AJ Mirag - Clippings

by Clippings (lit)

  At the end of the class, the roda6 was formed. As Daniel was a beginner, he only watched, thrilled, as the most experienced players moved gracefully to the sound of the berimbau, atabaque and tambourine.

  _________

  Sometimes Daniel spent hours thinking on the prison system and classifying the prisoners. He talked a lot with the Professor about it, and the Professor explained everything to him with patience and interest. Mephisto, however, would look at Daniel suspiciously and tell him that “children shouldn't get involved with adult matters.” But Daniel was a journalist and a social scientist by vocation: he wanted to study the people and the social relations he was witnessing in prison so that, one day, he could write a great investigative reporting book.

  “You have to read Foucault,” told him the Professor once, pulling out Discipline and Punish from his bookshelves.

  Daniel was fascinated by Discipline and Punish. The whole discussion on the Panopticon architecture gave him many ideas on the role of architecture in controlling the inmates inside the prison.

  He started to develop his own ideas on the subject. In the beginning, he didn't discuss them with the Professor. He wanted to research and gain a full picture of the subject before talking to him.

  On the other hand, when Daniel walked with Mephisto through the galleries and saw drugged or drunken prisoners talking to imaginary people, he wondered whether all his sociology and

  philosophy weren't useless, whether what he was seeing wasn't just the same misery that could be found everywhere, only extremely concentrated. Prison was just a microcosm of the larger society, to put it in more elegant words.

  Julinho had grown attached to Daniel and often visited him in his shack, especially when Mephisto wasn't there. Mephisto had authorized Daniel to let Julinho in, because Julinho didn't represent any kind of threat. However, talking with Julinho left Daniel downcast. Julinho seemed convinced that Daniel and Mephisto's relationship was similar to the one he had with Alfeu, and Daniel couldn't tell him the truth. Because Julinho considered him his equal, he told him stories that horrified Daniel. Alfeu, besides expecting Julinho to take care of all the housework, submitted him to all kinds of sexual humiliation, like tying him to the bed, beating him, forcing him to have sex even when Julinho was exhausted. But the worst part was that Julinho thought that it was all right, that he should be considered a privileged person for having someone to protect him.

  Julinho was very proud of Alfeu because he was “an important lawyer.”

  The fact that Alfeu was a lawyer made Daniel despise him even more. Alfeu seemed to be evil personified, and he didn't even have the excuse of “not having had a chance in life.”

  Mephisto advised Daniel not to judge Julinho and Alfeu. He believed Julinho liked the whole situation much more than Daniel thought. Daniel doubted that.

  _________

  On Daniel's second Saturday in the Detention House, Sarará warned him that his parents would come to visit him. Daniel felt ecstatically happy. He looked into the bathroom mirror and, because he didn't want to scare his parents, he was glad to see that the scar on his forehead was disappearing. He took a bath, put on his khaki trousers and the white t-shirt that Mephisto had bought him and, nervously, listened to Mephisto's explanations and advice.

  “Don't forget to remind them to bring the things you need on their next visit, because they can't possibly have brought everything you need now. They are newbies in this, too.”

  “Man, you're fucking crazy,” said Daniel. “You just think about the jumbo. I'm going to see my mom and my dad!”

  Mephisto shrugged. “Have fun.”

  Daniel realized he had been a bit harsh, and tried to make amends. “Don't be upset. I know I have a great debt to you. If they bring me some money, I'll be able to...”

  “Don't be stupid. I was thinking of you, not of this fucking debt.

  Forget the debt and go see your parents.”

  Daniel's heart was racing when he entered the visiting-room. His father was sitting behind the screen. He looked well, his brown hair with gray strands well-combed and correctly cut, as always. But when Daniel sat on the stool before him, on the other side of the screen, he noticed the lines of concern on his forehead. “Hi, Dad. Did you have to wait very long in line?”

  “A couple of hours. How are things going, Son?”

  “Fine.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I'm fine, but a bit worried. Is there any way of getting me out of here? I didn't kill anyone, you know that.”

  “I know, Son. Bureaucracy is a nightmare, but we're doing our best to get you out of here as quickly as possible. We have already requested a writ of habeas corpus. Are they treating you well? Is there anything that you need?”

  “The only thing they give us here is food. I have no clothes, no toiletries, nothing. And the prison food is horrible. If you can bring me some extra items, I'd be thankful.”

  “We've brought you a bag with some clothes and other stuff.

  Your mother wants to talk to you. We can talk again later.”

  His father stood up and Daniel's mother sat on the stool. Daniel had missed her so much, and she was so beautiful, her long brown hair loose and flowing, her lilac eyes gleaming with unshed tears!

  Daniel wanted to hug her, but the damned screen didn't let him.

  “Hi, Son.”

  “Mom...” he said, his voice faltering.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “Tell me what you need.”

  Daniel smiled. “I need a few pair of socks, underwear, t-shirts...a coat...”

  “We have already brought you all that. It's in the bag,” said his mother. “We didn't bring you any classy or expensive clothes, because we thought that, well, it wouldn't be wise to arouse envy in a place like this. So we've brought you old and comfy things. The clothes you liked to wear at home.”

  “You did well, Mom. You two are great. Next time, if you can, please bring me a blanket. It's beginning to get cold at night, it's almost winter. As for the food, I think the most practical is canned food. We don't have refrigerators here.”

  “I've brought you a jar of strawberry jam, your favorite.”

  “Thank you, Mom. What about Sophia? How's she doing?”

  “She's fine. Your father was afraid to bring her, but next time she'll come with us. She sent you a pile of comics.”

  “Cool!”

  The rest of the conversation seemed to drag painfully. It was difficult to tell his parents what happened inside the prison, and Daniel didn't really want to do that. He kept asking about outside mechanically. The truth was that what happened outside didn't interest him at all, since he couldn't participate in anything. It was, on the contrary, depressing to think that life went on out there and that he had been excluded from it.

  In spite of all the awkwardness of their meeting, when the jailer announced that the visiting time had ended, Daniel felt a knot in his throat. It was hard to say goodbye to his mom and dad and go back inside. The jailer handed him the bag his parents had left him.

  Daniel's father wanted to give him some money, but the jailer told him that that was not allowed, that he should have brought some packs of cigarettes. Then Daniel's father told him he would bring a box of cigarettes the next day and leave it at the lobby.

  Back to his shack, Daniel found Mephisto “clipping” dinner.

  “My father will bring me squares tomorrow, and then I'll be able to pay you,” announced Daniel.

  “Can you please forget about that? What did they bring you?”

  Daniel opened the bag and dumped its contents on the bed: five pairs of briefs, three pairs of socks, two t-shirts, a pair of jeans, a pair of pajamas, a jumper, an old wool sweater. A jar of strawberry jam and a box of chocolates. A pile of Sandman and other comics. Daniel looked at his treasure and beamed. “Woo-hoo!”

  Mephisto gazed at him with an amused gleam in his eyes. “If you
share your chocolates and your strawberry jam with me, we can call it quits.”

  “Of course I'll share them with you. You always shared everything with me! But I'm making a point of paying for those things you bought me when I arrived here.”

  “Let's change the subject, or I'll be offended,” stated Mephisto.

  Daniel didn't say anything else. The next day, however, as soon as he received the packs of cigarettes, Daniel went to a small market run by the prisoners on the fourth floor and bought a stock of supplies for both of them: a box of crackers, a pack of cookies, a can of guava paste, cheese, and salami.

  Mephisto became angry when he found out that Daniel had gone downstairs alone, but his anger didn't last long. With time, Mephisto started giving him more freedom. Now that everyone in the block knew Daniel and was aware that he was Mephisto's chicken, he didn't run as much of a risk as before. Upon Daniel's insistence, after a couple of weeks Mephisto decided to let him go to his weightlifting and capoeira classes alone.

  Daniel's parents continued bringing him provisions, clothes and packs of cigarettes every week, which helped Daniel to recover his sense of dignity in front of the other prisoners and especially with Mephisto. Still, even knowing he wasn't guilty of the crime he was being charged with, he felt bad for causing his family so much trouble.

  7. Metamorphosis

  Daniel had become accustomed to the prison routine. On Tuesday and Thursday mornings he practiced weightlifting with the Oldie. On Wednesday mornings he trained in capoeira. In his free time, he helped Mephisto clean the shack and in the kitchen. Between lunch and dinner, while Mephisto attended to his mysterious business affairs, Daniel would read in the Professor's shack and talk with the Professor. Some days Daniel and Mephisto took dinner at three PM and had tea at night; other days they did the opposite: they saved dinner for a late clipping and had tea in the afternoon. Sometimes, when Mephisto was free in the afternoon, they would have tea in the Professor's shack. At night, after either dinner or tea, Daniel read in bed, or talked with Mephisto.

  Talking with Mephisto was, however, a difficult art, even after many days of living together. Mephisto didn't do small talk. With Mephisto, every conversation had to have a purpose, everything had to be important. Not that he didn't know how to joke, but his jokes always had a serious core.

  Except, perhaps, when he mocked Daniel. When Daniel first put on the flannel pajamas his mother had brought him Mephisto asked if she had brought him his teddy bear too. And they weren't even childish pajamas: it was a classy pajama set, striped in white and blue!

  Daniel warned Mephisto that if he continued to tease him, he would stop lending him the Sandman comics that Mephisto had been eagerly devouring.

  _________

  One day, when Daniel was returning from his capoeira class, a young black man with frizzy hair wearing a yellow stained t-shirt approached him in the fifth-floor gallery, with a knife in his hand.

  “Keep walking, dude. Let's go to your shack. You're gonna give me all your decks of squares, unless you wanna become Swiss cheese.”

  Daniel's heart was beating erratically, but he tried to calm down.

  “Okay,” he said, and continued walking with the crack addict behind him, poking his knife in Daniel's neck.

  There wasn't anyone in the corridor. Suddenly, Daniel did a capoeira move he had learned while he was training with Lando a few days ago: he turned around and dodged, leaning to one side, then applied a rasteira7 on his aggressor. The guy fell flat on his back, and Daniel ran through the gallery, leaving him behind.

  He was panting when he entered the shack and closed the door.

  Mephisto approached him and asked what the problem was. Daniel finished locking the door before telling Mephisto what had happened, stopping to breathe every minute.

  As he listened to Daniel's story, Mephisto pushed him aside to open the latch again.

  Daniel held his arm. “Don't go after him. This will only make things worse. Please.”

  Mephisto made a desperate gesture. “But this motherfucker is a threat. We've got to do something.”

  “He will find his own destiny, as the convicts say. If he's attacking people in the galleries, he won't last long.”

  Mephisto let go of the latch, took a deep breath and turned to Daniel. “Are you okay?”

  “My foot hurts, but it will be fine.”

  There was wonder and concern in the look Mephisto gave him.

  “Did anyone else see what happened?”

  “I don't think so.”

  “Thank God. I'd have been in trouble, if they'd seen my prison wife beating a convict...”

  Daniel frowned. It took him a few seconds to understand the logic of what Mephisto had just said. The stupid prison morality.

  “Right... A prison wife has to be submissive, and can't beat a convict, even in self-defense. I can't believe these people!”

  “You can't believe it, but that's how things are here. If I were to give you advice, I'd tell you never to do what you just did. Never, ever attack an armed convict. But you got out pretty well, and as nobody saw it, I can only congratulate you.”

  “Thanks to Master Bumblebee's classes!”

  “Yeah, but now we'll have to do something about this beamer. I think I know who he is. His nick is Disquietude. I'm going to talk to Umbelino.”

  “Disquietude! You convicts make up some weird nicknames. But please, don't do that. They'll finish off the guy. I don't want to be the one responsible for...”

  Mephisto interrupted him. “That's not what I meant. I'm going to talk to Umbelino to see if he agrees with transferring the guy to another block. I've never asked anyone to finish off anyone, Daniel.

  That's not my style.”

  Daniel felt relieved. Perhaps they would send the crack addict to the Dungeons, and that was horrible, but the guy wouldn't last long, anyway. If the drug didn't kill him, some dealer would. “All right.”

  “And there's another thing: from now on, you won't go out alone anymore,” stated Mephisto.

  Daniel moaned. “Oh, no. Don't give me that.”

  “It's not my fault. I can't let my kid walk around alone, especially knowing how dangerous he is!”

  Daniel couldn't suppress the laughter, in spite of his anger. “So I can't be strong and defend myself. I have to be weak, so that you have to protect me.”

  “Exactly.” Mephisto pulled out the stool from under the table and placed it beside the bunk. “Sit down. Let me take a look at your foot.”

  Daniel obeyed. Mephisto pulled a tube of cream from the shelves, sat on Daniel's bed before the stool and carefully took off Daniel's right shoe, then his sock. He gently held Daniel's foot between his hands and massaged it with the soothing cream. At first, Daniel shivered with its coldness, but then he felt an intense heat spreading through his body, and bit his lip not to moan in pleasure.

  “I'm rusty now, but I learned capoeira too,” said Mephisto, with an unusual gleam in his eyes.

  “Really?” asked Daniel, his voice so hoarse that he couldn't even recognize it. “When my foot gets well, we can train together. Who taught you?”

  “A neighbor, when I was twelve.”

  Daniel was glad that for the first time Mephisto was talking about his own life, and decided to inquire further. “Did you like him?”

  “He was my first crush.”

  “But he was probably older than you,” objected Daniel.

  “He was seven years older. Why do you find that strange?”

  “Oh, nothing,” said Daniel.

  Mephisto stared at him intently, as if trying to read his thoughts.

  “When you're young, it's normal to like older guys. Nowadays I prefer younger men, but this is not an absolute rule. Age is just one of the factors.”

  “Okay. You don't have to give me any explanations,” said Daniel, embarrassed.

  “I know I don't. Everything I say, I say because I want to.”

  Daniel felt the heat spreading t
hrough his body again. “You never told me your real name...”

  Mephisto lowered his eyes, looking surprisingly shy. “Vladimir.”

  “Vladimir, as in Lenin?”

  Mephisto laughed. “Yes, brat. As in Lenin, Herzog8...and also Nabokov.”

  “Can I call you Vladimir, instead of Mephisto?” asked Daniel, in a sudden impulse.

  Mephisto stared at him for a long time before saying, “Call me Vlado, then. But only when we're alone. If people hear you calling me that, they'll start calling me 'Vlad the Impaler,' 'Count Dracula,' or something like that.”

  “Vlado. I like it. That's what I'll call you, from now on.”

  Still massaging Daniel's foot, Mephisto told him that “Vlado”

  was a Slavic name meaning “rule,” and “Vladimir” was “to rule with glory,” but that some people thought it could mean “to rule peacefully,” because of the many senses of the Slavic word “myr.”

  Daniel vaguely thought that all those meanings of the word could be applied to Mephisto. Mephisto's low, velvety voice lulled his thoughts as the firm touch of his hands made Daniel long for something else, something he didn't even know how to define.

  Later, when Daniel was in the shower, he masturbated imagining it was Mephisto's hand that was caressing him. At first, that image scared him, but he soothed himself with the thought that it was just a fantasy, that it didn't mean anything.

  _________

  Daniel didn't know how to cook and, in his first days in prison, he had no interest in learning. He thought it best to split the tasks in such a way that Mephisto took care of the food. Soon he found out, however, that there wasn't much to do in the shack between the lock- down and the sleeping hours. He spent most of his days reading in the Professor's shack, but even for a typical library rat like him, there were times when too much of a good thing was just too much.

  Mephisto was an avid reader, too. When he wasn't reading, cleaning or cooking, he would make small but necessary repairs. To escape from boredom, Daniel began helping him whenever he could.

  Surprisingly, the task that most pleased Daniel was cooking. He asked his mother to bring him a basic cooking book and started to experiment. Mephisto couldn't help criticizing him or giving him advice, but Daniel was used to his authoritarian tone. And there were moments when they had fun together, finding alternatives to unavailable ingredients in recipes, or adapting the recipes for cooking on their makeshift stove a dish that was supposed to be baked in the oven.