Chronicler Of The Winds

The Seventh Night

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.

Deolinda opened her bag and took out a little glass jar.

'Piri-piri,' she said.

The group had cautiously approached. Nelio divided the two chickens among them. At first Nascimento refused to take his share, but finally he snatched a piece and sat down a short distance away. From that moment on, Deolinda was one of them. Nelio remembered Cosmos asking him who he belonged to, and then from that moment on he was one of them. Now they had taken in Deolinda, and Nelio knew that the group was complete. No other new members would join unless one of them disappeared.

When the chickens had been eaten, Nelio told Nascimento to come closer.

'From now on Deolinda will be one of us. This means that no one can hit her without first asking my permission. Since she's new, she'll get only a half-share of our money. When we think that she deserves it, she'll get the same as everybody else. And no one calls her a xidjana unless she agrees to it. At the same time, Deolinda can't take advantage of the fact that she's a girl. She has to act exactly like the rest of us.'

Nelio thought about whether he had forgotten anything. After a moment's hesitation he added one thing.

'If Deolinda wants to be alone when she pees, she can. And she can also have a blanket if it's cold at night. But she has to get the blanket herself

Nelio looked around to see if anyone wanted to say anything.

'What do we need her for?' Nascimento said. 'She's neither black nor white, and she'll bring bad luck.'

To everyone's surprise, it was Tristeza who spoke up. 'Maybe that's a good thing. When she's with us, she's a xidjana. When she's with the whites, she's white. She can be both them and us.'

A good answer,' Nelio said. 'Soon you will earn your trainers.'

It didn't take long before Nelio saw that he had been right about taking Deolinda into the group. She was clever at begging, and she was quick to see possibilities in various situations that cropped up on the street. And besides, she could fight and defend herself. Soon nobody dared to accost her without risking that she would demonstrate her superior strength. Only Nascimento openly continued to show his dissatisfaction. Nelio began to suspect that one day Nascimento might leave them to join another band of street kids. He took Nascimento behind the petrol station and asked him straight out if he was thinking of leaving.

'No,' Nascimento said.

Nelio could hear that he was lying. But there was nothing he could do if Nascimento decided to leave.

It took a long time before Nelio began to understand what had driven Deolinda to the streets. Whenever he asked her about it, she would only snarl that it was nobody's business. It wasn't until Nelio opened her raffia bag while she was asleep and found inside a photograph of a man and a woman that he began to have some inkling of what some of the reasons might be. The man's face had been obliterated. The facial features had been scraped away with a nail or a stone. Nelio put the photograph back, ashamed that he had looked in her bag. No one should ever be forced to reveal a secret; and no one had the right to obtain information by stealth to satisfy his curiosity.

Nelio recalled something his mother had once said: No one is allowed to break his way into another's person's heart like a thief in the night.

Nelio soon noticed that Deolinda and Mandioca had become friends. They often squatted on the street, whispering to each other until they burst into laughter. If Nascimento was nearby he would angrily prowl around them without daring to interrupt their camaraderie. But they didn't seem to pay any attention to him.

One evening when Nelio was on his way home to his statue, he noticed that Deolinda was following him. His first thought was to stop and tell her to go back to the others. Then he realised that he might have a chance to find out what had driven her on to the streets. When he reached the small plaza, which was now deserted except for the sleeping nightwatchmen and the man who sold chicken thighs from his coal-fired drum, Nelio sat down at the foot of the statue. Deolinda had stopped at the street corner and was trying to hide in the shadows. But he called out that he had seen her. He thought she might be embarrassed at being caught.

'Who gave you permission to follow me?'

'I wanted to see where you live,' she replied, looking him straight in the eye.

'You can follow me for the rest of your life, but you'll never find out where I live.'

'Why not?'

'Because I just disappear.'

'I'd like to see that.'

Nelio nodded. 'If I manage to disappear without you noticing, what will you give me in return?'

She took a step back. 'I won't do xogo-xogo.'

Nelio was embarrassed. He knew what xogo-xogo was, but he had never done it. He knew that he wasn't old enough yet even to want to do it. 'I just want to know where you're from. Nothing else.'

'Why do you want to know that?'

'You can't go on being part of the group if I don't know where you're from. What did you do on the day before you sat down in my place in the shade of the tree? Why did you sit there? I have lots of questions.'

She was thinking about this. Then she nodded. 'You won't be able to disappear without me noticing. So I agree to answer your questions.'

'Turn round and close your eyes. Cover your ears. Count to ten. Can you count?'

'I can do everything. I can count and read and write.'

'Where did you learn all that?'

She didn't answer.

'Turn round,' he repeated. 'Close your eyes and count out loud to ten. And cover your ears too. If you cheat, you'll be struck blind.'

Nelio saw that she shuddered. She had heard about his supernatural powers.

She turned, shut her eyes and started counting. Nelio opened the hatch and quickly crawled inside the horse. He could see her through a hole next to the horse's mane. She finished counting and turned round. The plaza was deserted, there was no place he could have hidden, and he wouldn't have had time to run to the corner and disappear.

Nelio tried to decipher Deolinda's thoughts from her expression. She was confronted with something she hadn't expected.

Then she walked away. Nelio waited until he was sure that she had left the plaza. Then he crept out of the hatch and dashed through the night-empty streets, taking the shortest route he knew, until he was back at the Ministry of Justice building where the rest of the group was already asleep. He sat near his tree and waited. When he saw Deolinda coming, Nelio stood up and walked towards her. She gave a start when she caught sight of him.

'I disappeared and I came back,' he said. Then he stretched out his hand to her. 'Touch my hand. It's warm. I'm not a shadow or a phantom standing here.'

She touched his hand with her fingertips.

'People sleep too much,' Nelio said. 'Let's use the night to talk.'

He took her to the botanical gardens, up on the hill near the hospital. The gates were locked with heavy chains and padlocks, but Nelio knew of a hole in the fence. That's where they crawled through, and he led Deolinda over to a bench that was still sturdy enough to sit on. Next to the botanical gardens was a hotel, and its sign lit up the area around the bench.

Deolinda's face was stark white.

Nelio looked at her ragged dress and thought that soon they would have to get some money together so that she could buy a new one.

He didn't have to ask a single question. She started talking about her life of her own accord. He sensed that it was a relief for her, and he listened attentively.

She was born in one of the poorest suburbs of the city; a collection of shacks and hovels surrounding the city's swamplike rubbish dump. She was born and she was albino. Her father refused to look at her. He accused her mother of conceiving the child with a dead man that she had secretly met in a cemetery at night. Then he had chased her out of his house. Deolinda later learned that this was the time of her mothers greatest despair. But she would never have killed her daughter, she would never have strangled her and buried her in the rubbish so that she could return to her husband. She took her daughter to a town that was many days' walk from the city. There she had a sister, and there they would be able to live. Her three other children remained with their father, and she grieved for them so fiercely that for long periods of time she was close to death. One day, many months later, a message arrived from her husband, telling her that she didn't need to come back; he had found a new woman who would never give birth to an albino. The children would stay with him, and he cursed the dishonour she had brought upon him by being unfaithful to him with a ghost in a cemetery.

'I was born with a ghost for a father,' Deolinda said, and it sounded as if she were spitting out the words. 'Today, now that I'm grown up and smart, I realise that it's true. My father is a ghost, even if he's alive.'

'How old are you?'

She shrugged. 'Eleven. Or fifteen. Or ninety.'

'I think you're twelve,' Nelio said.

'If I'm twelve, then I'll stay twelve for the rest of my life,' she said. 'Why do we always have to exchange one age for another?'

'I've had the same thought,' Nelio said. 'I think I'll go on being ten until I get tired of it. Then I'll be ninety-three.'

Frogs were croaking in the pond of the botanical gardens. Deolinda had several half-rotten bananas in her woven bag which they shared.

After she learned to walk and already had four rainy seasons behind her, Deolinda became aware that she was different. Then, at the very time when she must have needed her more than ever, Deolinda's mother was struck by madness, which not even the renowned curandeiro, sent for from another village, was able to cure. She stopped eating altogether, she refused to braid her hair, and she started wandering around the village with no clothes on. Finally her sister locked her up in a hut and nailed the door shut. They gave her water through the slits in the wall. That was also where she died one night, after having poked out her eyes with a splinter from one of the bamboo poles supporting the roof. The last memory Deolinda had of her mother was of her hands sticking out of the slits in the wall of the hut. As if that was all that was left of her – two empty hands, ceaselessly wringing.

After Deolinda's mother died, her aunt changed. She blamed Deolinda for her sister's death, she frequently beat her, and sometimes she even refused to give her food. Deolinda tried to find out why she had changed, but no one could give her an answer. And so she started to believe that she actually deserved all the blame people placed on her. In her the ancestors had gathered all their misdeeds; they had chosen her to bear them. Deolinda realised that she couldn't stay in the village, and the only person she could think of who might help her was her father. She left the village one night when everyone was asleep, and she never went back. When she arrived in the city and found her father's house near the stinking rubbish dump, he chased her off with a stick and warned her never to come back. After that, the streets of the city were all that remained for her. Many times the nuns took her to an orphanage. But she never stayed more than a few Jays. On the city streets there were others who were as white as she was. Some of them even had cars. They had jobs, and they lived in proper houses. She had discovered, above all, that they also had black children. On the streets of the city she was not alone in being different.

'I'm going to stay alive so that I can have children,' she said. I'm going to have thousands of children, and they're all going to be black. Then, when I can't have any more children, I'm going to kill my father.'

'That's probably not a good idea,' Nelio said. 'If you absolutely have to have him dead, it would be wiser if you asked someone else to do it. I don't think it's good to sit in jail.'

'I want you to teach me how to disappear,' Deolinda said.

'I can't do that,' he said. 'I don't know how I do it myself. Tell me instead why you want to stay with us.'

For a long time she sat in silence. Nelio closed his eyes and dozed on the bench while he waited.

He woke up with a start when Deolinda touched his shoulder.

'You're asleep,' she said.

'I don't like waiting for anything,' Nelio said. 'Instead of waiting, I do something else. Just now I was sleeping.'

'Cosmos is my brother.'

He was astounded. He thought about what she had told him for a while. Could it really be truer?

'He saw the way my father chased me off with a stick. He was still living at home then. Our father started beating him too. He came to the city. He became the leader of the kids sleeping over there on the steps. We would sometimes meet in secret. He said that I could come here after he had set off on his journey. He was the one who taught me to read and write and count.'

'But how could he know that I would take you in?'

'He thought that you would.'

Nelio kept thinking about this strange piece of news.

'Was that why Cosmos set off on his journey?' he asked. 'So that you could come to us?'.

'Maybe.'

'Cosmos ought to be hung on the wall of a church,' Nelio said. 'Not Cosmos himself but his picture. His face carved out of wood, like a saint.'

They left the botanical gardens and crept out through the same hole they had used to get in.

'When I grow up, I'm going to sing for the whole world,' Deolinda said as they made their way through the empty streets.

'Can you sing?'

'Yes,' said Deolinda, 'I can sing. And my voice is very black.'

'Everybody's tongue is red,' Nelio said. 'Just like everybody's blood. There's so much to think about. So much that is strange.'

Deolinda wrapped herself in her blanket next to Mandioca. Tristeza and Mandioca lay on either side of Nascimento, who had crawled into his cardboard box and pulled down the lid. They lay there like two guards, ready if Nascimento should be attacked by the monsters that were always lurking in his dreams. Nelio stared thoughtfully at the ragged band. Then he went to his statue, thinking about what Deolinda had told him. On the way he passed a big hotel where festively dressed people were getting into their cars. He stopped for a moment and stared at all that wealth. Then he continued on his way.

But when he had crawled into the statue and rested his head on the left hind leg of the horse, he couldn't sleep, even though it was late. He started thinking back on the life he had lived in the past, before the bandits had come creeping out of the night and burned his village. He felt as if he were being drawn back in time by an invisible wind. Suddenly the horse's belly was filled with spirits scattering memories over him. He was overwhelmed by a great sorrow – so great that it was almost too heavy for his thin body to bear.

It's dawn. The dry earth is whirling outside the hut. His mother is pounding corn. And she is singing. He wakes up on the reed mat in the darkness of the hut. The smell of burning wood blows in through the opening of the hut. The smell of burning wood, which every morning reminds him that he will live another day. When he goes out into the strong sunlight, he can see that it's all true. His mother, who is pounding the heavy stick against the corn, his newborn sister, who is hanging on her back…

Inside the horse Nelio stood up straight, with his head inside the rider's ribcage. The horse seemed to be alive. He thought that soon he would have to return home. He had to find out what had happened, who was still alive, and who was dead.

The spirits hovering around him had no faces. The whole time he was afraid that he would suddenly recognise the presence of his father or his mother or his sisters and brothers. They would be dead, and it would be even harder for him to go on living life as he did now, which was only surviving.

Nelio would remember the days that followed as the time when he never danced and never smiled. He couldn't hide his gloomy mood, and he saw no reason to try. He was often annoyed at being disturbed all the time – by Nascimento who was always on his way from one fight to the next, and by Tristeza who came each day and asked what he should think about and when he was going to be allowed to buy his trainers. Nelio would lose his temper, and afterwards he would feel even gloomier at the thought that he had done something that was foreign to Cosmos. Deolinda, noticing that Nelio wanted to be left alone, tried to protect him. She chased off the others when she could, and she always saw to it that Nelio had something to eat without having to climb around on the rubbish heaps himself to search for scraps.

Nelio often thought about Cosmos as he sat in the shade of his tree. He wondered whether he was still alive, whether he had drowned at sea, or whether he had come so close to the sun that he caught fire and burned up. He wondered whether Yabu Bata had found the path he had spent more than nineteen years searching for.

When his thoughts grew too burdensome, he would leave the street and set off on long, solitary wanderings. The others would send someone to follow him, to see that he didn't walk straight into the sea and disappear. Of course, Nelio noticed that someone was following him at a distance. Ordinarily he would have turned round and said that he wanted to be left alone. But he didn't have the energy to do that. He walked and walked, sometimes so far that he reached the place where he had spent the night on the eve of his first entrance into the city. Often he would come back after it was already dark.

It was Mandioca who suggested that they should try to cheer him up by giving him a dog. They often sat and talked anxiously about Nelio's remoteness and melancholy.

'He thinks too much,' Nascimento said. 'Cosmos never had so many thoughts. He's sick in the head. His brain has swollen up from all the walking and brooding that he's doing.'

'What he needs is a dog,' Mandioca said. 'If you have a dog, you don't have time to think.'

'What do you know about dogs?' Deolinda said.

'I had a dog once,' said Mandioca sadly.

'What happened to him?' asked Deolinda.

'He ran away,' replied Mandioca. 'I look for him every day. Maybe he's looking for me.'

'He died a long time ago,' Nascimento said angrily. 'Dogs die taster than people.'

It looked as though a fight would break out between Mandioca and Nascimento. But Pecado stepped between them and said that they should be worrying about Nelio instead of fighting.

After discussing the pros and cons of getting a dog for Nelio, they decided it was worth trying. The next day they captured a brown dog by the harbour. The dog bit Nascimento on the hand, but they succeeded in tying a leash around his neck and dragged him back in triumph. Nelio was sitting in the shade of his tree when they appeared with the dog.

'We want to give you a dog so you'll be in a better mood,' Pecado said. 'He doesn't have a name, and I'm afraid he'll have to be tamed. He bit Nascimento on the hand. But I'm sure he'll be good company.'

Nelio stared at the dog, which was alternately barking and whining. He thought about the dogs that the bandits had killed when they burned the village.

He took the leash that Alfredo Bomba was holding.

'I thank you for catching a dog for me. I accept, and I will call him Rico. A stray dog is even poorer than we are, but I can still give him a good name. I will keep him until tomorrow. Then I'll let him go. But he will still be my dog. Tomorrow I will also be in a better mood. Now go away and leave me in peace.'

That night the dog stood tied up outside the equestrian statue, barking. In the early dawn Nelio let him loose. He ran off at once, and Nelio never saw Rico again. That night, as he lay awake because of the dog's barking, he realised that he would have to do something about his bad mood. He couldn't continue to be the leader of the group if he was always impatient and angry. And yet he couldn't leave them because he had made a promise to Cosmos. And none of the others could take over the leadership.

The only one he could imagine doing it was Deolinda, but that would never work. An albino who was also a girl could never be the leader of a group of wild street kids.

The next day he called them together behind the petrol station.

'I've had a lot to think about lately. And it was hard because you are always making such a commotion, but from now on everything will be different. I won't sit alone in the shade of my tree so often.'

His words had the effect he had hoped for. He could see that they were relieved. To further emphasise that he was back to normal, he told them that they should all work extra hard and not take any unnecessary siestas. Tristeza would be allowed to use the money they earned to go to the shoe shop and choose a pair of trainers. And from now on Deolinda would get the same share as everybody else. And they would also buy her a new dress.

'That we go around in rags is one thing,' Nelio said. 'But Deolinda is a girl. She should be properly dressed. But you have to wash well before you put on the new dress. And keep the old one. That's what you can wear when you climb around the rubbish heaps looking for food.'

A few days later Tristeza, his head held high, went into a shoe shop, and when he came out he was wearing a pair of white trainers. The same afternoon they bought Deolinda a new dress that was red with white trim around the sleeves.

'I thought all gloomy thoughts could be chased away,' Nelio said at last, as dawn drew near on the morning of the eighth day. 'But I was wrong. Because several days later something happened that made Deolinda disappear and never come back. And Alfredo Bomba started acting strangely.'

Nelio fell silent, as if he had said too much.

'Alfredo Bomba,' I said, trying to coax him to continue.

Nelio looked at me for a long rime before he spoke again. With the red glow of the morning on his forehead, I could see that he was sweating. He was slipping once more into a fever.

And then, just as I was starting to fear that he was asleep, he began speaking again.

Alfredo Bomba started acting strangely. And then everything else happened, ending with you finding me and carrying me up here to the roof

Then I knew that we had come to the end of the story. Now I was going to find out what had happened on that night down in the empty theatre. Maybe I would only have to wait one more night before I had the answers to the questions I had been pondering.

Nelio lay there with his eyes shut. I had put a cup of water next to the mattress. I got up carefully to go down to the yard and wash. I also had to wash my clothes, which were starting to smell bad.

Then Nelio began to speak again, without opening his eyes.

'It's not easy to die,' he said. 'It's the only thing that no one can teach us.'

He said nothing more. As I went down the winding stairs, I felt frightened. I could no longer push the thought aside; I could no longer fool myself with false hopes.

Nelio was going to die on the roof. He had known it all along.

I sat down in the dark of the stairs and wept. I don't cry very often. I couldn't even remember the last time it had happened. I am a man who laughs. But on that morning I sat in the dark stairway and cried, and I thought that it was all too late, and that a ten-year-old boy who is an old man is still only a child.

A child should live, not die.

I borrowed money from one of the girls at the bakery counter and then went over to one of the city's barraccas and drank tontonto. It didn't take long before I was quite drunk, and I fell asleep on the ground.

When I woke up many hours later someone had stolen my shoes, and I had to walk barefoot back to the bakery.

I remember that the day was very hot. The sea was dead calm.

I stood at the pump in the backyard for a long time, washing myself.

When Maria came walking towards the bakery I was out on the street waiting for her. I couldn't get enough of her smile. But all my thoughts were with Nelio, who was lying up there on the roof. No one had taught him how to act when he was about to die.

Is there any greater loneliness? When a person realises that he has to die and there's no one to teach him how to do it?

I thought about that great loneliness, and the feelings I had then have never since left me in peace.

At midnight I followed Maria out to the street again. When she had taken a few steps, she turned and waved.

Then I went back up to the roof.

It was the eighth night.