Oranges
Oranges. Plenty of them… at the traffic light.
The job came to a halt because of the pandemics. Nothing left to be done but stay home. Living in a community — a reasonable and socially acceptable name for former shanty towns turned into steady adobe habitations along the years — can be sometimes a hell of a tester: no entertainment, little food, drug traffickers allowing people what they can do or not, plenty of booze, people quarreling here and there, evangelical churches for the 7pm praise and NGOs teaching kids how to play drums, draw, shoot short-films and, with some trick of luck around, maybe a symphonic orchestra can come up.
Just TV sets on. Some of the residents along those days of quarantine dove their faces onto the mobile device screens since they got no desktop computers for any other better alternative towards a more productive time employment: some games, celebrity hoaxes, soap operas, video stream channels, music on earphones. Anything goes but common TV programming dictatorship pushing life standards harder and harder to be conceived and beyond any possible affordability in a near future.
Oranges were all Sérgio got to help his family with some proceeds. His dreams of kids & family, a well-paid work and a nice home in Casqueiro were pursues he should better forget. He used to spend part of his free time up and down the streets of the wealthier neighbourhood across the highway, but police patrols were very effective in unwelcoming him to that side of the city. Dream on, dreamer! They were still free… those dreams… who knows, an address around the square by the river: bars, cafes, fine bakery and queueless butcheries.
For better profits, he used to sell them — the oranges — in the neighbour city of Santos; buyers were a way wealthier there and didn’t complain about any sudden rise in prices from week to week. The goods were almost illegal: they were bought from a burglar skilfully taylored in the art of breaking into greengrocers. The lad was a genius. The large experience was certainly conferred by the fact he’d never been caught in his enterprises after midnight. So the oranges to be sold were acquired by very modest figures: a helping hand from the porch-climber friend as a sign of reverence for his best costumer having such a dire condition.
1980’s superstar singer Cindy Lauper used to ride on radio waves at the top of her lungs: “(…) money changes everything! (…)”. Big mistake. First, the amount counts: when the proceed barely covers the bus fare to go back home, the verse sounds meaningless. Second, what sort of change, my dear?! For good or for bad?!
Living in a country which muffles any corruption scandal like Banestado one, changes sometimes can be of no hype.
The best definition for all that was a herd of open legs; politicians, press, parties, a scumbag of miserable people around the will to stifle the most important political-financial scandal of that republic’s modern age. Bad for Sérgio: the missing material conditions forced him, under the hottest sun of tropical oceans, to sell whatever fell in his hands. Oranges that week. As a matter of fact , it could be anything he could make good money, but narcotics. He wouldn’t dare that much as responsability had been used to growing tall before the quarantine period. Moreover, there wasn’t the slightest chance of letting especially his mother down by the unfortune of an unfolding unexpected arrest. He was poor, and he knew it. Under those circumstances — unable to afford good solicitors — his term would be of a lifetime.
The risks of selling oranges were no risks at all. At the junction of the beach avenue and canal 6, there he was, trying to survive in a place the money has completely disappeared. Where was all that wealth coming from?, one would ask. “Have you heard about loundry, my dear?!”. No doubt about it: the finest and most sophisticated shops, stores, pubs and restaurants had been empty most of the days, but there for decades. “Talent?! Hmm… try your best shot next time.”
Beautiful places with no one inside, wishing you, however, happy new year over and over, could be only regarded as what cozzers locally called facade shops, business places the entrepreneurs didn’t need customers at all, but calm and good corruption schemes to keep their shell companies going on. Thousands of that all over the city, especially ones hid behind English schools and entertainment with that strong appealing of the parties. These entrepreneurs who belonged to the same economic group of the real operators, according to the local language — Portuguese, which is not Spanish or Italian by the way, although they’re technically called transparent languages, but far from being exactly the same — were well known among the population as oranges.
Different from the ones in Sérgio’s bag to be sold at the traffic light junction of canal 6 in that steamy afternoon, maybe his better fate could be fueled by small bits of the oranges’ money left for the purpose of purchasing healthy diet and helping the poor.
For every bit of small bucks and quids, one more step behind and away from his dreams of raising a family and a comfortable house in Casqueiro. And there was still several people who claimed Banestado, the Car Wash operation’s grandfather, was a thing of the past.
“No way!,” Sérgio thought. “Alive & kicking… as never before…”. And for those who had been trying to bury that for decades, may Lord be with them all.
