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.