There's No Point in Dying, page 1
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Copyright © 2017 Francisco Maciel
Translation copyright © 2026 Bruna Dantas Lobato
First published in 2017 as Não adianta morrer by Editora Estação Liberdade
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published with the support of the Brazilian National Library Foundation, of the Brazilian Ministry of Culture, and of the Guimarães Rosa Institute of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Obra publicada com o apoio da Fundação Biblioteca Nacional, do Ministério da Cultura do Brasil, e do Instituto Guimarães Rosa, do Ministério das Relações Exteriores do Brasil.
Epigraph from The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, “Chapter VII: The Delirium,” translated by Flora Thomson-DeVeaux, translation copyright © 2020 by Flora Thomson-DeVeaux. Used by permission of Penguin Classics, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Maciel, Francisco
[Não adianta morrer, English]
There’s No Point in Dying/Francisco Maciel; translation by Bruna Dantas Lobato.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-954404-39-7
Library of Congress Control Number 2025936992
I. Brazil—Fiction
Table of Contents
A Horse at the Door
Out of Time
The Four Mandelas
My Dear
Better Than Me
You Did Good
Nabor
The Comadres
The Clumsy Ones
Pará and Manaus
K-9s
Sibyl Maya Carpe Diem
You Need to Meet Your Mother-in-law
Singing Birds
Eternal Return Line
Josephine Poperetta
Christ in Rosebud
Lourinho’s Youngest Sister
One For All
And Then There Were None
The Sibyl Notebook
The End
Grand Hotel
Guile Xangô on the Steppes
Big Bang and a Horizon of Events
Fish Tank
The Two Soldiers
Beth Ramishpath
This Dream Has Some Truth to It
Quarry
The Miracles, the Crazy
You Deserve More
Vavau
5 x 1
Olívia
Always
At the Internet Café
Under the Hospital’s Shade
Guile Xangô’s Poems
Fathers and Sons
Smart Talk
Tiger Xangô 2100
All a Lie, Minus the Mother and the Dream
Let the Dogs Out
“And then man, tormented and unyielding, would run ahead of the fatality of things after a nebulous, elusive figure cobbled together out of scraps, a scrap of the intangible, another of the invisible, all sewn with flimsy stitches by the needle of the imagination; and this figure—nothing less than the chimera of happiness—either fled constantly or allowed itself to be caught by its train, upon which the man would clasp it to its breast, and then the figure would give a scornful laugh and vanish like an illusion.”
—JOAQUIM MARIA MACHADO DE ASSIS,
The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cuba
(translator: Flora Thomson-DeVeaux)
“Some, finding the spectacle barbaric,
would rather (the fragile ones) die.
There comes a time when there’s no point in dying.”
—CARLOS DRUMMOND DE ANDRADE,
“The Shoulders That Carry the World”
(translator: Bruna Dantas Lobato)
A HORSE AT THE DOOR
Dafé is running down Maia de Lacerda, it’s 2:15 in the afternoon, and at 2:22 he’s going to die. Tall, green eyes, coiled hair bleached bright yellow, he could’ve been whatever he wanted in life. Soccer player. Security guard. Gigolo. Star. He was meant to shine, he’d always thought. He was different, he was better. Then he made the wrong choices. Now he’s running down Maia. Just a pipe dream.
He feels like he’s soaring, but he isn’t. He spent the last two days fucking and nuzzling. No sleep, not enough food, too much to drink. He’s running on the sidewalk, on the left side of the street, past the parked cars, the trees, the lampposts. He’s trying to get to São Roberto. He’ll be safe then, he thinks. That’s where the woman he’s been banging lives, and though he told her they’re done, that’s where he’s headed, sex is no help in a situation like this, only gets in the way. But that’s where he’s going. His mother Mirtes’s would be safer, but he doesn’t think of that.
It’d be faster if he went through the Bezerra de Menezes Spiritist Center, jumped over the back wall to São Carlos and ran down the steps to get to São Roberto. But he keeps running down the street.
Everyone here’s a lame horse. That’s what Guile Xangô says, and Guile Xangô is a nice guy, weird and smart, he’s got a job, an address, identity documents. All the others are screw-ups, starving, one foot in jail. At least that part is true: it’s hard to find someone here who’s never done time. People pretend they haven’t. But when they’re hammered and high on blow they brag about it. They’re out and got nothing to show for it. No job, respect, dignity. They get wasted in seedy bars and snort white lines off black tables, the thin threads of their stupid lives going between their teeth. Life was better on the inside, they say. Then why not just stay there? Out here they got no rights, no respect. They’re nobody. They’re sick. They walked through the cell door right into a solid wall. They don’t exist. They don’t even know how much they don’t exist. Everyone here’s a lame horse, Guile Xangô says, and you know what you do to a lame horse? You put a bullet in it, kill it.
Dafé is still running down Maia, still feeling like he’s soaring. If he ran into the Halley Hotel, ran up the stairs, locked himself up in a room, Pernambuco would help him, he wouldn’t stand for cowardice, he’d be on his side. Dafé could stand a chance.
No one here has IDs. They work underground. They have marks on their skin instead. And he, Dafé, doesn’t have any of those either. He’s never liked tattoos. He’s proud of his own skin, clear, unblemished. He’s never fallen off his bike or his motorcycle. He’s never fallen.
The truth is that everyone’s gotten their marks right here in the present world. Guile Xangô has a historical explanation for this stuff. He says that all marks are inherited, like astral maps handed down from a past life. You believe this shit? It doesn’t make sense. Guile Xangô loves to talk about how slaves got punished. Like at the whipping post. Everyone’s feet swollen, all of today’s twists and turns from the thrashings at that same post in their past lives. All the slaves back then were marked like cattle. They were cattle. The body parts that would get marked: thighs, arms, stomach, shoulders, chest, faces. The marks could be a cross, a bell, flowers, letters (BP, FC, N&B). That’s what Guile Xangô keeps saying. Everyone here gets to be a slave again.
If you think about it (and you always think about it after talking to Guile Xangô) a lot of girls have these burn marks. Usually from boiling water. Mothers throwing hot water at their babies when they wouldn’t stop crying. A child reaching for the stove and pulling down the kettle, a waterfall on her face. Another kid throwing water at a girl walking home up the hill after school, so she’d learn her lesson and never look at another woman’s man. The ones with chemical burns from jealous cuckolded boyfriends like to show it off the most. They still wear tiny shorts, no matter that there’s only a scar left and the faint idea that at some time they were desired.
Leo smashed Monstrinho’s face with a bat. A trampled bloody chunk over his left eye and bare flesh under his right eye all the way down his chin. A beautiful scar. And the two of them go way back, served time together with Dentinho, Paula da Olívia, Pará da Lana. So many stab wounds between them. The bullet scars are more impressive: Monstrinho has at least twelve, entry and exit wounds. And two from bullets that didn’t exit: a scar on his leg and another on his scalp. Everyone here has those marks too: from stabbings, gunshots, bats, hot water, acid. And marks from diseases, arms and legs broken in places that don’t mend easy. Arms and legs maimed or crippled in car accidents, fingers lost to factories or lumber mills or machete fights, ears severed in some brawl.
And he’s still running at a gallop. The best part is when Guile Xangô talks about the iron muzzle, the one Escrava Anastácia wears in the history books, made of zinc or tin sheets. It covers her whole face and has tiny air holes. Slaves had to wear it as punishment when they drank or stole food or ate earth or clay. Cachaça was the vice of choice for city slaves. Clay was more popular in rural areas. Men and women relished eating right out of anthills, with shards of clay pots, broken bits from perfume bottles. When they had the muzzle on, they tried to inhale particles off the ground as best they could. Like people nowadays snorting white powder, desperate to get their fix. (Imagine all these addicts dying to get something in their bodies with their mouths gagged.) Every drunk and junkie in the world, every single one of them is a child of Anastácia, Guile X
Dafé keeps running. If he crossed the street and turned on Professor Quintino, he’d see two cops standing outside Luiz’s bar on Sampaio Ferraz, talking to the gambling mobster, they’re nice guys. He knows one of the cops, Sargento Salgueirão, he’s a friend, once he even gave Dafé some advice he ignored. Dafé remembers the cop lost his son in an accident, some five years ago, with his own gun in his own home. Soon this same cop will deliver Lana’s baby inside that very police car, he’ll win a medal and go crazy, lose his mind, a total lunatic. Dafé would be safe there.
And if he ran into Luiz’s bar, he’d see the woman he loves (and pretends he doesn’t) talking to Guile Xangô. At that very moment, she says to Guile Xangô, “I need a bump.” She walks toward the bathroom, followed by an attentive collective gaze. On her way back, she walks through a fog of desire, a disdainful smirk in the corner of her lips, red like a matador’s cape. She puts a coin in the jukebox and dances by herself. The men are like dogs watching a bitch in heat. Calves, thighs, ass, and the dogs on all fours, slobbering. She sways her arms, calves, hips, shakes her ass, rubbing it in. Then she sits back down, her naughty face shining with sweat, she reaches for Guile Xangô, touches his cheek with her hand and purrs, “You’re so, so, I don’t know, so . . . sweet!”
“If you call me sweet one more time, I’ll beat you to a pulp!” Guile Xangô’s eyes look cold, but then they warm up and he smiles. She bursts out laughing, her hand cupping her mouth, her whole body shaking, two fat tears puddling on her fingers.
“You always make me laugh. You know you’re the only one who makes me laugh like this?”
Dafé would be jealous, but Guile Xangô would take one look at him and Dafé would see it’s fine, the three of them would drink and drink until the sun came down.
He’s running at a gallop down Maia de Lacerda. His lungs are burning, his legs getting heavy. The guys on the motorcycle have their helmets on. The one on the back carries a gun in his left hand. Dafé is on his left side too, making it easier for him to finish the job.
Guile Xangô gets it. Vovô do Crime, on the other hand, looks down on everybody. Even on Dafé. He was another weirdo. Dafé had seen what it was like to walk up the hill with him at least three times. The two of them side by side and voices shouting “Asshole” from the houses, shacks, bars, and stores. The Asshole must be on his way up the hill right about now and Dafé wishes he could be there with him again. But he’s not. Up there, the Asshole will smoke and snort and talk to the kids in the Movement. They’re his armed guards, his dragons of independence: the tougher ones call the Asshole Dr. Freud, and the younger ones call him Vovô do Crime, their Criminal Papa. They talk about philosophy, the streets, and they come up with plans for the day the favela comes to an end, they’ll take over the city, burn shit to the ground, use the guts of the last priest in town to hang the last rich man. The Asshole will talk until he’s exhausted. The troop shakes when he says God doesn’t exist, and he doesn’t laugh at any of their Jesus jokes. (Did you know Jesus was Brazilian? Because he was always performing miracles, he was poor, and was killed by his government.) The kids hold on to their guns when they hear him mention the devil. Dafé wishes he was up there with the Asshole. He’d be safe.
Dafé needs more air, he’s sucking in air, his feet are hitting the ground and sending pain up his chest and then up to his head, still burning. He’s burning up. If he ran toward the metro, through the vacant lot across the street from the station, if he did that, Dafé would also be safe. And he’d see the group of Angolans. Though he wouldn’t know what was going on. Or maybe he’d know deep down, without fully knowing.
The Angolans stand around the phone booth outside the Estácio station. Someone found a way to call any number for free, some glitch, and they wait for their turn. More than twenty of them. Men, women, teenagers, children. They stand there from morning to night to morning again. But now they leave early. The military police warned them, a bunch of Black people huddled on a corner in the middle of the night can’t be anything good. Now they stay there from morning to ten in the evening, eleven, midnight. They came to Brazil to try to escape their civil war and the colonial misery they’d inherited, but they were never slaves, they were never trafficked in slave ships. They don’t have that mark. They haven’t been pulled up by the roots.
Dafé is out of breath. He drags himself down that street like a lame horse. He can’t think straight. He’s starting to feel foreign to himself. He’s ready to cross the street, continue his trip. His entire body hurts. But where is this heat on his back coming from, this hot sting on his back, and now this jabbing on his shoulder, and why is the sidewalk rushing up against him like this, turning into a wall?
He doesn’t know, but somewhere he’s still soaring, untethered, airborne, free, running, he’ll make it, he will, at a gallop. He’s turning on São Roberto, he’s there, but São Roberto is now a dark well, the houses have disappeared, the steps have disappeared, and he wants to freeze time, even Dafé himself is disappearing, going faint, collapsing forever, goodbye.
OUT OF TIME
There are seven of them and they’re sitting on the floor, in a circle. Manaus opens the bags and they each put in their piece. By his feet, three full pillowcases and a bundle of heavy weapons. They’re leasing their guns to Dentinho. Manaus closes the bag and places it under his right thigh. To his left, on the floor, a small black pistol. Manaus looks down and his dark hair falls on his indigenous features. He’s pissed and anything could happen. The women (there are three of them) are making the chow, talking and laughing.
“Go ahead, talk louder!” Manaus shouts at them in the other room.
The utter silence. The locked doors. The sheets covering the windows. The utter silence. Manaus moves his hair off his face with both hands like he’s parting curtains. He grabs the pillowcases at his feet and dumps out their contents: rings, necklaces, bracelets, watches, earrings, gold, silver, pearls, costumes, foreign coins, CDs, a wig, five pairs of panties. He picks up a pair with the tips of two fingers and asks without looking at anyone:
“Who brought this?”
Manaus collects the CDs. Then he places them side by side. He gets up and steps on each one with the heel of his cowboy boot. Then he sits back down.
No one says a word.
Manaus looks at Panda, who scratches his head and stares at his feet.
“You said there’d be no one at the house,” Manaus says. “But that wasn’t true, was it?”
“The cook said they’d be out of town,” Panda says.
“And what’s more, the owner of that house is an army colonel,” Manaus says. “Do you understand how bad you fucked up?”
“I never saw him in uniform the whole ten days I watched that house.”
“And the cook? You fucked her and got her to tell you when they were traveling, but nothing else? What about the safe? You didn’t ask shit about the safe?”
“But he had guns. We’re loaded now, no need to . . . ”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
The women’s whispers and food smells are coming from the kitchen.
“What I wouldn’t give to see what’s inside that safe,” Manaus says.
And Panda starts to describe how they dragged the safe from the office. The thunder from the safe falling down the stairs and how he spent half an hour trying to open that shit, until he thought of calling the man they found in the house that day, and the guy tried and everything, he said only the owner knew the combination, that he was only the wife’s brother, the owner was on a trip. The effort they made to lift that safe, they wanted to load it into the van in the garage, but they couldn’t get it off the living room floor.
Everyone laughs at this image. Even Manaus is laughing. The women are laughing in the kitchen, they don’t even know why. Until the guys notice Manaus isn’t laughing with them anymore. They go quiet and wait.
“And while we were fighting with that safe, Micuçu was in the bedroom fucking the woman,” Manaus says.
“So what? She was hot,” Micuçu says and laughs.“Go ahead, laugh,” Manaus says.
Nobody laughs. The utter silence.
Three knocks on the door. Manaus throws his RK 62 to Dafé and his Uzi to Beleco. Two knocks. Then three more quick knocks. Dafé opens the door and Dentinho comes in. Manaus’s jacket is hiding the loot.
