truth he was still just a child.
A sudden commotion out in the yard caused them all to look round and going to the window Michelle called out to Alfonso, a mischievous and horribly scarred fourteen-year-old, to ask what all the laughing was about. His answer started Michelle, Andréa and Antônio laughing too, for Flávio, the monkey-faced boy whom Antônio a couple of months ago had caught stealing from a trader’s stall, had just been allowed by Sister Lydia to choose his birthday. That obviously meant that no family or records had been traced for the boy. Not surprisingly, Flávio had chosen today, for everyone got a cake on their birthday and a trip to the movies with Antônio and a friend of their choosing.
‘Obviously the results of his bone analysis have come back,’ Andréa commented, tucking a few stray strands of her glorious ebony hair into the knot at the nape of her neck.
‘So, how old are those old bones?’ Antônio called out, as Flávio came grinning up to the window.
‘Eleven,’ Flávio announced proudly. ‘Want to come to the movies?’ he said to Márcio.
Márcio started, then his large brown eyes looked at the monkey face warily, before he shifted his gaze to Antônio and shrugged.
Antônio, who had once undergone the same bone analysis to find out his age, shrugged too.
‘How old are you, Antônio?’ a little pale-skinned girl with wiry pigtails and gappy teeth called out cheekily.
‘The same age as you,’ he answered with a wink.
‘He’s twenty,’ someone informed her.
‘No he’s not, he’s a hundred!’ squealed a dusty-haired little boy whose mother had abandoned him on the street after his stepfather had started beating him.
With the constant roar of traffic outside, the incessant hooting of horns, squealing of breaks and excited chatter of children, it was hard to keep up with what was being said, though even before Andréa nudged her Michelle had spotted Cavan over by the shelter’s Volkswagen Combi, trying to fend off the amorous attentions of a brazen Cristiana. The fourteen-year-old prostitute came in regularly each month, stayed for the duration of her period, then went back to the streets. It was the only way she got to eat for that week, as her pimp only fed her when she was earning.
Michelle and Andréa hooted with laughter at Cavan’s desperate lunge towards an approaching Sister Lydia, and Michelle silently marvelled at out how happy and light-hearted everyone seemed, despite the untold tragedy of their lives. Watching them now, it would be hard to make an outsider believe the ordeals these children had been through, the hardships they still knew, the fear and despair that descended upon them as cruelly as the aspirations and dreams that stole in with the night and magicked them to far-away lands and fairy tale lives just like any other child in the world.
With Márcio’s acceptance of Flávio’s offer the meeting in the hut broke up, for it was the shelter’s policy to tread as lightly and undemandingly as possible. The children were all free to come and go as they pleased, which in many cases meant they stayed. There were only three rules: no violence, no arms and no drugs. They were also greatly encouraged to take a bath before breakfast each morning and change their clothes at least every three days. Michelle often reflected how good it would be for people in richer countries to see the old clothing they sent being handed out to those who had none. If they could see it she was sure they would give more, for they would know then that their gifts really did get through.
After a rowdy lunch of black beans, chicken and rice she went off for her usual hilarious Portuguese lesson with Andréa and a group of eight-year-olds who were as bent on teaching her street slang as Andréa was on preparing them for school. Later they all went down to the yard, where Flávio was sharing out his cake and Sister Lydia was breaking the good news to Maria that someone in a place called Yorkshire in England had just ‘adopted’ her. Maria was ecstatic, mainly because Michelle and Cavan were English, so England was her favourite place in the entire world and where she was going to go when she was sixteen.
Much later that day, as she rested her arms on the scratched, wrought-iron balcony that hugged the window of Cavan’s eighth-floor apartment in Leme, Michelle was still thinking about Maria. The child had been so happy to know that she had ‘parents’ now whom she might never meet, but it didn’t matter. They might send her a Walkman, or some trai
ners, or things for her hair, the way other parents did for their ‘adopted’ kids. If only people knew how little it took to change a child’s life, to really make a difference. Yet it was up to Brazil to change too, to get one of the world’s most violent police forces under control and start sharing the country’s enormous wealth and resources with those who needed it most. And maybe, just maybe, what she and Tom and Cavan were doing here was going to move the possibility of that change a little closer to reality.
Sighing to her herself, she gazed down at the narrow, busy street below. She stopped off here most afternoons on her way home to the villa, glad of an hour’s respite from children and always in need of a refreshing caipirinha made with iced vodka and crushed limes. Occasionally Tom Chambers would meet her here, but most often it was a private time for her and Cavan.
Taking a generous sip of her drink, she watched the bustling activity below. As usual, yellow taxis were weaving and hooting a route through the clutter of market stalls which toted anything from great, huge slabs of beef to cheap T-shirts and dresses, to plastic toys and scarred fruit. The motion was constant, as crippled pedestrians, cyclists and stray dogs clogged up the street, while the insistent blare of heavy metal vibrated from the music shop half a block down. The cracked and decaying façades of the towering apartments confronted each other across the narrow, hot space where the air seemed never to move and in the distance, glimpsed through the dancing shimmer of heat, the teaming swell of the Atlantic threw itself wantonly over the Copacabana beach.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Cavan asked, from where he was lying on the bed.
Michelle inhaled deeply, gave a sleepy murmur and turned to look up at the mountains that rose in timeless splendour from the heart of the city’s mayhem. ‘Oh, lots of things,’ she answered.
Cavan watched her, a single dark-blue sheet covering his nudity, a fast overhead fan cooling the sweat on his matted chest. She was wearing a long, diaphanous robe and her shining blonde hair hung loosely down her back. The late-afternoon sun was so bright he could see the willowy outline of her figure through the robe she was wearing and kept at his apartment. Her high, narrow hips, superb long legs and wide, angular shoulders all looked so perfect to him. She often claimed she looked better in clothes, but Cavan disagreed, for to him, besotted as he was, she could never be anything other than completely beautiful, no matter how she was dressed. Though it was the very beauty he adored and the kind of elusiveness he was being subjected to, that fed his insecurity and turned him from the crazy, try-anything gringo at the shelter into the nervous and angry young man he was now.
‘Are you thinking about Michael?’ he asked querulously.
Michelle glanced at him over her shoulder and he flushed. Her wide green eyes were laughing, seeming almost to mock him and remind him of his youth. She turned away again, leaving the imprint of her incredible mouth with its slender though shapely lips and perfect white teeth burning in his eyes, as the jealousy burned in his heart. He moved restlessly and bit down hard on his frustration. It didn’t seem to make any sense, but he felt closer to her when they were at the shelter, dealing with the kids, or at her villa playing with the children there, than he did when they were alone. It was as though, when the sounds of childish laughter and tears receded and a veil was drawn over the unselfish love and commitment, another woman emerged – a woman whose spirit was locked somewhere beyond his reach.
‘Are you?’ he persisted, unable to stop himself.
Michelle sighed and leaving the balcony walked over to the cheap vinyl chest where he kept his clothes. Sitting on it, she crossed her legs and holding her glass out in front of her, said, ‘I’m always thinking about Michael. Whether consciously or unconsciously, he is always in my mind. You know that.’
It wasn’t the answer Cavan wanted and turning his head away he stared moodily at the wall.
After a while Michelle got up and returned to the balcony.
‘I spoke to him. Yesterday,’ Cavan told her.
Michelle looked down the street to where a rowdy game of dice was being played on the pavement. ‘How is he?’ she asked.
Cavan’s heart thumped on the pain as ignoring the question he said, ‘I wanted to tell him about us.’
Michelle turned to look at him, then, coming to sit on the edge of the bed she reached for his hand. ‘Darling,’ she said softly, ‘Michael and I are linked in a way neither of us will ever be able to break. Nor will we ever try. You know that, so why torture yourself like this?’
‘Because I love you,’ he said angrily. ‘I love you and I want you to stop.’
She waited a moment, then said, ‘Stop what? Loving Michael, or doing what I’m doing here?’
‘Both.’
She smiled and bringing his hand to her mouth she kissed it. ‘I can’t do either,’ she told him, ‘but what I can do is love you too.’
He stared up at her as her eyes roamed his dark, brooding expression, then came to rest on his mouth. ‘Do you see Michael when you look at me?’ he challenged. ‘Is that why you avoid my eyes?’
Michelle laughed. ‘It’s impossible not to see Michael when I look at you,’ she answered, ‘but that doesn’t mean I’m not seeing you too.’
‘And when we make love? Are you with him, or are you with me?’
‘I love you too much for that,’ she said, the humour dying in her eyes. ‘But you’re Michael’s brother and you love him as much as I do, so he’ll always be with us, Cavan. You have to accept that, just as I have to accept that one day you’ll leave me for a younger woman.’
‘Never,’ he swore.
She smiled, then laughed. ‘I’ll be thirty-seven next birthday,’ she reminded him. ‘That makes me fifteen years older than you.’
‘And four years older than Michael.’
‘Four is hardly fifteen,’ she said wryly. ‘But what we have is very special to me and though I’d like to think it could last I know …’
‘Stop,’ he cried, snatching at her wrist and bending her arm back. ‘It will last. I’m staying with you and if you move on to somewhere else after this then I’m moving on with you. I told you, right at the beginning, that I want to become a part of what you do. It’s in me too, you know that. I feel the same things you feel. I want to help these people too.’
‘Then why did you call Michael?’ she asked.
He looked long into her eyes and she could see, almost feel, the troubled depths of his mind.
‘You think he can stop what I’m doing here, don’t you?’ she whispered, touching her fingers to his cheek.
‘I’m afraid for you,’ he confessed. ‘What you do at the shelter, is one thing, but what you’re planning with Tom …’
‘I thought you were with us,’ she said.
‘I am. At least I’m with Tom. I just don’t think you should be involved. It’s too dangerous. You’ve got too much to lose and if Michael were to find out …’
‘This isn’t Michael’s decision,’ she interrupted.
He looked as though he wanted to argue that, but instead he said angrily, ‘There was a shooting in the favela you were at yesterday. Did you know that? The police went in and shot two innocent people stone dead.’
Her eyes suddenly widened with understanding. ‘And you think that it was someone being punished for talking to me and Tom,’ she said.
His eyes bored into hers. ‘Actually, what I was thinking,’ he said, ‘was that it could have been you. But OK, yes, what about the people you’re talking to Have you thought about the danger you’re putting them in? And how do you know that yesterday’s shooting wasn’t some kind of warning, letting them all know what’ll happen to them if they talk?’
‘The shooting yesterday happened before Tom and I got there, not after, so it had nothing to do with us. In fact, Antônio told me today that it was drug related. The dealers in that particular favela were refusing to give the police a cut. And as we already know, the police really don’t care who they kill to make the
ir point.’
‘But you shouldn’t be going in there with Tom,’ he reminded her. ‘The deal was, you go in with Antônio, as a goodwill worker, or whatever you want to call it. Not as a journalist, or anything else that could pose some kind of threat to the police, or more importantly, Pedro Pastillano.’
‘It was a one-off,’ she answered, ‘and Antônio was with us. And as for the danger we’re putting people in, you know very well that no one is being forced to talk to us. In fact, you’re as aware as I am that we don’t have anything in writing yet, nor have we found anyone who’s actually been arrested or imprisoned by Pastillano’s private force. All we have for now is hearsay, but we’re getting closer all the time. In fact, Tom might have an ex-member of the death squad who’s prepared to talk; if he does then maybe that’s all we’ll need.’
Cavan looked away, angry that he had been deprived of the last word. Michelle turned his face back to hers and widened her eyes imploringly. But, determined not to be won over, Cavan said, ‘Does Michael know what you’re using his guilt money for?’
Michelle’s eyes darkened. ‘There are no conditions attached to that money,’ she reminded him.
Cavan gave a snort of derision, but as he started to speak the buzzer sounded announcing Tom Chambers’s arrival. By the time he travelled the eight floors to the apartment both Cavan and Michelle were dressed. It wasn’t that Chambers didn’t know about their affair, but the apartment was so small it didn’t feel quite decent to flaunt it in his face with dressing gowns and hastily covered thighs.
As he came in through the front door Michelle felt her heart tighten – not with attraction, though God knew he was a good-looking man, but with apprehension for the troubled look in his deep-set grey eyes.
‘Chavés has disappeared,’ he declared, as Cavan handed him a Scotch.