A rat was sitting beside a cracked manhole cover, watching me with nervous eyes.
A slight tremor passed through the earth. I had never experienced such a thing before, but I knew what it was. The old people who had survived it in Dom Joaquim's first years as governor had recounted how the earth began to shake, how the ground had opened up, and how houses had collapsed. Those who had lived so long that they could remember that time had been waiting ever since for the tremors to come back one day, and for the earth to crack open again. I knew that was why so many old people refused to set foot on stairs or to have their beds on the first or second floor of buildings in the city of stone. They wanted to live on the ground, close to the earth, even though the fissure might open up right at their feet. They would rather be swallowed up by the warm earth than be crushed under a collapsing building.
The tremors were brief, barely more than ten seconds. Flakes of cement fell from the bakery walls, a window pane rattled. The rat disappeared underground. That was all. Then it was quiet once more. The early-morning people out on the streets – the drowsy street kids, workers and empregados on their way to various jobs – stopped in their tracks. It seemed as if the quake didn't really register in their bodies; it was more like a sound they seemed to hear, a feeling that something unusual was about to happen. When it was over, there was a vast silence. The city held its breath. Then a great turmoil erupted. People came rushing out of the buildings, many still in their night-clothes. Some carried small boxes containing their valuables, others seemed to have grabbed the nearest object without thinking. I saw people holding little mirrors, fans, a frying pan. The panic was palpable. Everyone stood in small, anxious groups in the middle of the street so as not to risk being struck by toppling buildings.
It was then that I noticed something quite strange. Everyone was looking up, to the sky and the sun, even though the tremors had come from below, an invisible shaking inside the earth. I still don't understand why they did that, although I've thought about it a great deal during the past year.
I must have been the only person who wasn't afraid.
Not because I'm so brave or fearless, but because I was the only one who knew what had happened. The trembling we heard or felt, as if it were some extraordinary portent, was Nelio's spirit breaking free from the last bonds that tied him to this world and, with violent force, slinging itself through the transparent barrier that forms the border to the other world, where his ancestors and those who once lived in the burned village were waiting for him. Alfredo Bomba would be there too, and this life was already a distant memory, like some mysterious dream only partly remembered. I looked at the people huddled together and thought that I ought to climb up on the roof of a car and explain what had happened. But I didn't. I simply left and went down to the shore, where I sat down in the shade of a tree with roots almost completely exposed by the shifting sand. I sat there looking out to the sea, at the small fishing boats with their triangular sails that were heading into the wide band of sunshine.
My sorrow was heavy. The dignity with which Nelio had left this world could only partially ease my pain of being left behind. At the same time I didn't know whether I could fully trust my own judgement. I was worn out after the long nights, I was exhausted in a way that I had never before experienced in all my life.
And I fell asleep sitting there next to the tree in the sand. My dreams were troubled. Nelio was alive, he had been transformed into a dog that I was trying to find as I dashed through the city. When I woke up I was soaked with sweat and extremely thirsty. From the sun I could tell that I had been asleep for hours. I walked down to the water's edge and rinsed my face. When I went back to the city, I saw that the commotion of the morning had subsided. Here and there people stood talking about the strange shaking inside the earth, but already it seemed a distant memory. They were now waiting for the next time, maybe in a hundred years, when it would happen again.
I reached the bakery and saw that the bakers were hard at work pulling the baking pans out of the ovens. Next to one of the ovens I noticed a scrap of the bandage that Nelio had worn around his chest on the last night. It must have come loose when I shoved his body into the fire. I glanced around and then snatched up the scrap of cloth and tossed it into the flames. Then I went out to the back courtyard and washed my whole body. I thought that now I ought to go back to the home I shared with my brother and his family. My life would now return to the way it was before I heard the shots fired in the deserted theatre that night. Nelio was gone. But Maria was still here, with her smile, along with all the bread that we had yet to bake during the countless nights that lay ahead of us.
But it was still too early. I went up to the roof, almost expecting to find Nelio there, his face pale with fever. But there was only the mattress, hollowed by the impress of his thin body. I shook it and then leaned it against the chimney to air. I folded the blanket, which I had to return to the nightwatchman. There was nothing else. I stuffed the cup that had held Senhora Muwulene's herbs into my pocket. Just as I was about to leave, I noticed the cat, which had come to visit on several nights, curling up at Nelio's feet or by his head. I tried to entice it to come closer, but without success. The cat kept its wary distance. When I stood up to go, it was still sitting there, staring at me. That was the last time I saw it. During all the nights I have since spent up here on the roof, the cat has never once come back.
Sometimes I think that the cat must have followed Nelio across to the other world. Maybe cats can keep on living in the land of the dead.
When I came down from the roof, Dona Esmeralda had arrived. She had brought along a bag of money – God knows where she got it – and she sat down on her stool and paid out the wages with her thin, wizened fingers. Although she was not miserly, it always seemed hard for her to let the money go. I think I understood why. There was so much she needed to do for her theatre, so many other things she would have liked to use the money for. Not for herself. Dona Esmeralda never bought anything for herself. The hat she wore was at least fifty years old, as were her clothes and the shabby shoes on her feet.
'Did you feel the earthquake?' she asked me.
'Yes,' I replied. 'The earth shook. Twice – like in a dream when you shudder from something unexpected.'
'I remember when it happened before,' she said. 'It was during my father's time. The priests thought it was an omen that the world was about to end.'
We said nothing more. I repaid the money I had borrowed from the girls at the bread counter and then left the bakery. The street kids were scavenging for food in the rubbish bins, the Indian shopkeepers were pushing up the heavy iron gratings on their windows and doors; the air was filled with the smell of corn gruel cooking; and no one, not one person, knew that Nelio was dead.
Without knowing why, I stopped outside one of the Indian shops and walked into the dim interior. Everything was the same as always. Behind the cash register sat a fat Indian woman, keeping an eye on her black sales clerks. A very old man bowed and asked me what I wanted.
What I wanted?
'I want Nelio back,' I said. 'I want him to be alive again.'