El Urracaõ / eBook / English

EL URRACAÕ

THEY CALLED IT PARADISE

1 The Devil's Hideout

In front of the Bar Sport, Jorge enjoys a cold beer in the solemn tranquility of a Saturday morning. By now, the economic crisis spares no one, not even the most popular places, yet this decrepit bar is still standing. It has already been three years since he first set foot in the so-called Paradise. Coming directly from the favela where he was born, Lemos de Brito, on the outskirts of Rio, with the last money he had left in his pocket. The money he had hidden in a cigar box under the magpie tree, in the "Devil's hideout".

Over fifty thousand reals. A fortune. And yet, in this tiny country nestled in the heart of Europe, Jorge was just a poor man. Because this is a paradise only for those who have money, power, and the right contacts. So he could do nothing but take the usual path, that of crime. But thanks to his talent, he quickly managed to get involved in certain traffics and now knows all the different groups in his "branch", clients of all kinds and, of course, the cops and their secrets. Politicians, officials, and even judges never refuse an envelope full of money to turn a blind eye. He doesn't care if those who do business with him are rich, powerful, dangerous, or ordinary people; he cares about making a profit. Whoever has money in hand is welcome, they are his client. From a friend in the police, he learned that even here they have nicknamed him El Urracaõ, the great flying thief, or more simply Urra. He doesn't care about being put under close surveillance; on the contrary, it makes him feel even more proud. His friend is called Gregor Rossi and he is the head of the city's police. By day he does his job, he is highly respected by the people, by night he is one of his many clients. One of the skeletons, as he calls them, who live a secret life in the darkness of the Locarnese pit. Jorge knows their dirty games well and they can no longer touch him, because if he goes down, half the country goes down with him.

Surviving in the favelas of Rio made him a real man. The years spent in the drug trade prepared him to be a leader. The cops here are just puppets, inflated balloons. The children of the favelas are sharper than all the cops in Paradise. Many, from the age of six and up, lose all fear by becoming couriers for the dealers. Jorge was one of them too. At eight years old, he already knew everything about that maze of narrow alleys and dangerous nameless streets. He still remembers the smells coming from the mud used to build the houses. The acrid stench exhaled in the heat from the dumps. But also the scents of the food that many cooks, with the skill of true artists, managed to prepare from nothing to feed their children. Because many are born in the favelas and just as many die quickly to make room for the next. He remembers the smell of detergents mixed with feces and urine, running through pipes or improvised channels to then collect in holes around the lower-built houses. Waste of all kinds formed rivulets in the middle of the small streets. The poor in the favelas are not entitled to a long life but their life has a price. Their brief journey ends in the pits that fill the cemeteries on the hills. Graves dug and reused many times, often without a headstone or even a cross. Only the wind from the sea, strong and salty, whistles, calling out the names of the dead. In Lemos de Brito, the people are poor but laugh often. Even in misery, they take advantage of every opportunity to celebrate, dance, and bring life to the guitars and tambourines found in almost every home. They savor the little sweetness that remains in the bitterness of their fate. Those who have a job feel happy and strive every day not to fall into the traps that are hidden everywhere there. The luckiest find a place in the city, working as domestics in the affluent neighborhoods of the middle or upper class who can afford them. Or they work as bricklayers, carpenters, glaziers, tailors, or do all kinds of manual labor. Others manufacture tools or materials needed to build houses and shacks. Mountains of bricks, made with mud, await to become the walls of new houses, along with mountains of metal objects, glass, and other materials, extracted from the dumps that surround the city. But many turn to crime. They deal drugs and weapons, produce strong, often poisonous alcohol. In the favelas, you can find everything, even the worst type of crime, mercenaries ready to kill for a few reals. Because here crime is a malignant cancer and it spreads abundantly.

Jorge was born in the worst part of the favela, in the only room of his grandmother's house, who died long ago from AIDS. He never knew his father, his mother never even uttered his name. Like many women left alone, she sold her body to earn some money. Just enough so they wouldn't all die of hunger. Jorge was sharper than his peers, and she sent him out on the street to steal a few reals wherever he could. He always found new tricks for his thefts and often wandered around the Artisan Square, which, with its Portuguese-style buildings, attracted many tourists easy to rob. And it was there, one day, that he had a strange encounter with a bird he had never seen before. All black but with a white belly, white patches on its sides and wings, and a very long tail. It was a magpie, as the barber who had a shop in that square later told him. That bird flew low and passed right in front of Jorge before perching on the roof of an old house overlooking the square. The boy watched it curiously. It seemed to be eyeing a group of tourists, just like him. It was staring at a blonde woman at the back of the group. Precious earrings dangled, shining in the sun. Jorge observed them, preparing to rob her. But the bird was watching them too. The blonde woman didn't notice the many miserable, hungry eyes watching her, even from above. Now was the right moment. Jorge quickly approached her from behind, but just as he reached out to grab one of the earrings, that bastard bird swooped down from the roof, claiming its loot with a cry. Jorge stopped abruptly, frightened by the unexpected sound. The woman also froze. Then everything happened quickly. The bird aimed precisely at the right earring and tore it painfully from her lobe without interrupting its flight. No one seemed to notice it. Except for the barber, who was smoking a cigarette in front of his shop at that moment. The tourists only saw Jorge with his arm still raised and the woman screaming and clutching her bleeding ear. Jorge stared at the magpie flying away. It was clear to the tourists, who surrounded the dirty-haired, tattered-clothed, dark-eyed, and cunning child. The woman seemed to go mad and wanted to grab him, screaming, "Thief, bastard, stop him!" Jorge, on the other hand, looked at her with innocence, paralyzed by danger. Then he heard the barber's voice shouting, "Kid, run!" So he turned quickly and ran into one of the many alleys leading off the square. The same one where he had seen the magpie disappear with its loot in its beak. He could still see it, up high, but now he had to think only about hiding. He looked back, hearing the tourists still shouting: "Stop him, stop that bastard, stop him!" Then he lost sight of that bird, smarter than him. The barber, standing at the door of his shop, smoked and enjoyed the spectacle.

The next day, Jorge stole two radios and some shiny objects, glass beads, and fishing lures. The barber had explained to him that the magpie is called a thief because it has a habit of stealing shiny things. And so he decided he wanted to outsmart it. His friend Raffaele, in agreement with him, sat at a table in Artisan Square, spreading out all those stolen things in front of him. As if hearing a call, the magpie returned and comfortably perched on the roof of the same house. It had already spotted what it could steal today. It was eyeing those glass beads and lures. Jorge imagined that the light reflections on the surface of those objects were very attractive to it. Jorge signaled his friend to move away, leaving the table free to encourage the magpie to come closer. Meanwhile, he was ready to chase it. That bird was clever, but Jorge was even more so. The magpie, as expected, swooped down on the table like a kamikaze. It snatched one of the beads in mid-air and immediately fled in the same direction as before. Jorge saw it flying between the rooftops and managed to chase it for a while. Then he lost it. But within a few minutes, the flying thief returned. Jorge knew that such a rich loot would attract it. This time, the magpie took a lure and Jorge tried to chase it again, but he was quickly blocked by a car stopped in the middle of the street and lost sight of it again. Five minutes later, the magpie was already back. But this time, almost before it could steal two lures from the table, Jorge was already running after it, as fast as he could. Now he could see it clearly and wouldn't let it escape. He ran a long time, sweating in the hot air, under a merciless sun, and finally saw it slip into what seemed like a kind of forest. Jorge knew that place, they called it the "devil's hideout."

A small green island in the middle of the Moro do Fubá favela, a territory reclaimed from the forest in recent years that had quickly filled with illegal houses and shacks. The hideout was a tangle of trees and bushes that seemed impenetrable; not even a path could be seen to get through the plants. Because of certain strange beliefs, no one had touched that patch of forest. The inhabitants of the surrounding houses were, in fact, frightened by some strange events that had happened, so much so that they were convinced that the devil himself lived there. More than once, it had happened that amulets and crucifixes, placed at the windows of the old and sick to protect them from evil spirits, mysteriously disappeared. Then maybe, by pure chance, those poor souls died the following night, and so people began to remember noticing a black bird flying in and out of that thicket. They had seen it near the houses of the sick just before the amulets disappeared. They didn't know that it was simply a magpie, irresistibly attracted to those sunlit objects during the mating season. Surely, though, its black feathers stirred their superstition. Thus, they began to say that it must be the devil who, during the day, took the form of that bird to fly and find a victim whose soul it would come to steal at night. In a short time, the green island thus became the "devil's hideout." Many took the elderly and sick to other distant suburbs, safely to the homes of relatives or friends. And those who couldn't leave protected themselves as best they could, maybe simply nailing the amulets and crucifixes to the window sills.