Today is a decisive day, today Seraverde will become blue or red, today there are elections in all of Pernambuco. The blues and the reds have set up blue and red trios elétricos on the city squares, tractor-trailers with stages and speakers, red and blue VW Bugs with megaphones drive through the streets, they announce a red and a blue celebration: free beer and forró tonight, drinks tonight! Vote blue! Vote red! On Rio do Lixo too the election is being decided, there’s Pitú and promises in exchange for votes: vote for us, meus amigos, and there will be two sacks of concrete per head! The district policeman Santos is the reds’ district candidate for Rua do Lixo, PT, the Workers’ Party, on walls, cars and donkey carts there are pictures of him and his mustache. I ask: Why the policeman of all people? and Felix answers, because everyone knows Santos, everyone has already paid him. Around noon Santos strolls once again down the garbage street, the black dog Lula! Named after the next president of our country, he said, Lula da Silva, remember that name! The black dog is wearing a red-and-white neckerchief, the colors of the Partido dos Trabalhadores. If you vote for me, compadre, I’ll put a roof on your hut, compadre, with the good tiles! Blue and red children play war, their fathers drink sugarcane liquor, cachaça. Wanna bet, Svensson? asks Felix, and I wager our souls and twenty dollars on the reds. In the afternoon Felix slaughters two chickens, the steady spinning of the bird in the air and precise chop of the head with the hatchet he learned from David. To celebrate the occasion there’s garlic chicken with coriander and pimento, we put halved garlic cloves in each of the seventy-seven knife cuts. At four the mothers fetch the children and the milk powder rations, at five the heavy iron gates are closed. The padre with the cap says his evening prayer, he opens a bottle of water and passes out glasses. Everyone is sitting at the round table in the courtyard, the padre, David, Ailton, Lucinda, Cris, Felix, Svensson, Ivan. Urinating is good for you, the padre says after his third glass of water. Today is a special day, today the radio is playing “Girl from Mars,” today merengue and forró waft over from the trios elétricos, today in the middle of the praying and the clinking of glasses there’s a soft knock at the steel door of the Fundação Ajuda de Nossa Senhora. David opens it, and in the dust of Rua do Lixo stands a small, blonde woman with a backpack and without shoes. I’m Tuuli, she says, I’m here as a volunteer.
THE GARBAGE STREET IS seething. It’s dark, on the equator night always falls like a curtain. On the left desert, over us the sky, on the green hills in the east the city, where the rich people live, their streetlamps, the lights of their cars. On a pulley hang a bucket of beer bottles and a bowl of cold chicken leftovers. Tuuli passes out the glasses like someone from here. Everyone has left, David is patrolling along the walls, only Felix, Tuuli, and I remain. Speeches about Rua do Lixo are now wafting from the city, Santos promises order and progress, ordem e progresso, for Rua do Lixo, along with a bottle of Pitú for every vote. Merengue steams through the air, the music gets louder, the speeches, the roar. The smoke of a hundred fires hangs over the huts, burning plastic and earth. On the empty field between the garbage dump and the bus station, which the people here call the murderers’ field, wild dogs are yowling, people are singing and cursing. Over the past few months, three men have been shot here and four stabbed. The reds shoot the blues, the blues stab the reds, the poor kill each other. Two weeks ago someone shot at Felix when he was sitting and smoking in a blue T-shirt in the scaffolding, but this someone only hit the metal bucket next to him. The blues are giving out meat and beer, we hear, but the reds have better music. Occasionally rockets shoot into the night sky, red on the left, blue on the right. Champagne for everyone, says Felix, opening a beer. The water tower is standing, there’s room for three people on the wooden top. David is still patrolling along the walls, we can hear him whistling down there. Tuuli is sitting between Felix and me, her legs dangling over the garbage street, she eats garlic chicken and licks her fingers and lips. Felix and I watch her as she rolls cigarettes and drinks, we look at her fingers, her wrists without multicolored bracelets, her hair tied back, we listen to her Finnish German, we watch her drink and laugh and sing, we fall in love voluntarily.
IF NO WATER COMES, Felix shouts from below over the noise of the motor, it looks bad. Is anything coming? Tuuli and I are lying on the water tower for cover, Tuuli rolls another cigarette. I shout: No! Nothing! Safados! An hour ago the music on the squares died away. Felix and I take turns getting beer, and we start the diesel pump as a trial run. The speeches are over, the poor return to the filth satiated and drunk, cheering, screaming, fighting. Red! Santos! Blue! Gonçalves Meirinho! They lie down in the dark recesses of the garbage street and sleep. Behind the garbage dump the desert dogs are howling, occasionally a shot rings out, sometimes a salute, sometimes a signal. On the horizon a fine line indicates the cardinal direction, in an hour the sun will rise. Tuuli hides the burning tip in her small hands so no one will see it. The pipe doesn’t even drip. Nothing, she shouts, nothing! Felix hoists up more beer. Macumba is the Brazilian form of voodoo, he says, as his head appears over the edge, we now turn to magic! In his hand Felix is holding an election poster of Santos and his mustache. The name José Santos Tourão Splitter is photocopied on it, Partido dos Trabalhadores. Does anyone have a light? Tuuli reaches into her pants pocket. Felix stands on the wooden cover of the water tower and holds the lighter to Santos’s name, then to his face. The poster catches fire and hangs ablaze in Felix’s outstretched hand. Macumba! Felix shouts, burning his fingers. If we had water, he laughs, that wouldn’t have happened, compadre!
DAVID! DAVID! Someone is pounding on the iron door of the Fundação Ajuda de Nossa Senhora and screaming for David. I wake up. Tuuli is lying with her head on Felix’s chest and her legs on my belly. Dawn is breaking. David, someone yells outside the wall of the Fundação Ajuda de Nossa Senhora, “DAVI” without the last d, then we hear the clip-clop of hooves and the wheels of a departing donkey cart in the gravelly dust. I wake the other two, in the courtyard we hear David’s keys and the dark bark of a dog, then David’s sudden command, hurry! Hurry! Felix and I almost fall off the water tower, because David is very close to shouting, we’ve never heard him shout before. Tuuli follows us. We run across the freshly swept courtyard, I trip over a goat and cut my knee. David is standing in the open doorway, his Heckler & Koch in his hand. Outside the door lies a man. Blood everywhere: on the steps, on the wall, on the iron door. The man has pissed all over himself, he’s not saying anything and isn’t screaming, he’s groaning softly, on his sleeves dust and dark blood, from a frayed hole in the middle of his belly lighter blood. The red party jersey is torn open and soaked through. His chest hairs are stuck together like gulls’ feathers in oil. He’s lying in his blood and looking at Felix and me with glassy eyes. Someone has shot off the man’s abdominal wall and left him on the doorstep of the Fundação Ajuda de Nossa Senhora, the tracks of the donkey cart can still be seen. Next to him stands a big black dog, he licks the sweat off the man’s face. The dog is wearing a red neckerchief, his chain is lying in the dirt behind him, his fur is blood-spattered, blood-smeared. Holy Mother of God, says David, it’s Santos! Shit, says Felix, hurry! Hurry and do what? asks Tuuli. I say: the truck. My fear like ice-cold water. We have to go to the hospital!