Parafuckinguay

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“I want to see the Delegado,” Miles stated, as a formal statement.

“You just did. That was him.” The friendly Federalé continued to steer Miles towards the exit of The Federal Police Headquarters, Rio de Janiero, Brazil. “Remember. Don’t forget. Forty eight hours.” He waved cheerily and pushed Miles out into the esgoto of humanity that was the street. Bade him boa viagem.

Dick had spent most of the day alone, in a windowless room, on a plastic chair, under a lightbulb, beside a water cooler. Infrequently the door would open and a variety of men, all obvious police officers, would look at him for longer or shorter intervals, but mainly he had just been sitting.

Months, perhaps years before, Miles had overstayed his visa. Now he needed to become legal. In pursuance of such status, he had dropped his passport into a bubbling vatt of feijao. With a new passport bare of entry stamps, he could rely on the mammoth inefficiency and corruption of Brazilian border formalities to allow him to creep by unnoticed. Things had not quite worked out like that in Salvador.

Advised by a previously wise and sane friend that he should go to Rio, “because everything is so much more corrupt there”, under the fierce lightbulb of the afternoon, Miles was unable to recall how go to Rio and fuck with the Federal Police ever seemed like a good idea. After a couple of hours he met a friendly man, who appeared to be more of a public official than an officer. He wore a cream suit and sunglasses, even in the windowless room. He had taken Miles to his opulent office, given him a cafezinho, expressed concern and understanding, taken Miles’ passport from his drawer and magnanimously stamped it before Miles’ very eyes.

Stamped it – ‘it’ being Miles’ three day old entirely virgin passport – on its whole first page with DEPORTADO.

Over the next forty hours, as Miles crawled miserably to Paraguay on a freezing bus, bacilli, dormant in his lungs on the tropical littoral, burst into fecund life as the altitude rose and temperature fell. By the time he had penetrated the heart of the continental winter he was critically bronchial. Mist rose from frozen bogs. Smugglers on the bus huddled under blankets. Phlegm covered everything Miles came into contact with. He was wearing all his clothes: two pairs of shorts, two t-shirts, a baseball cap and flipflops.

In Fôz do Iguaçu he struggled coughing onto a bus for Cidade Del Este. It was vital, the friendly Federalé had insisted, to get the exit stamp if he wanted to return. Everyone disembarked at the same time and Miles was surprised to find he was not at the border. “Where is the frontier?” he asked the driver. The driver simultaneously jerked his head backwards and poked his thumb over his shoulder. Miles felt sick. “E Paraguay o Brasil aqui?”

“E Paraguay. Claro!”

“You didn’t stop at the border.”

“You didn’t ask.”



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