Chronicler Of The Winds (8 page)

Two days later Nelio came to a little town, which consisted of low buildings along a single street. He stopped outside one of them where clothes were hanging on a rickety wooden rack. An Indian man who was so gaunt that he seemed emaciated, as if he had endured a long period of starvation, came out of the dark interior. Nelio bought from him a pair of trousers made of dark red cotton. After he paid, he went behind the building, pulled off the tattered
capulana
and put on the trousers. He wrapped the
capulana
artfully around his head as protection from the blazing sun. When he returned to the street, the Indian was standing outside his door, hanging a new pair of trousers on the wooden rack.

'Where are you headed?' the Indian asked him.

'South,' replied Nelio.

'Those trousers will last for a long journey,' said the Indian dreamily.

Nelio followed the line of the shore. Every night he slept behind a sand dune. At dawn he would take off his trousers, wade into the water, and wash himself the way he had seen Yabu Bata do. When he was hungry he would stop and help the fishermen pull their boats on shore and clean their nets. They gave him food, and he would set off again after he had eaten his fill. The landscape changed, but the sea was always the same. In the distance he saw mountains and plains, forests with toppled grey trees, swamps and deserts. He walked without thinking about where he was headed. He was still moving away from something, and he was waiting for some sign that would tell him where he was going. At night he saw the moon wax from a slender crescent and become full, and then disappear. He thought about how he had already been walking for many days, and the sea seemed to him endless. Occasionally he met people and he would accompany them for a few days, but more often he walked alone. Everybody asked him where he was going. He told them about the bandits and about the burned village, but he always left out the fact that one day he had refused to shoot his brother and had instead killed a man with narrow, squinty eyes. When they repeated their question – where was he going? – he would say that he didn't know. During this time he learned that people always want to know where other people are going. That was the question that bound strangers and wayfarers together.

One day, early in the morning, he reached the mouth of a river. He saw a demolished bridge nearby and was thinking that he would have to find someone with a boat to take him across, when he caught sight of a person sitting on a stone by the water. When he got closer, he felt uneasy. Her skin was scaly and she looked more like an animal than an old woman. But she had heard him, and she turned her head and looked at him with piercing eyes. Then he understood that she was a
halakawuma
disguised as a human being, a woman. Or maybe the opposite was true – maybe she was an old woman disguised as the wise lizard. He approached, the whole time keeping a safe distance from her tongue. He knew that he was in luck. If you met a
halakawuma,
you could ask for advice. Even kings listened when the
halakawuma
whispered its advice about how a land ought to be ruled. Nelio had heard stories about how the first leader of the young revolutionaries had his whole garden full of lizards, which he regularly called upon for advice. Nelio sat down on the ground. The lizard followed his movements with her piercing eyes.

'I don't want to disturb you,' he said, 'but I need some advice. I've been walking for many days without knowing where I'm going. I've been waiting for some sign, but none has appeared.'

'When one is as young as you are, there is only one road to take,' replied the lizard in a voice that rang like bells. 'Your road ought to lead you home.'

Then Nelio briefly recounted what had happened. The whole time he was worried that the lizard would become impatient and, hissing, creep away into the tall grass that grew beside the mouth of the river.

When he fell silent the lizard pulled a bottle out of a bundle at her side and took several vigorous gulps. To his surprise, Nelio noticed the smell of palm wine. The lizard drank and then grimaced. Nelio thought that the world was full of unexpected events. Never had anyone told him that a
halakawuma
might also be fond of the liquors that people poured down their throats whenever they wanted to get drunk.

'I am old,' the lizard said. 1 don't know how good my advice is any more. People have less and less respect for wisdom. Everyone seems to be taking the fools' roads, no matter what we say, those of us who still possess what is left of the old knowledge.'

The lizard took another gulp and began rocking back and forth on the stone. Nelio was afraid that she would fall asleep before he got his answer.

'Cross the river,' the lizard said at last, somewhat absent-mindedly, as if her brain was already full of other thoughts. 'Cross the river and walk for a few more days. Then you will come to the big city where the houses clamber like monkeys along the steep cliffs facing the sea. So many people are already there that it won't matter if one more arrives. There you can vanish and reappear as the person you want to be.'

Before Nelio had time to ask any more questions, the lizard crept away through the grass with a lumbering gait. He thought about what he had heard, and he decided that this was the sign he had been waiting for.

At the same moment he discovered that a man was just about to push a canoe into the river. Nelio jumped up and ran to the man, who already had a paddle in his hand.

An hour later, Nelio stepped ashore on the opposite bank of the river and continued his journey.

He came to the city late one afternoon. He had climbed a ridge, and he was very tired. How long he had been travelling, he could not say. But his feet were sore, and the trousers he had bought were already ragged and quite dirty. Now he saw the silhouette of the city rising along the cliffs down towards the sea.

At last he had arrived.

Although he had never been there before, he was immediately filled with the same feeling he had the first time he saw the sea with Yabu Bata. In the silhouette of the big city, the silhouette of something totally unfamiliar, something he could never have imagined, he felt himself at home. It was the second domain where he experienced an unexpected sense of belonging. This gave him with the idea that all people who are forced to flee from a war, a plague or a natural catastrophe, somewhere have another home waiting for them. It's only a matter of going on until you reach the point where all your strength has been emptied out. At that point, when exhaustion is transformed into an iron grip around the last remnants of your will, a home awaits you that you didn't know you had.

Nelio arrived in the city when the brief twilight was colouring the sky red. Some distance away he sat down on the soft sand and looked at the countless numbers of buildings, people, clattering cars and rusting buses.

Nowhere did he see any huts, nowhere in the city did he catch a glimpse of any villages.

He could also feel the fear inside him. Maybe the city belonged to the bandits. He didn't know. He still didn't dare go into the city. He would wait until the next morning. From a distance the city would be allowed to get used to his arrival. He knew that now his most important task was to stay alive. It's the most important task a person can have.

So Nelio found his home by the sea.

The following day he let himself be swallowed up by the people, the streets and the dilapidated buildings.

All of a sudden he was simply there.

*

Towards the end, at dawn, he was worn out. He had been speaking in such a low voice that I had to bend over his face to be able to hear what he said. Afterwards, when he had stopped talking, he fell asleep almost at once.

I sat next to him for a long time, afraid that he would never wake again. And I thought that then I would never find out what happened on that night in the theatre, the night that already seemed so long ago, the night when he was shot.

I put a wet towel on his hot forehead and went downstairs. From a distance I could hear Dona Esmeralda. Sometimes she came to the bakery early to check that everybody who was supposed to be there had arrived on time.

I stopped in the dark stairwell. Would she be able to tell from my face that Nelio was lying up there on her roof? Would she be able to tell that I had sat there all night long, listening to a story I never wanted to end?

I didn't know. So I continued down the stairs.

Dona Esmeralda didn't notice me as I came downstairs.

A great commotion was raging that morning on the streets outside the bakery and theatre. All the bakers, the dough mixers, the enticing girls who sold bread and the watchmen were standing around Dona Esmeralda in the doorway and looking out at the street. Since I am just as curious as everyone else, for a moment I forgot about Nelio who was lying up on the roof in his fever. Sometimes I think there is nothing that has as great a power over human beings as curiosity. So in a certain way I can forgive myself for not thinking about him for a little while. I asked the baker standing next to me – I think it was Alberto – what was going on. At the same moment I saw that huge groups of street kids were swarming restlessly back and forth along the street. They were blocking the traffic, throwing around the rubbish from the bins in front of the buildings, and yelling and screaming.

'Nelio has disappeared,' Alberto said.

I felt something grip my heart. 'Nelio,' I said. 'Nelio who?'

Dona Esmeralda, who has an exceptional ability to hear everything that is said in her vicinity, turned round and looked at me in surprise.

'Everybody knows who Nelio is,' she said in a sharp voice. 'The saintly Nelio whom no one has ever managed to beat up.'

'Of course I know who Nelio is,' I said apologetically. 'So he's disappeared?' I turned back to Alberto since Dona Esmeralda had returned her gaze to the street.

'He's gone,' replied Alberto. 'The street kids suspect that he's been taken captive.'

'Who could manage to capture him?'

'All the people who have never been able to give him a beating. The street kids think it's a conspiracy.'

'That hardly sounds plausible,' I said doubtfully. 'Where would he be kept captive?'

'How would I know?' Alberto said.

The uproar continued all day long. The street kids, who seemed to number in the thousands, kept on causing a commotion. The police had been called out and kept a watchful eye on everything from the pavement. But their commanders, who were sweating under their heavy caps, wouldn't allow them to intervene. Someone also claimed to have seen the Secretary of the Interior, the feared mestizo Dimande, pass by in his armoured car to survey the situation. Not until afternoon did the tumult of the street kids subside. They gathered in large bands and then broke up into small groups and vanished in all directions into the city. Although I was very tired, I had no peace to sleep during the day. My brother had also sent over one of his neighbours to find out if I had fallen ill since I had not been home for several days. I wrote a note on one of the brown bread bags, saying that at the moment I was working so much that I didn't have time to come home. But everything was fine, there was no reason to worry about me. I rinsed myself off behind the bakery, stripping off my clothes behind the rusty sheet metal from the roof that created a little partitioned space, and washing myself under the water pump. Then I went over to Senhora Muwulene's and bought new strips of cloth, which she dipped in her secret herb bath. I had the feeling she suspected it was Nelio who was in my care and that he had been injured in some way. As I stood in her dark garage reeking of ammonia and unknown spices, I seriously considered confiding in her about what had happened. Maybe I could ask her to come and take a look at Nelio as he lay on the roof. When I saw the thousands of swarming street kids, I realised what a responsibility I had assumed. What would happen if Nelio died and it was discovered that I had tried to nurse him on the rooftop, without getting him to a doctor? If Nelio could no longer speak, who would believe me when I said that it was his wish to be left alone on the roof? No one would believe me. Presumably I would be dragged out to the street, the police would look away, and I would be stoned, beaten to death, drenched in gasoline and set on fire.

So I said nothing to Senhora Muwulene. It seemed to be too late. I had taken responsibility for Nelio, and I would have to bear it alone until he asked me to move him from the roof. After my visit to Senhora Muwulene, I went to the big marketplace and shopped for food. I bought a ready-cooked chicken and vegetables; I didn't have enough money for anything else. The marketplace was bustling. Even though no street kids were running around looking for Nelio, there were many hungry people begging, more than I had ever seen before. I knew that a steady stream of refugees had been coming to the city. The bandits were staging attacks all over the country, and there were rumours that the young revolutionary soldiers ran off whenever the bandits approached. More and more people were being forced to take to their heels, abandoning their homes. I thought about what Nelio had told me, and I understood something about the terrible fate that had befallen my country. The war that was raging was dividing families, brother against brother; and behind everything that was happening, from a great distance away in other countries, there were invisible hands pulling the strings of the bandits. It was the white people who had once been forced to leave the land and who now were seeking to return. In my mind I could picture how Dom Joaquim's statues would one day stand in the plazas again, and I felt a sudden rage at everything that had happened. The war had not only flung Nelio into a homeless vacuum, but it had sent people fleeing – innocent, simple people who wanted nothing but to try to live in peace with each other, people who never allowed a stranger to pass their homes hungry.

When I returned to the bakery from the marketplace, I seemed to see the city in a new way. It was the last rampart of defence against the bandits and the statues that threatened to destroy us.

I wondered how things would go. Without being able to explain it even to myself, it seemed to me important for everyone in the city that Nelio was up there on the bakery roof, and that he was still alive. The story he was telling me was a story that belonged to us all.

With the money I had left, I bought a shirt from a street kid. It was cheap and I could feel that it was of poor quality. But I didn't want Nelio to go on lying there wearing the same shirt. It was sweaty and dirty, and I needed time to wash it. When I got back to the bakery, I sneaked at once up to the roof to see if Nelio was still asleep. To my surprise I discovered that a grey cat had curled up at the foot of his mattress. At first I thought of chasing it away because it was probably flea-ridden. But I let it stay. Nelio was sleeping heavily and his forehead was not as hot as it had been at dawn. I sat down near the chimney and looked at him. I still could not decide whether he was a ten-year-old boy or a very old man lying there.

At dusk the cat abruptly got up from the mattress and vanished over the ridge of the roof without a sound, slipping into the darkness. Nelio kept on sleeping. I ate half of the food I had bought at the marketplace and then went down to the bakery to start the night's work. As I supervised the dough mixer's work – he was new and still hadn't learned in what order to mix the flour, eggs, sugar, water and butter – I wondered if I should tell Nelio about what had happened during the day. I was not sure how he would react. Would he be pleased that he was missed? Or would it make him depressed? I also had to admit that above all else I was hoping it might make him tell me who had tried to kill him, and why.

I was convinced that it was not an accidental shooting. A servant of evil, unknown to me, had pointed the gun at Nelio. I thought it might have been the man with the hard, squinty eyes who had followed his tracks, which had led to the city, and who had now found Nelio. But I couldn't really believe it was him. And that wouldn't explain why it had happened on the spotlit stage, and in the middle of the night.

I argued with the dough mixer, who was lazy and uninterested in his work. I threatened to complain about him to Dona Esmeralda. But he only laughed at me and hummed his monotonous tunes, which he made up as he laboured with the flour and water. Finally I was able to send him home; it was then almost midnight. I baked the first loaves and filled the baking pans. When they were in the oven, I hurried back to the roof. A mild breeze was blowing in from the sea. In the distance I could see lightning flashes from a thunderstorm that was moving past.

Nelio was awake. He smiled when he caught sight of me. I gave him the food I had bought and some water, which I mixed with Senhora Muwulene's herbs.

'I slept for a long time,' he said. And I've been dreaming. I've been retracing my steps. I dreamed that I saw Yabu Bata again.'

'Did he find his path?' I asked cautiously.

Nelio looked at me in surprise. 'Why would I ask him that? Yabu Bata was looking for his path in real life. So why would I ask him about it when I met him in a dream?'

Now, a year after the events on the rooftop, after those nights before Nelio died and I was given the strange explanation for everything that had happened, even now I still can't claim to understand Nelio's answer to my question about Yabu Bata's path. I have a feeling that he was trying to tell me something important. But my brain is still not ready to allow me to penetrate all his words. Sometimes I doubt that I will live long enough to experience that moment.

I changed the bandage. When I saw how the wound had grown even darker, I couldn't hide my horror. I thought that I could also sense the faint smell of death already present in the infected wounds.

'I have to take you to the hospital,' I said.

'Not yet,' replied Nelio. 'I'll tell you when
it's
necessary.'

His words were so resolute that I couldn't bring myself to object. The extraordinary aura of irrefutable naturalness that surrounded Nelio, ever since he crawled from the equestrian statue and showed himself to the world, had not deserted him even though he was now very sick.

On that night, the fourth night, he talked a great deal about the statue that had become his home in the city and the secret space where he could retreat with his thoughts.

Nelio went into the city at first light on the day after he arrived. He had spent the night on the beach under an overturned fishing boat. He followed the stream of people, overloaded trucks, rusty buses, handcarts and cars moving towards the city. He gawked at the tall buildings and was afraid that the people he glimpsed behind the broken window panes would tumble out and land on his head. He followed the hordes of people without becoming part of them; he drifted along, wondering where he was going. He remembered his first days in the city as a ceaseless wandering, day and night. At first it was confusing and frightening, then more and more pleasant, and finally with a feeling of having reached a focal point where everything converged – all events, all people were gathered at a single point. Then he got to know the city. He pulled mattresses out of rubbish bins and learned to survive by copying the other children who lived on the streets as he did.

The next night he slept in the cemetery on the outskirts of the city. That was also where he thought he found a friend and then experienced a great betrayal. On the first day, which also was the longest day, his bare feet became covered with blisters since he wasn't used to walking on asphalt and rough cobblestones. He also stumbled many times and fell into the holes that peppered the streets and pavements. He learned that at any given moment he had to make a choice between looking at the wares on display in a shop window or continuing on. If he became absorbed in a fierce quarrel between a man and a woman, he couldn't keep moving at the same time.

When dusk began to fall, he found himself on the outskirts of the city. Behind a partially collapsed gate in a wall he saw several trees. He thought that he should climb up there, uncertain whether the city might have its own wild animals that hunted the homeless at night. But when he slipped in through the gate, he discovered he was in a cemetery. It didn't look like the place where they buried the dead in the burned village: simple mounds of earth, perhaps decorated with a few sticks tied in the shape of a cross. Here the graves had walls around them, with cracked, deteriorating photographs set in ceramic. Many of the graves were in shambles. He felt as if he were in a cemetery for dead grave monuments, not for people who had been reunited with their spirits. Some of the graves were so big that they resembled little houses, all of them adorned with white plaster crosses, and some of them had wrought-iron gratings in front of the openings. He was very tired. He saw other people curled up among the graves under blankets or pieces of cardboard. Outside some of the tombs, women were cooking food over fires while their families waited in the shadows. Nelio saw that the tree he had noticed from the street wasn't tall enough to climb. One of the tombs that was bordering on total collapse seemed deserted. That was where he crawled in and huddled in the dark. He fell asleep almost at once, secure in his conviction that he was surrounded by people and spirits who wished him no harm.

When he woke up at daybreak he discovered that he was not alone in the filthy tomb. A man was lying along the opposite wall. He had a mattress and a blanket, which he had pulled up to his chin. He had hung his clothes on a hanger: a suit, a white shirt and a necktie. A shaving mirror had also been set into the wall of the tomb where a piece of tile had fallen out. Nelio sat up cautiously and was preparing to sneak away when he noticed one of the man's feet sticking out from under the blanket. At first he thought the man was sleeping with his shoes on. But when he bent down and looked closer, he realised that they were not real shoes. The man had painted shoes on his feet, white shoes, with red edges and blue shoelaces. In amazement Nelio stared at the shoe-foot sticking out. At that instant the man woke with a start and sat up on the mattress. He was quite gaunt and had sharp, piercing eyes. Nelio had the feeling that he had yanked himself out of sleep the way a wrestler tears himself out of his opponent's grasp.

'Who are you?' the man asked. 'You were sleeping here last night when I came home. I didn't want to wake you up, even though this is my house. I'm a kind man.'

'I didn't know this was anybody's house,' Nelio said.