Chronicler Of The Winds

by Henning Mankell

  'Everyone's laughing,' he used to say. 'But what are they laughing at? At everything going to hell? The blacks should be crying instead. Things were different in the old days, before . . .'

  It might have been one of them. But it might also have been someone else, maybe some chance customer in the shop buying bread. But what I do remember quite clearly are the words that were spoken, the words that made me aware for the first time of the existence of a strange street kid named Nelio.

  'The President ought to make him his adviser. He's the smartest person in the whole country.'

  Several days later one of the girls who sold bread pointed him out to me; I think it was the thin little girl called Dinoka, who was always swinging her hips so seductively whenever a man came by. She pointed at a group of street kids who had their headquarters right outside the theatre. The boy she identified as Nelio was the smallest of all. He might have been nine at the time.

  'He's never been beaten up,' said Dinoka with awe. 'Just think, a street kid who's never been beaten up.'

  The life of the street kids was hard. Once they ended up on the streets, there was most often no turning back. They lived in filth, sleeping in cardboard boxes and rusty cars, scavenging food wherever they could find it, drinking water from the cracked fountains that still remained from Dom Joaquim's day. When it rained they would kick mud on to the cars that were parked outside the banks and then innocently set about washing them down when the owners came out to drink their afternoon coffee at the Scala or the Continental. They stole when they had the chance, they carried sacks of flour for Dona Esmeralda in exchange for old bread, and they knew that life would never get any easier.

  Each group of street kids had its own territory, and they organised their lives into small dictatorships in which the leader had unlimited power to judge and to mete our punishment. They often got into fights with each other, or with other groups that intruded on their territory, or with the police, who were always suspecting them of having stolen whatever couldn't be found. They chased the wild dogs. They caught rats in ingeniously designed traps, and then they doused them with petrol siphoned off from cars, and they cheered as the rats were incinerated.

  They came from all sorts of places, and they all had their own stories. Some had lost their parents during the long war, others had no memory of ever having had parents. Many had fled from step-parents; others had been literally thrown out of the house when there was not enough room or food for them any more.

  But they were always laughing. Sometimes when the heat of the bakery was too strong and the bread wasn't yet ready to be taken out of the ovens, I would stand outside and watch them. They were always laughing even when they were hungry, tired or sick. They laughed non-stop, especially at the fury of the drunken Leopoldo. Occasionally he would come tearing out into the street from his café if he thought they were making too much ruckus and throw beer cans at them, even though he knew that the next day the cans would be neatly lined up outside his café door and cause him all sorts of trouble as he was about to open.

  The stories about Nelio were legion. About his slyness and cunning, about his ability to administer justice, and especially about how he managed to avoid being beaten up. I also heard rumours that he possessed magic powers, that he carried the spirit of a deceased curandeiro who in the beginning of time, when the city barely existed, had exercised his power over the people who lived near the wide estuary.

  So I knew that he existed. I understood that he was remarkable.

  But I had never talked to him. Not until that night when I was alone in the bakery and heard the loud shots from inside the theatre. I raced up the winding stairs and sneaked into the uppermost gallery. To my surprise, I saw that the spotlights were on, and there was a set onstage that I had never seen before.

  And in the middle of the light lay Nelio. Blood was streaming from his body; it was almost black against his white, Indian cotton shirt. I stood there in the dark with my heart pounding and tried to think. Who had shot him? Why was he lying on the stage in the middle of the night, bathed in the spotlight and blood? I listened for any sound, but everything was quiet.

  Then I heard him wheezing, lying there on the stage. I fumbled my way down the dark steps, in constant fear that someone would pop up out of the dark and aim a gun at me too. When I reached the stage at last and fell to my knees at his side, I thought he was already dead. But as if he had heard me, he opened his eyes. They were still clear, even though he had lost a great deal of blood.

  'I'll go and get help,' I said.

  He shook his head weakly. 'Carry me up to the roof,' he said. 'All I need is fresh air.'

  I took off my white apron, shook off the flour dust and ripped it into strips. Then I wrapped them in a bandage around his chest where he had been shot; I lifted him and carried him up the narrow stairway to the roof. I kept a mattress there that I had found one morning next to the rubbish bins outside the bakery. That's where I set him down. I bent my face close to his mouth to see if he was still breathing. When I was sure that he was alive, I raced down to the ovens, got some water and a lamp, and went back up to the roof.

  'I have to get help,' I repeated. 'You can't stay here.'

  Again he shook his head. 'I want to stay here,' he said. 'I'm not going to die. Not yet.'

  He sounded so determined that I couldn't make myself object, even though deep inside I knew what he needed most was a doctor.

  He turned his head and looked at me. 'It feels so cool up here,' he said. 'This is where I want to stay.'

  I sat down beside him. Now and then I gave him some water to moisten his lips. Since he had been shot in the chest, I didn't dare let him have anything to drink.

  That was the first night.

  I sat on the mattress at his side. When he seemed to be asleep, I would go down to the ovens to make sure the bread was not burning.

  When it was still long before dawn, he opened his eyes again. By then he had stopped bleeding, and the bandage had grown stiff on his thin chest.

  'The silence,' he said. 'Here I can dare to release my spirits.'

  I didn't know what to say. The words sounded strange coming from a boy who was only ten years old.

  What did he mean?

  Much later I would understand.

  That was all he said.

  For the rest of the night, that first night, he was silent.

  The Second Night

  I have sometimes wondered why the sunrise arouses such melancholy in my soul. Often I would stand on the roof after a long night in the bakery where the heat was at times so intense that I felt it was about to drive me mad. In the early dawn, when the city was just starting to wake up, I would feel the coolness of the morning breeze from the Indian Ocean, watch the sun rise out of the sea like a huge globe, and feel a heavy sadness in my weary mind.

  Could this melancholy be a greeting from the spirits, those who care even about a simple baker? A reminder of the mortality that also awaits me?

  But on that morning, on that second day when Nelio had already been lying on the filthy mattress for many hours, I had no time to think about the spirits. I usually washed off the steam and sweat from the long night in the bakery at a water pump behind the theatre, where two carpenters would already be at work building the sets for Dona Esmeralda's productions. Then I would walk home through the city, which at that time of morning still smelled fresh, home to the place I shared with my brother Augustinho and his family in a bairro perched along one of the steepest slopes at the mouth of the river. But on that morning I did not leave. That wasn't entirely out of the ordinary, because sometimes I would lie down to sleep in the shade of the tree which years ago had taken root between the theatre and the Indian photographer's studio.

  I was also the only one who ever went up to the roof. I had kept secret the existence of the almost invisible extension of the winding staircase and the rusty sheet-metal door. I'm not sure that even Dona Esmeralda knew it was there. I don't think she has ev
er set foot on the roof If there was one thing in life that didn't interest her, it was a view, no matter how spectacular it might be.

  On that morning, when Nelio lay up there on the roof breathing fitfully, I couldn't go home. I had to stay. Hastily I washed up at the pump and then went to see Senhora Muwulene, who lived in a garage behind the courthouse, several blocks from the theatre. Senhora Muwulene had been a famous feticheira back when the white colonisers, clumsily and with increasing resignation, had tried to outlaw what they scornfully regarded as our primitive superstitions. The whites had never understood the importance of the spirits in a person's life. They had never understood the necessity of staying on good terms with the souls of your ancestors; they had never grasped that a person's life involves a constant struggle to keep the spirits in a good mood. No doubt that's why the whites lost the war in the end and were forced to return to their own country. It was the offended spirits who won the war, more than it was the young revolutionaries.

  But to the amazement of Senhora Muwulene and all the rest of us, the young revolutionaries were even stronger in their condemnation of our tradition of worshipping the spirits and regulating our lives in accordance with their wishes. At that time Senhora Muwulene used snakes to make pronouncements about the future and people's health. She lived outside the city, on the island which on a clear day can be seen from the bakery roof. At a huge public rally on the island, the local police inspector, who couldn't have been more than seventeen years old, had obeyed a directive issued by the young revolutionaries. All sorcerers and medicine women, including Senhora Muwulene, were to renounce immediately all their supernatural powers and to undergo extensive health-care training instead. Otherwise they would be thrown into prison. Everyone except Senhora Muwulene complied at once, since the police inspector had announced that the prison would be set up in the ice house of the fish factory, which the whites had hurriedly relinquished when the young revolutionaries seized power. Before they left, however, they destroyed the ice machines. The stench of rotten fish hovered over the island for years afterwards. But Senhora Muwulene had no intention of renouncing her supernatural powers. She turned up at the public rally with a number of snakes in her basket, and the ominous snarl that rose up from the crowd when the police inspector attempted to arrest her finally made him give way.

  Later, Senhora Muwulene moved to the city and established herself and her snakes in the garage behind the courthouse. Sometimes the snakes would escape and slither into the rooms where court proceedings were under way. Panic would break out and the proceedings would come to a halt as Senhora Muwulene crept about, gathering up her snakes, which were usually hiding in the dark corners behind the heavy tables of the prosecutors and attorneys. The tables were made of the black, iron-like wood that is found only in our country.

  So it was Senhora Muwulene that I was on my way to see, and she smiled her toothless smile when she saw me coming. I told her straight out that I needed herbs to treat a young man who had been shot in the chest and had lost a great deal of blood. Senhora Muwulene didn't ask any questions about what had happened. But she did want to know whether Nelio was left-handed and whether he had been born on a Sunday or on a day when the wind was blowing from the north. I told her honestly that I didn't know. Senhora Muwulene sighed and complained of my ill-prepared visit. Then she mixed some crushed leaves with a thin clear liquid that she poured from a bottle which had previously contained aftershave lotion. I paid her and then hurried back to the bakery. Following Senhora Muwulene's instructions, I diluted the contents of the bottle with water and went up to the roof. Nelio hadn't moved since I left him; he was lying motionless on the mattress. But when I knelt beside him, he opened his eyes and looked up at me.

  Does the face of a dying person seem more distinct? Is it only in the proximity of death that a person's features appear as they really are? I thought about this as I gave him the diluted potion to drink. Still, I was worried that if he drank anything it would seek out forbidden paths in his wounded chest. But I knew that I had to take the risk; there was no alternative as long as he refused to let me bring help or to take him on a cart to the hospital, which stood on the highest hill in the city. When he had finished drinking I lowered his head back down to the mattress. He closed his eyes after the exertion, and I looked at him and thought that even totally black people, like him and me, could turn pale. I touched his forehead and could tell that he had a fever; I hoped that Senhora Muwulene had mixed the best herbs she had.

  Nelio was ten years old, maybe eleven. And yet I had the feeling that it was a very old man who lay there on the mattress. Did the hard life of a street kid induce a different kind of ageing than for the rest of us ordinary people? A dog that is fifteen is already extremely old. Did the same apply to Nelio? I had no answer to my own questions, and I realised with despair that in a short time he would be dead. But soon I could tell from his breathing that he had slipped into a deep sleep again. It looked as if Senhora Muwulene's herbs had already brought down his fever; his forehead felt much cooler. I stood up and looked out over the city as I ate a piece of the bread I had baked during the night.

  Since it was still early in the morning, I knew that the theatre would be empty. The actors seldom arrived to start rehearsals before ten o'clock. Nelio was asleep and his breathing was steady now, so I went down the winding staircase, back to the stage where the night-time drama had been played out. The old cleaning woman, Cashilda, was slapping the seats with a rag, making clouds of dust. She was so old that she could neither see nor hear. On several occasions she had confused morning and night; she had arrived at the theatre in the middle of a performance and set about slapping at the seats while the audience was sitting in them. When the actors heard the continuous slapping sounds and the angry protests coming from the dark theatre, they stopped the play. Some of them went down to explain to Cashilda that it was evening, not morning, and that she shouldn't be slapping at the seats when people who had paid for tickets were sitting in them. Then the performance continued. The theatre was always dirty because Cashilda was old and tired. But Dona Esmeralda didn't have the heart to get rid of her. When I entered the theatre, she didn't notice my presence. I looked at the stage and discovered that the set from the night before was gone. I stared at the stage in disbelief. Could I have been mistaken? No, I was positive. It was not my imagination or a dream. A set had definitely stood there: an endless blue sky and a landscape of rippling elephant grass. But now it was gone. A solitary door stood on the stage, intended for the new play that Dona Esmeralda had lately started to rehearse.

  Why had Nelio been lying on the stage in the spotlight? What had happened in the empty theatre the night before? Who had shot him? I climbed on to the stage and could see the dark patch of blood. It was real blood, not a theatrical illusion left over from some previous performance.

  My thoughts were interrupted by Cashilda, whose dim eyes had caught sight of me. She thought I was one of the actors and that the rehearsals were about to begin. She always talked very loudly because she was deaf, and she started shouting her apologies because she hadn't yet finished the cleaning.

  'It doesn't matter,' I shouted back. 'I'm not an actor. I'm a baker.'

  But she didn't understand what I said. To her, I was an actor who had arrived early. I left the stage and went back to the roof. Nelio was still asleep. I thought I should put a new bandage on his chest, but I didn't want to touch him; I didn't want to wake him. I sat in the shadow of one of the chimneys and gazed out over the city. From far off came the sounds of all those people who for one more day were doing their utmost to survive.

  I saw before me all the thousands upon thousands of people who, with clenched teeth, were holding on to the futile dream that today, in spite of everything, things might be a little better than the day that had just passed. At the same time I wanted them to stop for a moment and think: right now up on Dona Esmeralda's roof a boy lies dying.

  I must have fallen asleep sitting there in
the shade of the chimney. When I woke, it was late afternoon. I sat up with a start, at first not sure where I was. I had been dreaming about my father; he had been talking to me non-stop, but I couldn't recall a word that he said. Then I remembered what had happened, and I went over to the mattress where Nelio lay. He was asleep, his face was very pale, but his breathing was still steady and his forehead was cool. Since I was hungry, I went down to the little courtyard behind the bakery which is covered with a roof of woven palm leaves. That's where the bakers ate their meals, and the cook, Albano, still had some boiled rice and vegetables left, which he had served earlier in the day. After I filled my plate and began to eat, I realised that I was extremely hungry. In a few hours I would have to start work again; the night was going to be a long one, and I didn't know how long Senhora Muwulene's herbs would keep the fever down.