'Understand what?' asked Nelio, unable to hide that he felt both displeased and disappointed.
'Understand that you have to learn to forget the promises that other people make.'
'I don't believe that.'
'You're not only inquisitive, you even object when older and wiser people tell you about life.'
Again they lay silent. The stars were waiting.
'Tomorrow when I wake up,' said Nelio, 'will Yabu Bata be gone?'
'That depends, of course, on how early you wake up. But I hope to be on my way by the time you open your eyes. I don't like saying goodbye. Not even to an inquisitive child.'
Nelio lay awake in the sand for a long time, long after Yabu Bata's breathing grew heavy, and even after he began to snore. Nelio seemed to realise for the first time that the next day he would be alone. He thought that this was the first thing he now had to learn, that he could no longer take for granted that he would always have someone else with him. Many times his father, Hermenegildo, had told him that the worst thing that could happen to anyone was to find himself alone. A person without a family was nothing. It was as if that person didn't exist. You could lose everything – your possessions, even your mind – if you drank too much tontonto. It was possible to survive all of that. But not being without other people, your family, all your mothers and sisters and brothers. Maybe that was the greatest injustice the bandits had done to him. They had robbed him of his family. Nelio felt very unhappy as he lay there in the cool sand with the snoring Yabu Bata at his side. Most of all he wanted to crawl over next to him, so close that he could hear his heartbeat. But he didn't dare. Yabu Bata would certainly wake up angry. Nelio stayed where he was and thought about everything that had happened ever since that night when the darkness had exploded in the white flash that came from the bandits' guns. He thought about his dead sister, about the man with the squinty eyes he had killed, and about his brother who was still alive. Tomorrow he would be left alone, he didn't even own a pair of trousers, and he didn't know where he should go. He thought that this would have to be the last question he asked Yabu Bata, the most important question he had ever asked in his life up until now.
Which way should he go? Where was his future? Was there any future at all? Had it vanished on that night when the bandits arrived and killed even their dogs? Or was it here, by the sea which he could not walk on, that his path would end? Was it here he would stay?
He fell asleep, dozing uneasily. All night long he dreamed that Yabu Bata had already got up and was preparing to leave. But when Nelio awoke in the early dawn, the suitcase was still at his side. Yabu Bata had taken off his sari and was standing naked in the water. His crooked body shone against the water as he washed. Nelio thought that someone standing naked in the sea was a very distinct individual. Against the water of the sea you could make out how a person truly looked.
Yabu Bata came back to the beach and did not seem glad to find Nelio awake. He pulled on his sari and shook the water out of his frizzy, pale yellow hair.
'I know that you think I ask too many questions,' Nelio said. 'That's why I'm only going to ask you one question before you leave.'
At that moment Yabu Bata seemed sad that they were going to part. He sat down on the sand next to his suitcase and rested his head in his hands.
'Sometimes I wonder whether I'm ever going to find that path I dreamed about,' he said. 'Every night I dream that I'm back in my village near Hunchback Mountain, that I'm at my forge. But when I wake up, I'm always somewhere else. I often wonder why God gave people the power to dream. Why should you see a path in your dreams that you might never find? Why should you keep returning in your dreams to your forge, and then wake up lying on the sand near the sea?'
Yabu Bata sat there for a long time with his head in his hands, brooding over why people dream. Then he straightened up and looked at Nelio.
'What did you want to ask me?' he said.
'Which way should I go?'
Yabu Bata nodded thoughtfully. 'That's the best question you've ever asked me,' he said. 'I wish I could answer it, but only you can say which direction you should take.'
'I want to go somewhere I can find a pair of trousers,' said Nelio firmly,
'You can find trousers anywhere,' Yabu Bata said. 'The best thing you can do is to follow the sea to the south. That's where there are people and towns. That's the way you should go.'
'Is it far?'
'You said you only had one question,' said Yabu Bata. 'As soon as I answer it, you come up with another one. A road can be both long and short. It depends on where you're coming from and where you're going.'
All of a sudden Yabu Bata started laughing. He grabbed a fistful of sand and tossed it over his head, as if he had suddenly lost his mind.
'I'll be damned if I'm not going to miss you!' he said after he calmed down.
He opened the lid of his suitcase and pulled out a little leather pouch. He took out several banknotes, which he gave to Nelio, 'Use these to buy a pair of trousers,' he said. 'Every time you take them off or put them on, you'll think about Yabu Bata.'
'I have nothing to give to you,' Nelio said.
'Give something to someone else when one day you have something to give,' Yabu Bata said, and he put the pouch back into his suitcase.
Then he stood and lifted the suitcase.
'There are only two roads in life. The road of foolishness, which leads a person straight to ruin. It's the road you take if you act against your own judgement. The other road is the one you must follow, the one that leads a person in the right direction.'
Then he started walking along the beach. He did not turn around. Nelio followed him with his gaze until his eyes began to hurt from the harsh sunlight which was flashing against the white sand. The last thing he saw was a blurry dot, finally hovering like a wisp of smoke in the heat.
Nelio followed the sea towards the south. He tried not to think about the great loneliness surrounding him. He missed the suitcase he had carried for so long on his head as much as he missed Yabu Bata. But he knew that he would never see him again, and he would never know whether he found his path or not.
Two days later Nelio came to a little town, which consisted of low buildings along a single street. He stopped outside one of them where clothes were hanging on a rickety wooden rack. An Indian man who was so gaunt that he seemed emaciated, as if he had endured a long period of starvation, came out of the dark interior. Nelio bought from him a pair of trousers made of dark red cotton. After he paid, he went behind the building, pulled off the tattered capulana and put on the trousers. He wrapped the capulana artfully around his head as protection from the blazing sun. When he returned to the street, the Indian was standing outside his door, hanging a new pair of trousers on the wooden rack.
'Where are you headed?' the Indian asked him.
'South,' replied Nelio.
'Those trousers will last for a long journey,' said the Indian dreamily.
Nelio followed the line of the shore. Every night he slept behind a sand dune. At dawn he would take off his trousers, wade into the water, and wash himself the way he had seen Yabu Bata do. When he was hungry he would stop and help the fishermen pull their boats on shore and clean their nets. They gave him food, and he would set off again after he had eaten his fill. The landscape changed, but the sea was always the same. In the distance he saw mountains and plains, forests with toppled grey trees, swamps and deserts. He walked without thinking about where he was headed. He was still moving away from something, and he was waiting for some sign that would tell him where he was going. At night he saw the moon wax from a slender crescent and become full, and then disappear. He thought about how he had already been walking for many days, and the sea seemed to him endless. Occasionally he met people and he would accompany them for a few days, but more often he walked alone. Everybody asked him where he was going. He told them about the bandits and about the burned village, but he always left out the fact that one day he had refu
sed to shoot his brother and had instead killed a man with narrow, squinty eyes. When they repeated their question – where was he going? – he would say that he didn't know. During this time he learned that people always want to know where other people are going. That was the question that bound strangers and wayfarers together.
One day, early in the morning, he reached the mouth of a river. He saw a demolished bridge nearby and was thinking that he would have to find someone with a boat to take him across, when he caught sight of a person sitting on a stone by the water. When he got closer, he felt uneasy. Her skin was scaly and she looked more like an animal than an old woman. But she had heard him, and she turned her head and looked at him with piercing eyes. Then he understood that she was a halakawuma disguised as a human being, a woman. Or maybe the opposite was true – maybe she was an old woman disguised as the wise lizard. He approached, the whole time keeping a safe distance from her tongue. He knew that he was in luck. If you met a halakawuma, you could ask for advice. Even kings listened when the halakawuma whispered its advice about how a land ought to be ruled. Nelio had heard stories about how the first leader of the young revolutionaries had his whole garden full of lizards, which he regularly called upon for advice. Nelio sat down on the ground. The lizard followed his movements with her piercing eyes.
'I don't want to disturb you,' he said, 'but I need some advice. I've been walking for many days without knowing where I'm going. I've been waiting for some sign, but none has appeared.'
'When one is as young as you are, there is only one road to take,' replied the lizard in a voice that rang like bells. 'Your road ought to lead you home.'
Then Nelio briefly recounted what had happened. The whole time he was worried that the lizard would become impatient and, hissing, creep away into the tall grass that grew beside the mouth of the river.
When he fell silent the lizard pulled a bottle out of a bundle at her side and took several vigorous gulps. To his surprise, Nelio noticed the smell of palm wine. The lizard drank and then grimaced. Nelio thought that the world was full of unexpected events. Never had anyone told him that a halakawuma might also be fond of the liquors that people poured down their throats whenever they wanted to get drunk.
'I am old,' the lizard said. 1 don't know how good my advice is any more. People have less and less respect for wisdom. Everyone seems to be taking the fools' roads, no matter what we say, those of us who still possess what is left of the old knowledge.'
The lizard took another gulp and began rocking back and forth on the stone. Nelio was afraid that she would fall asleep before he got his answer.
'Cross the river,' the lizard said at last, somewhat absent-mindedly, as if her brain was already full of other thoughts. 'Cross the river and walk for a few more days. Then you will come to the big city where the houses clamber like monkeys along the steep cliffs facing the sea. So many people are already there that it won't matter if one more arrives. There you can vanish and reappear as the person you want to be.'
Before Nelio had time to ask any more questions, the lizard crept away through the grass with a lumbering gait. He thought about what he had heard, and he decided that this was the sign he had been waiting for.
At the same moment he discovered that a man was just about to push a canoe into the river. Nelio jumped up and ran to the man, who already had a paddle in his hand.
An hour later, Nelio stepped ashore on the opposite bank of the river and continued his journey.
He came to the city late one afternoon. He had climbed a ridge, and he was very tired. How long he had been travelling, he could not say. But his feet were sore, and the trousers he had bought were already ragged and quite dirty. Now he saw the silhouette of the city rising along the cliffs down towards the sea.
At last he had arrived.
Although he had never been there before, he was immediately filled with the same feeling he had the first time he saw the sea with Yabu Bata. In the silhouette of the big city, the silhouette of something totally unfamiliar, something he could never have imagined, he felt himself at home. It was the second domain where he experienced an unexpected sense of belonging. This gave him with the idea that all people who are forced to flee from a war, a plague or a natural catastrophe, somewhere have another home waiting for them. It's only a matter of going on until you reach the point where all your strength has been emptied out. At that point, when exhaustion is transformed into an iron grip around the last remnants of your will, a home awaits you that you didn't know you had.
Nelio arrived in the city when the brief twilight was colouring the sky red. Some distance away he sat down on the soft sand and looked at the countless numbers of buildings, people, clattering cars and rusting buses.
Nowhere did he see any huts, nowhere in the city did he catch a glimpse of any villages.
He could also feel the fear inside him. Maybe the city belonged to the bandits. He didn't know. He still didn't dare go into the city. He would wait until the next morning. From a distance the city would be allowed to get used to his arrival. He knew that now his most important task was to stay alive. It's the most important task a person can have.
So Nelio found his home by the sea.
The following day he let himself be swallowed up by the people, the streets and the dilapidated buildings.
All of a sudden he was simply there.
*
Towards the end, at dawn, he was worn out. He had been speaking in such a low voice that I had to bend over his face to be able to hear what he said. Afterwards, when he had stopped talking, he fell asleep almost at once.
I sat next to him for a long time, afraid that he would never wake again. And I thought that then I would never find out what happened on that night in the theatre, the night that already seemed so long ago, the night when he was shot.
I put a wet towel on his hot forehead and went downstairs. From a distance I could hear Dona Esmeralda. Sometimes she came to the bakery early to check that everybody who was supposed to be there had arrived on time.
I stopped in the dark stairwell. Would she be able to tell from my face that Nelio was lying up there on her roof? Would she be able to tell that I had sat there all night long, listening to a story I never wanted to end?
I didn't know. So I continued down the stairs.
The Fourth Night
Dona Esmeralda didn't notice me as I came downstairs.
A great commotion was raging that morning on the streets outside the bakery and theatre. All the bakers, the dough mixers, the enticing girls who sold bread and the watchmen were standing around Dona Esmeralda in the doorway and looking out at the street. Since I am just as curious as everyone else, for a moment I forgot about Nelio who was lying up on the roof in his fever. Sometimes I think there is nothing that has as great a power over human beings as curiosity. So in a certain way I can forgive myself for not thinking about him for a little while. I asked the baker standing next to me – I think it was Alberto – what was going on. At the same moment I saw that huge groups of street kids were swarming restlessly back and forth along the street. They were blocking the traffic, throwing around the rubbish from the bins in front of the buildings, and yelling and screaming.
'Nelio has disappeared,' Alberto said.
I felt something grip my heart. 'Nelio,' I said. 'Nelio who?'
Dona Esmeralda, who has an exceptional ability to hear everything that is said in her vicinity, turned round and looked at me in surprise.
'Everybody knows who Nelio is,' she said in a sharp voice. 'The saintly Nelio whom no one has ever managed to beat up.'
'Of course I know who Nelio is,' I said apologetically. 'So he's disappeared?' I turned back to Alberto since Dona Esmeralda had returned her gaze to the street.