He encountered a storm of protest. Nelio knew that everyone thought his idea was excellent, and they were trying to help by pointing out anything that might be a problem.

'We can't break into the house,' said Mandioca. 'The police will come. We'll have to have the birthday party in jail. They'll beat us badly. Especially Alfredo Bomba, since his birthday is to blame for it all.'

'We're not going to break in,' Nelio said. 'I'll explain later.'

'Since it's not our house, we'll have to be quiet,' said Nascimento. 'But we can't be quiet. We've never been able to do that. How can we celebrate a birthday without making a racket?'

'We won't open the windows,' Nelio said. 'And we won't break anything.'

'We can't turn on the lights,' said Pecado. 'Are we going to walk around in the dark in a strange house? A lot of things will get broken, whether we like it or not.'

'The marques always leaves the lights on when he's away,' said Nelio, 'so that no robbers will break in.'

He countered all their objections and then explained how they would get inside the house.

'Mandioca is the one who can do two things better than anyone else. First, he can look more pitiful and starving than the rest of us. Second, he can keep quiet and sit still for a long time. That's why, Mandioca, you will go up to the house and ring the bell. The cooperante will open the door. Then you will faint and collapse just inside the threshold. The cooperante will get worried; he'll bring you water to drink. After a while you'll start feeling better. You ask to use the toilet. When you're alone in there, you unlatch the window. Do it so no one will notice. Then you thank the cooperante for everything he has done for you. He'll probably give you some money, since you're so hungry. And then you come back here to us.'

'If I'm supposed to look hungry, I'll have to be full,' said Mandioca. 'If I'm really hungry when I'm supposed to look hungry, I'll just look crazy.'

Nelio pointed to the box of tomatoes.

'The rest of the tomatoes are Mandioca's,' he said. 'There's just one thing you should remember when you're inside the house. If you have to pee when you're in the bathroom, pee into the chair with the lid. Don't pee in the bowl with the taps. Do you understand?'

'I won't pee,' Mandioca said. 'What kind of bowl?'

'You'll see when you get there,' said Nelio. 'Now we'll wait here until the cooperante comes home.'

'What happens if he doesn't leave tomorrow?' asked Nascimento.

'All the cooperantes lie on the beach and turn red on Saturday and Sunday,' said Mandioca. 'Nelio's right.'

'I've never had a birthday party,' said Alfredo Bomba. 'What do you do?'

'You eat and dance and sing,' said Nelio. And that's exactly what we're going to do. And we'll get cleaned up and sleep in beds and have a roof over our heads. We can look at the pictures on his TV.'

'Maybe he doesn't have a TV,' Nascimento said.

'All cooperantes have a TV,' said Nelio. 'They have yellow hair and they have TVs. You have to learn that once and for all.'

Mandioca fainted on the threshold of the marques's house, unlatched the window in the bathroom, and was given 20,000 when he had revived and was able to leave the house. The next day they stood in the street and waved to the yellow-haired man as he left in his car. Late in the afternoon Nascimento managed to get hold of a wine bottle that was half full. By eight in the evening the nightwatchman was asleep, and they crept into the garden at the back of the house. By climbing up on Mandioca's shoulders, Tristeza reached the window and slithered inside. A few minutes later he opened the outer door as Nelio had instructed. They hid in the shadows and waited for a couple of policemen to pass by on the street. Then they slipped swiftly out of the shadows and disappeared through the door. Nelio told them sternly to stand still and not touch anything until he checked to see that all the curtains were drawn. Then he gathered them around him in the hall.

'Now everybody will go and get cleaned up. It's especially important that you all have clean feet.'

Since he mistrusted their desire to wash properly, he locked them in the bathroom and said that he would let them out, one by one, after he had personally checked to see that they were clean enough. Then he walked through the house, opened the two refrigerators, decided where they would sleep, turned on the TV, and finally put away two porcelain vases that might easily fall to the floor and break.

Nascimento had to wash his feet three times before Nelio was satisfied. Then he gathered everyone in the kitchen.

'Cooperantes always have a lot of food in the refrigerator,' he said. 'I'm convinced that the man who lives here will be pleased that we're celebrating Alfredo Bomba's birthday with a proper meal. So let's cook.'

Nelio went into action as if he were organising an invasion. He put Mandioca in charge of the vegetables, while he told Pecado and Nascimento to cook the rice. Alfredo Bomba and Tristeza helped the others while Nelio cut up a big piece of meat into small pieces and started to fry them. When the food was ready, they sat down at the big table. They had found some juice in the pantry, and they looked at Nelio and waited for his permission to begin.

'Today might well be Alfredo Bomba's birthday,' he said. At least he dreamed that it was. So let's eat.'

Several times during the meal Nelio had to intervene when fights threatened to break out over the meat. When Nascimento started getting loud without being aware of it, Nelio sniffed at his glass and realised that Nascimento had mixed his juice with alcohol. Without his noticing, Nelio exchanged Nascimento's glass with his own, and later poured it into the sink. Afterwards, when they had also found two big cartons of ice cream in the huge freezer, they started dancing to a radio that Nelio brought in from the enormous living room. He thought it best if they stayed in the kitchen, where there were no carpets to get dirty; the floor was tiled and easy to wash. At first Nelio sat off to one side and watched the dance. Deep inside his head he seemed to hear the sounds of a timbila and the drums in the village that the bandits had burned. Suddenly they were all around him in the marques's kitchen: the spirits that were looking for him, all of the dead and all of those who might be dead or might still be living. He could feel that he was about to become so sad that he might disrupt Alfredo Bomba's party with his mournful face. He got up from his chair and joined the dance. He danced as if in a trance until the sweat ran down his forehead. They kept on dancing late into the night; they danced until they didn't have a single dance step left in their legs or hips.

By then Alfredo Bomba had already fallen asleep under the big table. Nelio showed them where they should sleep – some in the marques's bed, others on the sofas. When it was quiet in the house, Nelio went back to the kitchen and cleaned up. By daybreak, no one could have said that anyone had been there as long as they didn't look into the refrigerators or the freezer. Nelio walked through the silent rooms and looked at the group of kids as they slept.

He had the feeling that he was wandering through many different times and worlds all at once. It was as if he could remember the little forest grove outside the village where he grew up, the village the bandits had come to burn.

They never burned the trees, he thought. The forest has been growing for hundreds of years. Each time a child is born, a tree is planted. You could see from his tree how old a person was. The tall and thick tree trunks, which gave the most shade, belonged to people who had already returned to the spirit world. But the trees of the living and the dead stood in the same grove, sought their nourishment from the same soil and the same rain. They stood there waiting for the children that were not yet born, the trees that had not yet been planted. In that way the forest would grow, and the age of the village would be visible for all time. No one could tell from a tree whether someone was dead, only that he had been born.