The favela tour was Linda’s idea. And I will die saying it, no matter what Steve think or rave about. “Your girl is fuckin’ insane!” That’s what I said to him next time we met, just before he KO me with a hook on the tip of my chin. Come on guys! Do you really think I would take my wife for a tour inside the biggest slum in Latin America? Of course not. That day, I was thinking about walking leisurely along the Copacabana beachfront, drinking coconut milk and relaxing amidst the palm trees. But Linda… well, you already know how she is.
“Alfredo is gonna pick us up at 9:30 a.m. Sharp.”
“There’s no such a ‘sharp’ thing here in Rio, darling. You should be used to it already.”
“Anyway,” she continued, “he said he would be here about 9:30 a.m. More or less.”
“I’m sure it will be more. Believe me. Give him at least a quarter of hour credit.”
At 9:30 a.m. the phone rang. Sharp. Linda looked at me with a triumphant smile. She answered the phone. Listened. Hanged up.
“It was Alfredo,” she said.
“And?” I yawned.
“And he said he will be half an hour late.”
“Ha!” I blurted. “Potato!”
“What?” asked Linda, confused.
“Just another Brazilian expression meaning something like ‘as I’ve said before.’”
The favela tour was exactly what I thought it would be: boring. Very, very boring. There’s no variety in poverty. It is the same all over the world. Dirty, thin, weakened. But I have to confess that I got a bit impressed with the late developments. When I was a boy, favelas were built with crate wood and thin. Now, every house was built in concrete and they have schools, supermarkets, ATMs, clinics, every modern comfort you would find in any Tijuana neighborhood. I’m sure Linda was hating the tour as much as I was, but she kept acting as if she were in heaven.
“Look at that pig! How fat it is!”
“That’s not a pig, darling. It’s a rat.”
Very didactic, Alfredo explained that it was a “pet rat”.
“A pet rat?”
“Yes. To avoid the cats and other intruders.”
We were visiting a school when the shooting started. At first, just fireworks. A moment latter, the real stuff. Automatic weaponry, grenades. Alfredo looked at me and muttered:
“T-that’s not fair! They didn’t warned me of any police raid today!”
I was about to tell him that police raids, to be effective, generally are secret and unannounced when a burst of machine gun fire swept the blackboard.
“Routine!” cried a desperate teacher. And every kid in the class laid down on the floor.
A moment latter, the class was invaded by three teenagers armed with automatic pistols and AK47s. Traffic soldiers, no less. They went to the window and answered the police fire in short, trained, one at a time bursts of gunfire. Very cold blooded. Very professional.
“Surrender!” cried a voice outside.
“Not even fucking!” answered one of the kids, which in Portuguese mean something like “You’ll bet, asshole!”
The same guy turned himself to the teacher and said:
“Sorry, auntie. I couldn’t finish my homework yesterday.”
“Never mind!” cried the woman in panic. “You can bring it on Friday!”
Another exchange of gunfire. Another pause.
“Could it be computer printed or should I write it down myself?”
“Whatever, kid!” answer the teacher. “It’s the intention that matters!”
The police fire became more intense.
“Hey, pricks! We have hostages!” cried one of the boys by the window. “At least twelve students, a teacher… and a couple of gringo assholes!”
If there were only the twelve students and the teacher, everything would finish well. But the two “gringos babacas” added an extra flavor to that routine operation. Rede Globo and Bandeirantes arrived first, but CNN was right on their tail. And BBC, UP, AP, Reuters, whatever.
I guess it was exactly when the last TV crew arrived that Linda got mad. Until then she was absolutely mute and still, trembling under my weight. But, then, after another routine burst of police gunfire hit the sill, she stood up, went to the window and start yelling:
“Are you fuckin’ nuts you motherfuckers? There are women and children up here!” The gunfire ceased immediately. Absolute silence. Everybody was completely stunned by my wife’s display of bad temper. “Hey dumbasses, Your birth certificates are apologies from the condom factory! What are you up to? If you were twice as smart you still would be absolute jerks! Hold your fire and stick your thick rifles up your fat asses! You are the biggest bunch of idiot, retarded, douchebag imbeciles I ever met!”
That’s Linda in her best. Now you can imagine why the Puerto Ricans in our former job hated her.
(To be continued...)
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