The righteous men

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Friday, 7.40pm, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

It was the end of an exhausting week; Luis Tavares could feel the fatigue spreading through his joints. Even so, he would climb one more level: there were other people to see.

Some money had just come in. He could see that all around him. Suddenly this street was paved, the asphalt fresh enough to smell. Kids were buzzing around a TV set, visible through the open, doorless entrance to a shack. Luis smiled: his pestering of the authorities had worked. Either that or someone had bribed the power company to connect this row of huts to the city grid. Or a few people had clubbed together to find a cowboy electrician who would do it for a few reais.

Luis felt a familiar spasm of ambivalence. He knew he was meant to advocate respect for the law and condemn all forms of theft. Yet he could not help but admire these outlaws, these entrepreneurs of the favelas, who did whatever it took to provide for their communities. He applauded their determination to provide a stretch of road or desks for a classroom.

Could he condemn them for breaking the law? What kind of pastor would deny people who had next to nothing the little that makes life bearable?

He wanted to rest, but he knew he would not. Even the briefest pause made Luis feel guilty. He felt guilt when he awoke: how much more work could he have done if he had not slept? He felt guilt when he ate: how many more people could he have helped in that half hour he had spent feeding his face? And in Favela Santa Marta there was never any shortage of people needing help. The poverty was unstoppable, insatiable, like waves on a beach. And Luis Tavares was the local Canute — standing on the shore, raging at the sea.

He continued upward, heading for the view he knew would stun him, even after all these years. From that vantage point, he would be able to see both the city and the ocean, stretching out ahead. On nights like this, he liked to gaze at the glittering carpet of light, the sparkle of other favelas in the distance. Best of all, he was close to the sight that had made Rio de Janeiro famous: the giant statue of Jesus Christ, watching over the city, the country and, as far as Luis was concerned, the whole world.

As he climbed, the pastor noted for the thousandth time how the housing deteriorated with the altitude. At the bottom of the hill, there were homes that were recognizable as homes.

The structures were solid; they had walls, a roof and glass in the windows. Some had running water, a phone line and satellite TV. But as you moved up the hillside, such sights became rarer. The places he passed now barely qualified even as shelters. They were thrown together, perhaps a wall made of rusty steel, a sheet of corrugated plastic serving as a roof.

The door was a gap; the window a hole. They were jammed together, one leaning on the other like a house of cards. This was one of the main shantytowns near Rio's wealthy beach district and it was abject.

He had been here for twenty-seven years, ever since he first graduated from divinity school. Baptist clergy were always meant to see some searing deprivation early in their career, but not all became transfixed by it as he had. He would not learn its lessons and move on. He would stay and fight it, no matter how unequal the struggle. He knew poverty on this scale was like a garden weed: you might banish it today, but it would be back tomorrow.

Even so, he refused to feel that what he had done here was futile. There were dose to ten thousand people crammed on this hillside, each one of them a soul created in the image of God. If even one had a meal he would otherwise not have eaten, or slept under a roof rather than in a tiny, fetid alleyway — there was no room for anything so grand as a street — then Luis's entire life's work would have been justified. That was how he saw it, at any rate.

He felt frustrated that he was not engaged in that kind of activity this evening: the direct business of care — ladling out soup to a hungry woman, draping a blanket over a shivering child — where a change is made every second. No, his task tonight was to gather evidence for a report he had been asked to submit to a government department.

That they even wanted to see a report counted as an achievement, the result of nine months of Luis's lobbying.

Government — federal, state and municipal — had given up on places like Santa Marta years ago. They did not visit them, they did not police them. They were no-go areas where the writ of the state did not run. So if people wanted something — a hospital, say, or a yard where the kids could play football — they either organized it themselves or they had to harangue and nag government until it finally paid attention.

Which is where Luis came in. He had become Santa Marta's advocate, lobbying the state bureaucracy one week, a foreign charity the next, demanding they do something for the people of the favela, for the kids who grew up sidestepping sewage in the alleys or scavenging food from the trash mountains nearby. His favourite tool was shame. He would ask people to look at Lagoa, the neighbourhood just over the hill which was proud to be one of the wealthiest districts in Latin America. Then he would show them a Santa Marta child who ate less in a week than a Lagoa chihuahua nibbled in a day.

Tonight he was gathering testimony, talking to residents of one of the favela's toughest stretches. They would explain to him why they needed a clinic, what it should provide and where it should be, and he would pass that information on to officialdom as part of his submission. These days Luis even used a video camera, ensuring that the people of the favelas could speak for themselves.

Now he was at the first address, not that there were any numbers on this or any other house. He went inside and was surprised to see several unfamiliar faces: all young men.

Perhaps Dona Zezinha was not around.

'Should I wait?' he asked of one of the group. But there was no reply. 'Is this your home?' he said to another, a wolf faced boy who seemed nervous, avoiding Luis's gaze. Finally, 'What's going on?'

As if to answer the pastor's question, the wolf-boy produced a gun. Luis's instant thought was that the weapon looked vaguely comic; it was too large for the lad's hand. But then the gun was aimed at him. Before he had a chance to realize he was going to die, the bullet had torn his heart wide open.

Luis Tavares died with a look of surprise rather than terror on his face. If anything, it was his killers who looked scared.

They hurriedly covered the corpse with a blanket, just as they were told, then ran through the streets, agitated, rushing to meet the man who had ordered this job done. They took the money from him quickly, their eyes feverish. They did not listen as he thanked them. They barely heard him as he praised them for doing the Lord's work.