Chronicler Of The Winds (10 page)

On the other side of the plaza there was a small church where a black-clad priest would from time to time peer out of the gate, as if he expected the church to receive an unannounced visit from restless souls in need of consolation. But no one came, and he would slam the gate shut, only to peer out again a little while later. The priest was a white man, bearded but with no hair at all on his head.

People lived in the other buildings surrounding the plaza, lots of people. Washed clothes hung everywhere; children screamed and played on the pavements. Whenever they got too loud, the old men would shake their fists at them, but the children hardly took any notice. Several times Nelio felt a burning desire to run over to them and take part in their games. But he knew that he could no longer do that. When he arrived in the city he left his childhood, his actual age, behind, like an invisible shell on the beach where he slept on the last night before he was swallowed up by the streets. The fact that he was sitting in the shadow of the equestrian statue alongside the old men was a sign of the great transformation that had occurred on the night the bandits burned his village down. Here in the open plaza Nelio felt for the first time that he could master the anxiety that filled him. It was as if he had found a village in the middle of the city.

That same evening he also found his home. One by one the old men had stood up and vanished into the darkness, heading towards the hovels where they spent their nights. The sun had
set,
the Indian shopkeepers had been reluctantly, almost remorsefully, forced to acknowledge that the last customers had gone, and they locked their doors, pulling the heavy wrought-iron gratings into place. In their stead appeared the black nightwatchmen, dressed in long ragged robes, who unpacked their blankets and greasy chicken legs. They lit their fires and began to make tea. Not until the Indian shopkeepers had left in their cars did they eat and then settle down to sleep. The children stopped playing, called inside by their mothers. The washing was taken down, and the smell of curry and
piri-piri
blended with the wind from the Indian Ocean. At last Nelio was all alone at the base of the statue. He had eaten a piece of chicken, which he bought from a man whose stove was an old, coal-fired oil drum. Nelio didn't want to leave the place he had found when he was fleeing from Senhor Castigo, and he thought about the fact that only in flight did you discover the world's secrets, which otherwise remained hidden.

In the twilight, he suddenly discovered a hatch under the belly of the horse next to the raised foreleg. When he pulled on the rusty handle, the hatch opened, and he saw that the horse had no entrails; there was only an empty space. He climbed up inside the horse. Faint rays of light, as if from the stars, shone in through the horse's nostrils and the eyeholes of the helmeted swordsman. Nelio knew that he had found a home. The statue was so big that he could stand up straight inside. He felt a great joy at discovering this home. Above his head there would always be a man with a drawn sword to keep watch over him. Inside the horse his dreams could safely roam. Here he could become a grown-up, find a wife and watch his children grow. He was filled with thoughts that night. His anxiety gradually receded. When at last he fell asleep, his head was resting on the left hind leg of the horse, and the bent knee formed a pillow for his head.

Nelio woke at dawn to the sound of a man laughing like a lunatic outside his statue. When he crept out of the hatch under the horse's belly, he saw that it was the black-clad priest, who was restlessly pacing back and forth near the gate outside the little church. He was flailing his arms and carrying on a mumbled conversation as if he were not alone but had an unseen companion at his side. He argued, threw his arms about in anger, and every so often he broke into maniacal laughter. Nelio thought he was arguing with evil spirits or lost souls that had assembled outside his church in the night. But later, when the old men had taken up their places again in the shade at the base of the statue, he learned that the old priest, whose name was Manuel Oliveira, had many years before lost his mind. When the young revolutionaries had seized power and marched into the city, the priest was struck by madness, whether from terror or from anger, no one could say for sure. He had preached such damning sermons against the young revolutionaries in his church that eventually none of his old parishioners dared to attend his masses, for fear that they would be seized by the security police, which the revolutionaries had immediately created and granted wide-ranging authority. The security police were supposed to watch for and arrest those who thought differently, particularly those who thought of the former colonial era as the good old days.

But Manuel Oliveira had continued to preach his sermons, although he was speaking to empty pews. Occasionally someone from the security police would attend one of his lengthy masses, whereupon Manuel, roused by having someone to preach to, would increase the intensity of his violent attacks. At first the authorities had shown tolerance towards the old priest, a victim of age and insanity. They had contented themselves with issuing a general prohibition against attending the church, and they allowed him to preach to an empty room. But when the priest began to preach out of doors, standing by the church gate on a wooden box, they had had enough. Manuel Oliveira was sent to a correction camp for those who thought differently in the remote northern provinces. The authorities also threatened to shoot him on the steps of his church if he didn't stop his wild ranting against the new regime. Nothing helped. At last he was allowed to return to his church. They thought that eventually he would grow tired, and he did. Now he spent his days in silence inside the church, waiting in vain for his God to explain to him why his church was empty and what had happened. Only in the early-morning hours would vague remnants of his former insanity return. For the nightwatchmen, it was the daily signal for them to wake up in anticipation of the return of the Indian shopkeepers. They would confirm that everything was peaceful, and that they hadn't slept but had resolutely kept watch all night long. Later, at about the same time that Manuel Oliveira disappeared into the silence of his empty church, the nightwatchmen would pack up their blankets and hurry off to the jobs they had during the daytime. All of this the old men told to Nelio, and no one seemed to have any inkling that he had found a home inside the statue which protected them from the sun. Nelio saw that one of the women from a building next to the church placed a plate of food outside the church gate, and it occurred to him again that this place was like his home in the village which the bandits had burned.

In the days that followed, Nelio learned to survive in the city by keeping his eyes open. By chance he caught a glimpse of Senhor Castigo, very drunk, his suit stained and tattered. Nelio no longer feared him.

He spent much of his time watching the children his own age who lived on the streets. From a distance he observed their labours: washing cars, begging, selling and stealing whatever they could find. He saw how the older boys ruled the younger ones, and he thought that it was among them that he belonged. During his wanderings through the city he also came upon a neighbourhood that was especially quiet, where the streets were not full of rubbish or potholes. Big white houses without cracks were nestled in wide expanses of garden, hidden behind tall wrought-iron fences. There were children there too, the same age as he was. But he quickly discovered that they didn't see him; their eyes looked right through him. It was among the other children that he belonged – among those who, like himself, were living in order to survive.

He also realised that it was very difficult for kids who suddenly found themselves on the streets to force their way in and become accepted by those who were already living there and keeping watch over their territory. Many were turned away and beaten; they retreated, but then came back because they had nowhere else to flee. In the end, many of them disappeared, and no one ever asked about them. Nelio sometimes lay awake in the horse's belly with his head resting against the left hind leg, wondering whether there was a separate heaven for the street kids who vanished without a trace. A world solely for street kids, where they could continue their stubborn life of dancing and starving and laughing.

Nelio fell silent, practically in the middle of a sentence. It was almost dawn; the sky in the east had already begun to shimmer with the faint reddish-yellow light which heralded the sun. I could tell from his face how tired he was. I thought he had dropped off to sleep but then he began to speak again.

'The chance came unexpectedly. One day I had the chance to join a group of street kids – the ones you know, the ones who live right outside on this street. One day something happened that changed everything. It was pure chance that I was there. But isn't life made up of a long chain of chance moments?'

I waited for more, but it never came. Nelio had closed his eyes. Soon he was asleep. His breathing came in gasps. I was already dreading what I would see when I changed his bandage. And yet I knew that life was still holding on to him. He would never leave me ignorant of what had happened when he became one of the group of street kids that lived and plied their trades on the street outside the theatre and bakery.

I knew that there would be more.

I got up, went to the edge of the roof and looked out across the city, I was very tired.

Later that day, after I had paid another visit to Senhora Muwulene, I went to the plaza where the equestrian statue stood. The old men were sitting there in the shade, exactly the way Nelio had described them. I sat down next to the horse's leg and saw the hatch which led to Nelio's secret room. For a second I was tempted to open it and crawl inside. But I didn't do it. That would have been an affront to him. I left quickly. From one of the enticing girls I borrowed money to buy some food. There were still ten days left before Dona Esmeralda might pay me my small wages, if she happened to have any cash, and that was not always the case.

The day was exceedingly hot. A thunderstorm was brewing on the horizon. I hurried back to the rooftop where Nelio lay, fast asleep, and rigged up the rain canopy I had earlier put together from old flour sacks.

I had just finished when the rain came.

Nelio noticed nothing. He slept.

The rain had moved off and the night, which was fresh and clear, had settled in over the city. I had slept for several hours next to the chimney on a pile of old newspapers since the roof was still damp from the heavy downpour. It was almost midnight, and I was about to go down the winding stairs to the heat of the bakery to check on the slovenly baker's work when Nelio broke the silence and said that he needed to use the toilet. Since he had eaten so little during the days and nights he had lain on the mattress, I had forgotten to make any arrangements. I went downstairs and out to the backyard where one of the enticing girls from the bread counter had retired with one of the bakers from the day shift. I caught them in a situation that was not at all easy to ignore, and I could feel myself blushing, but I hastily grabbed one of the buckets that was used for emptying the rubbish and went back to the roof. Behind me I heard the baker's fury at being disturbed and the girl's embarrassed giggles. I tore pieces of newspaper and put them next to the bucket. Then I helped Nelio up and left him in peace. When I returned, he was lying on the mattress again. I saw that he was sweating from the effort, and I blamed myself for not making better arrangements for him.

'Your work is waiting for you,' he said.

'I'll be back soon,' I told him. 'The dough mixer doesn't know how much flour or how little salt to mix for the bread to meet Dona Esmeralda's standards.'

With the bucket in hand, I left. It took me two hours to get the night's work in order. The dough mixer's eyes were glazed. When I realised that he had been smoking
soruma
and was off in a land far away, I could no longer control myself, and I punched him right in the face. I yelled at him that I had had enough and that Dona Esmeralda would fire him the moment I told her how unreliable he was. After that, everything took even longer. The dough mixer could scarcely stay on his feet, and I had to haul up the heavy flour sacks myself, since I didn't dare to let him go to the storeroom alone. On top of that, the wood in the ovens was bad that night. It took a long time before I got them hot enough so I could shove in the first baking pans. I rolled out the dough and baked the bread as fast as I could. But it was the small hours of the morning before I could kick the dough mixer out and go back to the roof. Nelio was awake when I got there. To my joy, he had eaten the fruit and the slice of bread with the thick layer of butter, which I had left for him next to his mattress. He had also put on the shirt I had washed for him earlier in the day. I thought that a miracle might be in the making. The fact that he had needed to use the toilet was a sign that his stomach was not seriously damaged. The fact that he was eating meant that life was trying to return inside him. Maybe Senhora Muwulene's herbs were healing his wounds.

But when I changed his bandage, I felt disheartened again. The wounds had grown darker; they were festering and smelled very bad. I knew I had to tell him how things stood – that he would die if he wasn't taken to a hospital where doctors could cut out the bullets that were poisoning his body. But he only smiled and shook his head.

'I'll tell you when it's time,' he said.

I cleaned the wounds as thoroughly as I could, without causing him too much pain. I could see that he made the utmost effort not to show me how much it hurt. Afterwards I put on the clean strips of cloth and gave him some water to drink. He sank back on to the mattress. In the glow of the kerosene lamp I could see how haggard his face had become during the four days I had spent with him. His black skin was stretched taut over his cheekbones, his eyes seemed to have sunk into their sockets, his lips were cracked, and his curly hair had begun to fall out. I thought that he should rest instead of devoting his nights to telling his story. I couldn't deny my curiosity – I wanted to hear his words, every one of them, since I sensed that his story was in some way also about me. I realised that I had to be patient. In the silences, when he allowed the story to rest, he would have a greater chance of regaining his strength.

But when he asked me to sit down on his mattress and then continued his story, I was never able to tell him to stop, to think about himself and how important it was not to exert himself. As he had on the previous nights, he continued his wandering through the city and through his life. A little before dawn a few scattered raindrops fell. But that was all. Otherwise we were surrounded by silence, now and then broken by dogs growling and barking at each other somewhere in the dark.

Nelio had often pondered the power that chance has over human beings. Those little words 'if' and 'if not' were more important than all other words. No one could ignore them, no one could deny that they were always close at hand, like symbols of the unpredictability that shapes our lives.

One morning he had been out on one of his aimless meanderings through the city – which often brought him the most significant experiences – when quite close to the theatre and bakery he caught sight of several policemen who had grabbed a street boy and were furiously beating him with their black batons. Nelio had noticed the boy before; he was the leader of a band of street kids, and his name was Cosmos. Like most of the others who led bands of children and guarded their territories, Cosmos was somewhat older than the others, maybe thirteen or fourteen. Nelio had noticed him because he seldom hit the smaller boys, rarely even yelled at them or ordered them to run errands for him unnecessarily.

When Nelio saw Cosmos being beaten by the police, he knew that he had to help, even though he didn't know what had happened. Quickly he tried to work out what he could do. Once again chance came to his aid. He was standing on a street corner where there were traffic lights and an extremely busy intersection. One day a few weeks before, he had watched the light being repaired. Two men in overalls had opened a rusty iron box that stood next to the traffic light, and they controlled the light by flipping several circuit breakers off and on. Ever since, the lock had been broken, but no one would suspect this unless they knew about it. Nelio didn't stop to think any further. He knelt down next to the metal box, as if, like any other street kid, he was just sitting down or stretching out right there on the pavement to sleep because he felt tired. He prised open the metal door, stuck his skinny arm inside, found the circuit breakers and began wiggling them as he pretended to sleep. The traffic instantly erupted into chaos. The red and green lights seemed to be engaged in some sort of contest, and cars came to a halt in a complicated tangle in the middle of the wide intersection. Everyone was honking; the cars backed up farther and farther. The people who were sitting in the cars and couldn't see what was going on, got out and started yelling at bystanders. The police noticed that something was happening; they saw the violent turmoil that had developed at the intersection, released Cosmos, and plunged into the fray. By then Nelio had slipped away from the metal box, the lights were functioning as they should, and no one could later explain what had happened. Cosmos, who was swollen-faced and red-eyed and furious, was sitting on the curb when Nelio went over and sat down beside him. He told him what he had done. Nelio did not doubt that he would be believed and he was not disappointed. Cosmos began to laugh, and when the other boys in the ragged group had gathered around, he told them what had happened.

'Who do you belong to? he asked Nelio.

'I don't belong to anyone.'

'Now you belong to us.'

From that moment, Nelio left his great loneliness behind. He began a life with Cosmos, Tristeza, Mandioca, Pecado, Nascimento and Alfredo Bomba. With them he shared almost everything. The only thing he kept for himself was his statue. At first Cosmos wondered why Nelio didn't sleep with the others on the cardboard boxes in the stairwell of the Ministry of Justice. Nelio told him that he had a sickness that required him to sleep in a different place every night. He said it so convincingly that Cosmos believed him. He even suggested that they should try to collect enough money to visit a
curandeiro
who might be able to cure this strange illness. Without hesitation, since he knew that they would never manage to find the money, Nelio replied that he had no greater wish.

Nelio took his place in the group without encroaching on anyone else. Everyone had his position to guard, and it could be weakened or elevated, although it was always Cosmos who decided, sometimes on a whim, sometimes wisely and with good judgement. But from the very beginning Nelio went his own way. First Cosmos, then the others – even, at last, Tristeza, who was slow-witted – understood that Nelio was not like anyone else. As a person, he was his own breed. He acted like the others, learning their language and their customs quickly, but he was still an outsider, though in such a manner that no one even thought to ask him why this was so.

One night Cosmos had a dream which he told to Nelio much later on, but never to the others. He dreamed that Nelio was a sun-dried person, like a fruit or a fish, that tasted better than anything else and that lasted for as long as anyone was hungry. Cosmos asked Nelio whether he could explain this dream. He asked him about it when they happened to be alone, since it wouldn't look good for him, as the leader of the group, to be asking questions. He was supposed to have all the answers. Nelio said the dream was surely a divine revelation that only Cosmos could interpret. Nelio himself did not have the power to do so; he came from the remote regions where people very seldom received divine revelations in their dreams. Cosmos was so moved by Nelio's answer that on the following Sunday he ordered the whole group to get cleaned up and accompany him to the big cathedral to attend evening prayers. But when Tristeza could no longer hold back his laughter and when Alfredo Bomba fell asleep on the stone floor of the church, they were all thrown out, and they never went back.

'God exists even in the rubbish bins,' Cosmos had shouted derisively at the church officials who had angrily expelled them. They ran as fast as they could, scattering in all directions to avoid arrest, and later they regrouped outside the theatre. Cosmos was so mad that he even forgot to give Mandioca a thrashing. And he forgave him for losing during their hasty retreat the liturgical book which Cosmos had swiped from the wide pocket of one of the dark-clad padres and then passed swiftly over to Mandioca, who had the biggest trouser pockets. For a long time afterwards Cosmos mulled over the idea of starting his own religious movement, which would be devoted exclusively to the street children. Through him the ragged bands' god, who must exist somewhere, would be reborn. But since they were heading into the hottest time of the year, he decided that the whole thing was far too strenuous, and he let the matter drop.

Cosmos recognised early on that Nelio had not come to the group in order to challenge his leadership or to seize power at some advantageous moment. At first it made him uneasy, since he had never experienced this before or even heard of such a thing. In the beginning he suspected that Nelio was deceiving him, and in secret he told Pecado and Mandioca to ask sly questions and to try to work out whether Nelio was other than the modest and reserved person he appeared to be. But at last Cosmos was convinced that Nelio was exactly the strange person he seemed to be. Nelio was nothing other than what he was. Cosmos had never met such a person before. How could someone be exactly what he was? Apart from his peculiar sickness, Nelio did not seem to have any unexpected secrets. Cosmos told Nelio about all these thoughts much later on, when he was planning, in great secrecy, to leave the group and start off on his long journey to another world. Nelio was surprised by what he heard. He had never imagined that his presence in the group could have aroused so many emotions in Cosmos. On the other hand, he had felt for a long time that the others in the group, especially Nascimento and Pecado – and later Deolinda, after she had forced her way in among them – had great difficulty accepting his presence. That was when the rumour was born that he had an unmatched ability to avoid being beaten.

Nascimento was the one who challenged him most, the aggressive Nascimento who could barely speak, who instead used his clenched fists and leaps and kicks as the language with which he described and commented upon the world he was forced to live in. He bore the name of his own origins. Everyone in the group had his own story; everyone, in spite of his youth, was a full-grown personality. And they were regarded as the most filthy but also the most respected group of street kids in the whole city. Much later Nelio came to understand that it was this respect, clothed in filthy and threadbare rags, which had so provoked the police that they decided to pound some fear into Cosmos, a fear that he would then spread to the others of the group. But the police had never succeeded, and Nelio felt as if he were living inside a roaming, jumping, dancing, laughing fortress under whose protection he and the others were invulnerable. Gradually he came to know them all, one by one, and he discovered that they were grown up even though they were kids, that they were old men even though they had scarcely reached puberty. Their stories stretched over infinite spaces of experiences, and each was a hero, a scoundrel and a victim in his own drama. Their names and their black bodies were as if celebrated in song.

Mandioca, the tall boy with the big feet and the crooked little finger on his left hand, had the biggest trouser pockets, and he had onions and tomatoes growing in them. The earth which he poured into his pockets and watered each morning was constantly dribbling out around him. And it was his vow, his yearning, to return some day to the village he could not remember, but which existed in the depths of his consciousness – the village his family had fled from when the warning came that the bandits were on their way. They had travelled by bus, they were many in number, but when they thought they had reached safety, the attack had come suddenly. The bus was set on fire, and Mandioca was flung into a thicket where later, half dead and dehydrated, he was found by several foreign nuns who rattled off a litany of prayers and then took him along to an orphanage in the city. When he had learned to walk – and it was his opinion that the only reason he wanted to walk properly was to be able to run away – he set off for his home in the countryside. But he never got farther than to the centre of the city and he had been living on the streets since he was four. Different charitable organisations based in all parts of the world and people of good will would often take him to orphanages, but he always ran away, back to the streets, since he knew that it was from there that he would one day start his journey home. He did not want to bathe or sleep in a bed or wear clean clothes. He wanted big trouser pockets to hold the earth that was just as important to him as his own blood. In every person he met on the streets he looked for some reminder of his father or mother, without remembering what they actually looked like. He searched for his siblings, his brothers and sisters, his uncles and aunts, his cousins and his neighbours, and for those he had never seen and didn't even know whether they existed at all. Often he would sink into a furious grief. But just as often he would balance on the stone walls adorned with lions outside the Ministry of Justice and dance to the music that only he could hear.