'Why would that happen?' asked Nelio.
'Sick people swell up,' muttered Tristeza. 'The blood hides from death in their feet.'
Nelio pondered Tristeza's strange remark for a while. He had learned that Tristeza, even though he thought slowly, sometimes could say things that were worth considering.
'Alfredo Bomba doesn't want trainers,' he said. 'He wants to visit the island where people lose their fear. Our first problem is to find out where it is. Our second problem is that even if we find it, we have no money to pay for the journey.'
'There's no such island,' Nascimento said.
'Maybe not,' said Nelio thoughtfully. 'But that's a only minor problem.'
They were looking at him with surprise. What did he mean? Nelio raised his hand dismissively. Right now he didn't want to hear any more questions. Somewhere inside his head a plan was being hatched. He had discovered an unknown path in his mind which he was now following, and it would give him the answer to how they were going to grant Alfredo Bomba's wish. Nelio stood up and walked past the petrol station out to the street, and crossed to the other side where Abu Cassamo's photographic shop stood, next to the bakery and the theatre. One of Dona Esmeralda's performances had just finished. The audience was pouring out and heading off in the dark in various directions. The watchmen were starting to lock the doors, and the lights outside the entrance were extinguished, one by one. Nelio stood and watched all this at the same time as he followed a winding path between dense brambles in his head. He was seeing with his gaze turned inward, and he now knew how they would make the journey to the island in an unknown part of the world, or maybe in a world that didn't actually exist.
He went back to the waiting boys. Alfredo Bomba was asleep.
'I've found the island,' he said. 'It's not on the maps that Abu Cassamo tried in vain to read. And it's so close that we don't need any money to make the journey.'
'Where?' asked Nascimento.
'Right across the street,' Nelio said. 'It's right where Dona Esmeralda has her theatre. At night the theatre is empty. The stage is deserted, because the actors are asleep. What doesn't exist you have to create yourself. Even an island that no one can find can be created. Even a dream can be plucked out of your head and shaped for a purpose. Tonight when the watchmen outside the theatre are asleep, we'll climb in through one of the broken windows in the back, where Dona Esmeralda has her wardrobe room. Then we'll turn on the lights on the stage and start rehearsing a play about Alfredo Bomba's visit to the island that his mother told him about.'
'None of us knows how to do that,' Mandioca said.
'Then we'll have to learn,' Nelio told him.
'Some of the watchmen outside the theatre have guns,' said Nascimento.
'We'll be quiet,' Nelio said.
That same night, just after midnight, when the watchmen had fallen asleep outside the theatres entrance, they sneaked round to the back and climbed in through the broken window of the wardrobe room. They had assigned Tristeza to stay with Alfredo Bomba, since he would never be able to learn to say lines or to move in a disciplined way onstage. They found their way by striking matches, and then turned on the glaring spotlights that hung above the stage.
The stage was deserted.
They stood below in the house. At that moment Nelio thought that the stage looked like a mouth, an open mouth waiting for the food they would give it.
Then they began creating the island.
Nelio smiled his weary smile in the dawn light. In the distance, on the other side of the river, a thunderstorm was brewing. I realised that we were now approaching the end, both of his story and of his life,
I said nothing. I just looked at him and smiled. What was there to say, after all?
Then I got up and went down the stairs to the bakery.
The Last Night
On the last day of Nelio's life the sun was quite close to my spirit. When I emptied my lungs the air would flare up and fall like black-singed ashes to the cobblestones in the street. I have never – either before or afterwards – experienced heat as I did on that day. There was no relief anywhere; even the wind which crept in over the city from the sea seemed to be panting with exhaustion. I wandered restlessly through the streets, squeezed into the parched shadows where people were vainly seeking respite, and fought off a growing dizziness that was constantly threatening to topple me to the ground. I felt as if I no longer knew who I was, as if everything that had happened to me was a mistake that no one was responsible for or even cared about. For the first time I saw the world as it was, the world that Nelio could see through even before he was grown up.
What was it I thought I saw? The rusted engine in a burned-out tractor spoke to me like a scornful poem about a world that was on the verge of collapsing before my eyes. I saw a boy, a street kid, who was furiously lashing at the sand as if punishing the earth for his own misery. A solitary vulture sailed soundlessly overhead. It floated on the whirling updraughts, oblivious to the rays of the sun that were boring into its plumage. The bird's shadow passed over my head like an iron weight that was pressing me down to the ground. I saw an old black man standing naked at a water pump, washing himself. In spite of the heat he was rubbing his body vigorously, as if he were tearing off an old, worn-out skin. On that day, beneath the unrelenting sun, I discovered the true face of the city. I saw how the poor were forced to eat their lives raw. There was never any time for them to prepare their days – not those who were constantly forced to fight on the outermost bastions of survival. I looked at this temple of the absurd, which was the city and maybe also the world, and it resembled what I saw all around me. I was standing in the centre of the dark cathedral of powerlessness. The walls were slowly toppling to the ground, stirring up heavy layers of dust; the stained-glass windows had vanished long ago. I looked around and every single person was poor. The others, the rich people, stayed away from the streets, hiding in their walled bunkers, where the air was always kept cool by whining machines. The world was no longer round; it had gone back to being flat, and the city lay at the edge. Some day, when the torrential rains tore the houses from the slopes once again, the buildings would not merely slide down into the river – they would be tossed over the outermost edge, where no bottom awaited.
On that day the city seemed to have succumbed to an invasion, not of grasshoppers but of revivalists. Everywhere, perched on walls, boxes, pallets and rubbish bins, they were luring people over with their sobbing and plaintive voices, their sweaty faces and their pleading hands. Crowds gathered around them, swaying their bodies, shutting their eyes and thinking that everything would be different when they opened their eyes again. I saw people fall to the ground in convulsions, others crawl away like beaten dogs, and some who rejoiced – although the rest of us did not know why. I, who had always pictured the end of the world being played out against a backdrop of rain, racing black clouds, earthquakes and thousands of lightning bolts, started to believe that I might have been mistaken. The world was going to end in scorching sunlight. It seemed to me that all of our ancestors had gathered – there must have been millions of them – and that they had had enough of all the torments that the living were inflicting on each other. In the general apocalypse we would be united in the next world. The streets along which I was now walking would finally be only a memory in the minds of those who never quite learned to forget.
I passed a house where a crazy man suddenly began throwing his furniture out of the window. He was shouting for his brother Fernando whom he hadn't seen since the beginning of the war which the bandits had brought to our country. I caught sight of him just as he tossed out his bed. It struck the pavement, the mattress ripped open and the wooden boards splintered. Why didn't I yell at him to stop? Why did I just keep walking?
I still don't know why. The last day of Nelio's life was one long, drawn-out performance, like a dream that I can only partially remember. Something was about to end in my life. I had suddenly started to understand the real m
eaning of what Nelio was telling me. Maybe I was also afraid of the inevitable: that his story would end, that everything would be revealed and that he would die from the terrible wounds in his chest. I thought that for the poor, for people like Nelio and myself, death is the one thing that life gives us for nothing.
I thought about how we were forced to eat life raw. Afterwards, death was waiting.
We never had the chance to prepare any joys, to polish our memories until they shone, or to meet the next day without fear.
*
Not until dusk began to fall did I go back to the bakery. Dona Esmeralda was standing outside, squabbling angrily with a man delivering flour. It was a quarrel that had already lasted a thousand years and would be repeated for the next thousand. I waited until the man had departed crestfallen and Dona Esmeralda had gone into the theatre to force the actors to put on their elephant trunks and begin rehearsals in spite of the unbearable heat. Just as I stepped through the bakery door, I remembered that I had forgotten to buy herbs from Senhora Muwulene. But I didn't worry. I knew it was already too late.
I baked my bread, absent-mindedly staring at Maria's lovely body visible through her thin dress. The evening brought cool air from the sea. All around me the city was sleeping, getting ready for the next day when the sun would be just as punishing.
I thought about the boy furiously lashing at the ground. I wondered whether he was still there, striking out at his own misery, or whether he had somewhere to sleep.
Right after midnight Maria went home. Surreptitiously I had stood in the dark and watched her washing herself at the same pump that I used. Her naked body glinted in the light of the inquisitive stars, and I felt suddenly indignant that I could actually resist going over and pulling her to me. Her beauty, like everything that is beautiful, was mysterious. I wished that Nelio were standing next to me, looking at her, and sharing Maria's secret. It was a memory that I wished he could have taken with him to the next world. Even though I can't explain why, I don't believe that spirits are ever naked. But maybe I'm mistaken. I don't know.
When I reached the roof, I saw that the cat was there again. It had crept up close to Nelio's face to lie down. I paused in the shadow of the door to the winding staircase and watched what seemed to be a conversation between the cat and Nelio. A chill breeze blew past my face and made me shiver. The dead had begun to gather, waiting for Nelio to join them. Who the cat was, I couldn't tell. But it must have sensed my presence since suddenly it turned its head and glared at me with cold eyes. When it blinked, I thought that it was the man with the squinty eyes, the man that Nelio had killed, and who had now found him again. I picked up a pebble lying on the roof and threw it against the side of the mattress. The cat leaped away and vanished across the rooftops. When I went over to the mattress, I could see that Nelio was very pale. I felt his forehead; he had a fever, and his eyes were glazed with that vacant look I had seen in them before. And yet he smiled at me.
'The day was so hot,' he said in a low, brittle voice.
I gave him some water to drink, mixing the last of Senhora Muwulene's herbs in his cup.
Again we could hear the woman who spent the night preparing for the next day. Her pole was pounding the corn. And she was singing.
'Everything comes to an end,' Nelio said. 'Everything comes to an end, and everything starts over again.'
He raised one hand, which was terribly thin, and pointed up at the stars, so clear and close on that night. The sky had sunk down towards the roof to make Nelio's resting place smaller.
'My father was a very wise man,' he said. 'He taught me to look at the stars when life was hard. When I returned my gaze to the earth, whatever had been overwhelming would seem small and simple.'
I gave him some more water. Afterwards I felt his pulse, which was rapid and irregular. The allotted time was coming to an end.
Nelio looked at me in silence. His story had already begun, even though it was no more than a gleam in his weary eyes. But he still didn't seem the least bit frightened of what was coming. He was perfectly calm.
Is it possible to love death?
I never got an answer from Nelio while he was alive. But I still expect a solitary moth to alight next to me and give me the message from Nelio that I've been waiting for. That's why, in my loneliness, I sometimes dance on the roof and get drunk on tontonto.
I am waiting. I will always be waiting.
Nelio began to tell his story for the last time, and I knew that on that night it would be finished. He told me how they went up on to the empty stage in the glare of the spotlights. The shadows in the wings murmured, commenting on their presence. The stage breathed; every story that had been performed there over the years seemed to come alive again. The boys found themselves in the midst of a chaotic universe of plays, memorised lines, entrances and exits. It was a magic moment. Nelio gathered the others around him in the exact centre of the stage. He could see that they were frightened, that they sensed the presence of all the events which had been enacted there in earlier times and which had now been resurrected. Nelio thought that they were not just a group of street kids about to perform a play for the dying Alfredo Bomba. They had also come as an audience, and they had brought the old dramas to life by disturbing them in the midst of their long night.
They started by searching the theatre to see what things they might be able to use – discarded stage sets for old backdrops, costumes and wigs. Nelio gave strict instructions that nothing was to be touched unless he said so, and everything they used would have to be put back in the same place. That first night turned into one long game in which Nelio, from the spot where he was sitting in the centre of the stage, watched the others appear from the wings, unrecognisable in their costumes. Occasionally he had to tell them to hush when they forgot they were in the theatre illegally. He kept in mind Nascimento's warning about the armed watchmen on the street.
With the unrestrained joy of a child, Nelio watched them dressing up. Each time one of them appeared in a new costume, the whole stage would instantly change. A drama would begin, without words, without action, without any significance except that they had all been given permission to create another world from the one they normally inhabited. Pecado stepped into the light, dressed in a shimmering coat of red silk. On his feet he wore white shoes, and he moved across the stage as if prepared to defy gravity, even while waiting in the wings. A second later Nascimento appeared in the spotlight, transformed into a god, or perhaps an as yet unknown flower. He started rambling a disjointed narrative as, with great dignity, he circled around Nelio. Mandioca dressed up in various animal costumes, and also created animals that no one had ever seen before. With a crocodile's tail, a rat's legs, the breast of an insect and the head of a zebra, he crept across the stage, uttering sounds that Nelio had never heard before either.
While he watched this shifting, dreamlike parade, with one unexpected character and entrance after another, the play began taking shape in Nelio's mind. He imagined the journey, the moment when they stood by the river and glimpsed the island in the mist, the crossing and finally the arrival. He realised that it was no less than a paradise they had to try to depict. And since paradise doesn't exist, he had to conceive how it would look in Alfredo Bomba's world. He had to create a paradise that Alfredo Bomba would feel at home in. During that first night Nelio said very little. He gazed pensively, almost dreamily, at the various costumes and props that were brought on to the stage and then removed. He made a note in his mind of what he had seen. When he sensed that dawn was near, he gathered the others around him and said that now they would have to put everything back the way it was, erasing all traces of their presence, and then leave the theatre as unobtrusively as they had come.
'Tomorrow we'll start rehearsing,' he told them. 'For three nights we'll prepare. On the fourth night we'll make our journey with Alfredo Bomba.'
When they emerged into the light of dawn and returned to the place where Tristeza was waiting with Alfredo Bo
mba, Nelio saw immediately that he was much worse. For a moment he worried that Alfredo wouldn't live long enough for them to show him the play. Nelio told the others to keep quiet and not to make any commotion that might disturb the sick boy. Then he sat down at Alfredo Bomba's side and talked to him for a long time.
'We're going on a journey,' said he. 'We're going to carry you the whole way. The trip won't take long.'