'I know I'm going to die,' said Alfredo Bomba.
'You're not going to die,' Nelio said. 'I have medicine in my pocket.'
'Even so, I know that I'm going to die,' Alfredo Bomba said after a while.
'Didn't you hear what I said?' said Nelio angrily.
They walked in silence.
Later that day, when Alfredo Bomba was asleep, Nelio told the others what the doctor had said.
'He can make a wish for whatever he wants,' Nelio said. And whatever it is, we'll give it to him.'
'He can have my trainers right now,' Tristeza said.
'Alfredo Bomba has never liked wearing shoes,' Nelio said. And besides, his feet are smaller than yours. He's the only one who can tell us what he wants.'
That night Nelio didn't go to his statue to sleep in the horse's belly. They made a fire behind the petrol station. They had all done their utmost during the day to earn enough money so they could cook a feast over the open fire. Alfredo Bomba sat closest to the fire, wrapped in a blanket because he was cold. Nelio had given him a pill. The pain was gone, but Alfredo could do little more than taste the food they had made for him.
'I'm sure you'll be well soon,' Nelio said. 'But until then, I want you to make a wish for whatever it is you want most.'
Alfredo Bomba didn't seem to understand what Nelio was saying. 'Whatever I want?' he said slowly.
'Whatever you want.'
'I've never heard of anybody wishing for what he wanted most and then actually getting it.'
'Then you'll be the first,' Nelio said.
Alfredo Bomba sat for a long time, pondering what Nelio had said. Nascimento and Mandioca disappeared every once in a while to look for more wood to keep the fire going. The city grew more and more quiet; silence descended over the group sitting around the fire.
Then Alfredo Bomba began to speak. 'I remember that my mama once told me about something amazing when I was little. She said it was true, but I've always thought it was a fairy tale, the kind that you tell to children. But I've never forgotten what she said. Maybe now I should try to find out if it was true or not.'
A mother doesn't lie to her children,' Mandioca said.
'Quiet,' Nelio said. 'Don't interrupt. Let him talk in peace.'
'There's supposed to be a place where the living and the dead meet,' Alfredo Bomba said. 'It's supposed to be a huge garden, with a river running through it. In the middle of the river there's an island that's nothing but sand. If you ever visit that island, afterwards you'll never be afraid of anything for the rest of your life. If it's true that I can wish for whatever I want most, then I wish that I could go there.'
'Yes,' Nelio said when Alfredo Bomba had stopped. 'I've heard of that river and an oval-shaped island made of sand. I've also heard there's a kind of lizard there that sings. But maybe I'm mistaken. I think you're right – you should visit that place.'
'I don't know where it is,' Alfredo Bomba said. 'How can you go someplace without knowing where it is?'
'We'll deal with that,' Nelio said. 'I have an atlas of the world. The one that Tristeza found in the rubbish bin. I'll talk to Abu Cassamo, the photographer, tomorrow morning. He might know.'
'Do you really think it's possible?' asked Alfredo Bomba.
'Yes,' Nelio said. 'I think it's possible.'
Alfredo huddled under his blanket next to the fire and fell asleep.
'So we're going on a journey,' Nelio said a little later. 'We'll need a lot of money, and we have to find out where that place is. And we don't have much time, either, before Alfredo Bomba gets too sick to make the journey.'
'There's no river and there's no island,' Nascimento said. 'I won't be part of this deception. It's better that we let him go to the movies every night. I don't think Alfredo Bomba has ever been to the movies.'
'They'll never let him in,' Mandioca said. 'He doesn't have any shoes. You have to have shoes and a ticket to go to the movies. If you only have a ticket, you can't get in.'
'Sometimes all of you talk too much,' Nelio said, not hiding his annoyance. 'We're going to find that place, and we're going to get enough money together so that we can go there. Now we'd better get some sleep. We have a lot to do tomorrow. And to show you that I'm serious, I'm going to sleep here tonight.'
'It's no good if you get sick too,' Tristeza said, worried.
Alfredo Bomba is sicker than me. That's the only thing that matters.'
They settled down for the night. Nascimento crawled inside his cardboard box and pulled the lid shut. Nelio curled up next to Alfredo Bomba. He lay there thinking that he had taken on a great responsibility. Alfredo was counting on getting what he had wished for. No one had the right to disappoint someone who was dying.
That night Nelio slept badly, tormented by disturbing dreams. The dreams that plagued him all had faces and reminded him of the young bandits who had clung to their bloody weapons. They had taken away his trousers and his ability to think and feel. He found himself near a river and caught sight of his face in the water. He was looking at a ghost, an old man with sunken eyes and a grimy stubble on his face. From the other side of the river Yabu Bata shouted something to him, but he couldn't understand what he said. Nelio woke up before it was light. Alfredo Bomba was sleeping next to him, on his back with his mouth open, like a little child. Nelio thought it would be wise for him to start this important day by trying to understand the dreams he had had during the night. From his father he had learned that dreams often contain omens. They might be puzzling, but it was a person's task to interpret the omens and to act accordingly.
'People sleep in order to dream,' his father had told him. 'The reason we wake up afterwards is so that we have the chance to interpret our dreams.'
Nelio thought that it would have been easier if he were lying inside the horse's belly. There he was used to studying his dreams. He needed to be alone if he was going to listen to the voices of the night that spoke to him. Here, surrounded by the sleeping band, he had no peace.
With the first glow of morning light in the sky, Nelio got up, carefully so as not to wake the others, and walked across the deserted street to Abu Cassamo's shop. He listened at the door and could hear the sound of shuffling footsteps inside. He knocked gently and waited. Abu Cassamo peeked from the doorway after undoing all the locks and the safety chain, which were his security against the world he mistrusted. His eyes that were always melancholy regarded Nelio standing outside.
'I've brought my maps again,' Nelio said. 'And I also have a question to ask you.'
Abu Cassamo let him into the dim studio. Then he squatted down next to the spirit stove where he was making coffee according to a complicated ritual. Nelio sat on a stool and waited. On the walls hung torn tourist posters in gaudy, implausible colours, and Nelio assumed that they were scenes from the Indian subcontinent, which Abu Cassamo would never see.
When Abu Cassamo had emptied his little coffee cup, he wiped his mouth and sat down on a stool facing Nelio, who was already holding the tattered atlas in his hands. He explained to Abu Cassamo why he had come. But he spoke of Alfredo Bomba's wish as if it were his own.
'I once made a promise to my father to visit this island,' Nelio said. 'Last night I dreamed it was time for me to make the journey. My father will be very annoyed if I don't do as we decided.'
'I assume that your father is dead,' mused Abu Cassamo.
'He'd be angry even if he was alive,' replied Nelio. 'I don't think it's got any better since he drowned in a ditch full of water when he was groggy with malaria.'
Abu Cassamo took the book of maps and turned on the last of the glaring photographic lamps that still worked. Nelio waited, aware that he was slowly being pulled back in time, to a point long before the bandits came and burned his village. Not until many hours later, as Abu Cassamo turned the final page of the maps, did he come back to real life again.
'I can't help you,' Abu Cassamo said. 'The island where your father is waiting for you isn't shown. This is a very p
oor atlas.'
'I found it in a rubbish bin,' Nelio said. 'Now I understand why someone threw it away.'
'The world can only be shown on poor maps,' Abu Cassamo said. 'How could anyone make a complete map of something that is so badly tended as our world?'
They were quiet for a moment.
'How do you find an island that isn't shown on any map?' asked Nelio at last.
'You can't find it,' Abu Cassamo said. 'The best thing you can do is to drink uputso and dance and talk to your father. Sometimes the dead can show us ways that we didn't realise we knew.'
Nelio couldn't help noticing the faint undertone of scorn in Abu Cassamo's voice. He knew that Indians were like whites in the sense that they had never understood why black people often danced and talked to their ancestors. Just like the whites, Indians were afraid; they hid their fear by showing their contempt, although with much greater discretion than the whites, because they were businessmen and they didn't want to make enemies with anyone who might some day unexpectedly become a customer.
'I'm going to take your advice,' Nelio said. 'But I have another question. Who might give me all the money I need to make the long journey and also buy a new suit for my father?'
'I didn't know that the spirits wore suits.'
'My father claims they do. When I dream about him, he's always wearing the same suit, which is now much too shabby and worn.'
'I only know one person who might be able to give you the money,' Abu Cassamo said. 'His name is Suleiman, and he's just as rich as the great Khan, but everybody pretends he's not because he doesn't give any money to build new mosques.'
'Why would he give me the money?'
'He's Indian, like me,' Abu Cassamo said. 'But his soul has gone astray by living so many years among blacks, like you. He's so afraid of evil spirits and omens now that he doesn't even dare to conduct business any more. He has shut himself up in his house and never goes out. If you give him my greetings, he might let you in.'
'How do you happen to know him?'
'He was my last customer,' Abu Cassamo said sadly. 'In the last photograph I took, you can see the fear shining in his eyes.'
'Maybe he ought to go with me to the island,' Nelio said. 'Where does this man named Suleiman live?'
'There's a house next to the old prison that looks as if it's had its top chopped off. 'Suleiman tore down the upper storey with his bare hands after he was swindled in some big deal. He was punishing himself for being so gullible. That happened many years ago, before he believed that the evil spirits and omens could harm him.'
Nelio got up to go. It was already late afternoon. He was very hungry.
'Don't you ever eat?' he asked.
'Only when I'm hungry,' Abu Cassamo said. 'But today is not one of those days.'
'I'll let you take my picture,' Nelio said, 'when I come back from my journey. And you'll take pictures of the others that I live with here on the street. You'll develop the pictures, we'll pick the best ones, and then we'll frame them. And we'll pay you for your work.'
'Which wall should we hang the photos on?' asked Abu Cassamo after he had shown Nelio out.
'At the back of the petrol station,' Nelio said. 'There's a beautiful wall there. When it rains, of course, we'll have to cover them with sacks.'
*
The next day Nelio walked through the city to Suleiman's chopped-off house. He opened the gate and walked into a yard that looked like an overgrown cemetery. In the dry grass lay rusty dog chains, a reminder of furious barking. Nelio knocked on the door. A tiny slot opened just above the doorstep. A fat brown finger stuck out and indicated that Nelio should lie down so that his face was level with the slot. The finger disappeared, Nelio lay flat and stared straight into an eye.
'I've come to talk to Suleiman about an island where fear is erased,' he said. Abu Cassamo sent me here.'
The eye vanished and the door opened a crack. It occurred to Nelio that all Indians open their doors only halfway, maybe out of fear, but also out of thrift. Nelio went into the chopped-off house where all the curtains were drawn. There was an unfamiliar smell, and it was very dark. When his eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, he saw that the house had no furniture at all. The only thing inside the house was money. There were bundles and stacks of banknotes everywhere, all tied up with string. It was the money that was making the smell that Nelio hadn't recognised. In the midst of all the money, as if surrounded by protective walls of banknotes, stood Suleiman. He was short and very fat. His hair had fallen out, his beard was skimpy, and the frames of his glasses were held together with dirty tape. Nelio explained to Suleiman the purpose of his visit. He listened with his eyes closed. When Nelio stopped talking, Suleiman threw out his arms in a gesture of weary resignation.
'I don't have any money to spare,' he said. 'The little I have left, which you see here, is already spoken for. And I can't go with you on your journey either. Beyond these doors all those who wish me ill are waiting. At night I hear them scratching and scraping on the walls of the house. They've lured my watchdogs away with poisoned pieces of meat.'
'We could leave after dark,' Nelio suggested.
'Even worse,' Suleiman said. 'It might have been possible in the daytime, in bright sunlight, but I don't dare. And besides, I'm too fat and my eyes are too feeble. I have to stay here and guard the money that's left. Once I was a wealthy man, as rich as Khan. Now my wealth has made me poor by dwindling away in some manner that I don't fully comprehend. Everything is already spoken for.'
'I believe one of the small bundles would be enough,' Nelio said cautiously, lowering his voice so that his request would seem smaller because it was presented so quietly.
'I have no money to give away,' Suleiman said, and Nelio could tell that he was beginning to get annoyed. 'Everybody wants money. I can't leave the house without being surrounded by all the beggars. It's easier to count the ones who don't want anything. The beggars even beg from each other. The dead in the ground shout for money. I've given away everything I once owned. What's left here is for paying my debts after I'm dead. The money in the corner by the window will pay for my funeral, the money beyond the door there will pay for my cousins' weddings and for my faithless sons' illegitimate children, whom no one will acknowledge except me. I have the alms ready, the fines and the bribes, and everything is spoken for. There's no money for a suit for your father or for a journey to the island that you're talking about. Even if it doesn't exist, even if you're actually a con artist and I choose to let you deceive me, I have no money to give you.'
'A little boy is going to die soon,' Nelio said. 'His soul could protect you.'
'My house is full of all the dead souls that people who have asked me for money have given to me as guarantees which I can redeem when they die. But what good have they done me?'
Nelio left Suleiman's house. The paths he had taken during the past few days had not led him any closer to his goal.
That evening Nelio gathered the group. He waited until Alfredo Bomba was asleep before he began to speak.
'Abu Cassamo couldn't find the place that Alfredo Bomba's mother talked about. Since Abu Cassamo never has customers who want to be photographed, he has been able to devote all his time to studying the maps. So it won't do any good to ask anyone else. And we don't have time to go searching for Alfredo Bomba's mother; no one even knows if she's still alive. We haven't managed to get hold of any money, either.'
He looked around. They all avoided meeting his gaze since they had nothing to say.
It was Tristeza who broke the silence. 'Maybe it would be better if we gave him my trainers after all. Now that he's so sick, maybe his feet have grown bigger.'