In this kaleidoscopic novel set in a favela of Rio de Janeiro—“in the city of stray bullets, in the land of lost opportunities”—a gang member runs wildly through the streets not knowing he has only seven minutes left to live. Barflies, prostitutes, immigrants, a gay couple, a taxi driver, cops, a mobster, and more populate Francisco Maciel’s first book to appear in English. Leaping back and forth across time and spiraling into the surreal, the novel coalesces around a brutal massacre. Maciel’s multiracial characters write poetry and discourse on soccer, insects, samba, and climate change. Gritty, unpredictable, and percussive, There’s No Point in Dying is translated by National Book Award winner Bruna Dantas Lobato.
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A Horse at the Door
Dafé is running down Maia de Lacerda, it’s 2:15 in the afternoon, and at 2:22 he’s going to die. Tall, green eyes, coiled hair bleached bright yellow, he could’ve been whatever he wanted in life. Soccer player. Security guard. Gigolo. Star. He was meant to shine, he’d always thought. He was different, he was better. Then he made the wrong choices. Now he’s running down Maia. Just a pipe dream.
He feels like he’s soaring, but he isn’t. He spent the last two days fucking and nuzzling. No sleep, not enough food, too much to drink. He’s running on the sidewalk, on the left side of the street, past the parked cars, the trees, the lampposts. He’s trying to get to São Roberto. He’ll be safe then, he thinks. That’s where the woman he’s been banging lives, and though he told her they’re done, that’s where he’s headed, sex is no help in a situation like this, only gets in the way. But that’s where he’s going. His mother Mirtes’s would be safer, but he doesn’t think of that.
It’d be faster if he went through the Bezerra de Menezes Spiritist Center, jumped over the back wall to São Carlos and ran down the steps to get to São Roberto. But he keeps running down the street.
Everyone here’s a lame horse. That’s what Guile Xangô says, and Guile Xangô is a nice guy, weird and smart, he’s got a job, an address, identity documents. All the others are screw-ups, starving, one foot in jail. At least that part is true: it’s hard to find someone here who’s never done time. People pretend they haven’t. But when they’re hammered and high on blow they brag about it. They’re out and got nothing to show for it. No job, respect, dignity. They get wasted in seedy bars and snort white lines off black tables, the thin threads of their stupid lives going between their teeth. Life was better on the inside, they say. Then why not just stay there? Out here they got no rights, no respect. They’re nobody. They’re sick. They walked through the cell door right into a solid wall. They don’t exist. They don’t even know how much they don’t exist. Everyone here’s a lame horse, Guile Xangô says, and you know what you do to a lame horse? You put a bullet in it, kill it.
Dafé is still running down Maia, still feeling like he’s soaring. If he ran into the Halley Hotel, ran up the stairs, locked himself up in a room, Pernambuco would help him, he wouldn’t stand for cowardice, he’d be on his side. Dafé could stand a chance.
No one here has IDs. They work underground. They have marks on their skin instead. And he, Dafé, doesn’t have any of those either. He’s never liked tattoos. He’s proud of his own skin, clear, unblemished. He’s never fallen off his bike or his motorcycle. He’s never fallen.
The truth is that everyone’s gotten their marks right here in the present world. Guile Xangô has a historical explanation for this stuff. He says that all marks are inherited, like astral maps handed down from a past life. You believe this shit? It doesn’t make sense. Guile Xangô loves to talk about how slaves got punished. Like at the whipping post. Everyone’s feet swollen, all of today’s twists and turns from the thrashings at that same post in their past lives. All the slaves back then were marked like cattle. They were cattle. The body parts that would get marked: thighs, arms, stomach, shoulders, chest, faces. The marks could be a cross, a bell, flowers, letters (BP, FC, N&B). That’s what Guile Xangô keeps saying. Everyone here gets to be a slave again.
If you think about it (and you always think about it after talking to Guile Xangô) a lot of girls have these burn marks. Usually from boiling water. Mothers throwing hot water at their babies when they wouldn’t stop crying. A child reaching for the stove and pulling down the kettle, a waterfall on her face. Another kid throwing water at a girl walking home up the hill after school, so she’d learn her lesson and never look at another woman’s man. The ones with chemical burns from jealous cuckolded boyfriends like to show it off the most. They still wear tiny shorts, no matter that there’s only a scar left and the faint idea that at some time they were desired.
Leo smashed Monstrinho’s face with a bat. A trampled bloody chunk over his left eye and bare flesh under his right eye all the way down his chin. A beautiful scar. And the two of them go way back, served time together with Dentinho, Paula da Olívia, Pará da Lana. So many stab wounds between them. The bullet scars are more impressive: Monstrinho has at least twelve, entry and exit wounds. And two from bullets that didn’t exit: a scar on his leg and another on his scalp. Everyone here has those marks too: from stabbings, gunshots, bats, hot water, acid. And marks from diseases, arms and legs broken in places that don’t mend easy. Arms and legs maimed or crippled in car accidents, fingers lost to factories or lumber mills or machete fights, ears severed in some brawl.
And he’s still running at a gallop. The best part is when Guile Xangô talks about the iron muzzle, the one Escrava Anastácia wears in the history books, made of zinc or tin sheets. It covers her whole face and has tiny air holes. Slaves had to wear it as punishment when they drank or stole food or ate earth or clay. Cachaça was the vice of choice for city slaves. Clay was more popular in rural areas. Men and women relished eating right out of anthills, with shards of clay pots, broken bits from perfume bottles. When they had the muzzle on, they tried to inhale particles off the ground as best they could. Like people nowadays snorting white powder, desperate to get their fix. (Imagine all these addicts dying to get something in their bodies with their mouths gagged.) Every drunk and junkie in the world, every single one of them is a child of Anastácia, Guile Xangô says. Can you believe it?
Dafé keeps running. If he crossed the street and turned on Professor Quintino, he’d see two cops standing outside Luiz’s bar on Sampaio Ferraz, talking to the gambling mobster, they’re nice guys. He knows one of the cops, Sargento Salgueirão, he’s a friend, once he even gave Dafé some advice he ignored. Dafé remembers the cop lost his son in an accident, some five years ago, with his own gun in his own home. Soon this same cop will deliver Lana’s baby inside that very police car, he’ll win a medal and go crazy, lose his mind, a total lunatic. Dafé would be safe there.
And if he ran into Luiz’s bar, he’d see the woman he loves (and pretends he doesn’t) talking to Guile Xangô. At that very moment, she says to Guile Xangô, “I need a bump.” She walks toward the bathroom, followed by an attentive collective gaze. On her way back, she walks through a fog of desire, a disdainful smirk in the corner of her lips, red like a matador’s cape. She puts a coin in the jukebox and dances by herself. The men are like dogs watching a bitch in heat. Calves, thighs, ass, and the dogs on all fours, slobbering. She sways her arms, calves, hips, shakes her ass, rubbing it in. Then she sits back down, her naughty face shining with sweat, she reaches for Guile Xangô, touches his cheek with her hand and purrs, “You’re so, so, I don’t know, so… sweet!”
“If you call me sweet one more time, I’ll beat you to a pulp!” Guile Xangô’s eyes look cold, but then they warm up and he smiles. She bursts out laughing, her hand cupping her mouth, her whole body shaking, two fat tears puddling on her fingers.
“You always make me laugh. You know you’re the only one who makes me laugh like this?”
Dafé would be jealous, but Guile Xangô would take one look at him and Dafé would see it’s fine, the three of them would drink and drink until the sun came down.
He’s running at a gallop down Maia de Lacerda. His lungs are burning, his legs getting heavy. The guys on the motorcycle have their helmets on. The one on the back carries a gun in his left hand. Dafé is on his left side too, making it easier for him to finish the job.
Guile Xangô gets it. Vovô do Crime, on the other hand, looks down on everybody. Even on Dafé. He was another weirdo. Dafé had seen what it was like to walk up the hill with him at least three times. The two of them side by side and voices shouting “Asshole” from the houses, shacks, bars, and stores. The Asshole must be on his way up the hill right about now and Dafé wishes he could be there with him again. But he’s not. Up there, the Asshole will smoke and snort and talk to the kids in the Movement. They’re his armed guards, his dragons of independence: the tougher ones call the Asshole Dr. Freud, and the younger ones call him Vovô do Crime, their Criminal Papa. They talk about philosophy, the streets, and they come up with plans for the day the favela comes to an end, they’ll take over the city, burn shit to the ground, use the guts of the last priest in town to hang the last rich man. The Asshole will talk until he’s exhausted. The troop shakes when he says God doesn’t exist, and he doesn’t laugh at any of their Jesus jokes. (Did you know Jesus was Brazilian? Because he was always performing miracles, he was poor, and was killed by his government.) The kids hold on to their guns when they hear him mention the devil. Dafé wishes he was up there with the Asshole. He’d be safe.
Dafé needs more air, he’s sucking in air, his feet are hitting the ground and sending pain up his chest and then up to his head, still burning. He’s burning up. If he ran toward the metro, through the vacant lot across the street from the station, if he did that, Dafé would also be safe. And he’d see the group of Angolans. Though he wouldn’t know what was going on. Or maybe he’d know deep down, without fully knowing.
The Angolans stand around the phone booth outside the Estácio station. Someone found a way to call any number for free, some glitch, and they wait for their turn. More than twenty of them. Men, women, teenagers, children. They stand there from morning to night to morning again. But now they leave early. The military police warned them, a bunch of Black people huddled on a corner in the middle of the night can’t be anything good. Now they stay there from morning to ten in the evening, eleven, midnight. They came to Brazil to try to escape their civil war and the colonial misery they’d inherited, but they were never slaves, they were never trafficked in slave ships. They don’t have that mark. They haven’t been pulled up by the roots.
Dafé is out of breath. He drags himself down that street like a lame horse. He can’t think straight. He’s starting to feel foreign to himself. He’s ready to cross the street, continue his trip. His entire body hurts. But where is this heat on his back coming from, this hot sting on his back, and now this jabbing on his shoulder, and why is the sidewalk rushing up against him like this, turning into a wall?
He doesn’t know, but somewhere he’s still soaring, untethered, airborne, free, running, he’ll make it, he will, at a gallop. He’s turning on São Roberto, he’s there, but São Roberto is now a dark well, the houses have disappeared, the steps have disappeared, and he wants to freeze time, even Dafé himself is disappearing, going faint, collapsing forever, goodbye.
Translated by Bruna Dantas Lobato
Published with the permission of New Vessel Press.
There’s No Point in Dying is available now from New Vessel Press.
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