The punishment, A Forja, 1965aug

The boys were good boys. They were having some very nice chats in one of the neighborhood little squares.

There were also some guys from another little group. They had united because of common objectives: they had no objectives.

Suddenly boredom took hold of everyone. The program was very boring.

One of them remembered a party at a school, and suggested they go there to mess up the people’s party. After some discussions, they took the last drag on the weed, threw away the butts, got into their Beetles and went off doing about 120, to see if they could kill someone along the way, and arrived at that school, where the group in the car that arrived first made fun of the one that arrived second, and those excused themselves, saying it was because of an old guy who was strolling in front of them, but he also got one of those cut-offs. Then one of them observed that the world was lost because everyone was soft like the old guy, nobody was like them.

THEY were the ones who would make Brazil’s future. Then a sergeant who was part of the group complained, and told the other not to speak the name of his country with a marijuana cigarette in his hand, the other did not like it and they were already about to start fighting, when the others called them to enter the school.

They entered and immediately began shouting “where were the women”. The first one who passed by, one of them, in blue, pulled her hair, and said some little joke that was not very funny, because the girl slapped him, and went to complain to the school people.

Then the school people gathered, and some 5 or 6 of the bravest went to confront the young men, the others stayed watching from afar, so that the next day they could tell everything properly, as if they had acted, and make their poster before the female electorate.

That was what the little group wanted; the boss grabbed a bottle, broke the bottle and kept the neck in his hand and said:

-If the glass runs out, here is the machine, he showed his father’s Colt 45, who is a general, and a very understanding father.

You can see that the school people tried to use their mouths to convince the other to drop the bottle and the others to calm down, although each one kept constantly repeating, with an obsession:

-Today I fight. Today I break.

But while this was happening, a fight broke out between one from their little group and another from another little group, hold here, push there, take the leftover there, the police arrive. Then the Boss got worked up and said:

-Guys, the police have arrived, now it is for real.

And he began drawing the weapon. It happens that the policeman also had a weapon, and had a baton, and began bringing the aforementioned one down, and threw the boys into their Beetles, sent them away, sent the other group away too, because there was no point arresting anyone, the parents would soon come to release them, and the police hid around there, to see if anyone would come back. A little later the boys come back, then the police, who are also not stupid enough to risk themselves for nothing, fired two shots into the air. Then it was chaos; nobody knew where the shots had come from; each one only knew that it had not been him, and so whoever was armed fired, the police, hearing shots that were not theirs, fired again, the watchman fired, whoever had no weapon fired curses, and so it went. Suddenly a bullet hit the boys’ car, then they took off, happy, because they had already fulfilled their objective, and were taking their trophy.

The annoying part was the decision of the father of the boy who had taken the car, who the next day, seeing the car with two broken windows and the hood pierced by a bullet, forbade Paulinho from using the car for a week.

Context:

published in Aug 1955 in the newspaper A Forja, of the Student Guild of the Colégio de Aplicação of the National Faculty of Philosophy of UFRJ (former University of Brazil), also known as “CAp, or the Aplicação da Lagoa”, in Rio de Janeiro, when the author was finishing the then 3rd scientific year (last year of high school). Inspired by real events that took place at a little party held on a Saturday night at the school, a benefit event of the Guild, with confusion at the door caused by the “little groups” from neighborhoods or regions of the city, something then common around the world. It also records a time when the military occupied many public positions, and felt like owners of the nation. The governor of the then State of Guanabara (today the municipality of Rio) was Carlos Lacerda and the president of the republic was Marshal Castelo Branco.

Miguel Fernández y Fernández, engineer, chronicler and columnist, member of the National Academy of Engineering and of the Institute of Engineering # written in Aug 1965, 3,484 characters.