Nelio thought he must have been looking for his path for several months, maybe even since the rains had stopped. But when he asked, he received an answer he hadn't expected.

'You're still so young that you think a month is a long time,' replied Yabu Bata. 'I've been looking for my path for nineteen years, eight months and four days. With luck I'll find it before another nineteen years have passed. If I'm not lucky, or if my life is too short, I'll never find it. Then I'll have to continue my search for it when I begin my life with my ancestors.'

Nelio sat in silence, pondering what Yabu Bata had said. He began to worry that Yabu Bata might be counting on him to go on carrying his suitcase until he found the path he had once dreamed about, maybe for another nineteen years. Nelio hesitated for a long time, wondering whether he should say what he was thinking, since Yabu Bata was so quick-tempered. But finally Nelio realised he had to tell him.

'I can't follow you for nineteen years,' he said tentatively.

'I wasn't counting on that either,' Yabu Bata said angrily. 'I'm getting tired of seeing your face every day. When we reach the sea, we will go our separate ways. You'll have to manage on your own.'

'The sea?' Nelio said. 'What's that?'

His father may have told him a few times about a river that was so wide you couldn't see across to the other side. Nelio had vague memories of hearing about a gigantic body of water that could roar and heave itself up on to land, carrying off both people and animals. In those days he thought it was just one of the tales that his father liked to tell. Did the sea actually exist?

'I'd like to go with you to the sea,' Nelio said.

'It won't be long before we get there,' Yabu Bata said. 'At least, it won't take nineteen years.'

They reached the sea on an afternoon one week later. They had climbed up on to a ridge when Yabu Bata suddenly stopped and pointed. Nelio was following several paces behind him. He stopped short and didn't even have time to put down the suitcase before he caught sight of the blue water spread out before him. There and then, he had a strong feeling that he had arrived home.

So a person could feel at home in a place where he had never been before. Or is it imprinted on our consciousness, from the moment we're born, as a fundamental human trait, that we all must feel at home near the sea? Nelio stood next to Yabu Bata, gazing out over the water, which seemed to be growing bigger and bigger before his eyes, and thought about these things. They were thoughts that rose up of their own accord, effortlessly, thoughts that surprised him, since they were like nothing else he had ever thought in his life.

He didn't get far before Yabu Bata scattered his musings. 'If you can't swim, the sea is dangerous,' he said.

'Swim? What's that?'

Yabu Bata sighed. 'I'm glad we're going to part soon,' he said. 'You know nothing. And you ask questions about everything. I'd grow old very fast if I had to answer all of your questions. Swimming means floating in water and at the same time moving forward.'

Nelio, who had grown up near a river that was full of crocodiles, had never even imagined that a person could move around in the water. Water was for drinking, for washing, and for giving life to the corn and cassava. But to move around in it?

They walked down to the shore and to the sea, which was rolling back and forth.

'Don't put the suitcase down where it'll get wet,' Yabu Bata said. 'I don't want to be carrying a wet suitcase when I leave here.' Then he walked out into the water, after rolling up his trousers on his short, crooked legs. Nelio stayed behind with the suitcase so that he could move it quickly if the sea rolled farther in. The white sand was quite hot. Yabu Bata waded here and there, splashing water on his face. When he straightened up, he told Nelio to do the same.

'It's refreshing,' he said. 'Your heart slows down, your blood flows more quietly.'

Nelio walked into the water. When he bent down to drink, it tasted bad. He spat as Yabu Bata laughed gleefully from where he was sitting on the sand.

'When God created the sea, He did it with great wisdom,' shouted Yabu Bata. 'Since He didn't want human beings to drink up all His blue water, He made it salty.'

Nelio came back from the water's edge and sat down next to Yabu Bata on the sand. They sat there for hours without speaking and looked at the water, which was constantly changing, constantly moving. From several fishermen who passed by with nets and baskets over their shoulders Yabu Bata bought fish, which they cooked over a fire in the shelter of a sand dune. That night they stretched out on the sand and looked up at the stars. In the distance the water lapped the shore.

Yabu Bata suddenly broke the silence. 'Tomorrow I'm going to leave you. I brought you to the sea, as I promised.'

'You also promised me a pair of trousers.'

'You're an impudent young man,' Yabu Bata said crossly. 'People make lots of promises they'd like to keep. But it's not always possible to do everything you want to do. You want to live for ever. But that's not possible. You want to see your enemies perish from their own misfortune. That's not possible either. You want a pair of trousers. Sometimes that's possible. When you grow up, you'll understand.'

'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?