Chronicler Of The Winds (14 page)

'If I'm supposed to look hungry, I'll have to be full,' said Mandioca. 'If I'm really hungry when I'm supposed to look hungry, I'll just look crazy.'

Nelio pointed to the box of tomatoes.

'The rest of the tomatoes are Mandioca's,' he said. 'There's just one thing you should remember when you're inside the house. If you have to pee when you're in the bathroom, pee into the chair with the lid. Don't pee in the bowl with the taps. Do you understand?'

'I won't pee,' Mandioca said. 'What kind of bowl?'

'You'll see when you get there,' said Nelio. 'Now we'll wait here until the
cooperante
comes home.'

'What happens if he doesn't leave tomorrow?' asked Nascimento.

'All the
cooperantes
lie on the beach and turn red on Saturday and Sunday,' said Mandioca. 'Nelio's right.'

'I've never had a birthday party,' said Alfredo Bomba. 'What do you do?'

'You eat and dance and sing,' said Nelio. And that's
exactly
what we're going to do. And we'll get cleaned up and sleep in beds and have a roof over our heads. We can look at the pictures on his TV.'

'Maybe he doesn't have a TV,' Nascimento said.

'All
cooperantes
have a TV,' said Nelio. 'They have yellow hair and they have TVs. You have to learn that once and for all.'

Mandioca fainted on the threshold of the
marques
's house, unlatched the window in the bathroom, and was given 20,000 when he had revived and was able to leave the house. The next day they stood in the street and waved to the yellow-haired man as he left in his car. Late in the afternoon Nascimento managed to get hold of a wine bottle that was half full. By eight in the evening the nightwatchman was asleep, and they crept into the garden at the back of the house. By climbing up on Mandioca's shoulders, Tristeza reached the window and slithered inside. A few minutes later he opened the outer door as Nelio had instructed. They hid in the shadows and waited for a couple of policemen to pass by on the street. Then they slipped swiftly out of the shadows and disappeared through the door. Nelio told them sternly to stand still and not touch anything until he checked to see that all the curtains were drawn. Then he gathered them around him in the hall.

'Now everybody will go and get cleaned up. It's especially important that you all have clean feet.'

Since he mistrusted their desire to wash properly, he locked them in the bathroom and said that he would let them out, one by one, after he had personally checked to see that they were clean enough. Then he walked through the house, opened the two refrigerators, decided where they would sleep, turned on the TV, and finally put away two porcelain vases that might easily fall to the floor and break.

Nascimento had to wash his feet three times before Nelio was satisfied. Then he gathered everyone in the kitchen.

'
Cooperantes
always have a lot of food in the refrigerator,' he said. 'I'm convinced that the man who lives here will be pleased that we're celebrating Alfredo Bomba's birthday with a proper meal. So let's cook.'

Nelio went into action as if he were organising an invasion. He put Mandioca in charge of the vegetables, while he told Pecado and Nascimento to cook the rice. Alfredo Bomba and Tristeza helped the others while Nelio cut up a big piece of meat into small pieces and started to fry them. When the food was ready, they sat down at the big table. They had found some juice in the pantry, and they looked at Nelio and waited for his permission to begin.

'Today might well be Alfredo Bomba's birthday,' he said. At least he dreamed that it was. So let's eat.'

Several times during the meal Nelio had to intervene when fights threatened to break out over the meat. When Nascimento started getting loud without being aware of it, Nelio sniffed at his glass and realised that Nascimento had mixed his juice with alcohol. Without his noticing, Nelio exchanged Nascimento's glass with his own, and later poured it into the sink. Afterwards, when they had also found two big cartons of ice cream in the huge freezer, they started dancing to a radio that Nelio brought in from the enormous living room. He thought it best if they stayed in the kitchen, where there were no carpets to get dirty; the floor was tiled and easy to wash. At first Nelio sat off to one side and watched the dance. Deep inside his head he seemed to hear the sounds of a
timbila
and the drums in the village that the bandits had burned. Suddenly they were all around him in the
marques
's kitchen: the spirits that were looking for him, all of the dead and all of those who might be dead or might still be living. He could feel that he was about to become so sad that he might disrupt Alfredo Bomba's party with his mournful face. He got up from his chair and joined the dance. He danced as if in a trance until the sweat ran down his forehead. They kept on dancing late into the night; they danced until they didn't have a single dance step left in their legs or hips.

By then Alfredo Bomba had already fallen asleep under the big table. Nelio showed them where they should sleep – some in the
marques
's bed, others on the sofas. When it was quiet in the house, Nelio went back to the kitchen and cleaned up. By daybreak, no one could have said that anyone had been there as long as they didn't look into the refrigerators or the freezer. Nelio walked through the silent rooms and looked at the group of kids as they slept.

He had the feeling that he was wandering through many different times and worlds all at once. It was as if he could remember the little forest grove outside the village where he grew up, the village the bandits had come to burn.

They never burned the trees, he thought. The forest has been growing for hundreds of years. Each time a child is born, a tree is planted. You could see from his tree how old a person was. The tall and thick tree trunks, which gave the most shade, belonged to people who had already returned to the spirit world. But the trees of the living and the dead stood in the same grove, sought their nourishment from the same soil and the same rain. They stood there waiting for the children that were not yet born, the trees that had not yet been planted. In that way the forest would grow, and the age of the village would be visible for all time. No one could tell from a tree whether someone was dead, only that he had been born.

Nelio looked at the sleeping children and thought that he was wandering through a world that might not yet exist. In some future they would sleep in beds and on sofas, and they would dream the dreams that only people with full bellies can dream. Maybe the future would look like the
marques
's house.

He thought he could see something that the elders had talked about, as the greatest miracle that a person might be privileged to experience. To see what has been and what would come, all in the same moment.

He would never forget the night they spent in the
marques
's house. Alfredo Bomba would remember his birthday; Nelio would remember the feeling of floating freely through time. It's possible to fly without visible wings, he thought. The wings are inside us, if we're privileged to see them.

The first to wake was Tristeza. 'What should I think about today?' he asked.

'Think about how it feels to have clean feet,' Nelio said.

The others woke up and rubbed the sleep out of their eyes. First they looked around in amazement; then they remembered. It was still early dawn. By peeking through a curtain Nelio could see that the nightwatchman was still asleep.

'It's time to go,' he said. 'The same way we came.'

'How did you know there would be so much food in the cupboards that are cold?' Nascimento asked him.

'A man who comes home every day with big baskets of food can't be eating everything himself Nelio said. 'You've seen it for yourself. You could have answered that question without my help.'

They left the
marques
's house as stealthily as they had come.

'What will he say,' Alfredo Bomba said, worried, 'when he discovers all the food is gone?'

'I don't know,' Nelio said. 'Maybe like other whites who live in our world, he'll say that Africa and the blacks are inscrutable.'

'Are we?' asked Alfredo Bomba. Are we inscrutable?'

'No, we're not,' Nelio said. 'But the world we live in can sometimes be hard to understand.'

They went out on to the street, knowing that they shared a great secret. Nelio could see that they started rummaging through the rubbish bins and begging to guard cars with greater energy than usual so early in the morning.

He thought that what they had done was a good thing. That's why they would never do it again.

That morning Nelio was very tired. He said that he was going to sit in the shade of his tree and that he didn't want to be disturbed. They should also do their best not to fight or make a lot of noise around him.

But when he reached his tree he gave a start and stopped. Someone was sitting there. Someone he had never seen before. He was annoyed that his place beside the tree had not been respected. No one else was allowed to sit there.

He went over to the tree. It was a girl sitting there. And she was just as white, just as much an albino, as Yabu Bata.

I waited for more, but it never came. Nelio had cut short his story and slipped into his own thoughts. Then he looked up at me.

'I remember that I thought it had to mean something important,' he said. His voice was quite faint now, and I thought about the wounds that smelled bad and were growing darker under the bandage.

'First Yabu Bata showed me the way to the city,' he went on. 'And now a girl in ragged clothing was sitting in the shade under my tree. I thought it had to mean something. And it did.'

I thought about my own woman. The new dough mixer whom no one had escorted home in the night. I felt already a tense anticipation about seeing her again that evening.

'I see that you're thinking about something that makes you happy,' Nelio said. 'If I wasn't so tired, I would like to hear you talk about it.'

'You must rest,' I said. 'Then I will take you to the hospital.'

Nelio did not reply. He had already closed his eyes.

I stood up and left the roof.

The sixth night was over.

Can you hear from a man's footsteps that he's in love? If that's true, and I think it is, then Maria must have known that my heart was already burning for her when I entered the bakery on the second night that we were going to bake Dona Esmeralda's bread together. It was very hot, and she was wearing a thin dress through which the contours of her body were quite evident. She had started work by the time I came down from the roof, and she smiled when she caught sight of me.

Now, more than a year later, I can imagine that if everything had been different – if Nelio hadn't died and I hadn't left my job at Dona Esmeralda's and later reappeared as the Chronicler of the Winds – then maybe Maria and I would have become a couple. But we never did, and today it's no longer possible since she is bound to another man. I have seen her in the city, and she had a man quite close by her side. I think he was selling birds at one of the city's marketplaces, and her stomach was enormous. Even though our time together was so brief and even though I never found out whether my feelings for Maria were reciprocated, I hold on to my memory of her as the greatest joy of my life. A joy which also contained within it the seed of the greatest sorrow.

Something in my life seemed to come to an end during those days when Nelio lay on the roof of the theatre, slowly languishing from the black wounds that poisoned him and finally took the life from him. I think that's the way it has to be expressed: that his life was taken from him. Death always comes uninvited; it disrupts and causes disorder. But in Nelio's case, death arrived with a crowbar and broke its way into his body and stole his spirit.

Afterwards, when I had taken off my white cap, hung up my apron and left Dona Esmeralda's bakery behind, it was a different life that I began. I could not have taken Maria into that life, even if I had wanted to. How could I have asked her to follow me out into the world as the wife of a man who had chosen to be a beggar? How could I have made her understand that, for me, this was a necessity?

But I did see her in the streets of the city. And she was still extremely beautiful. I will never forget her. One day when I know that my time has come, when the spirits are calling me too, I will close my eyes and in my soul I will see her again, and with the image of her I will leave this world. It will make death easier for me. At least I hope so. Because as an ordinary, simple man, I feel the same fear of the unknown that everyone feels. I don't think my fear comes from the fact that life is short. The trembling and darkness that seize hold of me tell me that I will be dead for such an extremely long time.

I hope my spirit will have wings. I can't sit motionless in the shade of a tree during all the time I will have to spend in the unknown landscape of eternity.

I think you can hear from a man's footsteps that he's in love. His feet barely touch the ground, all fear is conquered, and time is dissolved like the fog in the first light of dawn.

Maria was the best dough mixer I ever had. I asked her where she had worked before and how Dona Esmeralda had found her. But she merely laughed at me, and never did give me an answer.

To watch her work was like listening to someone sing.

When you see someone working the way she did, you start to sing yourself.

I baked the best bread of my life during those nights when Maria mixed the dough and I followed her out to the street after midnight to watch her disappear into the dark. I was already longing for the next night when she would come back. In a childish and perhaps naive way I would worry that she had vanished into the darkness, never to return. But she did come back, her dresses were always thin, and she would smile her beautiful smile when I came down from the roof.

I wish that I could have told her about Nelio. She would have changed his bandage better than I did, and maybe she also would have persuaded him that the time was right to be carried down from the roof and taken to the hospital if he wanted to live.

But I never told her anything. And I never mentioned her name to Nelio either.

Up there, beneath the stars, only he and I existed.

When I went up to him on the roof after shoving the first baking pans into the hot oven, I felt that he was lying there waiting for me. Was it still true that he was trying to get better? His wounds had darkened more, and I held my breath as I unwrapped the bandage because the stench was so awful. But could a healing process be under way that was not apparent to me? I felt his forehead. It was hot again. I diluted some of Senhora Muwulene's herbs with water, and he drank the solution but with greater effort. It occurred to me that he had never asked me what kind of herbs I was giving him. From the moment I carried him up to the roof, he never once questioned my ability to take care of him.

Or was it because he already knew, from the moment the shots were fired, that there was no saving him?

I might have wished that I had not been alone with the responsibility. It was too great for me to bear alone, and yet I had no one to share it with. It was quite simply too late.

I helped him on with a clean shirt after I had changed his bandage. Since it was so warm, I took away the blanket and folded it beneath his head as an extra pillow. He was very tired, but his eyes were strangely clear. Again I had the feeling that he could see right through me.

At those moments when he looked at me, he was a ten-year-old boy lying there, with two bullets in his body. But when the fever returned, he was transformed once more into a very old man. I thought that it was not only his consciousness that seemed able to switch unhindered between what had been and what was to come, between the spirit world and the world that we lived in together. His body could also switch between ages, between the child that he was and the old man he would never be.

'Do the spirits of our ancestors have faces?' I asked him. Where that question came from, I didn't know. It was as if I didn't know what I was saying until after I had said it.

'People have faces,' replied Nelio. 'Spirits don't have faces. And yet we recognise them. We know who is who. Spirits don't have eyes or mouths or ears either. And yet they can see and speak and hear.'

'How do you know that?'

'The spirits are all around us,' he said. 'They're right here, but we can't see them. What's important is that we know they can see us.'

I didn't ask any more questions. I wasn't sure whether I had understood what he meant. But I didn't want to tire him unnecessarily.

That night he told me about the arrival of the
xidjana.

She was the one who turned up on that morning after they celebrated Alfredo Bomba's birthday in the
marques
's house. She was wearing a ragged dress, her face was covered with burns from the scorching sun, and she truly was an albino. She heard Nelio approach and quickly turned.

'What are you doing sitting in my place under the tree?' asked Nelio.

'A shadow is not a house that can be owned,' the
xidjana
said. 'I'm thinking of staying here.'

During all his days on the streets, Nelio had never been as challenged as he was by the
xidjana.
Yet he sensed that she was uncertain and maybe even weak. He squatted down a short distance away.

'What's your name?'

'Deolinda.'

'Where are you from?'

'The same place as you. Nowhere.'

'What are you doing here?'

'I want to stay here.'

They were interrupted by Nascimento who had caught sight of the girl under the tree from his place on the bed of the rusty lorry which he happened to be guarding. With a howl he came running over.

'What's this
xidjana
doing here? Don't you know that a
xidjana
means bad luck?'

'I'm not bad luck,' said the girl, standing up.

'Get away from here,' screamed Nascimento, rushing at her with clenched fists. Nelio didn't have time to intervene. But it wasn't necessary anyway. Reacting swiftly, the
xidjana
knocked Nascimento to the ground. He lay there, staring in amazement up at Deolinda who stood leaning over him.

'I'm not bad luck,' the girl said. 'I can beat anyone and I want to stay here.'

'We can't have a
xidjana
around,' Nascimento said, getting to his feet.

'Her name is Deolinda,' Nelio said. 'Go back to the lorry. She's stronger than you are.'

Nascimento left. Nelio watched him summoning the others to the bed of the lorry. None of them would want an albino in the group. He too thought it best if she disappeared. The band of kids should never be allowed to get too big: he would lose control, and the group, in turn, would lose control of itself.

'You're sitting in my place,' Nelio said. 'That's forbidden. Get out of here! We don't want a girl in our group. You can't do anything we can't do.'

'I can read,' Deolinda said. 'I can do lots of things.'

Nelio was sure that she was lying. He pointed at a word that someone had scratched on the side of the building.

'What does this say?'

Deolinda squinted as if the harsh sunlight was hurting her eyes.

'Terrorista.'

Nelio, who couldn't read, realised that he wouldn't be able to tell whether she was right.

'It's just because the letters are so big that you can read them,' he said evasively.

He picked up a piece of newspaper from the street.

'Read this,' he said, handing the paper to Deolinda.

She held it up close to her eyes and started to read.

"'A number of children will be given the chance to live in a big house. Nobody's children will become Everybody's children.'"

'What does that mean? "Nobody's children?" What's that?'

She frowned and thought for a moment. Then her face brightened.

'Maybe that's us.'

She continued to spell her way through the words. '"A European organisation will give money to the project . .."'

'"The project"?'

'We're going to be projected. I've been projected once. They gave me clothes and I was supposed to live in a house with lots of other kids. I was supposed to stop living on the street. But I projected myself out as fast as I could.'

Nelio begrudgingly acknowledged that Deolinda actually did know how to read. He realised that she had a good head, even though it was white and covered with permanent burns. And yet he still was not sure whether she should be allowed to stay with the group. Maybe it was true that an albino brought misfortune. But he also reminded himself that he had heard the opposite from his father. A
xidjana
could never die; a
xidjana
possessed many extraordinary powers.

But the big problem was something else entirely. She was a girl. Not many girls lived on the streets. Things were often much worse for them than for the boys.

Nelio needed to be alone to think.

'Go away,' he said. 'Get two grilled chickens. Show us what you can do. Then I will decide.'

Deolinda left. Slung over one shoulder she had a little bag made from woven strips of raffia. Her dress was hanging in tatters, but she carried herself as if at any moment she might start dancing. Nelio sat down in his spot in the shade under the tree. What would Cosmos have done? he wondered. He tried to picture Cosmos on board a ship, far away, quite close to the sun. He tried to hear his voice.

'You're crazy if you let her into the group,' he seemed to hear Cosmos saying.

'But she can read,' Nelio protested. 'I've never heard of a street kid who could read. Least of all a girl.'

'Did you see her eyes?' Cosmos said, and Nelio thought his voice sounded annoyed. 'Did you see that they're red and inflamed? That's the kind of eyes you get from reading. And then you go blind.'

'All
xidjanas
have red eyes,' Nelio said. 'Even the ones who can't read.'

He heard Cosmos sigh. 'Let her stay then. But chase her away as soon as there's a problem.'

Nelio nodded. He would let her stay. But only if she came back with the grilled chickens.

By evening she still hadn't returned. Nelio thought that she must have realised that she wouldn't be allowed to stay, and so she wasn't going to bother to get the chickens or come back. Nascimento was pleased and said that he would kill her if she ever appeared on their street again. When Mandioca pointed out that Nascimento had been knocked down by a
xidjana,
a violent fight broke out, and Nelio had great difficulty stopping it. It began with Nascimento throwing himself at Mandioca. But when Alfredo Bomba got mixed up in it, their anger turned on him. Nelio had learned that fights among street kids followed their own rules and could develop in the most unexpected directions.

'She's gone,' he said when the fight was over. 'Maybe she'll come back, maybe she won't. For now we can forget that she was ever here.'

They started getting ready for the night.

'What should I think about now?' asked Tristeza.

'Think about the night at the
marques
's house,' Nelio said.

'I've stopped thinking about my bank,' Tristeza said proudly.

'You can think about it once a week,' said Nelio. 'But never in the afternoon when we're having our siesta.'

In the morning of the following day Deolinda came back. Nelio found her once again sitting under his tree. When he went over to her, she pulled two chickens out of her bag.

'Where did you get them?'

'An ambassador was having a big dinner in his garden. I climbed over two fences and went into the kitchen when no one was looking.'

Nelio didn't know what an ambassador was. He hesitated for a moment, wondering whether he should tell Deolinda that he didn't know. Then his curiosity got the better of him.

'An ambassador?' he said.

'An ambassador for a country far away.'

'What country?'

'Europe.'

Nelio had heard people talk about Europe. That's where the
marqueses
came from, and all the others who were
cooperantes
and had small pouches with money on their bellies.

He tasted one of the chickens.

'Not enough
piri-piri,
' he said.