Funeral for a Dog: A Novel (16 page)

Today is a special day, today the water is supposed to come. In the morning I crush ants and spiders underfoot, I sweep the bedrooms and the courtyard, I drink the sugary coffee. I’ve grown thin, I’ve already gotten over the vomiting and diarrhea, I’ve spent nights lying awake next to the toilet. Now I wear friendship bracelets around my wrists like all the Europeans in the Fundação Ajuda, for health, for good luck. At eleven Felix and I drive the pickup into the city. For the last time we buy drinking water in containers, three sacks of concrete and two iron bars for the last steps to the water tower. We buy beer and a bottle of champagne. Felix and I work hand in hand, we saw, plane, nail. In the courtyard the hungry stand barefoot in line, there’s
feijoada
and rice,
oi, gringos
, they say to Felix and me. At eleven-thirty the bars are bent into makeshift steps, fourteen metal hooks up to the top, the last two we affix around twelve. We check the struts, we test-run the pump without water. Then the water tower is standing, it took us two months, a large metal tank on four legs, cast in concrete and six meters high. It stands in the middle of Rua do Lixo, against the filth in the area, against the poisonings, against the bacteria, against the dying of children. For two months Felix has driven the pickup into the city every day and bought concrete, pipes, wood and wire mesh with European money. The pipeline runs illegally through the field between Rua do Lixo and Seraverde, four hundred meters of plastic pipes twenty centimeters under the dust, buried by the day laborers at dawn and nightfall, the municipal pipelines tapped only unofficially, officer Santos was willing to turn a blind eye to the construction of the water conduit in exchange for a friendly donation,
meus amigos
. The pump runs on diesel. For a small fee,
compadres
, Santos said, he and his dog Lula wouldn’t notice any of this. Everyone helped: David can weld, I learned to mix concrete, Felix can hang in the scaffolding and direct the day laborers, his book in his hand,
Water Supply Systems for Home Farming
by Williams/Steynman, Chapter “Shut up and play”, everything just roughly tripled.

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.

T
HE 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.

I
F 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
!

D
AVID
! D
AVID
! 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!

Just a second, says Felix.

What?

He’s not going to make it anyway, is he? He’s already dead, isn’t he?

He’s breathing, see?

It’s Santos.

Who gives a damn who it is?

Santos is a corrupt asshole.

You want to let him bleed to death?

He makes everyone’s life hell here. He’s preventing us from getting water, think about it, they don’t want to bump him off for nothing.

What? Get the pickup, David, hurry!

Yeah. He’s got enemies here. Give me the gun, David.

Are you crazy? You want to play avenger of the poor?

Santos is an asshole and has been shot, we have to put him out of his misery.

The man has to go to the hospital!

I’m going to shoot him now. An act of mercy.

Felix, cut the crap.

Step aside.

Felix!

I’m going to shoot him now.

F
ELIX RAISED THE GUN
and aimed it at the policeman’s head, I grabbed his arm. We wrestled. The Heckler & Koch went off. It was only a joke, man! I kneeled in the dirt, Felix stood next to me, a fine mist wafted from the Heckler & Koch: Felix missed Santos and hit the dog instead. That was supposed to be a joke, Svensson! Idiot! The shot sobered us up. On the way to the state hospital on Avenida Osvaldo Cruz, the pickup now weaves around the huts and the holes, avoiding the sleeping bodies and the waking dogs. David honks, David yells, David slams on the gas so hard that the stones spray. In the back of the truck Tuuli is holding Santos’s head in her hands, the corrupt district policeman and local candidate of the Workers’ Party has closed his eyes and is breathing shallowly and rapidly. Lula is lying with his head close to Santos and moves only when the pickup jolts over the speed bumps. Felix and I heaved the dog onto the back of the truck too, with the lambskin from the seats as a cushion. Lambskin and dog and candidate are blood-soaked. Felix and I have a healthy respect for big dogs, Felix keeps the weapon pointed at the wounded animal to be safe. Tuuli with her finger on the candidate’s neck looks at me and smiles, I smile back and wonder why I’m smiling. We have a severely wounded police officer in the back of the truck, a Heckler & Koch in hand, a half-dead dog on the lambskin. I’m worrying about fingerprints and gunshot residues. The crack of the shot is still ringing in our ears. When we opened our eyes three minutes ago, the candidate was still lying in his pool of blood, his eyes closed and his lips pressed together as if he were waiting for death. I let go of Felix’s arm with David’s Heckler & Koch and stood up, we stopped our wrestling. Felix tried to explain his joke: he hadn’t wanted to shoot the man, of course not! A joke, Svensson, a joke! The shot had simply gone off, Felix explained, under no circumstances had he really wanted to shoot. You have to know when the fun stops, Tuuli finally said. Lula was lying in the dust, his left foreleg split open or broken off over the joint. The policeman’s heavy dog tried without orientation or control to get back on his feet, without making a sound, not a bark, not a yelp, nothing. With each attempt to stand up he sooner or later put his left foreleg on the ground, but the bone gave way again and again, his leg was attached to the rest of his body only by fur and sinews. The candidate’s dog fell again and again on his side and finally stayed down. The animal blood mingled with the human blood, in the dust they were the same color. Help me, Tuuli said, laying her hand on Lula’s heavy head. She grabbed the dangling foreleg and tied it off with the dog’s neckerchief. Meanwhile Santos refused to stop breathing, he clung to life, to the dog and maybe even to Tuuli.

The man is dying, Tuuli says with her finger on the candidate’s pulse, faster! We’re driving along the main street of Seraverde, the bars are closing or are opening again, red and blue paper is wafting down the side streets and getting caught in the trees, there are shards everywhere, everywhere there are dogs rooting around in the garbage, the street sweepers sweep, a pig is strolling about. It’s taking us too long. David honks the horn and disregards the right of way, between the streetlamps hang red garlands and blue paper flower chains. The yellow light over everything is fading when we reach the hospital, a bungalow under fluorescent lights. David stops next to the emergency room and shouts,
oi! Edson!
The nurses know the pickup, it brings the emergency cases from the garbage street, the problem births, burn victims, gunshot victims. They know Felix and David, they pay with money from donations, they always pay immediately. A nurse wheels a metal stretcher out the door,
oi, David, meu irmão! Oi, gringos!
Behind a glass pane a female doctor wearing rubber gloves is talking on the phone, she’s smoking. The four of us lift Santos onto the stretcher, he’s no longer groaning. The doctor is a volunteer from Birmingham and shines a flashlight in Santos’s eyes. He was lying outside the door, says David, someone shot him and left him on the doorstep,
safado
. The doctor stamps out her cigarette, today all hell has broken loose, she says, today the knives are dancing. It’s Santos, says Felix. Yes, says the doctor, pressing her stethoscope to an unbloodied spot on Santos’s neck. We have ten stretchers, she says, as she closes the glassy eyes of the district policeman and PT candidate, we can’t work wonders for everyone.