'In the morning I woke up from a deep slumber. We were herded out of the huts, and I saw that the bandits were sitting in a circle, as if they were preparing for a council meeting. I could tell at once that the man with no teeth was no longer the one in charge. There was another man – short, with narrowed, squinty eyes – who now seemed to be the leader of the bandits. We were herded into the circle and ordered to sit down. The day was stifling; in the distance, black clouds loomed, gigantic shadows which surely contained much rain. The man with the squinty eyes was wearing a uniform that was both clean and without holes. He stood in front of us and welcomed us to this plateau, which he said was a liberated area. He explained that this was where we would be living from now on. In various ways we would take part in the war against the young revolutionaries. We should be prepared to sacrifice our lives if need be, and we should all obey the orders we received if we wanted to stay alive. Then we were given food and water. Even though we were all very hungry, no one ate more than the barest minimum. We were still overcome by such great fear that our stomachs had shrunk, as if they too had tried to make themselves invisible. Afterwards all the boys, including me, were told to go with the man with the squinty eyes and several other bandits, all of whom carried guns. My mother tried to hold me back – her hand was like a claw around my arm – but I looked at her and told her it was best if I went. I would return. If I refused, they might kill me. I stood up and went with the others.

'That was the last time I saw my mother. Her hand, which had so often caressed my forehead, had gripped my arm like a claw. Her fingernails dug so deep into my skin that I had started to bleed. Her fingers had spoken to me. She was so afraid of losing me too.

'I stood up and did not look back.

'We followed a path until we reached a small ravine that ran like a crack straight through the high plateau. That was where we stopped. There were as many of us boys as I have fingers on my hands, and I was the youngest. The others were my friends, my brothers, my playmates.

'After that everything happened very fast. The man with the squinty eyes stepped up to me and handed me an extremely heavy gun. Then he told me to curl my forefinger around the trigger and to shoot the boy standing in front of me. Although I understood what he wanted, I was filled once again with great fear.

'"If you want to live, you have to shoot him," repeated the man with the squinty eyes. "If you don't shoot, you're not a man. Then you'll have to die."

'"I can't shoot my brother," I said. "And I'm not a man, anyway. I'm still just a boy."

'He didn't seem to hear what I said. "Shoot him if you want to live," was all he said. "Shoot him."

'The boy standing in front of me was named Tiko. He was the son of one of my father's brothers, and we had often played together, even though he was several years older than me. Now he stood before me and cried. I looked at him, and I knew that I would never be able to shoot him. Not even to save my own life. I also knew that the man with the squinty eyes was serious. He would kill me, maybe even with his bare hands, if I didn't do what he said.

'At that moment I grew up. I made a decision that in all probability would mean my own death. But if I didn't do what I knew I had to do, my life would lose all meaning. I could not shoot my brother.

'I thought about my sister who had been killed in the mortar. I wanted her to be in my thoughts when I died. I knew that we would soon see each other after I too had been killed.

'I gripped the trigger with my forefinger, swiftly aimed the gun at the man with the squinty eyes, and squeezed. The shot hit him in the chest, and he was flung to the ground. I can still see the look of surprise on his face before he died. Then I threw the gun away and ran as fast as I could towards the path from which we had come.

'The whole time I expected someone to shoot me in the back, the whole time I saw my sister before me in my mind, and I ran so fast that my bare feet barely touched the stony ground. It wasn't really me who was running, it was the life inside me that ran, and I knew they would soon catch up with me and then I would die. Later I learned that there are moments in life when you become whatever you are doing. In those moments I was a pair of feet and legs that were running – nothing else.

'I reached a spot where the path divided, and I ran to the left, although that was not the way we had come. I came to a steep slope and could go no further. Then I made for where there was no path, following the edge of the steep cliff until it began to slope downwards and it was possible for me to slide over the edge and slip down towards the valley spread out below. They still hadn't managed to catch me. When I reached the bottom of the valley I stood up and for the first time looked back. I could not see the bandits anywhere. I kept on walking through the valley, which was quite flat and seemed to be endless. When it grew dark I stopped near a tree and climbed up into the top branches. I was very thirsty and had to use my last strength to heave myself up into that tree.

'In the early dawn I set out again. I didn't know where I was going; I thought about my mother and my sister, about my father and the burned village. But I also thought about the brother I had refused to kill and the man with the hard, squinty eyes. I was only a boy, but I had already killed a man.

'Late in the afternoon, when my lips were cracked with thirst, I came to a small stream. I drank my fill and then sat down in the shade of a clump of thick bushes. I still wasn't sure that the bandits were going to let me get away. And I didn't know what to do. I remember the terrible loneliness I felt sitting there next to the stream.

'It felt as if the world had ended, and I was the only one left alive. No matter which direction I took, I would still be alone.

'But I was wrong about that. Because while I was sitting in the shade of the bushes, I discovered that there was someone on the other bank of the narrow stream. That was where I met the white dwarf, who later led me here to the city.'

It was dawn by the time Nelio stopped talking. A light rain had begun to fall and I made a canopy of flour sacks over him. I touched his forehead and noticed that the fever had returned. Before I got up to go and get more of Senhora Muwulene's herbs, I thought for a long time about what he had told me. I still didn't know what had happened that night on the stage of the theatre. What was he doing there? Who had shot him?

Nelio was asleep.

I stood up and stretched my back, which ached. Then I left him alone with the dreams I knew nothing about.

The Third Night

That night I thought Nelio was going to die, and I would never find out why he had been shot. For long periods he was submerged in the high fever raging through his body. He raved deliriously and thrashed about on the mattress, and it was like watching someone in the last stage of fatal malaria; there was nothing more that either I or anyone else could do for him. He was going to slip away from life without ending his story.

But he fought his way through that crisis too; he was still stronger than the fever caused by his wounds, and when dawn came, his forehead felt cool and he was sleeping peacefully. He had even asked for a little bread before he went to sleep. During the day I fell asleep too. I rolled out a reed mat that I had borrowed from Senhora Muwulene when I went to get more of her herbs. I told her how things stood since I believed I could rely on her. But I didn't tell her the whole truth: either that it was Nelio, a street boy, who lay on the roof of the theatre, or that he was the one who had been shot. I simply said that someone had been wounded, someone who needed my help. She made no comment, she just mixed a new batch of herbs, crushing some tiny leaves that glowed a bright red, leaves I had never seen before. But I didn't ask her what they were. She wouldn't have told me anyway. She would have treated me with the same lofty contempt she had once shown the young police inspector when he tried to take her snakes away from her.