Chronicler Of The Winds

The Fourth Night

Dona Esmeralda didn't notice me as I came downstairs.

A great commotion was raging that morning on the streets outside the bakery and theatre. All the bakers, the dough mixers, the enticing girls who sold bread and the watchmen were standing around Dona Esmeralda in the doorway and looking out at the street. Since I am just as curious as everyone else, for a moment I forgot about Nelio who was lying up on the roof in his fever. Sometimes I think there is nothing that has as great a power over human beings as curiosity. So in a certain way I can forgive myself for not thinking about him for a little while. I asked the baker standing next to me – I think it was Alberto – what was going on. At the same moment I saw that huge groups of street kids were swarming restlessly back and forth along the street. They were blocking the traffic, throwing around the rubbish from the bins in front of the buildings, and yelling and screaming.

'Nelio has disappeared,' Alberto said.

I felt something grip my heart. 'Nelio,' I said. 'Nelio who?'

Dona Esmeralda, who has an exceptional ability to hear everything that is said in her vicinity, turned round and looked at me in surprise.

'Everybody knows who Nelio is,' she said in a sharp voice. 'The saintly Nelio whom no one has ever managed to beat up.'

'Of course I know who Nelio is,' I said apologetically. 'So he's disappeared?' I turned back to Alberto since Dona Esmeralda had returned her gaze to the street.

'He's gone,' replied Alberto. 'The street kids suspect that he's been taken captive.'

'Who could manage to capture him?'

'All the people who have never been able to give him a beating. The street kids think it's a conspiracy.'

'That hardly sounds plausible,' I said doubtfully. 'Where would he be kept captive?'

'How would I know?' Alberto said.

The uproar continued all day long. The street kids, who seemed to number in the thousands, kept on causing a commotion. The police had been called out and kept a watchful eye on everything from the pavement. But their commanders, who were sweating under their heavy caps, wouldn't allow them to intervene. Someone also claimed to have seen the Secretary of the Interior, the feared mestizo Dimande, pass by in his armoured car to survey the situation. Not until afternoon did the tumult of the street kids subside. They gathered in large bands and then broke up into small groups and vanished in all directions into the city. Although I was very tired, I had no peace to sleep during the day. My brother had also sent over one of his neighbours to find out if I had fallen ill since I had not been home for several days. I wrote a note on one of the brown bread bags, saying that at the moment I was working so much that I didn't have time to come home. But everything was fine, there was no reason to worry about me. I rinsed myself off behind the bakery, stripping off my clothes behind the rusty sheet metal from the roof that created a little partitioned space, and washing myself under the water pump. Then I went over to Senhora Muwulene's and bought new strips of cloth, which she dipped in her secret herb bath. I had the feeling she suspected it was Nelio who was in my care and that he had been injured in some way. As I stood in her dark garage reeking of ammonia and unknown spices, I seriously considered confiding in her about what had happened. Maybe I could ask her to come and take a look at Nelio as he lay on the roof. When I saw the thousands of swarming street kids, I realised what a responsibility I had assumed. What would happen if Nelio died and it was discovered that I had tried to nurse him on the rooftop, without getting him to a doctor? If Nelio could no longer speak, who would believe me when I said that it was his wish to be left alone on the roof? No one would believe me. Presumably I would be dragged out to the street, the police would look away, and I would be stoned, beaten to death, drenched in gasoline and set on fire.

So I said nothing to Senhora Muwulene. It seemed to be too late. I had taken responsibility for Nelio, and I would have to bear it alone until he asked me to move him from the roof. After my visit to Senhora Muwulene, I went to the big marketplace and shopped for food. I bought a ready-cooked chicken and vegetables; I didn't have enough money for anything else. The marketplace was bustling. Even though no street kids were running around looking for Nelio, there were many hungry people begging, more than I had ever seen before. I knew that a steady stream of refugees had been coming to the city. The bandits were staging attacks all over the country, and there were rumours that the young revolutionary soldiers ran off whenever the bandits approached. More and more people were being forced to take to their heels, abandoning their homes. I thought about what Nelio had told me, and I understood something about the terrible fate that had befallen my country. The war that was raging was dividing families, brother against brother; and behind everything that was happening, from a great distance away in other countries, there were invisible hands pulling the strings of the bandits. It was the white people who had once been forced to leave the land and who now were seeking to return. In my mind I could picture how Dom Joaquim's statues would one day stand in the plazas again, and I felt a sudden rage at everything that had happened. The war had not only flung Nelio into a homeless vacuum, but it had sent people fleeing – innocent, simple people who wanted nothing but to try to live in peace with each other, people who never allowed a stranger to pass their homes hungry.

When I returned to the bakery from the marketplace, I seemed to see the city in a new way. It was the last rampart of defence against the bandits and the statues that threatened to destroy us.

I wondered how things would go. Without being able to explain it even to myself, it seemed to me important for everyone in the city that Nelio was up there on the bakery roof, and that he was still alive. The story he was telling me was a story that belonged to us all.

With the money I had left, I bought a shirt from a street kid. It was cheap and I could feel that it was of poor quality. But I didn't want Nelio to go on lying there wearing the same shirt. It was sweaty and dirty, and I needed time to wash it. When I got back to the bakery, I sneaked at once up to the roof to see if Nelio was still asleep. To my surprise I discovered that a grey cat had curled up at the foot of his mattress. At first I thought of chasing it away because it was probably flea-ridden. But I let it stay. Nelio was sleeping heavily and his forehead was not as hot as it had been at dawn. I sat down near the chimney and looked at him. I still could not decide whether he was a ten-year-old boy or a very old man lying there.

At dusk the cat abruptly got up from the mattress and vanished over the ridge of the roof without a sound, slipping into the darkness. Nelio kept on sleeping. I ate half of the food I had bought at the marketplace and then went down to the bakery to start the night's work. As I supervised the dough mixer's work – he was new and still hadn't learned in what order to mix the flour, eggs, sugar, water and butter – I wondered if I should tell Nelio about what had happened during the day. I was not sure how he would react. Would he be pleased that he was missed? Or would it make him depressed? I also had to admit that above all else I was hoping it might make him tell me who had tried to kill him, and why.

I was convinced that it was not an accidental shooting. A servant of evil, unknown to me, had pointed the gun at Nelio. I thought it might have been the man with the hard, squinty eyes who had followed his tracks, which had led to the city, and who had now found Nelio. But I couldn't really believe it was him. And that wouldn't explain why it had happened on the spotlit stage, and in the middle of the night.

I argued with the dough mixer, who was lazy and uninterested in his work. I threatened to complain about him to Dona Esmeralda. But he only laughed at me and hummed his monotonous tunes, which he made up as he laboured with the flour and water. Finally I was able to send him home; it was then almost midnight. I baked the first loaves and filled the baking pans. When they were in the oven, I hurried back to the roof. A mild breeze was blowing in from the sea. In the distance I could see lightning flashes from a thunderstorm that was moving past.

Nelio was awake. He smiled when he caught sight of me. I gave him the food I had bought and some water, which I mixed with Senhora Muwulene's herbs.

'I slept for a long time,' he said. And I've been dreaming. I've been retracing my steps. I dreamed that I saw Yabu Bata again.'

'Did he find his path?' I asked cautiously.

Nelio looked at me in surprise. 'Why would I ask him that? Yabu Bata was looking for his path in real life. So why would I ask him about it when I met him in a dream?'

Now, a year after the events on the rooftop, after those nights before Nelio died and I was given the strange explanation for everything that had happened, even now I still can't claim to understand Nelio's answer to my question about Yabu Bata's path. I have a feeling that he was trying to tell me something important. But my brain is still not ready to allow me to penetrate all his words. Sometimes I doubt that I will live long enough to experience that moment.

I changed the bandage. When I saw how the wound had grown even darker, I couldn't hide my horror. I thought that I could also sense the faint smell of death already present in the infected wounds.

'I have to take you to the hospital,' I said.

'Not yet,' replied Nelio. 'I'll tell you when it's necessary.'

His words were so resolute that I couldn't bring myself to object. The extraordinary aura of irrefutable naturalness that surrounded Nelio, ever since he crawled from the equestrian statue and showed himself to the world, had not deserted him even though he was now very sick.

On that night, the fourth night, he talked a great deal about the statue that had become his home in the city and the secret space where he could retreat with his thoughts.

Nelio went into the city at first light on the day after he arrived. He had spent the night on the beach under an overturned fishing boat. He followed the stream of people, overloaded trucks, rusty buses, handcarts and cars moving towards the city. He gawked at the tall buildings and was afraid that the people he glimpsed behind the broken window panes would tumble out and land on his head. He followed the hordes of people without becoming part of them; he drifted along, wondering where he was going. He remembered his first days in the city as a ceaseless wandering, day and night. At first it was confusing and frightening, then more and more pleasant, and finally with a feeling of having reached a focal point where everything converged – all events, all people were gathered at a single point. Then he got to know the city. He pulled mattresses out of rubbish bins and learned to survive by copying the other children who lived on the streets as he did.

The next night he slept in the cemetery on the outskirts of the city. That was also where he thought he found a friend and then experienced a great betrayal. On the first day, which also was the longest day, his bare feet became covered with blisters since he wasn't used to walking on asphalt and rough cobblestones. He also stumbled many times and fell into the holes that peppered the streets and pavements. He learned that at any given moment he had to make a choice between looking at the wares on display in a shop window or continuing on. If he became absorbed in a fierce quarrel between a man and a woman, he couldn't keep moving at the same time.

When dusk began to fall, he found himself on the outskirts of the city. Behind a partially collapsed gate in a wall he saw several trees. He thought that he should climb up there, uncertain whether the city might have its own wild animals that hunted the homeless at night. But when he slipped in through the gate, he discovered he was in a cemetery. It didn't look like the place where they buried the dead in the burned village: simple mounds of earth, perhaps decorated with a few sticks tied in the shape of a cross. Here the graves had walls around them, with cracked, deteriorating photographs set in ceramic. Many of the graves were in shambles. He felt as if he were in a cemetery for dead grave monuments, not for people who had been reunited with their spirits. Some of the graves were so big that they resembled little houses, all of them adorned with white plaster crosses, and some of them had wrought-iron gratings in front of the openings. He was very tired. He saw other people curled up among the graves under blankets or pieces of cardboard. Outside some of the tombs, women were cooking food over fires while their families waited in the shadows. Nelio saw that the tree he had noticed from the street wasn't tall enough to climb. One of the tombs that was bordering on total collapse seemed deserted. That was where he crawled in and huddled in the dark. He fell asleep almost at once, secure in his conviction that he was surrounded by people and spirits who wished him no harm.

When he woke up at daybreak he discovered that he was not alone in the filthy tomb. A man was lying along the opposite wall. He had a mattress and a blanket, which he had pulled up to his chin. He had hung his clothes on a hanger: a suit, a white shirt and a necktie. A shaving mirror had also been set into the wall of the tomb where a piece of tile had fallen out. Nelio sat up cautiously and was preparing to sneak away when he noticed one of the man's feet sticking out from under the blanket. At first he thought the man was sleeping with his shoes on. But when he bent down and looked closer, he realised that they were not real shoes. The man had painted shoes on his feet, white shoes, with red edges and blue shoelaces. In amazement Nelio stared at the shoe-foot sticking out. At that instant the man woke with a start and sat up on the mattress. He was quite gaunt and had sharp, piercing eyes. Nelio had the feeling that he had yanked himself out of sleep the way a wrestler tears himself out of his opponent's grasp.

'Who are you?' the man asked. 'You were sleeping here last night when I came home. I didn't want to wake you up, even though this is my house. I'm a kind man.'

'I didn't know this was anybody's house,' Nelio said.

'All of the houses in this city belong to somebody. There are so many people and so few houses.'

'I'll go,' Nelio said.

'Why are you sitting there staring at my shoes?'

'I thought they were feet,' replied Nelio. 'But now I see that I was mistaken.'

'I always sleep in my shoes,' the man said. 'Otherwise there's a big risk that somebody might steal them. To steal my shoes, the thief would, unfortunately, have to cut off my feet. That would be a great calamity.'

Then he showed Nelio how he had tied a string from his forefinger to the hanger where his suit hung. If anyone tried to steal his suit during the night, he would wake up.

'You can call me Senhor Castigo,' said the man as he got up and began to dress. 'Do you have a name? Do you know how to do anything? Or are you just as sluggish and ignorant as everybody else?'

'My name is Nelio.'

Then he considered what he could actually do.

'I can carry suitcases on my head,' he said.

Senhor Castigo gave him an amused look. 'An excellent occupation,' he said. 'The world needs people who can balance suitcases on the wooden blocks they call their heads. Can you hold a mirror without dropping it?'

Nelio held the mirror while Senhor Castigo skilfully knotted his tie.

When he was satisfied he nodded with pleasure at the mirror, hung it back on the wall and folded his blanket. Then he motioned to Nelio to follow him. Before they passed through the gate, which was hanging crookedly from its hinges, the man with the painted shoes stopped and stared at Nelio.

'You're too clean,' he said after a moment, and he bent down, picked up some dirt and rubbed it on Nelio's face. Nelio tried to resist, but Senhor Castigo hit him hard on the arm.

'Do you want to live? Do you want to survive? Or what?' he said. 'I can tell that you've just arrived in the city. I'm giving you the opportunity to survive – so long as you do as I say. Do you understand?'

Nelio nodded.

'Walk a few paces behind me,' continued Senhor Castigo. 'We don't know each other. Stop when I stop, walk when I walk. Remember this for the time being. I'll teach you the rest later on.'

They walked towards the town. At a street corner Senhor Castigo stopped and bought an onion. Nelio did as he had been instructed. He stopped a few paces away, and then continued to follow the man with the painted-on shoes. They walked along the base of the steep slopes until they reached one of the wide streets that Nelio recognised from the day before. They passed a café where many white people were sitting and drinking from glasses and cups. When they had left the café behind, Senhor Castigo drew Nelio into a dark stairwell that stank of urine,

'Carrying suitcases on your head is honest work, befitting a human being,' he said with a smile. 'But now you're going to learn the basis for all human labour, the most respectable profession that anyone can have.'

'I'd like to learn that,' said Nelio.

'Begging,' said Senhor Castigo. 'To arouse sympathy by means of your filth and your misery and your hunger. To help your fellow men express their generosity. Go out on to the street. When any white people come by stick out your hand, start crying and ask them for money. For food, for your brothers and sisters for whom you have sole responsibility. Your father is dead, your mother is dead, you're all alone in the world. Do you understand?'

'My mother is alive,' Nelio protested. 'My father might be too.'

Senhor Castigo flew into a rage. His eyes blazed. 'Do you want to live? Do you want to survive? Or what?' he shouted as he shook Nelio; his hand on Nelio's arm was like a claw. 'If I say they're dead, then they're dead. Right now, at this moment, while you're begging.'

'I can't cry for no reason,' said Nelio.

Senhor Castigo pulled the onion out of his pocket, bit it in half, and then grabbed Nelio hard by the neck. He rubbed the onion in Nelio's eyes until they stung and burned and his vision grew clouded with tears. Then he shoved Nelio out to the street. Nelio tried to do as he had been instructed. He stuck out his hand to the white people passing by. Mumbling, he tried to explain that he had not eaten for several days, for a week, for a month. A woman stopped. She was very fat and her skin was bright pink.

'Now you're lying,' she said. 'If you hadn't eaten for a month you would have been dead long ago.'

She walked away without giving him a thing.

Senhor Castigo hid in the shadows. Every time anyone stopped and began searching in his pockets to give Nelio a banknote, Senhor Castigo would walk past at exactly that moment, and then go back to the shadows from which he had come.

It wasn't until later that Nelio understood what was going on. In the middle of the day, when the heat was overwhelming, and Nelio was wobbly with fatigue and lack of water, Senhor Castigo said that they should leave and take a rest. They walked down to the harbour area, which Nelio had seen from a distance the day before. In the wall of a building hung a curtain made of white plastic streamers, which Senhor Castigo swept aside. Inside, the room was dark. Nelio had trouble seeing since his eyes still smarted. A woman who was toothless and filthy and smelled of sour wine appeared with a bottle of beer and a plate of food for Senhor Castigo. He told her to bring Nelio a scrap of bread and some water. When he was ready to pay, he took a wallet out of his pocket and smiled.

'Do you remember the man with the blue hat who didn't want to give you anything?' he said.

Nelio nodded. When he saw the wallet he began to suspect something although he still didn't fully understand. Senhor Castigo drank so much with his meal that now he was drunk. Nelio felt a growing uneasiness about being in his company. Even if he didn't know what he was going to do, he knew he didn't want to beg. He couldn't understand how it could be the most respectable profession a person could have. Why had everybody in the burned village talked about beggars with either contempt or pity? It was often hard to distinguish the two feelings.

Senhor Castigo pulled another wallet out of his pocket, and then another, this time a red coin purse that belonged to a woman. Nelio realised, without comprehending how his fingers had done it, that the man with the painted shoes was a pickpocket. That was why he had approached the people who stopped to give Nelio money and then slunk away. Nelio decided at once to run away from Senhor Castigo. There must be some other way for him to survive in the city. But the man on the other side of the table seemed to read his mind. He leaned over the table, grabbed Nelio by the throat with one hand, and looked at him with glazed eyes.

'Don't even think about it,' he said. 'Don't even think of running away. No matter what you do, I'll find you. Every policeman in this city is a friend of mine. If I tell them to look for you, they'll do it.'

He released his grip and then gave his full attention to drinking more beer and to emptying the contents of the wallets. The toothless woman appeared and stood at his side, watching. Now and then she would try to snatch a few of the banknotes, but Senhor Castigo was ever on the alert and slapped her hand. It was a brutal game they were playing. Nelio had slid his chair back, as far into the shadows as he could get. He could not understand how a thief could be such good friends with the police. He wondered if maybe that was the way things were in the city – the opposite of everywhere else. But even so, he was convinced that Senhor Castigo had said what he did only to frighten him. If Nelio didn't escape now, things were bound to get much worse. He would soon be blind from all the onion rubbed into his eyes.

His chance came when Senhor Castigo fell asleep on the other side of the table. His head fell back against the wall, and he started to snore with his mouth open. The toothless woman had disappeared into a back room. The smell of burning grease was coming from there. Nelio cautiously got up from his chair and retreated backwards towards the door. Carefully he pushed aside the plastic curtain. A ray of sunlight swept quickly over Senhor Castigo's face without waking him. As soon as Nelio was out on the street, he started running. He expected at any moment to feel Senhor Castigo's hand striking the back of his neck. Or the man with the squinty eyes, who had returned from the world of the dead to take revenge. Or the man with no teeth. Not until he was far away, swallowed up by the mass of people who were swarming outside the big marketplace, did Nelio stop to catch his breath. He drank some water from one of the crumbling fountains, catching in his mouth the spray of water that shot out of the ornamental fish, and then he rinsed the sweat from his face. The whole time he tried to make himself invisible. He kept an eye on all directions, thinking that Senhor Castigo would surely come after him. There were also a good many policemen outside the marketplace. Nelio noticed that they carried the same type of gun he had seen the bandits carry. The kind of gun he had held in his hands when he was supposed to shoot Tiko. How could it be that the police and the bandits had the same type of guns? Could it be true that the policemen were the pickpocket's friends? When the police came close to the fountain, Nelio ran off. In his pocket he had the banknotes he had begged. When he counted them, he saw that he had a quarter of the amount that Yabu Bata had given him to buy a pair of trousers. It was enough for food for two days if he ate as little as possible. For two days he would live like a beggar. Then he would have to decide what he was going to do to survive.

He walked down one of the long streets which followed the shoreline out of the city. It was lined with palm trees and decrepit benches. But there was a cool breeze from the sea and the palms provided shade. Nelio saw a stairway leading to the water. There he sat down and dipped his blistered feet in the sea. But he didn't dare stay for long. If Senhor Castigo found him, he would be lost. Then his only alternative would be to throw himself into the sea.

That night he slept in a broken-down car on a street on the outskirts of town. When he was sure that no one else was inside, he crawled into what was left of the back seat and tried to make it as comfortable as possible. Rats rustled around him. He slept fitfully; dreams groped over him like insolent fingers. He saw his father in his dreams, and the village when it was not burned down. His mother was also somewhere nearby, although he couldn't see her. It was one of those clear and cloudless days. But something was wrong; he felt a chill gust of wind in his dream. He didn't know at first what it was. Then he realised that the sun had disappeared. He looked up at the sky. The light was glaring, but it had no source. Someone had rubbed out the sun, removed it from the sky. But where was the light coming from? Then he realised that it was night-time and the bandits had come; they were all around him, and he was trying to escape.

Nelio woke up because he had banged his knee. He saw a stray dog standing by the car, staring at him. In the distance he heard someone laughing and a radio blaring. It must be the middle of the night. His dream had made him sad. He thought that the hardest thing of all was loneliness. There had to be a way for him to find something to eat so that he could survive. But how would he cure his loneliness? He left the car at dawn without having found an answer.

That very day he discovered the statue that would be his home during the time he lived in the city. While he was wandering aimlessly, fleeing from the menacing shadow of Senhor Castigo and in search of a remedy for his loneliness, he came to a section in the centre of the city that he hadn't yet seen. Squeezed in among the tall buildings he found a small open plaza, an almost circular marketplace. In the middle stood a tall equestrian statue. Nelio had never before seen a statue or a horse. At first he thought it was a donkey. But when he ventured to ask one of the old men sitting at the base of the statue, in the shadow of the mighty animal, whether such enormous donkeys really existed, all the men laughed at him.

'The biggest donkey is the one who asks such questions,' they told him, chuckling with satisfaction at their own inventive wit. Nelio realised that he had asked a thoughtless question. He knew from experience that old men took great pleasure in accusing the young of stupidity. One of the old men, who had a cane and a hacking cough, nevertheless explained to him that it was a horse, an Arab cavalo, and that the man riding the horse was a famous conqueror who was one of the forefathers of the notorious Governor Dom Joaquim. Nelio also learned that a few oversights had occurred in the young revolutionaries' campaign to tear down and remove those statues, which they thought were an unpleasant reminder of the era that was now over.

'But you can't eradicate statues,' said the old man pensively. 'You can't eradicate a statue the way you stamp on an insect. You can cart them away, melt them down. But you can't eradicate them.'

Nelio was told that the statue had been overlooked. A fierce debate had then broken out over who was to blame, and the debate was still raging. In the meantime, the statue had been allowed to stay. Nelio walked around it, again and again. The man sitting on the horse was wearing a helmet and holding a sword, which he pointed at the Indian shop selling cloth on the far side of the plaza. Nelio sat down at the base of the statue, at a suitable distance from the old men, and thought to himself that here, by this forgotten statue, was where he would stay. At this little marketplace, where people for a while stopped running and their pace was slow and dignified, where there were few cars and the sounds of the city were muffled by the tall buildings surrounding the plaza; this was where he would stay. It was like the calm space behind one of the sand dunes near the sea where he had slept during his long journey to the city. Or like a glade in one of the groves of black trees in the forest near his village. All afternoon he sat at the base of the statue, moving along with the old men whenever the shadows shifted, and watched what was going on in the plaza. He saw the Indian shopkeepers and their women with veils draped over their heads and shoulders, standing motionless in the doorways to their dimly lit shops, waiting for customers. In the shade of the tall acacias, women sat on their reed mats. They had piled up little pyramids of fruit, vegetables and cassava roots, which they sold. Around them crawled their children. Whenever any of the women fell asleep in the heat, one of the other women would at once take on the supervision of her child. Usually they sat in silence, occasionally they would sing, now and then they would get into a violent argument, which ended as quickly as it had begun. Nelio couldn't make out everything they said; their language was not like his own. But from the contemptuous comments of the old men, Nelio understood that the women were true to their nature and were arguing about everything that was of little consequence. The old men then began arguing with each other over this, about what could be considered of value in life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I knew that there would be more.

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

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

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

I had just finished when the rain came.

Nelio noticed nothing. He slept.