Chronicler Of The Winds (13 page)

The days of the street kids were always much the same without ever repeating themselves. Something would always happen that no one could have foreseen. But Nelio kept more and more to himself, and he would grow annoyed if the others didn't leave him in peace. His thoughts were often interrupted by Nascimento starting a fight with Pecado or someone in another band of street kids. Then Nelio would be forced to intervene to restore order and stop the strife from spreading.

When he stepped between the two combatants, silence would fall at once. No one had ever lifted a hand against Nelio, not even Nascimento. And no one could understand why he always managed to avoid being drawn into a fight. The rumour began to circulate that his father was some unknown
feticheiro
with exceptional powers which he had passed on to his son. Where the rumour stemmed from, where it had started, no one could say. But suddenly one day, a shadow fell across Nelio as he sat leaning against a tree right next to Dona Esmeralda's bakery, studying the torn and stained atlas of Africa that Alfredo Bomba had found in a rubbish bin the day before. When Nelio glanced up, a young woman holding a child was standing before him.

'My daughter is ill,' said the woman plaintively.

'Then she ought to be given medicine,' replied Nelio. 'But I have no medicine to give you.'

Nelio sank back into his thoughts. The woman did not move. Time passed. After more than an hour Nelio looked up at her again.

'I have no medicine,' he repeated. 'If your child was sick an hour ago, she must be even worse now.'

The woman had the child bound to her breast. Now she undid the wrappings, knelt down and held out the child towards Nelio. Many people had gathered around. Nelio felt ill at ease. He had great respect for the
feticheiros
and
curandeiros
who possessed the secret powers, who could talk to the restlessly hovering spirits, who could drive out the evil and liberate the good that every person has inside him. Nelio realised now that the woman who was holding out her child thought that he was a
feticheiro.
That scared him. Dead
feticheiros
would punish him severely if he pretended to be one of them.

'You're making a mistake,' he told the woman. 'Go to a
curandeiro.
I'll give you money, if you'll just go away.'

The woman didn't move. Nelio saw that Nascimento and the others were watching what was going on with interest. He had started to sweat.

'Go away,' he repeated. 'I can't help you. I'm only a boy.'

Suddenly the woman began to appeal to the circle of bystanders, which was getting bigger all the time.

'My child is sick,' she lamented. 'He refuses to help her.'

A murmur of displeasure erupted among those who stood there watching, and they immediately sided with the woman. Nelio saw that the only thing he could do was to take the child and hold her in his arms. He noticed that her lips were cracked and parched.

'Give the child boiled water with salt,' he told the woman, remembering what his mother had given him.

The woman took her child, smiled and placed a few crumpled banknotes at Nelio's feet. The crowd began to disperse.

'Not even Cosmos was a
curandeiro,
' said Pecado in amazement, 'Can you make the fleas stop sucking my blood?'

Several days later the woman with the sick child came back. Her daughter was now well. Nelio assumed it was the boiled water and salt that had had an effect. But from that moment on, the story spread that Nelio possessed the sacred, healing powers. Not wanting to be caught as a
curandeiro
who was not genuine, Nelio understood that all he could do was to spread another rumour. He gathered the group around him.

'If too many people start coming to ask me to make them well, then
it will
be impossible for me to continue to be your leader. That's why we're going to spread the news that I will only receive sick people when I'm sitting at the exact same spot where the woman found me. Only there. Nowhere else.'

From that day on, Nelio avoided sitting in the shade of that tree where he used to withdraw to ponder his many unanswered questions. Even though he never again held a sick child in his arms, he had acquired an invisible cloak over his shoulders, from which no one could free him. Nelio – he who was so young and yet had taken over as leader after Cosmos – was now a man with supernatural and magic powers. Nelio became a well-known figure in the city. Many started coming to him to ask advice. Nelio never tried to give a clever answer. He simply said what he thought. If he didn't understand a question, he would say so. If he had nothing to say, he would keep quiet. Rumours began to circulate that one day Nelio would perform a great miracle. Nobody knew what the miracle would be, but everyone expected it to be something magnificent, which would make their city famous around the world.

But Nelio had no intention of performing any magical or miraculous acts. He was striving only to do something that would make his life mean more than mere survival. At the same time, he took seriously his responsibilities as the successor of Cosmos. He was constantly trying to make sure that the kids in the group washed and didn't get sick. Several times he smashed half-empty wine bottles that Nascimento had found, determined to get drunk. During those brief times when they were not preoccupied with surviving, and they lounged on the pavement in a spot where they could find some shade, Nelio would listen to their dreams. He had discovered that the others' dreams were just as powerful as his own. He believed their dreams would always endure, no matter how hard their lives might be. Each and every one of them possessed a core that was as resilient and precious as a diamond. It was the dream of another day, a reunion, a bed to sleep in, a roof over their heads, an ID card.

Nelio decided that knowledge meant being able to see relationships between things. If anyone had asked him what was the fundamental need of every human being, he would have known the right answer at once: a roof and an ID card. That was what a person needed, in addition to food, water, a pair of trousers and a blanket. It was by having a roof over their heads and ID cards in their pockets that human beings differed from the animals. These were the first steps towards a decent life, an escape from poverty – building yourself a roof and obtaining an ID card. When the time was ripe, Nelio would see to it that the kids Cosmos had entrusted to his care would set off on that long journey away from the streets.

Nelio listened to their dreams, and he was often annoyed when they were both absurd and unrealistic. Even though he always tried to hide his irritation, there were times when he couldn't help putting his foot down. When Tristeza had disturbed their afternoon siesta over a long period of time with his endless pronouncements about how he would one day open his own bank, Nelio put his foot down. He woke up those who had managed to fall asleep and gave a lecture.

'Everybody is entitled to talk about their dreams. You dream when you're dreaming, and you keep on dreaming when you talk about what you have dreamed. That's fine. But what Tristeza is doing is not fine. It's not a good dream to believe that one day you will open a bank. Especially if you can't even count. It's idiotic. So from now on Tristeza will not talk about his bank. Especially when the rest of us want to nap.'

After that it was quiet. Everyone was happy to be allowed to sleep in peace. But Tristeza, who had a hard time understanding things and whose mind was sluggish, asked Nelio to repeat what he had said, and this time to say everything move slowly. Nelio was overcome with remorse when he saw how sad Tristeza felt when his dream was forbidden. He saw that he had to give him another dream at once so that he wouldn't lose his spirit.

'You must practise thinking faster,' Nelio said. 'That's what you should dream about. That one day you'll be able to think as fast as the rest of us. When you've learned to do that, we'll collect enough money for you to buy a pair of trainers.'

Tristeza gave him a look of disbelief.

'I mean it,' Nelio said. 'Do I usually make promises that I don't keep?'

Tristeza shook his head.

'You can go to the shop yourself and pick out whatever shoes you want,' Nelio said. 'Then you can take the money out of your pocket and pay for them yourself.'

'I'll never learn to think that fast,' Tristeza said.

'You'll get your shoes when you've learned to think just a little bit faster than now.'

'I don't know how to do that.'

'You think about too many things at once. That's why your head is always in such a muddle. Learn to think about only one thing and nothing else.'

'What should I think about?'

'Think about how hot it is,' Nelio said. 'Think about how soundly we're going to sleep and how seldom we'll be annoyed with you if you're not always talking about your bank. Think about that until you fall asleep. Later I'll give you something else to think about.'

'Trainers,' Tristeza said.

'Yes,' Nelio said. 'Trainers. Quiet now! Think. And sleep.'

Afterwards, when Tristeza too had fallen asleep, Nelio lay awake in the shade of his tree. He tried to imagine Tristeza in ten years, in twenty, as a grown man. He grew sad at the thought that Tristeza probably wouldn't live that long. The world wasn't made for slow-witted street kids.

*

One morning Alfredo Bomba came over to Nelio, who was absent-mindedly scraping dirt off his feet with a dull, broken knife blade. He told Nelio that during the night he had dreamed that the next day was his birthday.

'But you don't know what day you were born,' said Nelio.

'I dreamed that I knew,' replied Alfredo Bomba. 'Why would I dream something that wasn't true?'

Nelio looked at him thoughtfully. Then he clapped his hands and stood up.

'You're right,' he said. 'Of course it's your birthday tomorrow, and we're going to celebrate it. Leave me alone now so I can think about your birthday in peace.'

Whenever Nelio had to solve a problem or think something through until there was nothing more to think about it, he always wanted to be left alone. He couldn't think when the others were jabbering all around him. He would sit in the scorched-brown grass behind the petrol station where his only companions were a few scrawny goats. That was where he went now to think about Alfredo Bomba's birthday. After an hour he knew what they would do. He called the group together for a conference. Nascimento arrived carrying a box of half-rotten tomatoes that had fallen off the roof of an overloaded bus. With quick and practised hands they tore off the parts of the tomatoes that were rotten and gobbled down the rest. Nelio waited until the box was all but empty before he began to speak.

'Tomorrow is a great day. It's Alfredo Bomba's birthday. That's what he dreamed, and so it has to be true. I assume he's going to be nine or ten or maybe eleven. But that's not important. Nothing is preventing Alfredo Bomba from being as old as he wants to be. And tomorrow we're going to celebrate Alfredo Bomba's birthday.'

Nelio pointed to a house a short distance from the petrol station. In Dom Joaquim's day it had belonged to a wealthy plantation owner who had vast fields of tea in the remote western provinces. After the arrival of the young revolutionaries, the house stood empty for a long time and fell into disrepair. But during recent years various whites had lived there who had come to this country to offer assistance – people who were called
cooperantes.
Right now a man was living there who had bright yellow hair and who came from a country that no one had heard of. Nelio had once overheard that the man was a
marques,
without understanding what that meant.

Nelio had often wondered about these
cooperantes.
They wore shorts and sandals and carried small pouches of money in belts around their waists. Nelio thought this might be their uniform. They had big cars, and they were almost always friendly to the street kids and gave them too much money for guarding their cars. They liked getting red in the face from the sun and always tried to show that they weren't afraid of all the blacks who always wanted money from them – although Nelio had, of course, perceived that they were actually terrified.

Nelio pointed at the house.

'Tomorrow is Saturday. That means the
marques
will pack up his car with mattresses and chairs and food boxes. He won't be back until the following day, on Sunday. His
empregada
has the day off, and the nightwatchman always sleeps soundly. Nascimento can also try to get hold of a bottle of wine to give him. Then he'll sleep even more soundly. Since the man who lives there is a
marques
and
cooperante,
he's here to help the poor people of our country. We are poor. And he can help us by celebrating Alfredo Bomba's birthday. We'll hold the celebration in his house.'

He encountered a storm of protest. Nelio knew that everyone thought his idea was excellent, and they were trying to help by pointing out anything that might be a problem.

'We can't break into the house,' said Mandioca. 'The police will come. We'll have to have the birthday party in jail. They'll beat us badly. Especially Alfredo Bomba, since his birthday is to blame for it all.'

'We're not going to break in,' Nelio said. 'I'll explain later.'

'Since it's not our house, we'll have to be quiet,' said Nascimento. 'But we can't be quiet. We've never been able to do that. How can we celebrate a birthday without making a racket?'

'We won't open the windows,' Nelio said. 'And we won't break anything.'

'We can't turn on the lights,' said Pecado. 'Are we going to walk around in the dark in a strange house? A lot of things will get broken, whether we like it or not.'

'The
marques
always leaves the lights on when he's away,' said Nelio, 'so that no robbers will break in.'

He countered all their objections and then explained how they would get inside the house.

'Mandioca is the one who can do two things better than anyone else. First, he can look more pitiful and starving than the rest of us. Second, he can keep quiet and sit still for a long time. That's why, Mandioca, you will go up to the house and ring the bell. The
cooperante
will open the door. Then you will faint and collapse just inside the threshold. The
cooperante
will get worried; he'll bring you water to drink. After a while you'll start feeling better. You ask to use the toilet. When you're alone in there, you unlatch the window. Do it so no one will notice. Then you thank the
cooperante
for everything he has done for you. He'll probably give you some money, since you're so hungry. And then you come back here to us.'