The winding, often cobbled streets were even more beautiful now, in the dark of night and the pale of her vision. She had forgotten this view of the world. This vision of history, seeing all passages between life and death that had happened in the space immediately around her. The view was blindingly sharp, and she kept to the shadows as she wandered the streets through the darkest hours.
Thanatos was happy to be with his mistress again. The raven bobbed along, grasping her shoulder with his death grip. They wandered the streets of a Rio dead and gone. He whispered in her ear, reminding her of all she missed since turning her back on her former life. Together, they explored the dead streets of Rios that no longer danced the samba, and learned secrets from its past.
At this building on a small side street a woman threw herself from a second-story window, the rope around her neck also tied to her bed. Her husband, an officer in the imperial army, had left her for another woman. He never told her, simply not returning after his tour of duty. She was worried for his safety, until one of his buddies came to her roaring drunk to tell her the news and take advantage of her distress. Instead she killed him, and then herself. The deaths were over 150 years gone and the building no longer stood, but the scene was clear.
She turned the corner onto a somewhat larger street curling down and away. The lamplight flooded more brightly. The light hurt her eyes, so she screeched and shattered the bulb. Then she could see clearly again.
At this place twin boys were born in the middle of the street in the Twentieth Century’s second decade. Their mother, dirt poor, died in childbirth. A stranger who had stopped to help with the birth brought them to a doctor. The doctor worked with an agency to have them adopted by a wealthy, childless couple. One boy entered the navy, and the other became a journalist. The navy man served as an officer in World War Two until an Axis submarine on patrol in the South Atlantic sank his vessel. The journalist wrote for years in a local newspaper, and in the postwar period rose to prominence for his incisive reporting on national radio. When the dictatorship came to power, he was gunned down while walking with his wife on this street near his home. He spilled his life’s blood in a gutter not ten meters from where he was born.
Over here in a blind alley another baby was born to another dirt poor woman just after the dictatorship came to power, only this baby was asphyxiated and left in a pile of trash. The mother only lived a couple of years longer, dying when she and her lover committed suicide by drinking a deadly alcoholic poison cocktail of cachaça and caustic soda.
These stories were everywhere, and not all of them were history. The city must be full of gangs like the one that had liberated her. There were gang rape-murders and gangland slayings everywhere. At one spot where the street turned into a trail leading up into jungled slopes, a gang—the same gang—dragged on average three women a month up into the jungle, where they raped her repeatedly. By the time they were done, the poor girl would almost be dead. Sometimes they would have pity and finish her off, but usually they would leave her to bleed. They wouldn’t be doing that anymore.
She rounded a corner and caught a clear line of sight into a favela, those neighborhoods where the poorest of the poor struggled to make it one more day. On her shoulder, Thanatos shook his stick and wriggled excitedly. She asked if he wanted to go up the narrow street and he gave a long, low caw that sounded like rocks being ground together. She laughed and strode up the street. Before they came to the first cramped crossing of alleys, she felt a rush like the afterworld when war or plague struck the living. So many people had died in that dirt. Most of them had been under twenty-five, and almost all died violently. Many of those who weren’t killed either took their own lives or were taken by disease, hunger or drug overdose. Happiness was an illusion here, and the only reliefs from misery were the illusion of Carnaval and the finality of death.
Chapter 7, section 5: A history of Rio in births and deaths
The winding, often cobbled streets were even more beautiful now, in the dark of night and the pale of her vision. She had forgotten this view of the world. This vision of history, seeing all passages between life and death that had happened in the space immediately around her. The view was blindingly sharp, and she kept to the shadows as she wandered the streets through the darkest hours.
Thanatos was happy to be with his mistress again. The raven bobbed along, grasping her shoulder with his death grip. They wandered the streets of a Rio dead and gone. He whispered in her ear, reminding her of all she missed since turning her back on her former life. Together, they explored the dead streets of Rios that no longer danced the samba, and learned secrets from its past.
At this building on a small side street a woman threw herself from a second-story window, the rope around her neck also tied to her bed. Her husband, an officer in the imperial army, had left her for another woman. He never told her, simply not returning after his tour of duty. She was worried for his safety, until one of his buddies came to her roaring drunk to tell her the news and take advantage of her distress. Instead she killed him, and then herself. The deaths were over 150 years gone and the building no longer stood, but the scene was clear.
She turned the corner onto a somewhat larger street curling down and away. The lamplight flooded more brightly. The light hurt her eyes, so she screeched and shattered the bulb. Then she could see clearly again.
At this place twin boys were born in the middle of the street in the Twentieth Century’s second decade. Their mother, dirt poor, died in childbirth. A stranger who had stopped to help with the birth brought them to a doctor. The doctor worked with an agency to have them adopted by a wealthy, childless couple. One boy entered the navy, and the other became a journalist. The navy man served as an officer in World War Two until an Axis submarine on patrol in the South Atlantic sank his vessel. The journalist wrote for years in a local newspaper, and in the postwar period rose to prominence for his incisive reporting on national radio. When the dictatorship came to power, he was gunned down while walking with his wife on this street near his home. He spilled his life’s blood in a gutter not ten meters from where he was born.
Over here in a blind alley another baby was born to another dirt poor woman just after the dictatorship came to power, only this baby was asphyxiated and left in a pile of trash. The mother only lived a couple of years longer, dying when she and her lover committed suicide by drinking a deadly alcoholic poison cocktail of cachaça and caustic soda.
These stories were everywhere, and not all of them were history. The city must be full of gangs like the one that had liberated her. There were gang rape-murders and gangland slayings everywhere. At one spot where the street turned into a trail leading up into jungled slopes, a gang—the same gang—dragged on average three women a month up into the jungle, where they raped her repeatedly. By the time they were done, the poor girl would almost be dead. Sometimes they would have pity and finish her off, but usually they would leave her to bleed. They wouldn’t be doing that anymore.
She rounded a corner and caught a clear line of sight into a favela, those neighborhoods where the poorest of the poor struggled to make it one more day. On her shoulder, Thanatos shook his stick and wriggled excitedly. She asked if he wanted to go up the narrow street and he gave a long, low caw that sounded like rocks being ground together. She laughed and strode up the street. Before they came to the first cramped crossing of alleys, she felt a rush like the afterworld when war or plague struck the living. So many people had died in that dirt. Most of them had been under twenty-five, and almost all died violently. Many of those who weren’t killed either took their own lives or were taken by disease, hunger or drug overdose. Happiness was an illusion here, and the only reliefs from misery were the illusion of Carnaval and the finality of death.