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Overview
City of God is a gritty, gorgeous tour de force from one of Brazil’s most notorious slums. Cidade de Deus: a place where the streets are awash with narcotics, where violence can erupt at any moment over drugs, money, and love—but also a place where the samba beat rocks till dawn, where the women are the most beautiful on earth, and where one young man wants to escape his background and become a photographer.
When City of God erupted on screens worldwide, it became one of the most critically and commercially successful foreign films of recent years. But few were aware of the story behind the film. Written by Paulo Lins, who grew up in the favela (shantytown) Cidade de Deus in Rio de Janeiro and who spent years researching its gang history, City of God began life as a coruscating, harrowing novelistic account of twenty years in the illicit pursuits of the youth gangs born from the favela.
“With plot devices sometimes as minimal as the dawning of a new day, City of God seems more like a mosaic than a novel, but it’s a mosaic with unforgettably vibrant colors.” —Booklist
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781555846848 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Grove/Atlantic, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 448 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
HELLRAISER'S STORY THE 1960S
Seconds after leaving the haunted mansion, Stringy and Rocket were smoking a joint down by the river in the Eucalyptus Grove. Completely silent, they only looked at one another when passing the joint back and forth. Stringy imagined himself swimming beyond the surf. He could stop now, float a bit, feel the water playing over his body. Foam dissolved on his face and his gaze followed the flight of the birds, while he gathered his strength to return. He would steer clear of the troughs so he wouldn't be swept away by the current and wouldn't stay in the cold water so long he got a cramp. He felt like a lifeguard. He'd save as many lives as he had to on that busy beach day and then he'd run home after work. He wouldn't be one of those lifeguards that doesn't get any exercise and ends up letting the sea carry people away. You had to work out constantly, eat well and swim as much as possible.
Clouds cast raindrops on the houses, the Eucalyptus Grove and the open fields stretching out to the horizon. Rocket felt the hissing of the wind in the eucalyptus leaves. To his right, the buildings of Barra da Tijuca were gigantic, even from afar. The mountain peaks were wiped out by the low clouds. From that distance, the blocks of apartments he lived in, on the left, were silent, although he imagined he could hear the radios tuned to programs for housewives, dogs barking, children running up and down the stairs. His gaze came to rest on the river, the pattering raindrops opening out in circles all the way across, and his irises, in a hazel zoom, brought him flashbacks: the river when it was clean; the grove of guava trees, which had been razed and replaced by new blocks of apartment buildings; a few public squares, now choked with houses; the myrtles that had been murdered along with the haunted fig tree and the castor-oil plants; the abandoned mansion with its swimming pool and the Dread and Bastion fields — where he had played defense for the Oberom under-thirteens — had given way to factories. He also remembered the time he had gone to collect bamboo for his building's June festivities and had to run for it because the farm caretaker had set the dogs on the kids. He remembered spin-the-bottle, hide-and-seek, pick-up-sticks, the model racetrack he'd never had and the hours he'd spent in the branches of the almond trees watching the cattle go by. He recalled the day his brother got all cut up when he came off his bike over at Red Hill, and how great Sundays had been when he went to Mass and stayed behind at the church to take part in the youth group activities, then the movies, the amusement park ... He remembered the Santa Cecilia choir rehearsals of his schooldays with joy, which suddenly fizzled, however, when the river's water revealed images of the days when he sold bread or popsicles, pushed carts at the street market and the Leão and Três Poderes supermarkets, collected bottles and stripped copper wire to sell to the scrapyard so he could help out his mom a bit at home. It hurt to think of the swarms of mosquitoes that had sucked his blood, leaving lumps to be picked at with fingernails, and the ground with open sewers he had dragged his ass across as a little kid. He'd been unhappy and hadn't known it. He resigned himself in silence to the fact that the rich go overseas to live it up, while the poor go to the grave, jail or fuck-knows-where. He realized that the sugary, watery orangeade he had drunk his entire childhood hadn't really been all that great. He tried to remember the childish joys that had died, one by one, every time reality had tripped him up, every day he had gone hungry. He remembered his elementary-school teachers saying that if you studied hard enough you might make something of yourself, but here he was, disillusioned about his chances of getting a job so he could continue his studies, buy his own clothes and have a little money to take his girlfriend out and pay for a photography course. It'd be nice if things were the way his teachers had said, because if all went well, if he landed a job, soon he'd be able to buy a camera and a shitload of lenses. He'd photograph everything he found interesting. One day he'd win a prize. His mother's voice whipped through his mind.
'This photography game is for folks with money! What you need to do is get into the Air Force, the Navy or even the Army to guarantee yourself a future. Soldiers are the ones with money! I don't know what goes on in that head of yours!'
Rocket refocused his eyes, stared at Our Lady of Sorrows Church at the top of the hill and felt like going to Father Júlio to ask for all his confessed sins back in a shopping bag, so he could recommit them with his soul strewn across every corner of the world around him. One day he'd accept one of the many invitations to hold up buses, bakeries, taxis, any fucking thing ... He took the joint from his friend's hand. His girlfriend's ultimatum that she'd break up with him if he didn't stop smoking weed echoed in his ears. 'Screw it! The worst thing in the world has to be to marry a square. It's not just the hoods who smoke weed, otherwise rock singers wouldn't do it. Jimi Hendrix was the biggest head of all! And what about the hippies? The hippies were all crazies from so much smoking.' He was sure Tim Maia, Caetano, Gil, Jorge Ben, Big-Boy — the big names in music — all enjoyed a bit of weed. 'Not to mention that nutcase Raul Seixas, singing: "People who don't have eyedrops wear shades."' Smoking weed didn't mean he was going to go out looking for trouble. He didn't like squares, and the worst thing was that they were everywhere, noticing if your eyes were red, or if you were laughing at nothing. When he argued with squares about pot he always ended the argument by saying that it was the light of life: it made you thirsty, hungry and sleepy!
'Want another one?'
'Uh-huh!' answered Stringy.
Rocket insisted on rolling the joint. He liked this job; his friends always praised him. He made the joint as stiff as a cigarette without using much paper. He lit it himself, took two tokes and passed it to his buddy.
On rainy days, the hours pass unnoticed for those with nothing to do. Rocket mechanically checked the time and saw he was already late for his typing class, but what the fuck. He'd already missed tons of classes, so one more wasn't going to make any difference. He really couldn't be bothered to spend an hour banging away on the typewriter, and he wasn't going to school either. 'The square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the two adjacent sides, my ass.' He was really pissed off at life. He suppressed a sob, got up, stretched to relieve the pain of having spent so long in the same position and was about to ask his friend if he felt like scoring another bundle of weed, when he noticed the river water had gone red. The red preceded a dead body. The gray of the day intensified ominously. Red swirling into the current, another corpse. The clouds blotted out the mountains completely. Red, and another stiff appeared at the bend in the river. The light rain turned into a storm. Red, yet again followed by a carcass. Blood mixing with stinking water accompanied by yet another body wearing Lee jeans, Adidas sneakers and leeches sucking out the red liquid, still warm.
Rocket and Stringy stumbled home.
It was the first sign of the war to come. The war that imposed its absolute sovereignty and came to claim anyone who didn't keep their wits about them, to pump hot lead into children's skulls, to force stray bullets to lodge in innocent bodies and make Knockout Zé run along Front Street, his heart pounding like the Devil, holding a blazing torch to set fire to the house of his brother's killer.
Rocket arrived home afraid of the wind, the streets, the rain, his skateboard, the simplest things; everything seemed dangerous. He knelt by his bed, threw his head on the mattress, clasping his hands together, and in infinite supplication begged Exu to go and tell Oxalá that one of his sons felt doomed to eternal desperation.
In the past, life was different here in this place where the river, carrying sand, innocent water snake heading for the sea, divided the land on which the children of the Portuguese and the slaves trod.
Soles of feet grazing petals, mangos swelling, bamboo thickets shredding wind, a big lake, a lake, a pond, almond trees, myrtles and the Eucalyptus Grove. All this on the other side. On this side, the hills, the haunted mansions, the vegetable gardens of Little Portugal, and the cows on both sides living the peace of those who don't know death.
The branches of the river, which split over near Taquara, cut diagonally through the fields. The right branch cut through the middle, while the left — separating The Blocks from the houses and crossed by a bridge over which the traffic of the neighborhood's main street flowed — cut through the lower part of the fields. And, as the good branch returns to the river, the river, branching off, zigzagged along its watery path; a stranger who traveled without moving, carrying away loose rock crystals in its bed, allowing its heart to beat on rocks, donating water to the bodies that braved it, to the mouths that bit its back. The river laughed, but Rocket knew well that every river is born to die one day.
This land was once covered in green with oxcarts defying dirt roads, Negro throats singing samba, artesian wells being dug, legumes and vegetables filling trucks, a snake slipping through the grass, nets set in the water. On Sundays, soccer games on the Dread field and drinking wine under the light of the full moon.
'Mornin', Lettuce Joe!' Cabbage Manoel had said one day at dawn. But Lettuce Joe had not answered; he had just watched the first flight of the herons to the sound of roosters crowing and cows lowing.
The two Portuguese descendents tended the Little Portugal vegetable gardens on the inherited land. They knew that blocks of apartments were to be built in that area, but not that work was to begin so soon. They worked as they did every day, from five in the morning to three in the afternoon, talked about nothing, laughed at everything, whistled impossible fados, loved the different types of wind, ate dinner together, and together they heard the men in the car with the white license plate, in first gear, say: 'We intend to build a new place on your land.'
'Come, good wind! Put another smile on my face!' Lettuce Joe was to think later. 'Another wind, without homeland or compassion, has taken away the smile this soil gave me, this soil where men with boots and tools arrived, measuring everything, marking the land ... Then came the machines, destroying the Little Portugal vegetable gardens, scaring the scarecrows, guillotining the trees, land filling the marsh, drying up the spring, and all this became a desert. All that is left is the Eucalyptus Grove, the trees on The Other Side of the River, the haunted mansions, the cows that know nothing of death and sadness in the wake of a new era.'
City of God lent its voice to ghosts in the abandoned mansions, thinned out the flora and fauna, remapped Little Portugal and renamed the marsh: Up Top, Out Front, Down Below, The Other Side of the River and The Blocks.
Even now, the sky turns blue and fills the world with stars, forests make the earth green, clouds whiten landscapes and mankind innovates, reddening the river. Here, now, a slum, a neo-slum of concrete, brimming with dealer-doorways, sinister-silences and cries of despair along its lanes and in the indecision of its crossroads.
The new residents brought garbage, bins, mongrel dogs, exus and pqmbagiras in untouchable bead necklaces, days to get up and struggle, old scores to be settled, residual rage from bullets, nights to hold wakes over corpses, vestiges of floods, corner bars, Wednesday and Sunday street markets, old worms in babies' bellies, revolvers, orixá pendants, sacrificial hens, sambas, illegal lotteries, hunger, betrayal, death, crucifixes on frayed string, racy forró to be danced, oil lamps to shed light on saints, camping cookers, poverty to desire wealth, eyes to see nothing, speak nothing, never the eyes and guts to face life, to sidestep death, to rejuvenate anger, to bloodstain destinies, to make war and to get tattoos. There were slingshots, photo novels, ancient floor cloths, open wombs, decayed teeth, brains riddled with catacombs, clandestine graves, fishmongers, bread-sellers, seventh-day Mass, smoking guns to erase all doubt, the perception of facts before acts, half-cured cases of the clap, legs for waiting for buses, hands for hard work, pencils for state schools, courage to turn the corner and gambler's luck. They brought kites, asses for the police to kick, coins for playing heads or tails and the strength to try to live. They also brought love to ennoble death and silence the mute hours.
In one week there were thirty to fifty new arrivals a day; people bearing the marks of the floods on their faces and furniture. They were put up in the Mario Filho Soccer Stadium and came in government trucks, singing:
Marvelous city, full of enchantments ...
Then people from a number of favelas and other towns in the state of Rio de Janeiro came to inhabit the new neighborhood, which consisted of rows of white, pink and blue houses. On the other side of the left branch of the river, The Blocks were built: a complex of blocks of one- and two-bedroom apartments, some blocks with twenty and others with forty apartments each, all five stories high. The red shades of the beaten earth saw new feet in the hustle and bustle of life, in the stampede of a destiny to be fulfilled. The river, the joy of the kids, provided pleasure, sand, frogs and eels, and was not completely polluted.
'Look at the bag of myrtle berries I got!'
'I've already picked mangos and jaboticabas. Now I'm gonna get some sugarcane from The Other Side of the River!'
The children discovered marbles, and themselves in the process:
'Bags I go last ... if I getcha I'm king!'
'Everything goes!'
'On four fingers!'
'I'm throwin' it!'
'Get outta the way!'
'It moved! You're dead!'
'I'm next to the triangle!'
'Obstacle ... go around!'
'Nothin' goes!'
Flying kites:
'Don't go, your line's too short.'
'I'm gonna try and tangle him.'
'No way! Go for his tail and line.'
'I can't. The glass on my line's not sharp enough.'
'You've gotta pull him up.'
'I'm gonna drag him.'
'He'll hitch you up.'
'Here goes!'
Playing games:
'One hit, 'cos there's a new It!'
'One hit!'
'I hit him and everyone else does too!'
'I hit him but no one else does!'
'Jump the graveyard wall!'
'The graveyard's on fire!'
'Every monkey on his branch!'
'Send a letter to your girlfriend.'
'Out of ink!'
'Freeze!'
'One hit, 'cos there's a new It!'
'One hit!'
They found one another in hide-and-seek and tag, had castor bean wars on The Other Side of the River, swam in the pond and played boats and Journey to the Bottom of the Sea. They headed into the fields, competing for ground with snakes, toads and cavies.
'Wanna go to Red Hill?' asked Rocket.
'Where's that?' asked Stringy, holding a bucket of water.
'Down where you were, near the spring. We can climb up and run down like in cowboy movies.'
'OK!'
They headed off from behind The Blocks, having invited a couple of friends. Rocket's brother, seeing the kids getting ready for a new adventure, thought about putting his bike away to go with them, but then decided to take it at his buddies' insistence. They crossed an area of dense bush, where new blocks of apartments were later to be built, and found themselves at the left branch of the river.
'I'm goin' for a swim!' said Stringy.
'Let's go straight to Red Hill. We can swim later!' said Rocket.
'We're better off swimmin' now, 'cos our clothes'll dry and our moms won't know we were in the river,' argued Stringy.
'Scared of mommy?' asked Rocket.
Without listening, Stringy threw himself into the water and his friends followed suit. They waded out to a certain point and swam back with the current. Stringy wouldn't come out of the river, and swam into and out of the current. They dunked one another and played American submarine and Captain Hurricane. The morning had reached its peak, invading the branches of the guava trees and bringing in its wake a land wind that swept away the rain clouds one by one. The finches sang.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "City of God"
by .
Copyright © 2002 Paulo Lins.
Excerpted by permission of Grove Atlantic, Inc..
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