Labels and Other Stories

by Louis de Bernières

  Prudente knew that it was foolish to wander these streets unaccompanied, and without urgency or purpose in his stride. He realised with wry honesty that he did not live up to his name at times such as this, and therefore he was not altogether surprised when an arm went around his shoulder, and the barrel of a gun was stuck into his ribs. He knew immediately that he being robbed, but, strangely enough, he also realised that he could not be bothered to be alarmed.

  ‘Senhor,’ said the robber, walking along with him with his arm around his shoulder in apparent friendship, ‘you are richer than me, and I am very poor. If you give me your money and your watch, you will come to no harm.’

  ‘How do you know that I am richer than you?’ demanded Prudente, with an edge of irritation in his voice. ‘And if you’re so poor, how come you can afford to buy a gun?’

  ‘I stole it,’ replied the man, offended at the suggestion that he was lying about being poor.

  ‘Then you probably haven’t got any bullets, have you?’

  ‘Of course I have bullets.’

  ‘Prove it. Go on, fire into the air or something, and then I’ll believe you. Otherwise I give you nothing.’

  ‘If I fire it, everyone will come running.’

  ‘If you don’t fire it, I must assume either that you don’t have any bullets or that it’s a replica.’

  The thief sucked his teeth in irritation and poked the gun a little harder into Prudente’s ribs. ‘Come on, cut the chatter. Hand over.’

  Prudente continued both to be calm and to be surprised at how calm he was. He changed tack. ‘Do you know how boring you are?’

  ‘Boring?’

  ‘Yes. Very boring. Today I had a day off work, I had my shoes polished, I walked on the beach, I saw a beautiful sunset, I had a couple of caipirinhas. I was happy, and then you have to come along and disturb my peace of mind when I was only going to have a look at the Christ. It’s boring. Look, I’ll show you how boring you are.’ Prudente reached into his trouser pocket and produced a sheaf of cruzados. ‘Have a look at those, I keep them specially for muggers.’

  The thief looked down at them and said, ‘They’re out of date. You can’t use cruzados any more.’

  ‘Precisely, but in the dark a thief just takes them and runs, and looks at them later. I’ve been mugged four times, and now I carry a little wad of cruzados. And look at this …’ Prudente reached into his shirt pocket and brought out a rectangle of plastic. ‘This is an expired credit card that I carry for the same reason.’ He drew himself up to his full height and inhaled as if with exasperation. ‘That is how boring you are. You and your kind are so inevitable that I don’t even care about it.’

  The robber appeared both crestfallen and insulted. He avoided Prudente’s reproachful and disdainful glance, and said, ‘Nonetheless, hand over the cash, and your watch.’

  Prudente held up his left wrist. ‘Plastic watch,’ he announced, with a glee that was almost malicious, ‘resale value nil. What a shame.’ There was a long pause as the two men looked at each other, and then Prudente said, ‘Are you poor and hungry?’

  ‘Yes. Why else would I do this?’

  ‘Because you’re a lazy son of a bitch who won’t get a real job? Because you have no sense of morality? Because you like the excitement? Who knows?’

  ‘I am poor and hungry,’ insisted the thief.

  ‘You have nice clothes. Nice shoes. A nice gold tooth.’

  ‘Nonetheless, I am poor and hungry. Not everything is as it seems.’

  ‘So you don’t like to do bad things?’

  Prudente felt the barrel of the gun prod with less intensity into his ribs. ‘Of course not,’ replied the robber at last.

  ‘Come and have dinner with me,’ proposed Prudente. ‘I have an evening off, and if you are so hungry, then you can have a free meal on me, without doing anything bad.’

  The robber eyed him suspiciously. ‘I think I’ll just go home,’ he said at length.

  ‘No, no, no, come on, I invite you. Be my guest. I’d like the company. What’s your favourite meal?’

  ‘Feijoada.’

  ‘Ah, me too, but I don’t know anyone who serves it in the evening. By the middle of the afternoon there’s nothing left. I’ll take you to a churrasco house, perhaps, and we can have a picanha. How about that?’

  ‘What’s the catch?’ asked the thief, finally putting the gun into the waistband of his trousers.

  ‘We’ve got to go and look at the Christ first.’

  ‘One false move and I shoot,’ warned the thief, who had watched a great many westerns on the television, and had picked up one or two of the most time-honoured clichés.

  Together the two men walked down to the lagoon. They saw a row of white egrets perched upon a jetty, recuperating from a hard day’s fishing, and one man with a torch was paddling in the shallows, hoping to attract a fish or two to the pool of light that he was casting upon the water. In his right hand he held a machete with which to dispatch his victims. High above, the statue of Christ shone in glory above the clouds, its arms outspread in a gesture that was both a crucifixion and an embrace.

  ‘I come here when I need to think, to have a little consolation,’ said Prudente.

  ‘I like it too,’ said the thief.

  ‘Where are you from? You don’t have a Carioca accent.’

  ‘I’m from Salvador. I love it, but to be honest, there’s no future up there. Rio’s where the money is.’

  ‘And São Paulo.’

  ‘São Paulo’s OK. Brasilia’s just one big traffic jam.’

  ‘You’re right there. Come on, let’s go and eat. We can try Luna’s or Paz E Amor.’

  ‘I’ve never been to a proper restaurant,’ said the thief, ‘you’ll have to tell me what to do.’

  In Paz E Amor Prudente watched with satisfaction as his guest chewed enthusiastically upon the medallions of rare beef. Juice trickled down their chins, and they clinked glasses at every gulp. Prudente had chosen first a bottle of Concha y Toro from Chile, and then a bottle of Brazilian Forestier. ‘We Brazilians make good wine,’ he observed, ‘but we’ve forgotten to tell anyone. All the more for us, eh?’

  The dish of picanha was large enough for four people, but the two of them managed to demolish it nonetheless, with the aid of copious draughts of mineral water and swigs of the fine red wine. Prudente instructed his guest upon the art of attracting the waiter’s attention and explained that you always get better service if you say ‘thank you’ a great deal. ‘What’s your favourite football team?’ he asked.

  ‘Flamengo. What’s yours?’

  ‘What a coincidence. Mine’s Flamengo too. Did you see the game last week?’

  ‘I heard about it. Did you see it?’

  ‘It was fantastic.’

  ‘I heard it was. I couldn’t get in, so I went and had a drink.’

  Prudente attracted the waiter with a snap of his fingers, and said, ‘Two cognacs. Have you got the one with the ginger in it?’

  ‘Macieira, sir?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  Prudente showed the thief how to warm the glass in his hands so that the vapour would rise up and be trapped in the glass. He showed him how to sniff it. The thief inhaled deeply, a slow smile spreading across his face. ‘Nossa Senhora! I could get drunk on that alone,’ he said.

  ‘Have you heard the rumour about the police executing people like you?’ asked Prudente.

  ‘People like me?’

  ‘Thieves, armed robbers, that sort of thing. They say that the cops are so fed up with lawlessness that they’re taking the law into their own hands.’

  The thief looked at him reproachfully, as though resentful of being named for what he was. ‘I heard it was the police who killed all those street children on the steps of the Candelaria.’

  ‘I don’t think the police kill children,’ said Prudente, ‘but I heard they were killing people like you. Somebody found a corpse on the Corcovado recently. Apparently they only do it in
their spare time, when they’re out of uniform. That’s dedication for you, eh?’

  The thief regarded him, a small glow of fear alight in his eyes. ‘Don’t talk like this,’ he said, ‘it gives me the creeps.’

  ‘Hey, I bought you a meal. You’re OK with me. By the way, was I right in thinking that you didn’t have any bullets? Too expensive, eh? Or is the gun a replica?’

  ‘I’ve got bullets,’ said the thief, ‘I just don’t like to kill anyone. It’s bad enough when someone like you keeps reminding me that I’m a thief, but I’m not a murderer. I hope I never sink to that.’

  They sat in companionable silence, sipping their cognac, and feeling the picanha lie in their stomachs with the mildly uncomfortable weight of a small cannonball. ‘I’ve got to go to the men’s,’ said the thief, ‘keep an eye on my things.’

  ‘That’s OK; I’ve got to make a phone call. Do you want me to order some coffee? Do you like it pure, or with sugar?’

  After the thief had gone, Prudente took his mobile phone from his jacket, stabbed at the buttons, and talked for a few moments into the receiver. He put it down as the thief reappeared, and let it lie on the table, as if to indicate, ‘You could have stolen this.’

  ‘Do you mind if I look at your gun?’ asked Prudente. ‘I have an interest in them.’

  ‘In a restaurant?’ protested the thief. ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Oh, go on. Just pass it under the cloth. Take the bullets out first if you want. Is it a nice one?’

  ‘Browning automatic, 9mm. It’s a sweetie.’

  ‘Let’s have a look.’

  The thief thought about it, and then removed the weapon from inside his jacket. He withdrew the ammunition clip and passed the weapon under the tablecloth. Prudente hefted its weight in his hands, and said, ‘I prefer a .38 revolver. I mean, with automatics you can’t ever be sure that they’re not going to jam, and if that happens in a tight spot, you’re done for.’

  ‘I know.’ The thief leaned forward confidentially. ‘I bet you’ll never guess where I got it from.’

  ‘You said you’d stolen it.’

  ‘I bought it from one of the soldiers at the Copacabana Fort.’

  ‘Nossa Senhora!’ exclaimed Prudente. ‘I heard that such things happened, but I didn’t think it was true.’

  ‘They’re all in it,’ said the thief bitterly. ‘Police, politicians, the army, you name it.’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re so disgusted,’ said Prudente, ‘you’re a thief yourself.’

  The thief looked at him wearily. ‘As you keep reminding me.’

  Prudente reached inside his jacket and withdrew a pair of panatellas. ‘Cigar?’ he asked. ‘It goes well with the cognac and coffee. A good way to end the evening happily.’

  The thief accepted the cigar and blew out his cheeks. ‘I’m stuffed,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow I’ll be shitting pure blood, like a vampire.’

  The two men watched with interest as a Military Police vehicle disappeared slowly around the corner. ‘They’re up to something,’ observed the thief, ‘you can always tell. When the sirens are going, you know that they’re just trying to get home quickly. It’s when they’re creeping about that you know something’s up.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ said Prudente, nodding his head and blowing a thick cloud of blue aromatic smoke into the air above the thief’s head.

  ‘Nice cigar,’ said the thief.

  ‘I’m going to pay the bill,’ said Prudente de Moraes. ‘It’s time we were off. It’s been a great evening. After an inauspicious start to our acquaintance, I am beginning to feel that I have almost made a friend.’

  ‘You’ve been very kind,’ said the thief, ‘a true Christian.’ He hung his head, and a choke came into his voice. ‘I didn’t deserve to be treated so well, after what I tried to do.’

  As they walked off together, Prudente put his arm through that of his new friend, and they matched step as they considered the beauty and calm of the evening, ‘Did you know,’ asked Prudente, ‘that in the northern hemisphere they see a completely different set of stars? I’ve often thought of that as a metaphor for something, but I don’t know what.’

  ‘It makes you think,’ said the thief, and at that moment the two men became aware that ahead of them, coming towards them, were four very large men walking abreast. ‘Better cross the street,’ said the thief, ‘better be on the safe side.’

  ‘It’s too late now,’ replied Prudente de Moraes. ‘All we can do is look strong and confident, and keep going as if we know exactly what’s what.’

  ‘Maybe we should invite them to dinner,’ said the thief, with a small and very nervous laugh.

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Prudente, ‘I think I know these characters. Friends of mine.’

  ‘That’s a relief. I thought we were done for.’

  Prudente called out to the men, who were now within a few paces, ‘Hey, Vargas, Francisco, Bartolomeu, Paulo, how’s things? Good to see you. What a coincidence. Let me introduce you to my friend.’

  They shook hands all round, the thief revealing that his name was Luis Ribeiro.

  ‘We’ve had a great evening,’ said Prudente. ‘You’ll find that Luis is good company.’

  The thief eyed the four men and grew suspicious. They all had neatly brushed hair, broad shoulders, bulky jackets, freshly shaved faces and very shiny shoes. It did not seem quite right.

  ‘This is him, is it?’ asked one of the men, and Prudente nodded.

  The thief howled and protested as he was dragged towards the Military Police car, forced up against it, disarmed, searched and handcuffed. One of the men briefly inspected the thief’s Browning automatic and handed it to Prudente. The thief was pushed into the vehicle, and Prudente leaned in through the window. The thief was shaking with fear, whimpering, almost unable to speak.

  ‘Don’t take it too badly,’ said Prudente soothingly. ‘You’ve had the traditional meal, the traditional smoke, even a chance to repent. We’ve had a great time. I would shake your hand and wish you well, but I can’t because of the handcuffs. It’s a pity.’ He reached out his hand, and patted the thief comfortingly upon the shoulder. ‘Adeus.’ To the four men he said, ‘Good night, boys, go carefully.’

  ‘Good night, Sergeant,’ they chorused in reply, and Prudente de Moraes watched the car pull away from the kerb and head towards the Túnel Rebouças. A twinge of regret tugged at his heart, and he set off back towards Ipanema beach, where he bought a can of Guarana, sat on the steps, looked up at the Southern Cross, and listened to the sea.

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  Copyright © Louis de Bernières 2019

  Cover illustrations © Georgie McAusland

  Louis de Bernières has assert
ed his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  First published by Harvill Secker in 2019

  penguin.co.uk/vintage

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9781473547926