The face that was bending over him vanished. He heard footsteps running, fading into the distance. Then it was quiet again. The light from the spotlights was dazzling. He closed his eyes. Every time he took a breath, pain sliced through him. It felt as if he had a hole all the way through his body. In spite of the pain, he tried to work out what had happened. It must have been the thunder, he thought. I should have known that the sound of someone rattling and shaking the thunder sheets would be heard out on the street. The watchmen would start to wonder, and they would think we were thieves who had broken in. And they started shooting because they were afraid of being shot themselves. If I had stood perfectly still, they might have noticed that I'm only a child.
He heard footsteps again. This time they were familiar. Thin paws were cautiously treading across the stage. The group had come back. Nelio opened his eyes and saw their terrified faces. He did his utmost to hide from them how much pain he was in.
'You have to take Alfredo Bomba away,' he said. 'You can't leave him lying on the street or in a ditch. You have to see to it that he has a proper burial. Take him to the morgue and give the nightwatchman the money we have left. Then they'll take him to the cemetery tomorrow after it gets light. But before you leave, you have to put everything back the way it was when we came.'
Are you going to stay here?' Nascimento asked him.
'I'm just going to rest,' replied Nelio. 'I'll come later. Now do what I say. Even though I'm bleeding a lot, it's not as serious as it looks. Hurry. Dawn is almost here.'
They did as he said. They hung the costumes back in place, they lifted up Alfredo Bomba, and then they carried him away.
All was quiet around Nelio again. He tried to sense whether he was going to die soon, or whether it was going to take time. The hole in his body didn't seem to be getting bigger. It hurt terribly when he breathed, but he wasn't going to die right away. He was not yet ready to follow Alfredo Bomba.
Nelio had been talking with his eyes closed. Now and then his voice was so faint that I had great trouble understanding what he was saying. But now he opened his eyes and looked at me.
'You know the rest,' he said. 'I lay there on the stage, you came, and you carried me up here to the roof. How long I've been here, I don't know.'
'This is the ninth night,' I said.
'The ninth night, and the last. I can tell I won't be able to hold out much longer. I'm already starting to leave my body.'
'I have to take you to the hospital,' I said. 'There are doctors who can make you well.'
Nelio looked at me for a long time before he replied.
'No one can make me well. You know that.'
I gave him some water. There was nothing else I could do.
Somewhere out in the darkness I could hear two drunks quarrelling. I put my hand on Nelio's forehead and felt that it was very hot.
'I have nothing more to tell you,' Nelio said. 'It feels like my life has lasted so long. I'm glad you were the one who found me and carried me up here to the roof. I also want to ask you to burn my body when I am no longer living.'
He saw that I gave a start at the thought.
'How could you carry me away from here?' he said. 'How could you explain that I've been lying here on the roof and died. You must burn my body in order to get rid of me.'
He was right.
'It will take an hour for me to disappear,' he said. 'My body is so small.'
When he had asked me to do this last favour for him and he understood that I would do as he wished, he asked me again for some water. Then he closed his eyes and turned away from the world. His face was very peaceful.
What were his last words? Did he say anything else?
Even a year later, I am uncertain. But I don't think he said anything else.
My body is so small.
That was the last thing he said.
The night was quiet. I sat and looked at his pale face in the glow from the flickering lamp.
I remember that for some strange reason his face reminded me of the sea. It was etched with the experience of eternity.
An errant gust of wind swept its hand across the roof and brought with it a chill. When it departed, Nelio was gone.
And the ninth night approached its dawn.
Dawn
I will never forget that morning.
When I left the bakery, I stepped out into a dawn light that I had never witnessed before. Or was it my eyes that had changed, so that they could now take in the secrets of the light, the blush of dawn, coloured by Nelio's invisible spirit, which was floating free in its own space? I stood motionless on the street; the insight that Nelio had given me up there on the roof, that a human being is always at the centre of the world, no matter where he finds himself, now seemed to me quite self-evident.
A rat was sitting beside a cracked manhole cover, watching me with nervous eyes.
A slight tremor passed through the earth. I had never experienced such a thing before, but I knew what it was. The old people who had survived it in Dom Joaquim's first years as governor had recounted how the earth began to shake, how the ground had opened up, and how houses had collapsed. Those who had lived so long that they could remember that time had been waiting ever since for the tremors to come back one day, and for the earth to crack open again. I knew that was why so many old people refused to set foot on stairs or to have their beds on the first or second floor of buildings in the city of stone. They wanted to live on the ground, close to the earth, even though the fissure might open up right at their feet. They would rather be swallowed up by the warm earth than be crushed under a collapsing building.
The tremors were brief, barely more than ten seconds. Flakes of cement fell from the bakery walls, a window pane rattled. The rat disappeared underground. That was all. Then it was quiet once more. The early-morning people out on the streets – the drowsy street kids, workers and empregados on their way to various jobs – stopped in their tracks. It seemed as if the quake didn't really register in their bodies; it was more like a sound they seemed to hear, a feeling that something unusual was about to happen. When it was over, there was a vast silence. The city held its breath. Then a great turmoil erupted. People came rushing out of the buildings, many still in their night-clothes. Some carried small boxes containing their valuables, others seemed to have grabbed the nearest object without thinking. I saw people holding little mirrors, fans, a frying pan. The panic was palpable. Everyone stood in small, anxious groups in the middle of the street so as not to risk being struck by toppling buildings.
It was then that I noticed something quite strange. Everyone was looking up, to the sky and the sun, even though the tremors had come from below, an invisible shaking inside the earth. I still don't understand why they did that, although I've thought about it a great deal during the past year.
I must have been the only person who wasn't afraid.
Not because I'm so brave or fearless, but because I was the only one who knew what had happened. The trembling we heard or felt, as if it were some extraordinary portent, was Nelio's spirit breaking free from the last bonds that tied him to this world and, with violent force, slinging itself through the transparent barrier that forms the border to the other world, where his ancestors and those who once lived in the burned village were waiting for him. Alfredo Bomba would be there too, and this life was already a distant memory, like some mysterious dream only partly remembered. I looked at the people huddled together and thought that I ought to climb up on the roof of a car and explain what had happened. But I didn't. I simply left and went down to the shore, where I sat down in the shade of a tree with roots almost completely exposed by the shifting sand. I sat there looking out to the sea, at the small fishing boats with their triangular sails that were heading into the wide band of sunshine.
My sorrow was heavy. The dignity with which Nelio had left this world could only partially ease my pain of being left behind. At the same time I didn't know whether I could fully trust my own judgem
ent. I was worn out after the long nights, I was exhausted in a way that I had never before experienced in all my life.
And I fell asleep sitting there next to the tree in the sand. My dreams were troubled. Nelio was alive, he had been transformed into a dog that I was trying to find as I dashed through the city. When I woke up I was soaked with sweat and extremely thirsty. From the sun I could tell that I had been asleep for hours. I walked down to the water's edge and rinsed my face. When I went back to the city, I saw that the commotion of the morning had subsided. Here and there people stood talking about the strange shaking inside the earth, but already it seemed a distant memory. They were now waiting for the next time, maybe in a hundred years, when it would happen again.
I reached the bakery and saw that the bakers were hard at work pulling the baking pans out of the ovens. Next to one of the ovens I noticed a scrap of the bandage that Nelio had worn around his chest on the last night. It must have come loose when I shoved his body into the fire. I glanced around and then snatched up the scrap of cloth and tossed it into the flames. Then I went out to the back courtyard and washed my whole body. I thought that now I ought to go back to the home I shared with my brother and his family. My life would now return to the way it was before I heard the shots fired in the deserted theatre that night. Nelio was gone. But Maria was still here, with her smile, along with all the bread that we had yet to bake during the countless nights that lay ahead of us.
But it was still too early. I went up to the roof, almost expecting to find Nelio there, his face pale with fever. But there was only the mattress, hollowed by the impress of his thin body. I shook it and then leaned it against the chimney to air. I folded the blanket, which I had to return to the nightwatchman. There was nothing else. I stuffed the cup that had held Senhora Muwulene's herbs into my pocket. Just as I was about to leave, I noticed the cat, which had come to visit on several nights, curling up at Nelio's feet or by his head. I tried to entice it to come closer, but without success. The cat kept its wary distance. When I stood up to go, it was still sitting there, staring at me. That was the last time I saw it. During all the nights I have since spent up here on the roof, the cat has never once come back.
Sometimes I think that the cat must have followed Nelio across to the other world. Maybe cats can keep on living in the land of the dead.
When I came down from the roof, Dona Esmeralda had arrived. She had brought along a bag of money – God knows where she got it – and she sat down on her stool and paid out the wages with her thin, wizened fingers. Although she was not miserly, it always seemed hard for her to let the money go. I think I understood why. There was so much she needed to do for her theatre, so many other things she would have liked to use the money for. Not for herself. Dona Esmeralda never bought anything for herself. The hat she wore was at least fifty years old, as were her clothes and the shabby shoes on her feet.
'Did you feel the earthquake?' she asked me.
'Yes,' I replied. 'The earth shook. Twice – like in a dream when you shudder from something unexpected.'
'I remember when it happened before,' she said. 'It was during my father's time. The priests thought it was an omen that the world was about to end.'
We said nothing more. I repaid the money I had borrowed from the girls at the bread counter and then left the bakery. The street kids were scavenging for food in the rubbish bins, the Indian shopkeepers were pushing up the heavy iron gratings on their windows and doors; the air was filled with the smell of corn gruel cooking; and no one, not one person, knew that Nelio was dead.
Without knowing why, I stopped outside one of the Indian shops and walked into the dim interior. Everything was the same as always. Behind the cash register sat a fat Indian woman, keeping an eye on her black sales clerks. A very old man bowed and asked me what I wanted.
What I wanted?
'I want Nelio back,' I said. 'I want him to be alive again.'
The old man gave me a meditative look.
'We don't have that,' he said softly. 'But if senhor would like to try the shop across the street . . . They have unusual items. They import directly from those countries where people have slanting eyes.'
I thanked him. Then I bought a hat. There were some hanging on the wall behind him, and I pointed to the one in the middle.
'A hat is nice in the heat,' said the old man, unhooking it with a long stick that had a claw on the end.
The hat was white, with a black band around the crown. He wrote out an order, which I took to the woman at the cash register. As I was taking out my money, I realised that it cost more than half my month's wages. I picked up my new hat, set it on my head and went back out into the sunlight.
I walked to a café and had some food. My mind was empty.
In the evening I returned to the bakery. Maria was already there.
Her dress was gauzy and thin, her smile was broad.
'Did you feel the earthquake?' I asked.
'No,' she said and smiled. 'I was asleep.' Then we began working. At midnight I followed her out to the street. I touched her arm as we parted. She smiled.
That night I did not go up to the roof. When I needed some air, I went out to the street and sat on the steps.
The following day I returned home to my brother and his family. They were very glad to see me. My sister-in-law wondered whether I was ill.
'A man who buys a new hat isn't ill,' said my brother. 'A man does as he pleases. He goes home if he wants to, or he stays away.'
I lay awake in my bed for a long time, listening to all the sounds coming through the thin walls.
I knew that something was happening inside me, but I did not know what it was.
Not yet.
Several weeks passed. I baked my bread, touched Maria's arm, and hung my hat on the hook next to the ovens. On a few occasions when I didn't feel like going home in the morning, I crawled through the ventilation shafts and watched Dona Esmeralda's rehearsals of the play about the revolutionary elephants. Different actors tried out for the role of Dom Joaquim, but none of them in Dona Esmeralda's eyes was suitable. The actors seemed more and more confused about the meaning of the drama. They tried playing it in various ways: as a tragedy a comedy and a farce. But no matter what they did, the elephant trunks got in the way. One time the beautiful, young and pampered Elena started to cry onstage. It looked so odd to see her trying to wipe her tears behind the trunk. That was the only time I laughed during those days after Nelio's death. A single laugh that floated weightless in the space where I no longer felt at home.
One night I followed Maria out to the street, saw her smile and watched her leave. I went back into the bakery, shoved the baking pan into the oven, and closed the door.
I knew then that this would be the last night I worked for Dona Esmeralda.
I would finish up everything. In the morning I would wash myself at the back of the bakery; I would take my hat and leave, never to return.
I had come to the realisation that I could no longer be a baker. I had a different mission for the rest of the days that were allotted to my life. I had to tell Nelio's story. The world could not get along without it. I would not allow his story to be forgotten.
After more than a year I can still remember that moment quite clearly. I didn't actually make a decision. The decision already existed inside me, but it wasn't until that moment that I knew what I had to do. I thought about how I would miss the fragrance of fresh bread. I would miss Maria and her gauzy dresses. Maybe I would even miss Dona Esmeralda and her theatre.
Chronicler Of The Winds Page 23