AJ Mirag - Clippings

by Clippings (lit)

  “Did you do the drawings yourself?” asked Daniel.

  “Yes.”

  Daniel pondered on what he had read, and finally asked, “Aren't you exposing yourself too much by showing me that?”

  The Professor smiled, and his eyes sparkled. “It's just another of my experiments.”

  “Are you studying my reactions?” asked Daniel.

  “Yours, and mine, too. Don't think I don't make stupid experiments with myself.”

  “Right... Psilocybin is a hallucinogenic mushroom, isn't it?”

  The Professor arched up an eyebrow. “You're a well-informed young man!”

  “Why did you choose that name?”

  “Because I like to do mind experiments.”

  Daniel bit his lip, wondering if he should ask the next question or not. He finally took courage. “With hallucinogens?”

  “Oh, I was a teen in the '70s. Everyone was high all the time. I wasn't an exception,” answered the Professor.

  “You're avoiding the question.”

  The Professor gave a delighted laugh. “Touché. You deserve a decent reply. I used to make a tropical variant of LSD at home, and I even created an alternative hallucinogen, similar to LSD and ecstasy, but cheaper. In the beginning, everything went well. There weren't many people selling LSD in Brazil. The kids didn't even notice any difference between my product and the imported one. Some of my clients even said my acid was purer, because I didn't add amphetamines to it. We used to say that our product was imported and that we were part of an international drug traffic chain... I made deals with marijuana dealers to obtain more protection and have access to the markets. That was how I met Mephisto; he used do work for one of those pot dealers. However, when ecstasy arrived in Brazil, things started to change. When I created the new hallucinogen, the main ecstasy dealers, who weren't happy with my competition, decided I was going too far, and planted a spy among the people who worked for me.”

  Daniel widened his eyes. “Oh, my God! When was that?”

  “When I was arrested? Two years ago. I got ten years. I'll be released in a year or so, because of the progression system.”

  “So people who get ten years can be released after three years?”

  “Yes, if their process is not left sitting in some desk drawer forever, and if the prisoner's behavior while in prison is 'of an appropriate standard,'” answered the Professor, a sardonic smile on his lips.

  “What about Mephisto?” asked Daniel.

  “What do you want to know about Mephisto?”

  “Why was he arrested, and how many years did he get?”

  “Mephisto was arrested because of me.”

  “What happened?”

  The Professor sighed. “He suspected there was something rotten in my kingdom, so to speak. He intercepted a phone call from a guy who worked for me; the guy was a stool pigeon and was passing information to the police. Instead of running away, Mephisto went after me to warn me. It was too late; we got busted and were arrested together. He was loyal to the very end. He's the most loyal man I ever knew.”

  Suddenly, Daniel felt it was important to know more about that man who, stubbornly, had decided to protect him. “Did he get ten years, too?”

  “Nine. Since I was the boss, I got a year more than he.”

  “So he may leave in about a year.”

  “We hope so, but you can never be sure.”

  “How ironic that, on my second day here, Mephisto told me not to take drugs,” complained Daniel.

  “He did very well. We can't afford risks. Besides, you know what happens to crack addicts, don't you? It leads to a complete debasement. I would never have anything to do with a drug that destroys people so completely in such a short time.”

  Daniel found that somewhat hypocritical coming from the Professor. After all, hallucinogens could destroy a person's brain, couldn't they? They might not be as quick and devastating as crack, but even so...

  Daniel risked one more question. “Why does he call you Lucifer, and why is he called Mephisto?”

  “My real name is Luís Fernando. Mephisto started abbreviating my name as 'LuísFer' and spelling it 'Lucifer.' Then I started calling him Mephisto, because Mephisto, as we told you yesterday, is the second fallen angel. The first angel to follow Lucifer.”

  The relationship between Mephisto and the Professor puzzled Daniel. “Have you been friends for long?”

  “He had a difficult childhood. His father was an alcoholic, and abused him. He ran away from home when he was very young, dropped out of school and became involved with drug traffic. When I met him, he was about your age. I noticed he was a clever, intelligent boy, and tried to encourage him to read more, to frequent intellectual circles... Thanks to my help, he went to a fast-track school for adults and graduated from high school. Gradually I realized he was the most trustworthy and resourceful of my men. But we only became real friends after we were imprisoned.”

  So the Professor had “chosen” Mephisto and interfered in his life, more or less like the two of them were doing with Daniel now.

  Daniel wondered exactly what kind of work Mephisto did for Lucifer, and whether he was still doing it now. Everything seemed to indicate that he was, and that, more than a friendship, existed between the Professor and Mephisto a power relationship, like almost all the relationships Daniel had found in the Detention House so far.

  Daniel decided he had extracted enough information for a day and let the Professor steer the conversation to less dangerous subjects.

  _________

  Back in his shack, Daniel didn't want to tell Mephisto he had talked with the Professor about Mephisto's personal life, so he just told him how he had felt when he had tried to listen to music on the Professor's laptop.

  “I can get you an MP3 player,” said Mephisto. “This way you can listen to music alone when I'm not here.”

  “No, it's not necessary. I...don't feel like listening to music here.”

  “I understand. I feel the same thing. I was crazy for music, but since I got here I stopped listening to it.”

  “Really? What kind of music do, or did, you like?”

  “Rock from the '60s and '70s. Especially hard rock and progressive rock: The Doors, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Yes, Pink Floyd...”

  “Oh, those bands are classic and timeless. We have similar tastes.”

  “But I don't know any new bands. The last band I really liked was Nirvana.”

  Daniel shrugged. It didn't matter, now. In prison, everything was different. They were isolated from the outside world, and time didn't have the same meaning it had before.

  6. Visiting Times

  Every Friday, the prisoners would join forces to clean the block to receive “their people,” as they said, on Saturday. Daniel was very disappointed when Mephisto told him that his family would not be allowed to visit him until the Ministry of Justice had given them permission, and that might take a few days.

  On Saturday morning, a long line had trailed outside the Detention House since early morning. The visitors waited for at least two hours before being allowed to enter.

  Daniel spent Saturday watching the prisoners engaging in activities very different from the routine of the other days. They would take a bath, put their best clothes on and go meet their people in the visiting-room — a large hall divided into booths with screens separating the prisoner from the visitor. A few convicts were allowed to receive their people at the “Garden of Eden,” which was a courtyard placed at the center of the five blocks of the Detention House, an oasis of trees with a water fountain in its center. A few privileged convicts could receive “intimate visits”: they could spend the whole weekend with their wives or girlfriends. The prisoners who shared cells had to regroup themselves to allow the couple privacy.

  “I'll take you for a walk in the Garden of Eden, but don't you dare look at any prisoner's wife or girlfriend,” Mephisto warned him.

  “If a convict catches you looking at his woman, you'
re a dead man.”

  “I thought you were going to tell me not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge! But you're the Devil, not God...” Daniel pretended to wince at his own joke. “All right, I promise not to look at any women. What about you, don't you have any visitors?”

  “I'm a lonely man. I ran away from home when I was fourteen. I couldn't stand my father anymore. He used to come home drunk every night and beat me. I never talked to my family again. And I never married because, well, you know my preferences.”

  “But you could have had a steady relationship with a guy.”

  “Not really. My life has always been too busy, and I'm not an easy person to live with,” admitted Mephisto. “What about you?”

  “Do you want to know if I have a girlfriend waiting for me out there? Nope. My latest girlfriend passed the admission tests to the State University of Londrina and decided to move there. So we broke up. It wasn't working, anyway. We were always fighting with each other.” That wasn't a subject Daniel liked to talk about, so he steered the conversation back to the visitors. “Who else in our floor gets visits?”

  “The Professor receives a lot of visitors, from his family, friends and former students. He always meets them in the Garden of Eden.

  He's divorced from his wife, and doesn't get intimate visits. Julinho's mother and two sisters visit him every week. Julinho's jumbo is always the best, but Alfeu takes everything for himself.”

  “Jumbo?”

  “That's what we call the bags the families bring the prisoners.

  Julinho's mother always fills a bag with fruits and sweets for him,”

  explained Mephisto. Then he went on, “Alfeu receives visits from many lawyers, but not from his family. The Oldie...have you met the Old School Guy already?”

  “He's our neighbor to the left, correct? The Professor talked about him, and I saw him leaving his shack once, but I've never talked to him.”

  “The Oldie is quite a guy. He has a wife and a lover. I mean a female lover...he's a real macho guy. The two women know about each other, and they take turns to visit him.”

  Daniel laughed and was curious to meet the Oldie.

  In the Garden of Eden, Daniel saw the Professor talking with a group of friends. Among the people in the circle there was a young man in his twenties who seemed to be his son. Julinho was seated with his mother and two elder sisters on a stone bench, eating cookies and drinking soda. He seemed so young, so different from when he was in his shack, tirelessly working to please Alfeu!

  Shadow was there, too, talking with a teen girl. Was she his daughter or his girlfriend? Daniel remembered Mephisto's warning, that he shouldn't look at the prisoners' women. Anyway, Daniel didn't want to know. Thinking of people like Shadow left him depressed.

  He gazed at the trees, instead, and basked in the sun. The azaleas were blooming and coloring the Garden magnificently.

  _________

  One morning, after lunch, Daniel heard screams coming from the gallery. He was about to go out to see what was happening, but Mephisto stopped him.

  “Are you crazy? When you hear screams, shots or anything that may be a sign of violence, shut the door, lock the frog and try to keep out of shooting range. If things get really ugly, go hide behind the cupboard. You don't have to do it now, though, because...I know what's happening.”

  “What is it?” asked Daniel, shaky.

  “Some guys decided to finish off a convict from the second floor.”

  “What exactly do you mean by 'finish off'?”

  Mephisto shrugged. “Beat him or stab him to death.”

  “What has this guy done?”

  “He snitched on another convict. Reported him to the administration,” said Mephisto.

  “And you agree with this? What about the Professor, does he agree with this, too?”

  “Listen, Daniel, it's not up to me or the Professor to agree or disagree. There isn't anything we can do about these settlings of scores. We don't want to get involved with this kind of thing. A leader of this group came to us and said, 'this guy will be finished off because he did such and such, do you have a problem with that?'

  Then we said, 'this is not our problem, we have nothing to do with it.'

  Is it horrible? Yes, it is. But get this into your head: there isn't anything we can do except try to survive and develop another kind of relationship between prisoners inside the Detention House, so that those who agree with our principles can find an alternative. We can slowly change things. This block is the most peaceful one exactly because people respect the Professor. In spite of that, bad things like that happen sometimes.”

  “And the prison administration doesn't do anything?”

  “They can't do anything either. There's always some guy who goes to the administration and confesses the crime. It's usually someone indebted to the killers and who's coerced to confess to avoid being finished off himself,” explained Mephisto.

  “What if one day they decide you have to be finished off?”

  “I do my best not to violate their rules, and they respect me, but if that happens and they refuse to even negotiate, it will be my end.”

  _________

  Gradually, Daniel got accustomed to living with Mephisto. He stopped feeling embarrassed when they stumbled into each other, when he had to undress before Mephisto, or when Mephisto was naked before him. Not that he didn't notice the way Mephisto looked at him, not that he felt really at ease before that look, but he had learned to trust his companion to a certain degree.

  After many debates, Mephisto let Daniel practice weightlifting with the Old School Guy and capoeira with Master Bumblebee at the sport training rooms, located around the central courtyard on the first floor. However, Mephisto would make a point of taking him to his classes and bringing him back to their shack every time.

  The Old School Guy was a sexagenarian burglar who liked to tell stories of his good old days, especially of his legendary escapes from several prisons. A tall, strong and brawny fellow with gray-flecked hair, the Oldie practiced weightlifting and taught whoever wanted to

  “lift his first weights.” Daniel could barely lift the twenty kilo barbell, but was determined to succeed. He wanted to learn to defend himself, and weightlifting and capoeira were the only available forms of training in the Detention House — besides boxing, a sport that Daniel didn't appreciate.

  The Oldie didn't cut any slack for beginners like him. Daniel's back hurt and his face grew hot as if it was going to explode.

  “Are you a man or not?” shouted the Oldie, trying to encourage him. “Hmm, I think you're a pansy...”

  When Daniel was trying to lift the barbell but couldn't stand the weight any longer, the Oldie struck his back with a stick. The shock and fright triggered an adrenaline rush that helped Daniel to finish lifting the barbell.

  After the first day of training, when Daniel took off his t-shirt before Mephisto, the latter inquired him. “What's this red bruise on your back? Did someone beat you?”

  “It's nothing. The Oldie beats all his pupils to stimulate them.”

  “What kind of stimulus is that?”

  “Don't look at me like that. It works. When you're about to give up, he beats your back with a stick and, well, you pick up steam.”

  Mephisto shook his head. “I don't know, fish. I think you shouldn't let him take such liberties with you. What will people say if they find out I let a convict beat my chicken?”

  Daniel shrugged. The convicts' twisted morality gave him headaches. “The Oldie is a nice guy. Besides me, there are only three guys in my class. None of them will tell anyone else, because the Oldie beats them too!”

  The first times Daniel listened to the Oldie's stories, he was impressed. But when Daniel mentioned to Mephisto the story of the Oldie's spectacular escape from the Ilha Grande Prison, involving the threatening of a jailer and a guard with a syringe supposedly containing AIDS-contaminated blood taken from a convict, the theft of a fishing boat, a pursuit by
sharks and an attack by seagulls, Mephisto burst in laughter and mocked Daniel for being so naïve.

  “He sold you a hog, fish. Get smart.”

  “A hog?” asked Daniel.

  “That's a prison expression, meaning that what he told you is bullshit.”

  “But you and the Professor said I could trust the Oldie.”

  Mephisto rolled his eyes. “When we say you can trust someone, that means that guy won't screw you over. Like, he won't attack you from behind, or something like that. But that doesn't mean that everything he says is true. That doesn't mean the guy won't try to con you, you understand? That's what the old school guys are: they're tricksters and swindlers. They're nice guys, but you can't trust everything they tell you.”

  _________

  Master Bumblebee, an old black man with white hair and sweet almond eyes, began his class by saying that the beginners (among them, Daniel) should focus on the ginga5. He taught Capoeira Angola, the oldest and most traditional style. Class started with a warm-up, which consisted of calisthenic and stretching exercises. The warm-up was followed by the training of individual strikes, including dodges and falls. Watching Daniel's first movements, Master Bumblebee told him he had good reflexes and would be a wonderful dodger when he had learned the ginga. After the individual training, the apprentices were paired off in couples. An experienced apprentice was selected to practice with Daniel: Lando, a black young man with outstanding flexibility. The Master advised Lando to practice only sequences of single strikes and dodges with Daniel, since it was Daniel's first class.

  Daniel gaped at Lando's grace.

  “I've been practicing my whole life,” said Lando, the whiteness of his smile contrasting with the dark color of his skin. “It's not a big deal. Some masters, like Master Bimba, say too much flexibility is bad for playing capoeira.”

  Daniel found this remark interesting and enigmatic, but not very helpful: he still felt awkward and lost. At the end of the training in couples, the Master told him, “Don't worry. For the first six months you'll feel like a fish out of water, but then your body will start swinging as if by itself when the berimbau plays.”