Chronicler Of The Winds

The Sixth Night

That day a cold wind suddenly swept in over the city. During the hottest time of the year this was not uncommon, but even though people knew this, it always took everyone by surprise. One time, long ago, when the city consisted of nothing more than several low buildings along the unspoiled estuary, rumour had it that icebergs could be seen at just about that spot where sharks now prowl with their fins barely visible above the surface. For several days the estuary froze solid, and people were able to cross the mouth of the river by walking on water. Even if this tale is in all likelihood a fiction, today whenever the cold winds sweep across the land from the sea, you still see people – especially old people – standing by the city docks, scanning the horizon to see whether the icebergs are about to return after all these years. Then the truth would be revealed: what had happened in the past was not just a fable.

I fell asleep in the shade of a tree down at the wharf where the rusty ferry that shuttles back and forth across the river puts in. I woke up suddenly because I was cold. It was already late in the afternoon, and I hurried back to the bakery. I was just on my way up to the roof to see whether Nelio was still asleep when I heard someone calling me. It was one of the girls from the bread counter, who said that Dona Esmeralda had been asking for me. I was supposed to go and speak to her at once, even though she was now over in the theatre rehearsing a new play with the actors.

I was instantly nervous. It was extremely rare for Dona Esmeralda to want to be disturbed when she was in the theatre. I asked the woman – I now remember that it was Rosa, who was big and fat and who passionately loved a tailor who had left her more than fifteen years before – what it was that Dona Esmeralda wanted.

'Who knows what she wants?' Rosa said. 'But I think you'd better hurry. She's been waiting a long time.'

I thought Dona Esmeralda must have discovered that Nelio was on the roof. She would know that I was the one who had taken him there. Now she was going to fire me because I had been hiding something from her.

I stepped cautiously inside the dim theatre, full of evil forebodings. Onstage, in the same spotlight where I had found Nelio lying in his blood, I saw the actors performing. They were stuffed into strange grey suits that seemed to be pumped full of air. From their faces hung long pipe-like objects that looked like lengths of rough rope, making it hard for them to move. I stopped inside the doorway, entranced by the balloon-shaped creatures onstage who were tripping over their long noses.

It took a while before I realised that they were supposed to be elephants. I could see Dona Esmeralda's back. She always sat in the same place, in about the middle of the house, when she was directing rehearsals. Since the rehearsal was under way, I waited to approach to her. I had a hard time working out what the play was about since the actors' words were impossible to hear from behind the long trunks hanging in front of their faces. But it seemed to me that they sounded annoyed. They kicked irritably at their trunks, moving awkwardly and ponderously in the balloon-like suits, which must have been quite hot.

As the rehearsal continued without interruption, I thought that I shouldn't wait any longer, so I walked tentatively down the middle aisle towards where Dona Esmeralda was sitting. She had taken off her hat and laid it on the floor near her chair. She was totally still. When I got close, I saw that she had fallen asleep. But she was sitting erect; her chin had not sunk towards her chest. The actors onstage shouldn't notice that she was asleep. I was about to retreat when she woke with a start and looked at me. She gestured with one hand that I was to sit down beside her. Carefully I moved the bottle of cognac from next to her chair and sat down. All the while the elephants were bellowing incomprehensibly at each other on the stage. Then Dona Esmeralda leaned towards me and whispered in my ear.

'What do you think of our new play?'

'It looks good,' I whispered back.

'It's about a herd of elephants that is afflicted by religious problems,' she said. 'It's a reminder of those evil days when my father still ruled this country. Towards the end of the play he appears onstage himself, with a drawn sword. If I can find anyone to play him, that is. The elephants are actually revolutionary soldiers.'

I have to admit that I had no idea what she was talking about. Since the actors up onstage seemed annoyed, I assumed that they didn't understand what the play was about either. But I didn't dare to venture any remark except to repeat what I had already said, that it looked good. Dona Esmeralda nodded contentedly and then seemed to forget I was there. She was following the rehearsal with a rapt expression of childish delight. I watched her surreptitiously, thinking that it was exactly this child's sense of joy that was keeping her alive, despite the fact that she was at least ninety or maybe even a hundred years old.

I thought she had forgotten that I was sitting there at her side when she suddenly looked at me again.

'I fired the dough mixer,' she said. 'What was his name?'

'Julio.'

'I told him to get himself an instrument and try to be a musician. I think he'd be good at it.'

Even though Dona Esmeralda always went to great lengths to avoid firing the people she employed, it could not be totally avoided. And she never let anyone go without recommending what type of work they ought to take up in the future. I knew that she was nearly always right. I tried to imagine what instrument would suit Julio, but I couldn't come up with anything.

Dona Esmeralda interrupted my thoughts. 'A new dough mixer is coming tonight. That's why I wanted to see you. I've hired a woman.'

A woman? But the flour sacks are heavy!'

'Maria is very strong. She's as strong as she is beautiful.'

The conversation was over. Dona Esmeralda signalled to me that I could go. I left the dark theatre, thankful that she had not sent for me to talk about Nelio.

She had said that Maria was as strong as she was beautiful. And God knows, she was right! When I went into the bakery late that night to start my work, there stood the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I fell instantly in love with her. At that moment no one else existed but her. We shook hands.

'My name is Maria,' she said.

'I love you,' I thought of saying. But of course I didn't. I simply told her my name.

'My name is also Maria,' I said. 'José Antonio Maria. The flour sacks are very heavy.'

I placed a sack – a white one with blue-and-red stripes – right next to her feet. She leaned forward, bent her knees and lifted it high over her head.

How could a woman be so strong? How could a woman be so strong and yet so beautiful?

'Have you worked in a bakery before?' I asked.

'Yes,' she said. 'I know how to mix dough.'

And she did. I just had to tell her how many portions of dough we needed to make each night and what Dona Esmeralda's special wishes were. Maria nodded, and I never had to remind her again.

She was so beautiful that several times I forgot all about Nelio. It wasn't until I let her go home around midnight that he once again entered my consciousness, although not until I had gone out into the street to see whether some man was waiting for Maria. But she went off alone into the night. At that moment I married her in my mind.

It was not until I was on my way up the winding stairs to the roof that I remembered where I was going and why. I immediately felt guilty. A human being was dying on the roof, and I had only my new dough mixer Maria on my mind. I forced myself to feel ashamed, though it was difficult, and then I rushed up to the roof.

Nelio was awake when I got there. Earlier in the evening, before Maria arrived, I had borrowed an old tattered blanket from the nightwatchman outside the Indian photographer's shop. I gave him a loaf of bread and a matchbox filled with tea leaves in return for the loan of the blanket. I had spread it over Nelio to protect him from the cool winds blowing over the city. I had given him some of Senhora Muwulene's herbs and sat beside him while he had one of his attacks of fever. The cool air seemed to have done him good. He smiled now when he caught sight of me.

At that moment he was a ten-year-old boy. The next moment he could once again be a very old man. He switched back and forth all the time. I never knew which one I would find before me. The only thing that was certain was that he had been lying on the roof for five days and five nights; it was now the sixth night, and the wounds in his chest were getting darker and darker.

Maybe it was meeting Maria that had influenced me – I don't know. But when I changed the bandage and saw that Nelio now showed the unmistakable signs of blood poisoning, I could no longer refrain from speaking my mind.

'You're going to die if you stay here on the roof

'I'm not afraid to die,' he said.

'You don't have to die. Not if you let me take you away from here. To a hospital. The bullets in your body have to come out.'

'I'll tell you when,' he said, as he had so many times before.

'Now it's my turn to say when,' I replied. 'I have to move you now. Otherwise you will die.'

'No,' he said. 'I'm not going to die.'

What was it that made me believe him? How could I allow myself to go along with something that I knew wasn't right?

The answer is that I don't know. But Nelio's power was so great that I yielded to him.

That night he told me about the time after Cosmos crept on board a ship and disappeared into the dawn. Towards daybreak, when Nelio began to grow tired, I could feel that the cool air had once again vanished. When I stood up to leave him and looked at the ocean, I could not see any icebergs.

On the morning when Cosmos left, when Nelio told the others that from now on he would be the leader of the group, everything had proceeded quite calmly. A transfer of leadership might be accompanied by unrest and murky feelings of resistance seeping to the surface. But Nelio told them the truth – that some day Cosmos would come back and then everything would revert to the way it was. He had no intention of changing anything – what he knew about being a leader he had learned from Cosmos.

But this was not entirely true. During the night, when he lay in the horse's belly and sleeplessly waited for dawn and the ranting morning prayers of the maniacally laughing priest, Nelio thought that he would be exactly like Cosmos, but even more so. He would be a little more patient with Tristeza; he would laugh a little more at the endless stories that Alfredo Bomba told. In this way Nelio hoped to be able to exercise the authority that Cosmos had established in the group.

The only one to challenge him during those first days was Nascimento.

'You know where Cosmos is,' he might suddenly say in the evening as Nelio was dividing up the money they had earned during the day by watching over and washing cars.

Tension would instantly spring up among the others. Nelio knew that he had to accept the challenge and once and for all make clear to Nascimento why Cosmos had chosen him as his successor.

'He appointed me as leader because he knew that I was the only one who wouldn't tell where he was going,' Nelio said. And then he continued, unperturbed, to divide up the money.

Nascimento pondered what this answer actually meant. That night he said nothing more.

'We can't have a leader who doesn't sleep with the rest of us,' he said on another evening.

Nelio was prepared for this. He had suspected that Nascimento would make use of the differences between him and Cosmos. And he had come to the conclusion that there were two significant differences between them. One, that Nelio lived separately, and two, that he was not several years older than the others.

'Everything will be the same as it was under Cosmos,' Nelio said. 'That's why I will continue to sleep wherever I like.'

A leader should be older,' said Nascimento.

'That's something you will have to discuss with Cosmos,' replied Nelio. 'I'm sure he'll be able to give you an answer that will satisfy you.'

Nascimento soon stopped challenging Nelio. He realised that it was getting him nowhere. The group was content with the fact that a change had occurred without anything threatening to split them up. Before long the other street kids in the city knew that Nelio, despite his young age, had taken over leadership from Cosmos, who had set off on a mysterious journey.

It was also during this period that Nelio began to speculate more and more about why the world looked the way it did. Before him he saw life teeming in the streets of the city. One day, when he was an old man and about to eat his last meal, would he have to dig that too out of the rubbish bins the way he did now? Was life really nothing more? Was that all? He remembered the words that the white dwarf, Yabu Bata, had spoken before they parted. 'There are two roads. One will lead you in the right direction, the other is the path of foolishness and will lead a person straight to ruin.' Which road had he chosen when he entered the city on that morning? Should he have continued to follow the endless shoreline instead? Nelio had only one mission in life: to survive. When he understood this, he grew uneasy. I have to do more than that, he thought. I have to do more than simply survive.

During that period he also acquired some habits which contributed to creating the image of him as a remarkable person. But he was never aware of the rumours circulating about him.

Every morning when he woke up he would ask himself whether he wanted to spend another day under the name Nelio. On those days when his name felt like a burden, he would choose another. He used to ask one of the boys playing by the equestrian statue what his name was and then take that name for the day. So far no one had discovered that he had turned the statue into his home. He always opened the hatch with caution when Manuel Oliveira began laughing outside his empty church, and he would slip out as quickly as possible. Then he would hurry through the city to the stairwell at the Ministry of Justice, where the others had begun to wake up at about the same time. They didn't want to be caught sleeping there when the guards arrived to open the doors or they would be brutally driven off and their cardboard boxes might be kicked to shreds.

The days of the street kids were always much the same without ever repeating themselves. Something would always happen that no one could have foreseen. But Nelio kept more and more to himself, and he would grow annoyed if the others didn't leave him in peace. His thoughts were often interrupted by Nascimento starting a fight with Pecado or someone in another band of street kids. Then Nelio would be forced to intervene to restore order and stop the strife from spreading.

When he stepped between the two combatants, silence would fall at once. No one had ever lifted a hand against Nelio, not even Nascimento. And no one could understand why he always managed to avoid being drawn into a fight. The rumour began to circulate that his father was some unknown feticheiro with exceptional powers which he had passed on to his son. Where the rumour stemmed from, where it had started, no one could say. But suddenly one day, a shadow fell across Nelio as he sat leaning against a tree right next to Dona Esmeralda's bakery, studying the torn and stained atlas of Africa that Alfredo Bomba had found in a rubbish bin the day before. When Nelio glanced up, a young woman holding a child was standing before him.

'My daughter is ill,' said the woman plaintively.

'Then she ought to be given medicine,' replied Nelio. 'But I have no medicine to give you.'

Nelio sank back into his thoughts. The woman did not move. Time passed. After more than an hour Nelio looked up at her again.

'I have no medicine,' he repeated. 'If your child was sick an hour ago, she must be even worse now.'

The woman had the child bound to her breast. Now she undid the wrappings, knelt down and held out the child towards Nelio. Many people had gathered around. Nelio felt ill at ease. He had great respect for the feticheiros and curandeiros who possessed the secret powers, who could talk to the restlessly hovering spirits, who could drive out the evil and liberate the good that every person has inside him. Nelio realised now that the woman who was holding out her child thought that he was a feticheiro. That scared him. Dead feticheiros would punish him severely if he pretended to be one of them.

'You're making a mistake,' he told the woman. 'Go to a curandeiro. I'll give you money, if you'll just go away.'

The woman didn't move. Nelio saw that Nascimento and the others were watching what was going on with interest. He had started to sweat.

'Go away,' he repeated. 'I can't help you. I'm only a boy.'

Suddenly the woman began to appeal to the circle of bystanders, which was getting bigger all the time.

'My child is sick,' she lamented. 'He refuses to help her.'

A murmur of displeasure erupted among those who stood there watching, and they immediately sided with the woman. Nelio saw that the only thing he could do was to take the child and hold her in his arms. He noticed that her lips were cracked and parched.

'Give the child boiled water with salt,' he told the woman, remembering what his mother had given him.

The woman took her child, smiled and placed a few crumpled banknotes at Nelio's feet. The crowd began to disperse.

'Not even Cosmos was a curandeiro,' said Pecado in amazement, 'Can you make the fleas stop sucking my blood?'

Several days later the woman with the sick child came back. Her daughter was now well. Nelio assumed it was the boiled water and salt that had had an effect. But from that moment on, the story spread that Nelio possessed the sacred, healing powers. Not wanting to be caught as a curandeiro who was not genuine, Nelio understood that all he could do was to spread another rumour. He gathered the group around him.

'If too many people start coming to ask me to make them well, then it will be impossible for me to continue to be your leader. That's why we're going to spread the news that I will only receive sick people when I'm sitting at the exact same spot where the woman found me. Only there. Nowhere else.'

From that day on, Nelio avoided sitting in the shade of that tree where he used to withdraw to ponder his many unanswered questions. Even though he never again held a sick child in his arms, he had acquired an invisible cloak over his shoulders, from which no one could free him. Nelio – he who was so young and yet had taken over as leader after Cosmos – was now a man with supernatural and magic powers. Nelio became a well-known figure in the city. Many started coming to him to ask advice. Nelio never tried to give a clever answer. He simply said what he thought. If he didn't understand a question, he would say so. If he had nothing to say, he would keep quiet. Rumours began to circulate that one day Nelio would perform a great miracle. Nobody knew what the miracle would be, but everyone expected it to be something magnificent, which would make their city famous around the world.

But Nelio had no intention of performing any magical or miraculous acts. He was striving only to do something that would make his life mean more than mere survival. At the same time, he took seriously his responsibilities as the successor of Cosmos. He was constantly trying to make sure that the kids in the group washed and didn't get sick. Several times he smashed half-empty wine bottles that Nascimento had found, determined to get drunk. During those brief times when they were not preoccupied with surviving, and they lounged on the pavement in a spot where they could find some shade, Nelio would listen to their dreams. He had discovered that the others' dreams were just as powerful as his own. He believed their dreams would always endure, no matter how hard their lives might be. Each and every one of them possessed a core that was as resilient and precious as a diamond. It was the dream of another day, a reunion, a bed to sleep in, a roof over their heads, an ID card.

Nelio decided that knowledge meant being able to see relationships between things. If anyone had asked him what was the fundamental need of every human being, he would have known the right answer at once: a roof and an ID card. That was what a person needed, in addition to food, water, a pair of trousers and a blanket. It was by having a roof over their heads and ID cards in their pockets that human beings differed from the animals. These were the first steps towards a decent life, an escape from poverty – building yourself a roof and obtaining an ID card. When the time was ripe, Nelio would see to it that the kids Cosmos had entrusted to his care would set off on that long journey away from the streets.

Nelio listened to their dreams, and he was often annoyed when they were both absurd and unrealistic. Even though he always tried to hide his irritation, there were times when he couldn't help putting his foot down. When Tristeza had disturbed their afternoon siesta over a long period of time with his endless pronouncements about how he would one day open his own bank, Nelio put his foot down. He woke up those who had managed to fall asleep and gave a lecture.

'Everybody is entitled to talk about their dreams. You dream when you're dreaming, and you keep on dreaming when you talk about what you have dreamed. That's fine. But what Tristeza is doing is not fine. It's not a good dream to believe that one day you will open a bank. Especially if you can't even count. It's idiotic. So from now on Tristeza will not talk about his bank. Especially when the rest of us want to nap.'

After that it was quiet. Everyone was happy to be allowed to sleep in peace. But Tristeza, who had a hard time understanding things and whose mind was sluggish, asked Nelio to repeat what he had said, and this time to say everything move slowly. Nelio was overcome with remorse when he saw how sad Tristeza felt when his dream was forbidden. He saw that he had to give him another dream at once so that he wouldn't lose his spirit.

'You must practise thinking faster,' Nelio said. 'That's what you should dream about. That one day you'll be able to think as fast as the rest of us. When you've learned to do that, we'll collect enough money for you to buy a pair of trainers.'

Tristeza gave him a look of disbelief.

'I mean it,' Nelio said. 'Do I usually make promises that I don't keep?'

Tristeza shook his head.

'You can go to the shop yourself and pick out whatever shoes you want,' Nelio said. 'Then you can take the money out of your pocket and pay for them yourself.'

'I'll never learn to think that fast,' Tristeza said.

'You'll get your shoes when you've learned to think just a little bit faster than now.'

'I don't know how to do that.'

'You think about too many things at once. That's why your head is always in such a muddle. Learn to think about only one thing and nothing else.'

'What should I think about?'

'Think about how hot it is,' Nelio said. 'Think about how soundly we're going to sleep and how seldom we'll be annoyed with you if you're not always talking about your bank. Think about that until you fall asleep. Later I'll give you something else to think about.'

'Trainers,' Tristeza said.

'Yes,' Nelio said. 'Trainers. Quiet now! Think. And sleep.'

Afterwards, when Tristeza too had fallen asleep, Nelio lay awake in the shade of his tree. He tried to imagine Tristeza in ten years, in twenty, as a grown man. He grew sad at the thought that Tristeza probably wouldn't live that long. The world wasn't made for slow-witted street kids.

One morning Alfredo Bomba came over to Nelio, who was absent-mindedly scraping dirt off his feet with a dull, broken knife blade. He told Nelio that during the night he had dreamed that the next day was his birthday.

'But you don't know what day you were born,' said Nelio.

'I dreamed that I knew,' replied Alfredo Bomba. 'Why would I dream something that wasn't true?'

Nelio looked at him thoughtfully. Then he clapped his hands and stood up.

'You're right,' he said. 'Of course it's your birthday tomorrow, and we're going to celebrate it. Leave me alone now so I can think about your birthday in peace.'

Whenever Nelio had to solve a problem or think something through until there was nothing more to think about it, he always wanted to be left alone. He couldn't think when the others were jabbering all around him. He would sit in the scorched-brown grass behind the petrol station where his only companions were a few scrawny goats. That was where he went now to think about Alfredo Bomba's birthday. After an hour he knew what they would do. He called the group together for a conference. Nascimento arrived carrying a box of half-rotten tomatoes that had fallen off the roof of an overloaded bus. With quick and practised hands they tore off the parts of the tomatoes that were rotten and gobbled down the rest. Nelio waited until the box was all but empty before he began to speak.

'Tomorrow is a great day. It's Alfredo Bomba's birthday. That's what he dreamed, and so it has to be true. I assume he's going to be nine or ten or maybe eleven. But that's not important. Nothing is preventing Alfredo Bomba from being as old as he wants to be. And tomorrow we're going to celebrate Alfredo Bomba's birthday.'

Nelio pointed to a house a short distance from the petrol station. In Dom Joaquim's day it had belonged to a wealthy plantation owner who had vast fields of tea in the remote western provinces. After the arrival of the young revolutionaries, the house stood empty for a long time and fell into disrepair. But during recent years various whites had lived there who had come to this country to offer assistance – people who were called cooperantes. Right now a man was living there who had bright yellow hair and who came from a country that no one had heard of. Nelio had once overheard that the man was a marques, without understanding what that meant.

Nelio had often wondered about these cooperantes. They wore shorts and sandals and carried small pouches of money in belts around their waists. Nelio thought this might be their uniform. They had big cars, and they were almost always friendly to the street kids and gave them too much money for guarding their cars. They liked getting red in the face from the sun and always tried to show that they weren't afraid of all the blacks who always wanted money from them – although Nelio had, of course, perceived that they were actually terrified.

Nelio pointed at the house.

'Tomorrow is Saturday. That means the marques will pack up his car with mattresses and chairs and food boxes. He won't be back until the following day, on Sunday. His empregada has the day off, and the nightwatchman always sleeps soundly. Nascimento can also try to get hold of a bottle of wine to give him. Then he'll sleep even more soundly. Since the man who lives there is a marques and cooperante, he's here to help the poor people of our country. We are poor. And he can help us by celebrating Alfredo Bomba's birthday. We'll hold the celebration in his house.'

He encountered a storm of protest. Nelio knew that everyone thought his idea was excellent, and they were trying to help by pointing out anything that might be a problem.

'We can't break into the house,' said Mandioca. 'The police will come. We'll have to have the birthday party in jail. They'll beat us badly. Especially Alfredo Bomba, since his birthday is to blame for it all.'

'We're not going to break in,' Nelio said. 'I'll explain later.'

'Since it's not our house, we'll have to be quiet,' said Nascimento. 'But we can't be quiet. We've never been able to do that. How can we celebrate a birthday without making a racket?'

'We won't open the windows,' Nelio said. 'And we won't break anything.'

'We can't turn on the lights,' said Pecado. 'Are we going to walk around in the dark in a strange house? A lot of things will get broken, whether we like it or not.'

'The marques always leaves the lights on when he's away,' said Nelio, 'so that no robbers will break in.'

He countered all their objections and then explained how they would get inside the house.

'Mandioca is the one who can do two things better than anyone else. First, he can look more pitiful and starving than the rest of us. Second, he can keep quiet and sit still for a long time. That's why, Mandioca, you will go up to the house and ring the bell. The cooperante will open the door. Then you will faint and collapse just inside the threshold. The cooperante will get worried; he'll bring you water to drink. After a while you'll start feeling better. You ask to use the toilet. When you're alone in there, you unlatch the window. Do it so no one will notice. Then you thank the cooperante for everything he has done for you. He'll probably give you some money, since you're so hungry. And then you come back here to us.'

'If I'm supposed to look hungry, I'll have to be full,' said Mandioca. 'If I'm really hungry when I'm supposed to look hungry, I'll just look crazy.'

Nelio pointed to the box of tomatoes.

'The rest of the tomatoes are Mandioca's,' he said. 'There's just one thing you should remember when you're inside the house. If you have to pee when you're in the bathroom, pee into the chair with the lid. Don't pee in the bowl with the taps. Do you understand?'

'I won't pee,' Mandioca said. 'What kind of bowl?'

'You'll see when you get there,' said Nelio. 'Now we'll wait here until the cooperante comes home.'

'What happens if he doesn't leave tomorrow?' asked Nascimento.

'All the cooperantes lie on the beach and turn red on Saturday and Sunday,' said Mandioca. 'Nelio's right.'

'I've never had a birthday party,' said Alfredo Bomba. 'What do you do?'

'You eat and dance and sing,' said Nelio. And that's exactly what we're going to do. And we'll get cleaned up and sleep in beds and have a roof over our heads. We can look at the pictures on his TV.'

'Maybe he doesn't have a TV,' Nascimento said.

'All cooperantes have a TV,' said Nelio. 'They have yellow hair and they have TVs. You have to learn that once and for all.'

Mandioca fainted on the threshold of the marques's house, unlatched the window in the bathroom, and was given 20,000 when he had revived and was able to leave the house. The next day they stood in the street and waved to the yellow-haired man as he left in his car. Late in the afternoon Nascimento managed to get hold of a wine bottle that was half full. By eight in the evening the nightwatchman was asleep, and they crept into the garden at the back of the house. By climbing up on Mandioca's shoulders, Tristeza reached the window and slithered inside. A few minutes later he opened the outer door as Nelio had instructed. They hid in the shadows and waited for a couple of policemen to pass by on the street. Then they slipped swiftly out of the shadows and disappeared through the door. Nelio told them sternly to stand still and not touch anything until he checked to see that all the curtains were drawn. Then he gathered them around him in the hall.

'Now everybody will go and get cleaned up. It's especially important that you all have clean feet.'

Since he mistrusted their desire to wash properly, he locked them in the bathroom and said that he would let them out, one by one, after he had personally checked to see that they were clean enough. Then he walked through the house, opened the two refrigerators, decided where they would sleep, turned on the TV, and finally put away two porcelain vases that might easily fall to the floor and break.

Nascimento had to wash his feet three times before Nelio was satisfied. Then he gathered everyone in the kitchen.

'Cooperantes always have a lot of food in the refrigerator,' he said. 'I'm convinced that the man who lives here will be pleased that we're celebrating Alfredo Bomba's birthday with a proper meal. So let's cook.'

Nelio went into action as if he were organising an invasion. He put Mandioca in charge of the vegetables, while he told Pecado and Nascimento to cook the rice. Alfredo Bomba and Tristeza helped the others while Nelio cut up a big piece of meat into small pieces and started to fry them. When the food was ready, they sat down at the big table. They had found some juice in the pantry, and they looked at Nelio and waited for his permission to begin.

'Today might well be Alfredo Bomba's birthday,' he said. At least he dreamed that it was. So let's eat.'

Several times during the meal Nelio had to intervene when fights threatened to break out over the meat. When Nascimento started getting loud without being aware of it, Nelio sniffed at his glass and realised that Nascimento had mixed his juice with alcohol. Without his noticing, Nelio exchanged Nascimento's glass with his own, and later poured it into the sink. Afterwards, when they had also found two big cartons of ice cream in the huge freezer, they started dancing to a radio that Nelio brought in from the enormous living room. He thought it best if they stayed in the kitchen, where there were no carpets to get dirty; the floor was tiled and easy to wash. At first Nelio sat off to one side and watched the dance. Deep inside his head he seemed to hear the sounds of a timbila and the drums in the village that the bandits had burned. Suddenly they were all around him in the marques's kitchen: the spirits that were looking for him, all of the dead and all of those who might be dead or might still be living. He could feel that he was about to become so sad that he might disrupt Alfredo Bomba's party with his mournful face. He got up from his chair and joined the dance. He danced as if in a trance until the sweat ran down his forehead. They kept on dancing late into the night; they danced until they didn't have a single dance step left in their legs or hips.

By then Alfredo Bomba had already fallen asleep under the big table. Nelio showed them where they should sleep – some in the marques's bed, others on the sofas. When it was quiet in the house, Nelio went back to the kitchen and cleaned up. By daybreak, no one could have said that anyone had been there as long as they didn't look into the refrigerators or the freezer. Nelio walked through the silent rooms and looked at the group of kids as they slept.

He had the feeling that he was wandering through many different times and worlds all at once. It was as if he could remember the little forest grove outside the village where he grew up, the village the bandits had come to burn.

They never burned the trees, he thought. The forest has been growing for hundreds of years. Each time a child is born, a tree is planted. You could see from his tree how old a person was. The tall and thick tree trunks, which gave the most shade, belonged to people who had already returned to the spirit world. But the trees of the living and the dead stood in the same grove, sought their nourishment from the same soil and the same rain. They stood there waiting for the children that were not yet born, the trees that had not yet been planted. In that way the forest would grow, and the age of the village would be visible for all time. No one could tell from a tree whether someone was dead, only that he had been born.

Nelio looked at the sleeping children and thought that he was wandering through a world that might not yet exist. In some future they would sleep in beds and on sofas, and they would dream the dreams that only people with full bellies can dream. Maybe the future would look like the marques's house.

He thought he could see something that the elders had talked about, as the greatest miracle that a person might be privileged to experience. To see what has been and what would come, all in the same moment.

He would never forget the night they spent in the marques's house. Alfredo Bomba would remember his birthday; Nelio would remember the feeling of floating freely through time. It's possible to fly without visible wings, he thought. The wings are inside us, if we're privileged to see them.

The first to wake was Tristeza. 'What should I think about today?' he asked.

'Think about how it feels to have clean feet,' Nelio said.

The others woke up and rubbed the sleep out of their eyes. First they looked around in amazement; then they remembered. It was still early dawn. By peeking through a curtain Nelio could see that the nightwatchman was still asleep.

'It's time to go,' he said. 'The same way we came.'

'How did you know there would be so much food in the cupboards that are cold?' Nascimento asked him.

'A man who comes home every day with big baskets of food can't be eating everything himself Nelio said. 'You've seen it for yourself. You could have answered that question without my help.'

They left the marques's house as stealthily as they had come.

'What will he say,' Alfredo Bomba said, worried, 'when he discovers all the food is gone?'

'I don't know,' Nelio said. 'Maybe like other whites who live in our world, he'll say that Africa and the blacks are inscrutable.'

'Are we?' asked Alfredo Bomba. Are we inscrutable?'

'No, we're not,' Nelio said. 'But the world we live in can sometimes be hard to understand.'

They went out on to the street, knowing that they shared a great secret. Nelio could see that they started rummaging through the rubbish bins and begging to guard cars with greater energy than usual so early in the morning.

He thought that what they had done was a good thing. That's why they would never do it again.

That morning Nelio was very tired. He said that he was going to sit in the shade of his tree and that he didn't want to be disturbed. They should also do their best not to fight or make a lot of noise around him.

But when he reached his tree he gave a start and stopped. Someone was sitting there. Someone he had never seen before. He was annoyed that his place beside the tree had not been respected. No one else was allowed to sit there.

He went over to the tree. It was a girl sitting there. And she was just as white, just as much an albino, as Yabu Bata.

I waited for more, but it never came. Nelio had cut short his story and slipped into his own thoughts. Then he looked up at me.

'I remember that I thought it had to mean something important,' he said. His voice was quite faint now, and I thought about the wounds that smelled bad and were growing darker under the bandage.

'First Yabu Bata showed me the way to the city,' he went on. 'And now a girl in ragged clothing was sitting in the shade under my tree. I thought it had to mean something. And it did.'

I thought about my own woman. The new dough mixer whom no one had escorted home in the night. I felt already a tense anticipation about seeing her again that evening.

'I see that you're thinking about something that makes you happy,' Nelio said. 'If I wasn't so tired, I would like to hear you talk about it.'

'You must rest,' I said. 'Then I will take you to the hospital.'

Nelio did not reply. He had already closed his eyes.

I stood up and left the roof.

The sixth night was over.