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 meaning 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 Bomba, 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.'
'I'm scared,' Alfredo murmured.
'You don't have to be scared,' Nelio reassured him.
'I'm scared to have Nascimento carry me. He might drop me by mistake – or on purpose.'
'I'll tell him we'll beat him with sticks if he drops you. Nascimento doesn't like being hit with sticks.'
Alfredo Bomba did not seem convinced by Nelio's words, but he was too tired to make any further objections. Nelio gave him another pill from the paper cone, and then he called over Pecado and told him to massage Alfredo Bomba's feet.
'What good will that do?' asked Pecado suspiciously. 'He's not cold.'
'We can't let the blood collect in his feet,' Nelio said firmly. 'Just do as I say.'
Pecado rubbed Alfredo's feet while Nelio made sure the others took turns wiping his sweaty forehead and saw to it that he always had cold water to drink. Those who weren't needed to take care of Alfredo Bomba were sent out on the street to wash cars and then buy ice and bread with the money they earned. The heat hung on, and someone was always sitting by Alfredo's head, fanning him with part of a broken umbrella. When the watchmen sat down on the steps of the theatre after midnight and started playing cards, the boys again crawled in through the broken window at the back of the building.
That night they began rehearsing their play. Nelio gathered them around him onstage.
'None of us knows anything about theatre,' he said. 'We're going to have to do this without help, but that's something we can do better than anyone else – we can survive without help.'
'I want to play the monster,' said Nascimento.
'You'll get to play the monster,' said Nelio. 'But only if you don't interrupt until I've finished talking. The key thing is that we make Alfredo Bomba forget that he's sick and forget where he is. Then we can take him wherever we want. And we'll wait until he's asleep before we bring him here. When he opens his eyes, he'll think he's dreaming.'
'It'll be hard to get him through that window if he's asleep,' Pecado said anxiously.
'There's a door in the back,' Nelio said. 'The night before we perform our play, we'll leave it unlocked.'
Then they started rehearsing the journey to the island that Alfredo Bomba's mother had once told him about. They tried to create a dream that would have the same power as reality. Nelio was filled with doubt. He felt as if he were casting about in a dark room. Often he would get angry because the others didn't do as he said or made too much commotion. It was soon clear that it would be almost impossible for him to use either Nascimento or Mandioca as actors. Nascimento had found a monster head, which he refused to take off, although he never managed to grasp when he was supposed to be on the stage, what he was to do, or what he was to say. Finally Nelio lost all patience and told him to wrap himself up in a piece of blue cloth and pretend to be the sea.
'What should I say?' Nascimento wanted to know.
'The sea doesn't speak,' replied Nelio. 'The sea is endless, it billows or it lies calm. You don't say anything, because the sea never speaks.'
'That sounds like a very boring part,' Nascimento protested.
'But important,' replied Nelio. 'If you keep on objecting, you won't play any part at all.'
The one who demonstrated the most natural ability to act was Pecado. He instantly memorised everything Nelio told him, he made his entrances on cue, and he spoke the words that Nelio wanted to hear. Nelio himself was in charge of the lights, turning them off and changing colours when needed. They were all very tired, but he urged them on. Each morning when they emerged from the theatre building, their faces pale and drawn, they could see that Alfredo Bomba was sinking deeper into his illness and moving swiftly towards the end. They didn't have much time.
On the third night they went through the whole performance that they had created. Except for the fact that Nascimento fell asleep in the wings, snoring inside his monster head, everything went almost the way Nelio wanted it. When he sat in the balcony and watched what was happening below him on the stage as he made the beams from the spotlights rise and fall, he sometimes even forgot where he was. The journey to the island shed its outer skin, which was the dream, and became a real journey that was being played out before his eyes.
Afterwards, when they once again gathered onstage and Nelio told Nascimento that he couldn't sleep in the wings, he said that now they were ready. They couldn't make the performance any better.
'Before we leave here tonight, we'll unlock the door at the back. Then tomorrow night we're going to carry Alfredo Bomba over here so that he can be part of the play.'
'Isn't he just going to watch?' wondered Mandioca.
'When he's watching he will also be part of it,' replied Nelio. 'That's the whole point of what we're trying to do.'
'He might not understand any of it,' Pecado said. 'He might be so disappointed that he won't even want to watch the whole thing. He might fall asleep.'
Nelio didn't have the strength to reply. Nothing would be any different. All that was left was to wait for the following night. He simply told the others to get everything ready so they could leave the theatre before it was light.
That morning Nelio realised that Alfredo Bomba only had a few days to live. He had stopped eating, his skin was stretched taut over his skull, and his eyes had sunk deeper and deeper. They sat in a circle around him, silent, tired and scared. Everyone felt anxious at being so close to death.
A hard rain fell on the city before dusk. They covered Alfredo Bomba with an old tarpaulin that had been discarded behind the petrol station. But he seemed not to notice; he was deep in his restless dreams.
'Old people are supposed to die,' Nascimento said, wiping the rain from his face. 'Old people, not children. Not even the ones who just live on the street like Alfredo Bomba.'
'You're right,' Nelio said. 'That's something that this world should hurry up and learn.'
Nascimento sat still in the rain, looking at Alfredo Bomba. 'Can spirits die?' he asked. 'In the same way that people do?'
Nelio shook his head. 'No. Spirits can't be born and they can't die. They just are.'
'I think Alfredo Bomba will be much better off than he is now,' Nascimento said.
'Old people are supposed to die,' Nelio said. 'Not children.'
'I think he'll be back with his dog,' Nascimento said hesitantly. 'Alfredo Bomba likes dogs, and dogs like him.'
'You're probably right. But be quiet now.'
Late that night the rain stopped. Alfredo Bomba was asleep. Everyone was tense. Pecado made frequent forays out to the street to keep an eye on the armed watchmen outside the theatre. 'It's Armandio and Julio tonight,' he said. 'Armandio, the fat one, is asleep. But Julio usually stays awake.'
'They won't hear a thing,' Nelio said. 'We'll go soon.'
Earlier in the day Nelio had gone to the marketplace and borrowed two thick broomsticks from an old broom-maker that he knew from before. On his way back he caught sight of Senhor Castigo being dragged down the street between two policemen. He was battered and bloody, and his clothes were hanging in tatters, as if an enraged mob had tried to rip him to shreds. He saw Nelio too. For a brief, confused moment he tried to remember who the boy with the two broomsticks could be. But Nelio doubted that he had recognised him.
Senhor Castigo is an omen, he thought. He has been caught and beaten. In the dark cells of the police station he'll be beaten even more. Soon there will only be scraps left of what might once have been a human being. If I hadn't escaped from him, I might have ended up just like him.
By pulling two old vests over the broomsticks, they made a stretcher. At midnight, they lifted Alfredo Bomba, who was delirious, and carried him across the deserted street. They listened in the shadows before they opened the back door and slipped into the theatre. While Nelio groped his way over to the light panel in the dark, the others waited behind the stage. Nelio made a faint dawn light sweep across the dark stage, a pink glow above a sea that was still asleep. He went back to the others, and they set the stretcher down, close to the footlights. Nelio sat down beside Alfredo Bomba while the others left to get ready. He didn't want to wake him yet. He could feel from Alfredo's forehead that he had a high fever.
After a while Nascimento stuck his monster-head out from the wings and whispered that they were ready. Nelio nodded. The next moment a wind started blowing. It came gusting in from the wings, from the mouths of Pecado and Mandioca and the others. Gently Nelio woke up Alfredo Bomba, coaxing him out of his deep slumber. When Alfredo Bomba opened his eyes, Nelio was bending over his face.
'Do you hear the wind?' he asked.
Alfredo Bomba listened. Then he nodded weakly.
'It's the wind from the sea,' Nelio said. 'We're on our way to the island that your mother told you about.'
'I must have fallen asleep, Alfredo Bomba said. 'Was I sleeping? Where are we?'
'On a ship,' Nelio said, his torso swaying slowly. 'Do you feel the swells?'
Alfredo nodded again. Nelio helped him to sit up, leaning him against the side of the stage.
Then he left Alfredo Bomba sitting there alone and went back to his light panel.
In his old age, when death had already taken root in his body, Old Alfredo Bomba made the journey that he had dreamed of and prepared for all his life. One night, when the tide was out and the water had retreated, he waded out to a little fishing boat with a lateen sail that was going to carry him along the coast to the estuary, which only those trusted by their mothers could find. On board the fishing boat was an invisible helmsman, a dog and a man with a sack of rice; a shipwrecked monster appeared occasionally at the side of the boat. They navigated by the stars and held a steady course for the second star in Pegasus. Before dawn, they were struck by a storm from the north-east; the wind tore at the sail, thunder boomed and bolts of lightning criss-crossed each other. Afterwards the sea was calm again, the shipwrecked monster seemed to have perished in the waves, and the man with the rice sack stood motionless in the bow, searching for the mouth of the river. The dog was lying next to Alfredo Bomba. It had hands instead of paws, but with the wisdom of his years, Alfredo Bomba realised that journeys along unknown coasts meant travelling in the company of strange creatures that no one had ever seen before. They drew close to land in the early dawn. The coast was lined with steep cliffs. The man in the bow offered a handful of rice to the sea, and then a river broke through the cliffs. They sailed up the river, which at first was very wide. The monster returned in the shape of a crocodile. But Alfredo Bomba felt quite safe in the company of the invisible helmsman, the dog and the man with the sack of rice. On the river banks people were visible, and they all waved to him. Alfredo Bomba had the feeling that he recognised the people waving to him, just as he thought the dog lying at his side was a dog he had met earlier in his life. But he thought this might have been when he was quite young, still only a child. After they had been sailing for a long time, the boat scraped against an invisible sand bar in the middle of the river. The dog stood up on his human-like hind legs, picked up the sack of rice, and waded off towards an island, which lay close to the place where the boat was stranded. The man who had been standing in the bow throughout the voyage, ceaselessly scanning the waters, now turned his head for the first time. Alfredo Bomba seemed to recognise him too. It was a face that came gliding towards him out of his past. Then he remembered who it was.
'Pecado,' he said. 'Is it really you?'
'Pecado was my father. I am his son.'
'I remember him,' Alfredo Bomba said dreamily. 'You look a lot like him. But he didn't have a crooked moustache under his nose.'
'Here we are. Let me help you ashore.'
Pecado's son helped the feeble Alfredo Bomba out of the boat. For a moment they were wrapped in the sea, which resembled a blue silk cloth. They waded a short distance before stepping ashore. The light was now quite strong, as if the sun had grown and was shining with many eyes above his head. Pecado's son set Alfredo Bomba down in a deckchair and opened a parasol over his head. The dog lay down at his side again; the boat and the crocodile had disappeared. It was very quiet.
'What happened to your father?' asked Alfredo Bomba, who felt the silence on the little sandy island carrying him back in time with dizzying speed.
'It was my son who led you here,' Pecado said. 'I am his father.'
Alfredo Bomba looked at him in surprise. Then he noticed that the moustache under his nose was gone. It really was Pecado who was standing next to him.
'Everything seems so long ago,' said Alfredo Bomba, and he felt the sea slowly beginning to seep into his body. A wave had started rippling inside his skin.
'You've grown old too,' he continued, still looking, at Pecado in amazement.
Pecado smiled. Then he pointed at the river. Alfredo Bomba squinted in the glare of the sunlight. He saw Nelio wading towards him with his trouser legs rolled up. At his side were Nascimento, Mandioca and Tristeza. Soon they had gathered around him. He saw that they were all old, just like him.
'I thought we would never see each other again,' said Alfredo Bomba. 'I no longer understand what I was always so afraid of
'We're here,' Nelio said. 'Wherever friends gather, there is never room for fear.'
Alfredo Bomba felt the wave inside him growing stronger and stronger. It was about to carry him away towards something unknown but not yet feared. The water was warm, and he felt pleasantly drowsy. The sunlight was dazzling, and the faces around him were slowly being erased.
'Who brought me here?' he asked. 'I should thank the man who stood at the helm.'
'It was your mother,' said the voice that belonged to Nelio, although Alfredo could no longer see his face.
'Where is she?' asked Alfredo Bomba. 'I can't see her.'
'She's standing behind you,' someone said, and now it was the dog lying next to him who was talking.
Alfredo Bomba didn't have the strength to turn his head. But he felt her warm breath on his neck. The wave rippled inside him, he was very tired, and he thought that it was a long time since he had had any sleep. He closed his eyes, his mother was sitting right behind him on the sand, and he now knew that he had been afraid for no reason. What had happened would keep on happening: his friends would always be with him.
Then the suns were extinguished around him, one after the other. He smiled at the thought of the strange dog that had human hands instead of paws. He must remember to tell Nelio when he woke up. A dog that had hands instead of paws…
They stood around him, watching him sleep.
'He's smiling,' Nascimento said. 'But he didn't applaud. I think he was afraid of the monster.'
'Be quiet,' Nelio said. 'You talk too much, Nascimento.'
Nelio looked at Alfredo Bomba's face. He wore an expression that he had never seen before. Then he understood that Alfredo Bomba was dead. He took a step back.
'He's dead,' said Nelio.
At first they didn't understand what he meant. Then they saw for themselves that Alfredo Bomba was no longer breathing, and they backed away.
'Were we that bad?' said Mandioca.
'I think we did the best we could,' replied Nelio, and his voice was thick with sorrow.
None of them said a word. Nascimento had turned his back and fled inside the monster's head.
A rat rustled under the stage.
Then everything happened very fast.
The doors at the back of the theatre were flung open. Someone screamed. In the harsh glare of the spotlights they couldn't see who it was. Everyone except Nelio ran to the wings. Someone kept on screaming. Nelio understood that he should put up his hands, that he should surrender. He stood in front of Alfredo Bomba, who was lifeless in his deckchair, and thought that even a dead street kid deserved to be defended. Nelio walked towards the footlights to explain that nothing was going on. Two shots rang out in rapid succession. Nelio was thrown backwards and lay full-length on the stage, at Alfredo Bomba's feet. He felt his vision grow hazy and he began to sink. He vaguely sensed that someone was looking down at him. Maybe it was Julio, one of the watchmen from outside the theatre. But the face was blurred, and he wasn't positive that he recognised the voice either. It might also be the transparent face of death, which had come for Alfredo Bomba, but had now decided to take him too – that's what he thought.
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.