Chronicler Of The Winds

The Third Night

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.'

Yabu Bata sighed in the dark.

'They kill so many,' he said sadly. 'In the end they will have killed everybody. The snakes will rule the earth. The spirits will search anxiously for all those who are dead and cannot be found.'

'Have the bandits always existed? Who are their mothers?'

'We have to sleep now,' Yabu Bata said crossly. 'You should ask questions when the sun can laugh at all your stupidities. Tomorrow we'll no doubt have a long way to go. Who knows?'

They lay close together in the dark. Nelio could feel Yabu Bata's breath on the back of his neck. His steady breathing made the terror disappear, as if it too had retired for the night. Nelio's last thought before he fell asleep was whether Yabu Bata might be able to help him find a pair of trousers.

Many days passed under the searing sun without Yabu Bata finding the path he had dreamed about. They often had very little to eat, and even though Yabu Bata had promised to get him a pair of trousers, Nelio was still wearing the ragged capulana wrapped around his body. They put more and more distance between themselves and the high mountains, but that didn't mean they were getting farther from the bandits. They passed other villages that had been burned down, where solitary ghosts sat staring straight ahead. Several times Yabu Bata stopped when he saw people in the distance. If he had the slightest suspicion that they might be bandits, they would lie in the grass and stay there until they were alone again. Usually they walked in silence; Nelio realised that Yabu Bata was prepared to answer questions only rarely. Since he was afraid that Yabu Bata might suddenly tire of his company and chase him away, Nelio said nothing until he was absolutely sure that Yabu Bata had time for him. He learned that Yabu Bata's mood depended on whether or not they had food. One time, when they had corn and also several fish they had managed to catch in a river and they had eaten their fill, Yabu Bata began to sing in his shrill voice. He sang so loudly that Nelio was afraid the bandits a long way off would hear him and come up on them. But no bandits came. Later, after Yabu Bata had taken a nap in order to digest his food, snoring sonorously, he sat up without warning and looked at Nelio.

'I come from the Hunchback Mountains,' he said. 'If my father is still alive he certainly must have more animals than when I left. My mother wove mats, my uncle carved sculptures of black wood. I learned to be a blacksmith even though my arms are so short. If I hadn't had my dream, I'd still be a blacksmith. My wife may still be waiting for me, and my four children too; they're all tall and just as black as you are.'

Nelio thought he must have been looking for his path for several months, maybe even since the rains had stopped. But when he asked, he received an answer he hadn't expected.

'You're still so young that you think a month is a long time,' replied Yabu Bata. 'I've been looking for my path for nineteen years, eight months and four days. With luck I'll find it before another nineteen years have passed. If I'm not lucky, or if my life is too short, I'll never find it. Then I'll have to continue my search for it when I begin my life with my ancestors.'

Nelio sat in silence, pondering what Yabu Bata had said. He began to worry that Yabu Bata might be counting on him to go on carrying his suitcase until he found the path he had once dreamed about, maybe for another nineteen years. Nelio hesitated for a long time, wondering whether he should say what he was thinking, since Yabu Bata was so quick-tempered. But finally Nelio realised he had to tell him.

'I can't follow you for nineteen years,' he said tentatively.

'I wasn't counting on that either,' Yabu Bata said angrily. 'I'm getting tired of seeing your face every day. When we reach the sea, we will go our separate ways. You'll have to manage on your own.'

'The sea?' Nelio said. 'What's that?'

His father may have told him a few times about a river that was so wide you couldn't see across to the other side. Nelio had vague memories of hearing about a gigantic body of water that could roar and heave itself up on to land, carrying off both people and animals. In those days he thought it was just one of the tales that his father liked to tell. Did the sea actually exist?

'I'd like to go with you to the sea,' Nelio said.

'It won't be long before we get there,' Yabu Bata said. 'At least, it won't take nineteen years.'

They reached the sea on an afternoon one week later. They had climbed up on to a ridge when Yabu Bata suddenly stopped and pointed. Nelio was following several paces behind him. He stopped short and didn't even have time to put down the suitcase before he caught sight of the blue water spread out before him. There and then, he had a strong feeling that he had arrived home.

So a person could feel at home in a place where he had never been before. Or is it imprinted on our consciousness, from the moment we're born, as a fundamental human trait, that we all must feel at home near the sea? Nelio stood next to Yabu Bata, gazing out over the water, which seemed to be growing bigger and bigger before his eyes, and thought about these things. They were thoughts that rose up of their own accord, effortlessly, thoughts that surprised him, since they were like nothing else he had ever thought in his life.

He didn't get far before Yabu Bata scattered his musings. 'If you can't swim, the sea is dangerous,' he said.

'Swim? What's that?'

Yabu Bata sighed. 'I'm glad we're going to part soon,' he said. 'You know nothing. And you ask questions about everything. I'd grow old very fast if I had to answer all of your questions. Swimming means floating in water and at the same time moving forward.'

Nelio, who had grown up near a river that was full of crocodiles, had never even imagined that a person could move around in the water. Water was for drinking, for washing, and for giving life to the corn and cassava. But to move around in it?

They walked down to the shore and to the sea, which was rolling back and forth.

'Don't put the suitcase down where it'll get wet,' Yabu Bata said. 'I don't want to be carrying a wet suitcase when I leave here.' Then he walked out into the water, after rolling up his trousers on his short, crooked legs. Nelio stayed behind with the suitcase so that he could move it quickly if the sea rolled farther in. The white sand was quite hot. Yabu Bata waded here and there, splashing water on his face. When he straightened up, he told Nelio to do the same.

'It's refreshing,' he said. 'Your heart slows down, your blood flows more quietly.'

Nelio walked into the water. When he bent down to drink, it tasted bad. He spat as Yabu Bata laughed gleefully from where he was sitting on the sand.

'When God created the sea, He did it with great wisdom,' shouted Yabu Bata. 'Since He didn't want human beings to drink up all His blue water, He made it salty.'

Nelio came back from the water's edge and sat down next to Yabu Bata on the sand. They sat there for hours without speaking and looked at the water, which was constantly changing, constantly moving. From several fishermen who passed by with nets and baskets over their shoulders Yabu Bata bought fish, which they cooked over a fire in the shelter of a sand dune. That night they stretched out on the sand and looked up at the stars. In the distance the water lapped the shore.

Yabu Bata suddenly broke the silence. 'Tomorrow I'm going to leave you. I brought you to the sea, as I promised.'

'You also promised me a pair of trousers.'

'You're an impudent young man,' Yabu Bata said crossly. 'People make lots of promises they'd like to keep. But it's not always possible to do everything you want to do. You want to live for ever. But that's not possible. You want to see your enemies perish from their own misfortune. That's not possible either. You want a pair of trousers. Sometimes that's possible. When you grow up, you'll understand.'

'Understand what?' asked Nelio, unable to hide that he felt both displeased and disappointed.

'Understand that you have to learn to forget the promises that other people make.'

'I don't believe that.'

'You're not only inquisitive, you even object when older and wiser people tell you about life.'

Again they lay silent. The stars were waiting.

'Tomorrow when I wake up,' said Nelio, 'will Yabu Bata be gone?'

'That depends, of course, on how early you wake up. But I hope to be on my way by the time you open your eyes. I don't like saying goodbye. Not even to an inquisitive child.'

Nelio lay awake in the sand for a long time, long after Yabu Bata's breathing grew heavy, and even after he began to snore. Nelio seemed to realise for the first time that the next day he would be alone. He thought that this was the first thing he now had to learn, that he could no longer take for granted that he would always have someone else with him. Many times his father, Hermenegildo, had told him that the worst thing that could happen to anyone was to find himself alone. A person without a family was nothing. It was as if that person didn't exist. You could lose everything – your possessions, even your mind – if you drank too much tontonto. It was possible to survive all of that. But not being without other people, your family, all your mothers and sisters and brothers. Maybe that was the greatest injustice the bandits had done to him. They had robbed him of his family. Nelio felt very unhappy as he lay there in the cool sand with the snoring Yabu Bata at his side. Most of all he wanted to crawl over next to him, so close that he could hear his heartbeat. But he didn't dare. Yabu Bata would certainly wake up angry. Nelio stayed where he was and thought about everything that had happened ever since that night when the darkness had exploded in the white flash that came from the bandits' guns. He thought about his dead sister, about the man with the squinty eyes he had killed, and about his brother who was still alive. Tomorrow he would be left alone, he didn't even own a pair of trousers, and he didn't know where he should go. He thought that this would have to be the last question he asked Yabu Bata, the most important question he had ever asked in his life up until now.

Which way should he go? Where was his future? Was there any future at all? Had it vanished on that night when the bandits arrived and killed even their dogs? Or was it here, by the sea which he could not walk on, that his path would end? Was it here he would stay?

He fell asleep, dozing uneasily. All night long he dreamed that Yabu Bata had already got up and was preparing to leave. But when Nelio awoke in the early dawn, the suitcase was still at his side. Yabu Bata had taken off his sari and was standing naked in the water. His crooked body shone against the water as he washed. Nelio thought that someone standing naked in the sea was a very distinct individual. Against the water of the sea you could make out how a person truly looked.

Yabu Bata came back to the beach and did not seem glad to find Nelio awake. He pulled on his sari and shook the water out of his frizzy, pale yellow hair.

'I know that you think I ask too many questions,' Nelio said. 'That's why I'm only going to ask you one question before you leave.'

At that moment Yabu Bata seemed sad that they were going to part. He sat down on the sand next to his suitcase and rested his head in his hands.

'Sometimes I wonder whether I'm ever going to find that path I dreamed about,' he said. 'Every night I dream that I'm back in my village near Hunchback Mountain, that I'm at my forge. But when I wake up, I'm always somewhere else. I often wonder why God gave people the power to dream. Why should you see a path in your dreams that you might never find? Why should you keep returning in your dreams to your forge, and then wake up lying on the sand near the sea?'

Yabu Bata sat there for a long time with his head in his hands, brooding over why people dream. Then he straightened up and looked at Nelio.

'What did you want to ask me?' he said.

'Which way should I go?'

Yabu Bata nodded thoughtfully. 'That's the best question you've ever asked me,' he said. 'I wish I could answer it, but only you can say which direction you should take.'

'I want to go somewhere I can find a pair of trousers,' said Nelio firmly,

'You can find trousers anywhere,' Yabu Bata said. 'The best thing you can do is to follow the sea to the south. That's where there are people and towns. That's the way you should go.'

'Is it far?'

'You said you only had one question,' said Yabu Bata. 'As soon as I answer it, you come up with another one. A road can be both long and short. It depends on where you're coming from and where you're going.'

All of a sudden Yabu Bata started laughing. He grabbed a fistful of sand and tossed it over his head, as if he had suddenly lost his mind.

'I'll be damned if I'm not going to miss you!' he said after he calmed down.

He opened the lid of his suitcase and pulled out a little leather pouch. He took out several banknotes, which he gave to Nelio, 'Use these to buy a pair of trousers,' he said. 'Every time you take them off or put them on, you'll think about Yabu Bata.'

'I have nothing to give to you,' Nelio said.

'Give something to someone else when one day you have something to give,' Yabu Bata said, and he put the pouch back into his suitcase.

Then he stood and lifted the suitcase.

'There are only two roads in life. The road of foolishness, which leads a person straight to ruin. It's the road you take if you act against your own judgement. The other road is the one you must follow, the one that leads a person in the right direction.'

Then he started walking along the beach. He did not turn around. Nelio followed him with his gaze until his eyes began to hurt from the harsh sunlight which was flashing against the white sand. The last thing he saw was a blurry dot, finally hovering like a wisp of smoke in the heat.

Nelio followed the sea towards the south. He tried not to think about the great loneliness surrounding him. He missed the suitcase he had carried for so long on his head as much as he missed Yabu Bata. But he knew that he would never see him again, and he would never know whether he found his path or not.

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.