Where Tigers Are at Home by Jean-Marie Blas de Robles

Author:Jean-Marie Blas de Robles
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781590515631
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2013-03-04T22:00:00+00:00

Fortaleza: I’m not a snake but I go, full of venom …

Zé had brought him back to the favela very early, before setting off on a delivery trip that would last three days. By seven in the morning Nelson was already at his post where the Avenue Duque de Caxias and the Avenue Luciano Carneiro crossed. Impervious to the nauseating stench of the exhaust fumes—fuel made from cane-sugar alcohol, on the contrary, used by a considerable number of cars, left a pleasant scent in his nostrils, as if all the inhabitants had taken part in a massive booze-up the previous evening and were exuding cachaça from every pore—deaf to the cacophony of horns and the roar of the engines, Nelson went about his begging with the casual assurance of a true specialist. Toward nine, when the stream of motorists going to work was replaced by taxis and vans, he went to the beira-mar to work on the tourists who were starting to venture out of their hotels. His feelings for them were a mixture of contempt and pity: contempt for their arrogance of holidaymakers with nothing better to do than to waste their dough on pointless purchases, and pity for the palefaces, flayed alive by the scorching sun, making them look like people with third-degree burns rather bewildered at finding themselves without their bandages. Unlike the lepers, whom hardly anyone went near out of instinctive repugnance and fear of contagion, or even the legless cripples and the blind who were less mobile than he was, his handicap was useful: just as it allowed him to attack cars, it made it possible for him to storm the entrances of luxury hotels, and even if he did have to use a bit of cunning not to get thrown out by the commissionaires—some of whom turned a blind eye to his game for a percentage of his takings—it was rare for tourists, taken by surprise as they left the Imperial Orthon Palace or the Colonial, not to quickly give a few coppers to blot out this disturbing piece of bad taste in a day devoted to pleasure.

It was almost midday when Nelson decided to take the bus to Aldeota, the posh district of the town. Not that there was any chance of getting a single cruzeiro there—the rich were barricaded in their fortress-like villas and it was teeming with vigilantes, often more dangerous than the cops themselves—but Zé had finally given him the address of the garage that had acquired the Willis. He intended to ferret around a bit up there.

At the José de Alcanar Garage Nelson observed an employee half-heartedly polishing a radiator grille; taking advantage of his inattention, he slipped under one of the cars parked inside the garage building. A Mercedes agent, the owner had specialized in classic cars. Nelson’s eye was caught by a splendid front-wheel-drive Citroën whose polished chrome parts seemed to him as beautiful as monstrances. Crawling under the cars with the litheness of a Sioux, he

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