Chronicler Of The Winds (6 page)

'At that moment it felt as if the world died. Even though many of us were still alive, we were actually dead. Even the spirits, which were fluttering restlessly all around, fell to the ground like a rain of tiny, cold dead stones.

'I remember very little of what happened after that. My mother, who had fainted, was carried and dragged along by the bandits. I was still naked and my body was slashed by the thorny bushes we passed on our way towards a destination which none of us knew. I thought that we were walking like ghosts through a landscape that was no longer alive, a group of people all dead, bandits who were dead, breathing an air that was dead too. There was no more life; it had all come to an end when my sister stopped screaming. The river, which we glimpsed now and then through the brush, was dead, the water was dead, the sun burning in the sky was dead, our weary footsteps were dead. We were a caravan of dead people who had left our lives behind us. We were on our way towards eternal nothingness. We walked when it was dark, and we walked in the early dawn. Out in front moved the scouts whom the man with no teeth had sent ahead. Whenever they saw people, we would take a long detour. In the daytime we waited for darkness in the shelter of groves of densely intertwined trees.

'By then the bandits had already begun to divide the women up among themselves. But they didn't want anything to do with my mother. She cried the whole time and wouldn't stop even when they kicked and hit her. I tried to stay near her at all times. I still had no trousers, but one of the other women had torn off a scrap from her
capulana,
which I had wrapped around my waist. The bandits forced the women to make the food, which they then ate, not sharing any with us. After they had eaten they would drag the women into the bushes. When the women came back, their clothes would be torn and in disarray, and I could see that they were ashamed. The bandits were constantly drinking from their cans filled with
tontonto.
Sometimes they would fight. But most often they would go to sleep if the man with no teeth didn't send them to scout or keep watch.

'We trudged through a landscape that seemed to have been abandoned by everything alive. There weren't even any birds. Judging by the sun, I could tell that we first headed north; then one day we turned to the east. Still none of us knew where we were going. We weren't allowed to talk to each other, we were only permitted to answer the questions that some of the bandits asked us. I looked at the boys who were only a few years older than me. Although they were young, not even full grown, they behaved as if they were old men. I would often sit and sneak a glance at the boy who had chopped off Alfredo's head with his axe. I thought about the way he had laughed because of the terror that filled him. I wondered how his spirit would some day be received by the dead, by his ancestors. I thought they would probably punish him. I couldn't imagine that the spirits would fail to punish each other for the crimes they had committed when they were alive.

'Late one evening we reached a high plateau. For several days the path we had been following grew steeper and steeper. When we came to the top, other bandits were already there, along with several poorly built huts, flickering fires and lots of guns. We had arrived at one of the bases which the bandits concealed in inaccessible places and which the young revolutionaries seldom managed to find. I remember nothing from our first night there except that we were exhausted. My mother had stopped crying by then, but she had also stopped talking, and I thought that her heart was paralysed with sorrow for all those who were left behind in the burned village. The bandits herded us into one of the huts. I lay for a long time on the hard earthen floor in the dark, listening to the bandits getting drunk on palm wine, now and then quarrelling or singing obscene songs or cursing the young revolutionaries. I had a hard time falling asleep because I was so hungry. It felt as though fierce animals were biting me in the stomach, making tiny holes through which all my strength was seeping out, like the last drops of water in an almost dry river bed. But I must have fallen asleep at last.

'In the morning I woke up from a deep slumber. We were herded out of the huts, and I saw that the bandits were sitting in a circle, as if they were preparing for a council meeting. I could tell at once that the man with no teeth was no longer the one in charge. There was another man – short, with narrowed, squinty eyes – who now seemed to be the leader of the bandits. We were herded into the circle and ordered to sit down. The day was stifling; in the distance, black clouds loomed, gigantic shadows which surely contained much rain. The man with the squinty eyes was wearing a uniform that was both clean and without holes. He stood in front of us and welcomed us to this plateau, which he said was a liberated area. He explained that this was where we would be living from now on. In various ways we would take part in the war against the young revolutionaries. We should be prepared to sacrifice our lives if need be, and we should all obey the orders we received if we wanted to stay alive. Then we were given food and water. Even though we were all very hungry, no one ate more than the barest minimum. We were still overcome by such great fear that our stomachs had shrunk, as if they too had tried to make themselves invisible. Afterwards all the boys, including me, were told to go with the man with the squinty eyes and several other bandits, all of whom carried guns. My mother tried to hold me back – her hand was like a claw around my arm – but I looked at her and told her it was best if I went. I would return. If I refused, they might kill me. I stood up and went with the others.

'That was the last time I saw my mother. Her hand, which had so often caressed my forehead, had gripped my arm like a claw. Her fingernails dug so deep into my skin that I had started
to
bleed. Her fingers had spoken
to
me.
She
was so afraid
of
losing me too.

'I stood up and did not look back.

'We followed a path until we reached a small ravine that ran like a crack straight through the high plateau. That was where we stopped. There were as many of us boys as I have fingers on my hands, and I was the youngest. The others were my friends, my brothers, my playmates.

'After that everything happened very fast. The man with the squinty eyes stepped up to me and handed me an extremely heavy gun. Then he told me to curl my forefinger around the trigger and to shoot the boy standing in front of me. Although I understood what he wanted, I was filled once again with great fear.

'"If you want to live, you have to shoot him," repeated the man with the squinty eyes. "If you don't shoot, you're not a man. Then you'll have to die."

'"I can't shoot my brother," I said. "And I'm not a man, anyway. I'm still just a boy."

'He didn't seem to hear what I said. "Shoot him if you want to live," was all he said. "Shoot him."

'The boy standing in front of me was named Tiko. He was the son of one of my father's brothers, and we had often played together, even though he was several years older than me. Now he stood before me and cried. I looked at him, and I knew that I would never be able to shoot him. Not even to save my own life. I also knew that the man with the squinty eyes was serious. He would kill me, maybe even with his bare hands, if I didn't do what he said.

'At that moment I grew up. I made a decision that in all probability would mean my own death. But if I didn't do what I knew I had to do, my life would lose all meaning. I could not shoot my brother.

'I thought about my sister who had been killed in the mortar. I wanted her to be in my thoughts when I died. I knew that we would soon see each other after I too had been killed.

'I gripped the trigger with my forefinger, swiftly aimed the gun at the man with the squinty eyes, and squeezed. The shot hit him in the chest, and he was flung to the ground. I can still see the look of surprise on his face before he died. Then I threw the gun away and ran as fast as I could towards the path from which we had come.

'The whole time I expected someone to shoot me in the back, the whole time I saw my sister before me in my mind, and I ran so fast that my bare feet barely touched the stony ground. It wasn't really me who was running, it was the life inside me that ran, and I knew they would soon catch up with me and then I would die. Later I learned that there are moments in life when you become whatever you are doing. In those moments I was a pair of feet and legs that were running – nothing else.

'I reached a spot where the path divided, and I ran to the left, although that was not the way we had come. I came to a steep slope and could go no further. Then I made for where there was no path, following the edge of the steep cliff until it began to slope downwards and it was possible for me to slide over the edge and slip down towards the valley spread out below. They still hadn't managed to catch me. When I reached the bottom of the valley I stood up and for the first time looked back. I could not see the bandits anywhere. I kept on walking through the valley, which was quite flat and seemed to be endless. When it grew dark I stopped near a tree and climbed up into the top branches. I was very thirsty and had to use my last strength to heave myself up into that tree.

'In the early dawn I set out again. I didn't know where I was going; I thought about my mother and my sister, about my father and the burned village. But I also thought about the brother I had refused to kill and the man with the hard, squinty eyes. I was only a boy, but I had already killed a man.

'Late in the afternoon, when my lips were cracked with thirst, I came to a small stream. I drank my fill and then sat down in the shade of a clump of thick bushes. I still wasn't sure that the bandits were going to let me get away. And I didn't know what to do. I remember the terrible loneliness I felt sitting there next to the stream.

'It felt as if the world had ended, and I was the only one left alive. No matter which direction I took, I would still be alone.

'But I was wrong about that. Because while I was sitting in the shade of the bushes, I discovered that there was someone on the other bank of the narrow stream. That was where I met the white dwarf, who later led me here to the city.'

It was dawn by the time Nelio stopped talking. A light rain had begun to fall and I made a canopy of flour sacks over him. I touched his forehead and noticed that the fever had returned. Before I got up to go and get more of Senhora Muwulene's herbs, I thought for a long time about what he had told me. I still didn't know what had happened that night on the stage of the theatre. What was he doing there? Who had shot him?

Nelio was asleep.

I stood up and stretched my back, which ached. Then I left him alone with the dreams I knew nothing about.

That night I thought Nelio was going to die, and I would never find out why he had been shot. For long periods he was submerged in the high fever raging through his body. He raved deliriously and thrashed about on the mattress, and it was like watching someone in the last stage of fatal malaria; there was nothing more that either I or anyone else could do for him. He was going to slip away from life without ending his story.

But he fought his way through that crisis too; he was still stronger than the fever caused by his wounds, and when dawn came, his forehead felt cool and he was sleeping peacefully. He had even asked for a little bread before he went to sleep. During the day I fell asleep too. I rolled out a reed mat that I had borrowed from Senhora Muwulene when I went to get more of her herbs. I told her how things stood since I believed I could rely on her. But I didn't tell her the whole truth: either that it was Nelio, a street boy, who lay on the roof of the theatre, or that he was the one who had been shot. I simply said that someone had been wounded, someone who needed my help. She made no comment, she just mixed a new batch of herbs, crushing some tiny leaves that glowed a bright red, leaves I had never seen before. But I didn't ask her what they were. She wouldn't have told me anyway. She would have treated me with the same lofty contempt she had once shown the young police inspector when he tried to take her snakes away from her.

It was late that night when Nelio took up his story again. By this time I had told my dough mixer to go home, and everything was set for a lonely shift in the bakery; no one seemed to have any idea that my thoughts were far away from the ovens, up on the roof, where Nelio lay.

But there was one thing that had happened during the day which I realised had something to do with Nelio's gunshot wounds. Rosa, one of the enticing girls who sold the bread we baked, pointed out that a group of street kids who usually hung around the theatre and the bakery had disappeared. I went out to the street, and saw at once that it was Nelio's group that had gone. I asked one of the other boys, who for some reason was called Nose, whether he knew where they were.

'They're gone,' was all he said.

Gone. Maybe they had found a better street. With more expensive cars that would pay better if they made them dirty and then washed them clean.

I can't honestly say whether it was my curiosity or my concern for Nelio that was stronger. But as my ancestors are my witness, I hope it was my concern. That night I couldn't help asking him about what had happened. Nelio didn't seem surprised by my question. His answer was firm yet evasive.

'I haven't got as far as that yet,' he said. 'I haven't even arrived in the city yet.'

Then he looked me right in the eye, and he spoke as if he were a wise old man, not the pale and emaciated ten-year-old who was lying before me on the filthy mattress I had found one day next to a rubbish bin.

'I'm telling you my story to stay alive,' he said. 'Just as it was my life itself that was running when I fled from the bandits, now my life is contained in the words that describe everything that happened.'

I realised then that Nelio knew he was going to die. He had known it all along. He wasn't telling the story of his life to me. He was telling it to himself and to the spirits – the spirits of his ancestors, which were hovering invisibly all around him as he lay there on the roof, waiting for him to return to them and to the life that exists before and after all our lives.

I asked him nothing more. I knew he would live long enough to answer all my questions when at last, at the end of his long journey, he would come to the night when he was shot.

That night I also changed the bandage around his chest. I had bought some strips of cloth from Senhora Muwulene. To my surprise, I saw that they were pieces of a torn flag, although I couldn't say from what country. They might also have come from one of the old leftover colonial banners, maybe hidden away in some dark garret because no one knew what to do with it. She had soaked the strips of cloth in a bath of herbs and told me to wait until the breeze from the sea made the air cooler before I changed the bandage. In the flickering light of the kerosene lamp I could see that the two holes from the bullets were beginning to darken. The bullets had not gone straight through his body; there was no exit wound on his back. And there were powder burns on his shirt. Nelio must have been shot point-blank in the chest.

Nelio knew who had shot him. But that didn't necessarily mean he knew why.

Or did he? During those nights when he lay on the roof and waited for the spirits to come for him, I never once saw him upset by what had occurred. Had he been expecting it? I was burning to know the answer. But I only asked him once. Then I understood that he was telling his story the way a person lives his life. The events were not scattered about, they were happening all over again, in the same order, through his words.

One day comes before the next.

I tried to be gentle, but Nelio was in pain when I changed the sticky, stiff bandage for the strips of flag that Senhora Muwulene had dipped in the bath of red leaves. I saw the way he clenched his teeth, and once he even fainted for a few seconds when I was forced to tug on a scrap of bandage that was stuck to one of the gunshot wounds. Afterwards he lay for a long time saying nothing. The woman who reminded him of his mother stood in the darkness below the roof and pounded her pole on the corn in her mortar. I shivered at the memory of what Nelio had told me the night before. I kept asking myself: Where does the evil in human beings come from? Why does barbarism always wear a human face? That's what makes barbarism so inhuman.

That night I had a lot to do downstairs in the bakery. A religious sect that was active in the city had placed an order with Dona Esmeralda for a particular type of bread which had to be baked longer than normal. I had made it many times before, so I knew that you had to be more vigilant than usual. But at last I finished the bread for the sect. When I went back up to the roof, Nelio was awake. I gave him water. The night was exceptionally clear, the stars seemed very close. We heard the sound of drums from somewhere in the night. The woman with the corn had fallen silent. Another woman laughed loudly and passionately. Then she too was silent. Dogs howled and mated in the dark; a lorry with a coughing engine passed by on the street below.

*

That was when Nelio returned to the river bank, where he had sunk down to rest after his long flight from the bandits. When he continued his story his voice was different from the night before. Then it had been meditative, at times sorrowful and hard. Now there was joy in his voice because the bandits were no longer right behind him.

Across the river he caught sight of someone. At first he had thought it was an animal, maybe one of the rare white lions he had heard the old people in the village talk about, the lions that heralded great events, although no one could foretell whether the events would be good or bad. Then he saw that it wasn't an animal but a person, a person who was both small and white, a
xidjana.
Nelio crouched down, because he wasn't sure whether bandits could also be small and white. But the dwarf on the opposite bank had seen him and called to him in a language that was almost the same as the one he spoke.

'What's a child doing all alone by the river?' His voice was squeaky and shrill. 'What's a child doing all alone by the river when there's no village nearby? Have you lost your way?'

'Yes,' Nelio said. 'I'm lost.'

'Then you're going to see things that you hadn't expected,' said the dwarf. 'Come over here. There's a place where you can wade across, below the tree that fell into the river.'

Nelio waded across the river where a half-rotten tree trunk had sunk into the sand bar. When he reached the dwarf, he was sitting on the ground with his legs crossed and chewing on a root which he had washed clean with river water. Next to him stood a big leather suitcase with elaborate metal fastenings. Nelio had never seen a suitcase. He thought that if it had been a little bigger, it could have been the dwarf's house that he was carrying around with him.

The dwarf unwrapped a piece of cloth lying nearby, took out another root and handed it to Nelio, who took it because he hadn't eaten in a long time. Nelio started gnawing on it. The root had a bitter taste. He had never seen that type of root before, and he thought to himself that he was already in a place where the plants that grew out of the ground were different from the ones growing in his village, which had been burned down.

'Don't eat so fast!' cried the dwarf, and Nelio was suddenly afraid that he had fallen into the hands of a bandit after all, disguised as a dwarf and albino.

Nelio began chewing more slowly. They ate in silence. Even though the dwarf, who had not yet mentioned his name, was sitting several metres off, Nelio noticed that he smelled like a flower – a sweet scent, almost like a woman getting all dressed up for a man.

It took a long rime to finish the roots. The dwarf was still silent. But at last, when only the stem remained and he had used it to rub his teeth clean, he started to talk again.

'Have you a name?' he shouted, as if he couldn't speak without trying to make himself heard all over the world.

'Nelio.'

The dwarf gave him an intent look. 'I've never heard that name before,' he said. 'That's no name for a black man. That's a white man's name, short and meaningless.'

'My father's oldest brother gave it to me.'

'That name will never make you happy,' said the dwarf, but he didn't explain what he meant. A little while later he stood up, as if to move on. Nelio stood up too. He discovered that he was taller than the dwarf standing in front of him.

'Where are you going?' the dwarf asked him.

'Nowhere,' Nelio said, and he noticed that he had been infected by the dwarf's shrill voice. 'Nowhere!' he shouted.

'Don't yell!' shouted the dwarf. 'I'm right here. I can hear you. My legs and arms may be short, but my ears are big and deep.'

Then he was silent for a moment, pondering.

'Someone who is on his way to somewhere can hardly keep company with someone who is going nowhere,' he said. 'But we can try. You can come along with me if you carry my suitcase.'

'Where are you going?' Nelio asked. 'Do
you
have a name?'

'Yabu Bata,' said the dwarf, putting his suitcase on top of Nelio's head. To his relief, Nelio discovered that it wasn't heavy.

'What do you have in the suitcase?'

'You ask too many questions,' shouted the dwarf. 'My suitcase is empty. I have it with me in case I find something I have to take along.'

They set off. The dwarf walked fast, with his crooked legs pounding against the dry ground. They followed the river south.

After they had walked for hours and the sun was already nearing the horizon, the dwarf stopped abruptly, as if he had suddenly thought of something.

'I'm going to answer your question now, about where I'm going. I had a dream that I was supposed to set off on a journey in search of a path that would show me the way.'

Nelio put down the suitcase and wiped the sweat from his face. 'What path?' he asked.

'What path?' the dwarf repeated angrily. 'The path I dreamed about. That will show me the way. Don't ask so many questions. We have a long way to go.'

'How do you know that?'

Yabu Bata looked at him in astonishment before he replied.

A path that you dream about and that's supposed to show you the way can't be nearby,' he said at last. Anything important is always hard to find.'

*

When the evening light was glowing on the horizon, they set up camp. They had stopped near an abandoned termite mound, in the middle of a vast plain. In a solitary tree sat an eagle, regarding them with watchful eyes.

'Are we going to stop here?' Nelio said. 'Shouldn't we climb up in a tree? What if the wild animals come?'

'You don't know anything,' Yabu Bata said angrily. 'You haven't learned a thing. You've lost your way, and you should be glad I'm letting you carry my suitcase. We're going to sleep inside the termite mound, of course. Give me a hand now, and don't ask so many questions.'

With great vigour, Yabu Bata attacked the hard shell of the termite mound with a crude knife which he wore on his belt. Nelio could see that he was very strong. He helped out by shovelling away the hard clay that Yabu Bata hacked loose. At last he had cut an opening to the hollow inside the termite mound.

'Throw some grass inside,' the dwarf said.

'Why?'

'You're still asking too many questions. Just do as I say.'

Nelio gathered up grass until Yabu Bata told him that was enough. He took a piece of flint from his pocket and struck fire. The grass inside the termite mound began to burn. Nelio leaped backwards and stumbled over Yabu Bata's suitcase. Two snakes slithered out of the termite mound and disappeared into the grass.

'Now we're alone,' chuckled Yabu Bata. 'Now we can crawl inside and go to sleep.'

It was stuffy inside the termite mound when Yabu Bata placed his suitcase in front of the opening. Their bodies brushed against each other, and Nelio smelled the strong scent of perfume, which prickled his nose. But he didn't want to ask Yabu Bata why he smelled like a woman. A dwarf and an albino might possess many secret powers, which shouldn't be unnecessarily provoked. Instead, he ought to be grateful to be allowed to accompany Yabu Bata and carry the dwarf's empty suitcase on his head.

'You were fleeing from the bandits,' Yabu Bata said suddenly in the dark. 'You didn't lose your way. Why did you lie to me?'

Nelio thought that Yabu Bata must be able to read his thoughts. He couldn't keep a secret from an albino, who would never die. Everybody knew that about albinos: they lived for ever. They had no spirits, they never had to cross over to the other life, they existed for all eternity, white and visible. How could he have forgotten that?

'They came in the night and burned down the village,' Nelio said. 'They killed many people. They also killed our dogs. They wanted me to kill my brother. That's when I ran.'