honour words
From the outset, it didn’t take him long to learn that when you’re dealing with squats you mustn’t draw attention to yourself — exactly the opposite of what Rener did. Interviews, photos here and there, the old Robin Hood weakness. It wasn’t hard to find her, it wasn’t hard to work out who she was; even in a city where nobody is interested in finding out who you are. Another valuable squatter rule that Paulo learned was to choose buildings that don’t create problems: a two-room council flat was his favourite kind of lead. Rener, however, wanted confrontation. She really wanted it till she found it. The Lebanese men had no trouble tracking her down, inviting her to take a walk and putting her in a private cell (and this time it was no longer just the brothers who had kicked her out of the occupied house but an older cousin, well-connected in the circles that the London police call the city’s Really Fucked Bits). They didn’t go so far as to torture her, they kept her in a perfectly soundproofed room just to be safe, until they got to Paulo under forty-eight hours later. There was no beating, they did little more than push him around and handcuff him. He had to hand over his passport, his papers, all his documents from Brazil. They set terms for bail, that was what they said. Bail, reasonable and feasible, so as not to have to end his life and the life of his black friend, who came this close to being raped, she could have been, and still could be, since she was an angel fallen from heaven, that was what they said. Paulo only got to talk to her for twenty minutes before they were separated, he paid what they asked for, he used up all his savings and was left still owing them a thousand five hundred pounds. There would be no problem setting up an instalment plan, that was what they said, give him the chance to pay it off in instalments, with two per cent interest accruing per month until he had met the total cost of the life insurance, that was another phrase they used. The lives of a Brazilian guy and a French girl who looks like a model are worth a lot more than that, that’s what they said. At Paulo’s insistence, Rener returned to Paris; she never knew about the agreement he had made with the Lebanese men. He lied that he’d had to give them two thousand pounds, that was all, and that they would kill them if they didn’t leave London, which they had never said. They took his luxury squat in Chelsea and forbade him ever to occupy another property again. Paying rent to live somewhere would be good for him, it would give him a new sense of the market, that was that they said. This meant that Paulo had to get a job, that was when he started working at Whispers, a yuppie bar in Covent Garden, where the basic cocktail list included no fewer than a hundred and twenty alcoholic drinks, he came top in the selection process to fill two vacancies to work on the first-floor bar, he rented a room in some guy’s house in Kilburn. The guy works as a first mate with two other friends, taking sailing boats to and from the Greek islands, boats belonging to people who like to sail to a certain place and then don’t have the patience or the time to sail back. The house is always empty, it’s modern, and it has a private patio that is completely grassed over. The money he takes home from Whispers is great and his customers include the most beautiful girls in Covent Garden, much better than the ones at Sol. Paradise for any Brazilian, or rather for anyone at all in his early twenties who wants to work in London, were it not for the constant pressure from the Lebanese men who would show up at the bar once a week asking for free drinks and constantly announcing new additions to the total amount owed. In the movies, in books, in comics, the hero always finds some way of getting the most brilliant revenge and escaping, leaving behind him the crushing defeat of his enemies, and yet, however many nights he spends wide awake thinking, he has never been able to come up with a way out. Getting hold of a new passport at the Brazilian consulate, asking his parents for money, or one of his acquaintances, and taking off completely on the quiet; that wasn’t for him. He is more paranoid than ever, he has hated himself.
It is the second time Paulo is trying to change gears in the Ford Fiesta they have just hired; he bangs the door with his fist and realises that same second that he needs to use his left hand and to stay on the left-hand side, particularly on the minor roads like this one that he has taken to reach the house of his Portuguese workmate, the guy who is going to join him and the two Moroccans who also work at the bar, one as a busboy and the other as a bartender (in whose name the car was rented, since Paulo has no passport or papers); none of them wanted to drive the car in that busy traffic because, despite having licenses, they haven’t had much practice. The drizzle will complicate matters a bit, but it’s part of the fun of getting out of the city and curing a hangover on the road to Newquay, a surfer beach in the south-west of England. Driving is just another reason to stop thinking about everything that has happened in the last few months. The Portuguese guy gets into the car, says he’s going to surf every wave and fuck all the girls they find and that as soon as they’re out of London he will take over the driving and show them how you drive on a European motorway, something he’s sure doesn’t exist in Brazil. Paulo isn’t good at handling the Portuguese guy’s agitation, he’d imagined that his colleague would be calmer outside work but apparently not, just the opposite. He says he needn’t wait till they have left the city if he really wants to drive, he can take the wheel right now. He gets out of the car and from outside gestures for him to do the same. They swap seats. Paulo feels the weight of his hangover. Up till this moment he has managed not to think about what the Lebanese men had said to him the night before. After pouring them two glasses of Moosehead beer and telling them that with this month’s interest and everything else he now owed them the final two hundred and sixty pounds, after which he will have settled his debt, that he would be giving them the money in forty minutes when he went on his break, he heard the older one saying they had decided to charge him a two thousand pound fine for Rener having left London without their permission. Paulo said nothing, went back to serving the group of yuppies who were waiting for him at the other end of the bar. On his break he went down to the staff room, opened his locker, took out the money and outside he handed the two hundred and sixty pounds to the Lebanese men, asking when they were going to give him back his passport and the rest of his documents. He knew the answer already, but he wanted to hear it all the same: only when he paid up the fine. He looked up, trying to see the London sky which in the centre of town always hides the stars, he turned his back on them and — even though there were still fifteen minutes left to the end of his break — returned to work, took a bottle of bourbon without checking whether the manager was watching him or not, poured himself a glass with some ice and Coke, the official drink of any self-respecting bartender, and started to drink. The Portuguese guy won’t shut up shouting Alright like a madman, imitating a Texan accent, overtaking cars on the motorway, gesturing at their passengers, especially when they are women. The soundtrack is The Cult played at maximum volume. Paulo is really annoyed now, he turns off the music and, speaking in Portuguese, mostly so that the Moroccans don’t get involved, he tells the Portuguese guy that he’s the biggest idiot on the face of the earth and to pull the car over immediately. He thought he would get the chance to rest on this trip to the coast, but running away from your problems, even those that have just appeared at the last minute, is an inexcusable fault. The Portuguese guy pulls towards the hard shoulder and stops the car. Paulo gets out, saying he is going to take over the driving, the other guy doesn’t argue with him. Paulo apologises to the Moroccans and says that from here on in only he will drive. They get back on the road. Paulo drives at more than a hundred and forty (the car has a good engine, the road is excellent; Jaguars, Mercedes-Benzes, Porsches pass them at more than a hundred and sixty), one thought is supplanted by the next, he tries to predict what he will do when they get to Newquay, what it’ll be like in the B&B, since they haven’t made reservations, what it will be like dealing with the Portuguese guy who has gone into a sulk and hasn’t spoken another word, how he’s going to be able to wrench his passport from the Lebanese men, what he will do if the car is stopped for some reason and they ask for his license, what he’ll do to go back to having a life in Brazil, when he will go back to Brazil, when he will see Rener again, what it’ll be like when he tries to find Maína, when he will go back to being proud of his country, when he’ll have more news of what’s happening in Brazil, how he’s going to manage to get to sleep like a normal person, when he will stop giving himself a hard time, when he will reach the top of the world, and he hears the phrases I won’t make it and It doesn’t matter what I do, God doesn’t exist. He sees the caramel and white cocker spaniel at the side of the road (he isn’t sure if he really does see it, he isn’t sure of anything), and panic sets in. Scared to breathe, scared of not being able to breathe any more, scared to talk, of not being able to talk, not being able to swallow, scared to think, of not being able to stop thinking. He pulls over, opens the car door, gets out, his steps shaky, holding his head as though it might come unstuck from his neck, walks off the road and kneels down looking at the ground, the ground which at this moment looks like nothing, his eyelids almost shut. The others get out of the car, ask what’s going on. He says quietly that he is going to die, he says it in Portuguese, he says it in English. He can’t stop thinking. He says he’s about to have a heart attack. The world is never going to change. There is no meaning to life. And nothing can be more futureless (and hopeless), more awful and terrifying.