Chronicler Of The Winds Read Online Free PDF Page A

many people who deep in their souls felt thoroughly bewildered. Several years after the whites had disappeared back across the sea, I often heard my father complain about the actions of the young revolutionaries just as quietly as he had once criticised the conditions of the colonial period. And in all seriousness he would express longings for the good old days, when there was law and order and the whites still decided what thoughts needed to be thought. It was a confusing time, when we suddenly had to stop saying patrão and call everyone camarada instead. It was a time when everything was supposed to change, but everything stayed the same, only in a different way.
    That was also when the long civil war broke out. The young revolutionaries, who had become middle-aged and rode around in black Mercedes escorted by the shrill sirens of motorcycle police, called the others in the war bandidos armados. From what we could understand, it was the whites who had fled and now dreamed of returning who stood behind them. They had formed a bandit army of malcontent blacks. One day they would return and put Dom Joaquim's statues back in the plazas, they would retake power and decide what thoughts people should think, and the middle-aged revolutionaries would be forced once more to cross the northern border. In the name of these whites, the bandits committed terrifying acts, and we all harboured a great fear that they would win the war.
    It wasn't until the year I met Nelio that the war ended. A peace agreement was signed, and the leader of the bandits came to the city and was embraced by the President. The whites had already returned. But they were different whites; they came from countries with peculiar names, and they did not come to chase us back to the tea plantations and fruit orchards. They came to help us rebuild everything that had been destroyed during the war. Many of them bought their bread from Dona Esmeralda. We knew that our bread was good. If anything ever went wrong with the bread, Dona Esmeralda would close up the bakery at once and refuse to open it again until the bread had regained its former quality.
    I quickly learned to enjoy working for Dona Esmeralda, though she could be capricious and temperamental, and she seldom had money to pay our wages when the last day of the month came around. The proximity of the theatre was something that gave a particular substance to my life and filled it with new and unusual experiences. A short time after the legendary premiere, Dona Esmeralda had formed an ensemble that was not supposed to do anything but perform plays. That alone, in the eyes of many, was a scandalous excess on her part. Did she really think that people should be paid for standing on the stage a few evenings each week? Could a theatre be anything but a hobby? Dona Esmeralda, of course, passionately defended her efforts, and she gathered around her all those people who were regarded as the most talented actors in the country. In the daytime they rehearsed the new plays, and at night they gave their performances.
    A winding staircase led from the bakery up to the theatre's roof. Right under the roofing sheets we could crawl through a duct that was once used for the huge air-conditioning machines. Through a hatchway we could then slip down into a room where an old film projector stood, like some sort of prehistoric beast. Through the peepholes in the wall we could see what was happening on the lit-up stage. Dona Esmeralda knew that when we bakers had time we used to watch the rehearsals; she encouraged us to do so and to tell her what we thought about the play we had seen. And she often told us that if we were quiet she would let us sit in the upper galleries when a new play was so near completion that they were ready to do a dress rehearsal.
    As a baker who only learned to read when I was fifteen – thanks to old newspapers and Master Fernando's stubborn battle with my laziness – naturally I cannot presume to judge