“Search him,” says Chicken Zé.
Augusto allows himself to be searched by the man with the club. The latter gives Chicken Zé Augusto’s pen, his ID card, his money, the small pad of paper, and the semiprecious stone in a small cloth sack that Augusto received from the bagger of fat women.
“This guy’s nuts,” says an old black man observing the goings on.
Chicken Zé takes Augusto by the arm. He says: “I’m going to have a talk with him.”
The two walk to the Escada da Conceição alleyway.
“Look here, Mr. Fancy, first of all, my name isn’t Chicken Zé, it’s Zumbi from Jogo da Bola, you understand? And second, I’m not president of any fucking Beggars Union; that’s crap put out by the opposition. Our name is the Union of the Homeless and Shirtless, the UHS. We don’t ask for handouts, we don’t want handouts, we demand what they took from us. We don’t hide under bridges or inside cardboard boxes like that fucker Benevides, and we don’t sell gum and lemons at intersections.”
“Correct,” says Augusto.
“We want to be seen, we want them to look at our ugliness, our dirtiness, want them to smell our bodies everywhere; want them to watch us making our food, sleeping, fucking, shitting in the pretty places where the well-off stroll and live. I gave orders for the men not to shave, for the men and women and children not to bathe in the fountains; the fountains are for pissing and shitting in. We have to stink and turn people’s stomachs like a pile of garbage in the middle of the street. And nobody asks for money. It’s better to rob than to panhandle.”
“Aren’t you afraid of the police?”
“The police don’t have any place to put us; the jails are full and there are lots of us. They arrest us and have to let us go. And we stink too bad for them to want to beat up on us. They take us off the streets, and we come back. And if they kill one of us, and I think that’s going to happen any time now, and it’s even a good thing if it does happen, we’ll get the body and parade the carcass through the streets like Lampião’s head.”
“Do you know how to read?”
“If I didn’t know how to read, I’d be living happily in a cardboard box picking up other people’s leavings.”
“Where do you get the resources for that association of yours?”
“The talk’s over, Epifânio. Remember my name, Zumbi from Jogo da Bola; sooner or later you’re going to hear about me, and it won’t be from that shitass Benevides. Take your things and get out of here.”
Augusto returns to his walkup on Sete de Setembro by going down Escada da Conceição to Major Valô Square. He takes João Homem to Liceu, where there’s a place called the Tourist House, from there to Acre Street, then to Uruguaiana. Uruguaiana is occupied by police shock troops carrying shields, helmets with visors, batons, machine guns, tear gas. The stores are closed.
Kelly is reading the part of the newspaper marked by Augusto as homework.
“This is for you,” Augusto says.
“No, thank you. You think I’m some kind of performing dog? I’m learning to read because I want to. I don’t need little presents.”
“Take it, it’s an amethyst.”
Kelly takes the stone and throws it with all her strength. The stone hits against the skylight and falls to the floor. Kelly kicks the chair, wads the newspaper into a ball, which she throws at Augusto. Other whores had done things even worse; they have attacks of nerves when they spend a lot of time alone with a guy and he doesn’t want to go to bed with them. One of them tried to take Augusto by force and bit off his entire ear, which she spat into the toilet and flushed.
“Are you crazy? You could break the skylight. It’s over a hundred years old. The old man would die of a broken heart.”
“You think I’ve got the clap, or AIDS, is that it?”
“No.”
“You want to go to the doctor with me for him to examine me? You’ll see I don’t have any kind of disease.”
Kelly is almost crying, and her grimace reveals her missing tooth, which gives her an unprotected, suffering air, which reminds him of the teeth he, Augusto, doesn’t have and awakens in him a fraternal and uncomfortable pity, for her and for himself.
“You don’t want to go to bed with me, you don’t want to hear the story of my life, I do everything for you, I’ve learned to read, I treat your rats well, I even hugged a tree in the Public Promenade, and you don’t even have one ear, and I never mentioned that you don’t have one ear so as not to annoy you.”
“I was the one who hugged the tree.”
“Don’t you feel like doing it?” she yells.
“I don’t have desire, or hope, or faith, or fear. That’s why no one can harm me. To the contrary of what the old man said, the lack of hope has liberated me.”
“I hate you!”
“Don’t yell, you’re going to wake the old man.”
The old man lives in the rear of the store, downstairs.
“How am I going to wake him up if he doesn’t sleep?”
“I don’t like to see you yelling.”
“I’m yelling! I’m yelling!”
Augusto embraces Kelly and she sobs, her face against his chest. Kelly’s tears wet Augusto’s shirt.
“Why don’t you take me to the Santo Antônio Convent? Please, take me to the Santo Antônio Convent.”
Saint Anthony is considered a saint for those seeking marriage. On Tuesdays the convent is filled with single women of all ages making vows to the saint. It’s a very good day for beggars, as the women, after praying to the saint, always give alms to the poor petitioners, and the saint may notice that act of charity and decide in favor of their petition.
Augusto doesn’t know what to do with Kelly. He says he’s going to the store to talk with the old man.
The old man is lying in bed in the small room at the rear of the store. The bed is so narrow that he doesn’t fall out of it only because he never sleeps.
“May I speak with you a bit?”
The old man sits up in bed. He motions for Augusto to sit beside him.
“Why do people want to go on living?”
“You want to know why I want to go on living, as old as I am?”
“No, all people.”
“Why do you want to go on living?” the old man asks.
“I like trees. I want to finish writing my book. But sometimes I think about killing myself. Tonight Kelly hugged me, crying, and I felt the urge to die.”
“You want to die so as to put an end to other people’s suffering? Not even Christ managed that.”
“Don’t talk to me of Christ,” Augusto says.
“I stay alive because I don’t have a lot of pains in my body and I enjoy eating. And I have good memories. I’d also stay alive if I didn’t have any memories at all,” says the old man.
“What about hope?”
“In reality hope only liberates the young.”
“But at the Timpanas you said—”
“That hope is a kind of liberation … But you have to be young to take advantage of it.”
Augusto climbs the stairs back to his walkup.
“I gave the rats some cheese,” Kelly says.
“Do you have some good memory of your life?” Augusto asks.
“No, my memories are all horrible.”
“I’m going out,” Augusto says.
“Will you be back?” Kelly asks.
Augusto says he’s going to walk in the streets. Solvitur ambulando.
On Rosário Street, empty, since it’s nighttime, near the flower market, he sees a guy destroying a public telephone; it’s not the first time he’s run into that individual. Augusto doesn’t like to interfere in other people’s lives, which is the only way to walk in the streets in the late hours, but Augusto doesn’t like the destroyer of public phones. Not because he cares about the phones—since he left the water and sewerage department he has never once spoken on a telephone—but because he doesn’t like the guy’s face; he shouts “Cut that shit out,” and the vandal runs off in the direction of Monte Castelo Square.