When I wake up, it’s bright. The pickup is parked in the floodlight of an armored car. Police, Felix whispers, come on, Svensson, move your ass! He buries the Supermercadinho e Panificadora Bom Jesus bag under me and the lambskin. I need a few seconds to get my bearings: Brazil, pickup, lambskin, me, Felix, David the night watchman. The policemen are hard to see in the glare of the floodlight, their Heckler & Kochs are shining, the armored car is blocking the pickup. I slide back and forth on the lambskin and feel the bulging plastic bag under me. Just arrived, I think, and immediately thrown in prison. A short policeman approaches the window between tall policemen, he has a sparse mustache but is otherwise clean-shaven, he’s in shirtsleeves and holds a pair of leather gloves in his hand. Next to him is a black German shepherd, it barks deeply and darkly at the pickup. Our night watchman David puts up his hands, the policeman grins into the truck and I don’t move, at least not visibly. Santos! says Felix. Oi, meus amigos alemães, says the policeman, tudo bem? He looks over the rim of the mirrored sunglasses he’s wearing, even though it’s night. Felix nods, so I nod too, as if I understood. The black dog is waiting next to the policeman like death, his chain rattles, the muscles under his smooth fur move, his jowls droop, and when he yawns, I can see his fangs. Get out and put your hands on the roof, the policeman says politely, so we step out and put our hands on the hood, one of the tall policemen pulls my passport out of my back pocket and flips through it. Svensson? Turista? Yes. The pitch-black dog sniffs Felix first, then I feel his wet nose between my legs. The animal takes his time thinking about what part of this tourist he should bite into first. Just woke up, I think, and already got my balls bitten off. David and the tall policemen seem to know each other, the doors are opened, they take David’s Heckler & Koch out of the glove compartment, hold it up to the light and put it back. P10? No, MK23. Permit? In his pants pocket. Santos laughs, David laughs too, but his laugh sounds angry. Can the dog sniff out the weed? He licks my hand, he licks every single finger with his rough tongue, the weed smell reaches this far. I’m trembling, and the pickup’s hood fogs up under my damp fingers. Then Santos slaps the dog on the nose with the leather glove and pulls him to the pickup by the chain, vambora, Lula, vambora! The dog sticks his nose into the truck and drools on the seat. Does the dapper policeman smell the Supermercadinho e Panificadora Bom Jesus bag under the lambskin? Felix reaches into his pocket and presses a few bills into Santos’s hand. They both laugh. The policeman twirls his fine mustache and smoothes out the money. He sticks it in his shirt pocket, then steps up the negotiations. Santos stands on tiptoe and takes the panama hat off Felix’s head, he turns it and flips it, he puts it on over his thin hair. David holds a forced smile as if he were posing for a painting. If Lula doesn’t find anything, says Santos with the panama hat on his head, you’ll have to reward him, Allemaos. The tall policemen with their Heckler & Kochs in their hands laugh. Vambora, Lula, vambora! Of course, says Felix, meu amigo, of course! Compadres, says Santos, if you still need water for your tower, Lula and I could do a lot for you. All we need is a little favor. Meu amigo, Felix says, of course, and he turns to me. Do you have any money? With the black dog Lula breathing down my neck and the lambskin in the corner of my eye, with damp fingers and weak knees, I hand over to Santos all the dollars from my neck pouch. Beleza, meu irmão, Santos shakes Felix’s hand and claps me on the shoulder. The tall policemen rub their fingers together, Santos tugs on Lula’s chain. He runs a glove across his throat, the floodlight goes out, all of a sudden it’s dark. The policemen get in their car and drive slowly toward the city, Lula has to gallop behind the car, we hear the rattle of his chain on the asphalt along with a jubilant song from the radio of the pickup, “Girl from Mars.” On the hills in the background the lights of Seraverde. Just arrived, I think, and already robbed. Welcome to Seraverde, says Felix, and David crosses himself and curses, if it were up to him, Santos would drop dead, safado, two-faced son of a bitch. Drop dead!
Two months later, the day the new volunteer arrives, everything is at first the same as always. A wall encloses the Fundação Ajuda de Nossa Senhora, on top of it glass shards embedded in concrete and razor wire. When David comes back from his last round at sunrise, Felix and I are already awake in our hammocks and mosquito nets. I make coffee with sugar, and Felix smokes some weed before he goes to the bathroom, he sings, er ist achtzig, hat zittrige Finger und ist schon ganz weich in den Knien. David takes off his ski mask and puts the Heckler & Koch in the cabinet, he washes with water from the enamel bowl, he lies down in Felix’s hammock. David guards our sleep, he works when we’re asleep, he makes his rounds along the walls, he sits cross-legged amid the glass in concrete and smokes, sometimes he shoots a cat with ragged ears, sometimes one of the gray street pigs, and leaves them there until the dogs get them. At first everything is the same as always: at six the gate is opened, in the old people’s barracks the residents wake up, at seven the padre says the morning prayer in his purple baseball cap. At seven-thirty comes the soup kitchen cook Cris, at eight the mothers bring the first children, at nine comes the dentist, and I throw the first molars on top of the onion skins and chicken bones. I’ve learned how to give injections. On the train platforms behind the Fundação Ajuda de Nossa Senhora the railroad children sit with their plastic bags and glue cans, they get orange juice and bread. Felix feeds the chickens, he milks the goats, he gives the smallest children the bottles, he rocks them to sleep. Today he is doing all this for the last time, today the new volunteer is supposed to arrive on the six o’clock bus from Recife, we send one of the railroad children to Rodoviária to pick her up.
Today is a special day, today the water is supposed to come. In the morning I crush ants and spiders underfoot, I sweep the bedrooms and the courtyard, I drink the sugary coffee. I’ve grown thin, I’ve already gotten over the vomiting and diarrhea, I’ve spent nights lying awake next to the toilet. Now I wear friendship bracelets around my wrists like all the Europeans in the Fundação Ajuda, for health, for good luck. At eleven Felix and I drive the pickup into the city. For the last time we buy drinking water in containers, three sacks of concrete and two iron bars for the last steps to the water tower. We buy beer and a bottle of champagne. Felix and I work hand in hand, we saw, plane, nail. In the courtyard the hungry stand barefoot in line, there’s feijoada and rice, oi, gringos, they say to Felix and me. At eleven-thirty the bars are bent into makeshift steps, fourteen metal hooks up to the top, the last two we affix around twelve. We check the struts, we test-run the pump without water. Then the water tower is standing, it took us two months, a large metal tank on four legs, cast in concrete and six meters high. It stands in the middle of Rua do Lixo, against the filth in the area, against the poisonings, against the bacteria, against the dying of children. For two months Felix has driven the pickup into the city every day and bought concrete, pipes, wood and wire mesh with European money. The pipeline runs illegally through the field between Rua do Lixo and Seraverde, four hundred meters of plastic pipes twenty centimeters under the dust, buried by the day laborers at dawn and nightfall, the municipal pipelines tapped only unofficially, officer Santos was willing to turn a blind eye to the construction of the water conduit in exchange for a friendly donation, meus amigos. The pump runs on diesel. For a small fee, compadres, Santos said, he and his dog Lula wouldn’t notice any of this. Everyone helped: David can weld, I learned to mix concrete, Felix can hang in the scaffolding and direct the day laborers, his book in his hand, Water Supply Systems for Home Farming by Williams/Steynman, Chapter “Shut up and play”, everything just roughly tripled.