AJ Mirag - Clippings Read online

  “Shut up, Sarará2.”

  “Oh, you're snappish today, too, ain't ya?” drawled Sarará.

  “Go suck a lemon,” replied Mephisto, pulling the sheet to cover the door again, and then turning to Daniel. “Don't let the jailers bullshit you.”

  Daniel walked into the bathroom, washed his hands and face and dried them with Mephisto's towel, which smelled moldy like everything else.

  The coffee was strong, but had already cooled down and tasted awful. Daniel shuddered at the first sip.

  Mephisto laughed. “Terrible, isn't it? But don't panic. The experts on coffee say the Professor's coffee is great. The shacks will start to be unlocked by eight o'clock.”

  “Right... After the lock-up, we can go wherever we want, or will they take us somewhere?”

  “Do you have anywhere to go?” asked Mephisto sardonically.

  Daniel shrugged, irritated, and bit his buttered roll, which didn't taste good either.

  Mephisto's expression became serious. “Listen, fish, you still don't know this place. You should never walk around alone. If you want to go somewhere, ask me or the Professor to go with you. If I have to go out and you don't want or can't come with me, latch the door and pull the Fuck-in-Peace closed, okay?”

  “Pull the Fuck-in-Peace closed?”

  A malicious half-smiled crossed Mephisto's face. “'Fuck-in-Peace'

  is what the convicts call this sheet we hang over the door.”

  Daniel blushed when he understood the not-so-subtle subtext, then he raised his chin. He was tired of being treated like a helpless kid. “Look, I'm not a child.”

  “Ahahaha. Look at the fish: 'I'm not a child,'” said Mephisto, mimicking him. “I'm twice your age.”

  “All right, you're twice my age, but I'm not a child. I'm thankful that you gave me a place in your cell, but you don't have the right to...”

  Mephisto grasped Daniel's shoulders with a strength surprising for his slender frame, and interrupted him. “I'm saying this for your own good. Don't tell me later that I didn't warn you.”

  Daniel struggled not to moan and tried to push Mephisto away, but Mephisto only let him go when he decided to. Looking angry, Mephisto began preparing tea, and Daniel got back to bed. There wasn't anything else to do. From his bed, he could hear Mephisto washing the dishes and cleaning the table and the bathroom. Daniel felt guilty for not helping him, but he was angry too. Besides, he had taken another painkiller after coffee and was feeling sleepy again.

  He woke up to Mephisto shaking his arm.

  “Wake up, brat. It's chow time. I can't leave you sleeping here. I'll have to go out after lunch. You better get up.”

  Daniel grumbled something he didn't understand himself. He hated being treated as a child.

  The meal was hard to swallow. The horrible smell that hovered everywhere around the prison didn’t help his appetite. The rice was flavorless, the beans were watered down. The farofa3 tasted stale.

  There was a beef steak, but it was hard to chew. The only edible thing was the dessert, which was a banana. And Daniel didn't even like bananas very much!

  After lunch, Daniel caught Mephisto staring at him in his intense, enigmatic way.

  “I can't leave you alone here, it's too dangerous. But I have a lot to do. I'll take you to the Professor's shack.”

  Daniel didn't want to fight again, so he kept silent and followed Mephisto to the cell across the corridor — or “gallery,” as the prisoners called the corridors. Shack, bull, cow, frog, fish, Fuck-in- Peace, gallery... Daniel would have to get used to all those terms.

  Surprisingly, the Professor's shack occupied two cells, numbers 413 and 415. The wall that separated them had been demolished. All the walls were lined with bookshelves. There was a wooden single bed and an old leather armchair. A wooden desk dominated the left side of the cell, between the bed and the bathroom. Daniel gaped when he saw a laptop on the desk. Beside the bathroom, at the right back of the cell, there was a small wardrobe.

  The Professor was a tall man in his fifties. His glasses were rectangular. A few gray strands streaked his originally auburn hair. He was neither thin nor fat, and had broad shoulders, but didn't look strong. He looked both casual and elegant in his brown pullover and blue jeans. “So you're the famous Daniel,” he said, smiling and extending his hand to Daniel.

  “Sir.”

  Daniel shook the Professor's hand. “You got a lot of books here,

  “Oh, please, don't call me 'sir.' I've grown accustomed to hundreds of pupils...everybody here insists on calling me

  'Professor'...but please don't call me 'sir.'”

  Daniel nodded.

  Mephisto made an impatient gesture. “Lucifer, I have to go.

  Don't forget what we've talked about.”

  “Don't worry,” said the Professor. “I'll take care of Daniel.”

  Inadvertently, Daniel looked at Mephisto's face and saw embarrassment in it. Then Mephisto turned around abruptly and dashed out of the cell.

  Daniel walked to the window and saw that it looked out the front of the block, as expected. He could see the prison walls, with its watchtowers on the right and left sides. Their block stood on the right of the complex. At the center, inside the walls, there was a building lower than the other blocks.

  “The building in front of ours is Block One, the Administration Block,” explained the Professor, approaching Daniel from behind.

  “Come here. I'll show you my library.”

  The Professor's library was a real treasure. There were many books on social sciences, a field that interested Daniel. After he browsed the sociology books, he skipped the sections on chemistry and psychology and went straight to the science fiction section, which was impressive.

  “You may take whatever book you want to read. Just let me know which ones you’ll be taking, and please bring them back when you finish reading. I'm not terribly possessive of my books, but I like to know where they are.” The Professor gazed at him with curiosity.

  “I'd like to invite you to spend your afternoons reading here. This armchair is comfortable. I usually spend my afternoons at my desk, writing or doing research on my laptop, or drawing. We can keep each other company. You can also listen to music on the laptop, with the earphones, while I read.”

  Daniel didn't understand why the Professor was being generous to someone he had just met. First Mephisto, and now the Professor.

  Why was the Professor concerned about him? What were his intentions? Anyway, compared to the prospect of spending the afternoons stumbling into Mephisto inside their small, cramped shack, the idea of exploring the Professor's library seemed much more attractive.

  “I still don't know the prison routine well, but thank you, I'll think about your invitation.”

  “Very well. Sit down in the armchair and let's have a chat.”

  Daniel complied.

  The Professor sat behind his desk. “Mephisto told me you're a journalism student.”

  The fact that Mephisto knew details about Daniel's life and had talked about such details with the Professor seemed somewhat fishy to Daniel. “Yes. I study journalism at the Federal University.”

  “Journalism is a marvelous field. You have to be well-informed and prepared to do fast research when you don't know the subject.”

  “That's true. Were you... Are you really a professor?”

  “I'm a biochemistry professor, but I have always been interested in psychology and sociology, too. Since I was forced to...retire, I have had more time to devote to those other fields.”

  “Oh, I'm glad to know that it's possible to continue studying here. I've always thought that in prison, it would be impossible to do anything creative.”

  The Professor smiled. “Very well-observed, Daniel. Indeed, it's very difficult to be creative in prison. That is, perhaps, my greatest struggle here. I hope you will help me.”

  “I don't understand...”

  “Oh, you have just arrived. I won't fill your
head with my fantasies...yet. We'll have plenty of time for that later.”

  “Er... Do you think I'll stay here for a long time?”

  The Professor made a vague gesture with his head. “The justice system is chaotic. Some prisoners have been waiting for five, six years to be brought to trial!”

  “But...what if they're judged innocent?”

  “Precisely! It's a Kafkian situation. I'm not saying that your case will take so long, though. There are many factors to be taken into account. Anyway, the average waiting time is more than six months.”

  Daniel sighed. “Six months! It's a long time!”

  “Indeed. That's why I'm worried about you. I’d like to help you not to go astray.”

  Daniel didn't know what the Professor meant with “go astray,”

  but he didn't have time to ask, because the Professor was asking him another question.

  “Would you like to take a tour around the block with me? There are other interesting residents that I'd like to introduce to you.”

  Daniel accepted the invitation gladly. He wanted to see the whole picture. He had to learn how things worked inside the Detention House if he wanted to survive. He wanted to be able to do things by himself, without depending on Mephisto or the Professor.

  The Professor led Daniel through the galleries of the fifth floor.

  There were eleven cells on the outer side of the corridor and ten on the inner side. Many prisoners were sweeping their cells or doing the laundry with their cell doors open. Some of them were listening to music on the radio or cassette tapes as they worked. Pagode4 seemed to be the most popular genre, to Daniel's dismay, since he preferred rock music. Almost all the shacks had their walls paneled with posters of naked women.

  The Professor greeted everyone they met and was greeted with respect by everyone. Most prisoners were black. Many of them were shirtless and wearing shorts or khaki trousers; others wore shabby t-shirts. Some paraplegics were riding around in wheelchairs. The Professor explained to Daniel that the block lift had been broken for more than a week and so the paraplegics couldn't go downstairs and take the sun in the courtyards.

  The general appearance of the inmates was of extreme poverty and filth, and some of them were drunken or drugged.

  “Crack destroys people very quickly,” commented the Professor when they passed by a man who was sitting in a corner, trembling and talking to himself.

  Daniel and the Professor walked through two barred doors to reach the staircase, and went down to the fourth floor, which looked very much like the fifth one. The only prisoner who captured Daniel's attention was a man who seemed to be a Protestant: he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt with a high-buttoned collar, and had a Bible in his hand.

  “He's a member of the Assemblies of God,” explained the Professor. “They aren't many in this block, but there are almost two hundred of them in Block Four, and more than two hundred in Block Five. In those blocks, they live in separate wards.”

  The Professor approached a cell door and called Daniel to look inside the closed shack through its hatch. It was a double shack like the Professor's, but it also contained a bathtub, a double bed and a flat screen TV. “This shack is vacant because its occupant was transferred to another prison, and he's charging one thousand dollars for it.”

  “What? How can this be?”

  “Oh, my dear, such are the mysteries of the so-called system...

  The administration lost control over the shacks. The wealthier prisoners invest in their shacks. When they leave, they don't want to lose their investment, so they lend or sell the shack to other prisoners. My shack must be worth about five hundred dollars...without the books, the laptop and the television, naturally.

  When one of those 'improved' shacks becomes vacant because its owner is transferred or released, the administration is too weak to enforce the rules. They can't put another convict into the shack, because the convicts know that if they don't pay what the former owner is charging, they will be punished. So, if the poor guy can't find a shack he can afford, the only thing he can do is to ask the administration to put him in the Dungeons.”

  Daniel felt dizzy: the poorer and the weaker had to pay even for staying in prison. The prison world was even more complex than he had imagined. And Daniel used to think he was a well-informed journalism student!

  On the third and second floors there were many locked shacks.

  The Professor explained that most of them were occupied by rapists and vigilantes, who never left their cells for fear of being killed. As for the first floor, Daniel had already been there: it was where the Infirmary and the Registry Room were located.

  The Professor led Daniel to the central courtyard, where a few dozens of prisoners were talking in small groups. They didn't stay there for more than a couple of minutes; it was too noisy and hectic.

  They walked along other galleries and through other doors and went outdoors, to a yard where there was a soccer field. High walls on the front, back and right side separated the block from the other blocks;

  on the left side, the soccer field extended as far as the external wall of the Detention House.

  The sun, which Daniel hadn't seen for many days, dazzled him.

  At the field, two teams of prisoners were playing.

  “Do you like sports?” asked the Professor.

  “Hmm, I like to watch, but I'm not much into practicing.”

  “Just like I thought. You're like me: an intellectual. But you're a young man, you should do some sport. One of those days I'll introduce you to the Old School Guy. Maybe you can practice weightlifting with him. It will do you good.”

  Daniel shrugged. Why did everyone keep giving him advice?

  They strolled back into the block. When they arrived at the staircase, the Professor pointed to the steps that led downwards.

  “Down there are the Holding Cells and the Dungeons. Those are the worst cells in the Detention House. Dozens of prisoners, many of them very dangerous, are crammed together. It's horrible. They have to take shifts for sleeping. There isn't enough space for everyone to sleep at the same time. However, if you ask any of the men in the Dungeons if they want to swap cells with another convict of any other floor or block, they will tell you that they would rather stay where they are.”

  “Because they were marked to death by other prisoners?”

  “Precisely,” answered the Professor. “The right thing to do would be to transfer them to other prisons, but that seldom happens, because the other prisons are overcrowded too. To make things worse, the administration sends to the Dungeons the prisoners who are punished for committing all kinds of crimes inside the House, like drug or alcohol traffic, disrespect to officials, theft, murder, participation in riots and disturbances, and so on.”

  Daniel was astounded. Inequality reigned in prison to such a degree that there was a vacant luxurious cell while in the Dungeons the prisoners had to take shifts to sleep due to the lack of space.

  As they climbed back the stairs, Daniel saw some transvestites parading around the galleries on the fourth floor. They were all heavily made-up and underdressed, showing their big breasts.

  On the fifth floor, the Professor led Daniel to the cell beside his own, the cell number 417. It was the same size as Mephisto's — the default in their block, which had been initially planned to contain individual cells. A thin, shirtless boy with ginger hair and pale skin was washing clothes in the sink.

  “Hi, Julinho,” said the Professor.

  Julinho smiled at them. “Hi, Professor! How are you?”

  “This is Daniel,” said the Professor.

  Julinho dried his hands with a shabby dish towel and approached them. “Hi, Daniel. Wow, you're such a twink! The chicken hawks will swoop down on you.”

  If “chicken hawks” was the same thing as “short-eyes,” and

  “twink” was what Daniel supposed it to be, that was a compliment Daniel didn't appreciate at all. “Hi,” he managed to say, trying not
to sound angry.

  When Julinho approached, Daniel noticed he had a tattoo on his chest: a little heart with the name “Alfeu” at its center. Daniel shivered in disgust, figuring out the symbolism.

  “Come in,” said Julinho. “I've already cleaned the shack, now I just have to finish washing Alfeu's clothes.”

  “Oh, I just came by to introduce you to Daniel, but we don't want to disturb you,” said the Professor. “I've taken Daniel on a tour of the House.”

  “Oh, great. Daniel, feel at home. Come visit me whenever you feel like.”

  “Thank you,” said Daniel, already knowing that the last thing he wanted to do was meet Alfeu.

  Back to the Professor's shack, Daniel was choosing a book when Mephisto arrived.

  “How did things go?” asked Mephisto to the Professor.

  “Fine. Daniel behaved very well,” joked the Professor.

  “What about you, Lucifer? Did you behave well?” asked Mephisto in a stern tone, but his amused look showed that his question was nothing but an affectionate, playful provocation.

  “Of course not!” countered the Professor. “After all, I have a reputation to uphold.”

  Mephisto flashed a half smile and looked at Daniel. “Beware the Professor's ideas. He's a snake.”

  “That's why you call him Lucifer?” asked Daniel.

  “Yes.”

  “Lucifer and Mephisto. Which of the two is really the devil?”

  asked Daniel.

  The Professor and Mephisto exchanged meaningful looks, and then Mephisto said, “Lucifer is the boss. Mephisto's just his first minion.”

  The two men seemed to be linked by an old and intimate friendship. Daniel was curious to know more about their relationship, but he knew that those things would only be revealed with time.

  The Professor looked at his watch. “It's almost dinner time.

  Have you chosen a book yet?”

  Daniel took a book by a Russian science fiction author from the shelves. “I'd like to begin with this one.”

  “Oh, good choice. Konstantin Sagdeev's books are difficult to find in the Western world. He holds a peculiar view on human relationships,” commented the Professor.