Nelio tried to decipher Deolinda's thoughts from her expression. She was confronted with something she hadn't expected.

Then she walked away. Nelio waited until he was sure that she had left the plaza. Then he crept out of the hatch and dashed through the night-empty streets, taking the shortest route he knew, until he was back at the Ministry of Justice building where the rest of the group was already asleep. He sat near his tree and waited. When he saw Deolinda coming, Nelio stood up and walked towards her. She gave a start when she caught sight of him.

'I disappeared and I came back,' he said. Then he stretched out his hand to her. 'Touch my hand. It's warm. I'm not a shadow or a phantom standing here.'

She touched his hand with her fingertips.

'People sleep too much,' Nelio said. 'Let's use the night to talk.'

He took her to the botanical gardens, up on the hill near the hospital. The gates were locked with heavy chains and padlocks, but Nelio knew of a hole in the fence. That's where they crawled through, and he led Deolinda over to a bench that was still sturdy enough to sit on. Next to the botanical gardens was a hotel, and its sign lit up the area around the bench.

Deolinda's face was stark white.

Nelio looked at her ragged dress and thought that soon they would have to get some money together so that she could buy a new one.

He didn't have to ask a single question. She started talking about her life of her own accord. He sensed that it was a relief for her, and he listened attentively.

She was born in one of the poorest suburbs of the city; a collection of shacks and hovels surrounding the city's swamplike rubbish dump. She was born and she was albino. Her father refused to look at her. He accused her mother of conceiving the child with a dead man that she had secretly met in a cemetery at night. Then he had chased her out of his house. Deolinda later learned that this was the time of her mothers greatest despair. But she would never have killed her daughter, she would never have strangled her and buried her in the rubbish so that she could return to her husband. She took her daughter to a town that was many days' walk from the city. There she had a sister, and there they would be able to live. Her three other children remained with their father, and she grieved for them so fiercely that for long periods of time she was close to death. One day, many months later, a message arrived from her husband, telling her that she didn't need to come back; he had found a new woman who would never give birth to an albino. The children would stay with him, and he cursed the dishonour she had brought upon him by being unfaithful to him with a ghost in a cemetery.

'I was born with a ghost for a father,' Deolinda said, and it sounded as if she were spitting out the words. 'Today, now that I'm grown up and smart, I realise that it's true. My father is a ghost, even if he's alive.'

'How old are you?'

She shrugged. 'Eleven. Or fifteen. Or ninety.'

'I think you're twelve,' Nelio said.

'If I'm twelve, then I'll stay twelve for the rest of my life,' she said. 'Why do we always have to exchange one age for another?'

'I've had the same thought,' Nelio said. 'I think I'll go on being ten until I get tired of it. Then I'll be ninety-three.'

Frogs were croaking in the pond of the botanical gardens. Deolinda had several half-rotten bananas in her woven bag which they shared.

After she learned to walk and already had four rainy seasons behind her, Deolinda became aware that she was different. Then, at the very time when she must have needed her more than ever, Deolinda's mother was struck by madness, which not even the renowned curandeiro, sent for from another village, was able to cure. She stopped eating altogether, she refused to braid her hair, and she started wandering around the village with no clothes on. Finally her sister locked her up in a hut and nailed the door shut. They gave her water through the slits in the wall. That was also where she died one night, after having poked out her eyes with a splinter from one of the bamboo poles supporting the roof. The last memory Deolinda had of her mother was of her hands sticking out of the slits in the wall of the hut. As if that was all that was left of her – two empty hands, ceaselessly wringing.

After Deolinda's mother died, her aunt changed. She blamed Deolinda for her sister's death, she frequently beat her, and sometimes she even refused to give her food. Deolinda tried to find out why she had changed, but no one could give her an answer. And so she started to believe that she actually deserved all the blame people placed on her. In her the ancestors had gathered all their misdeeds; they had chosen her to bear them. Deolinda realised that she couldn't stay in the village, and the only person she could think of who might help her was her father. She left the village one night when everyone was asleep, and she never went back. When she arrived in the city and found her father's house near the stinking rubbish dump, he chased her off with a stick and warned her never to come back. After that, the streets of the city were all that remained for her. Many times the nuns took her to an orphanage. But she never stayed more than a few Jays. On the city streets there were others who were as white as she was. Some of them even had cars. They had jobs, and they lived in proper houses. She had discovered, above all, that they also had black children. On the streets of the city she was not alone in being different.

'I'm going to stay alive so that I can have children,' she said. I'm going to have thousands of children, and they're all going to be black. Then, when I can't have any more children, I'm going to kill my father.'

'That's probably not a good idea,' Nelio said. 'If you absolutely have to have him dead, it would be wiser if you asked someone else to do it. I don't think it's good to sit in jail.'

'I want you to teach me how to disappear,' Deolinda said.

'I can't do that,' he said. 'I don't know how I do it myself. Tell me instead why you want to stay with us.'

For a long time she sat in silence. Nelio closed his eyes and dozed on the bench while he waited.

He woke up with a start when Deolinda touched his shoulder.

'You're asleep,' she said.

'I don't like waiting for anything,' Nelio said. 'Instead of waiting, I do something else. Just now I was sleeping.'

'Cosmos is my brother.'

He was astounded. He thought about what she had told him for a while. Could it really be truer?

'He saw the way my father chased me off with a stick. He was still living at home then. Our father started beating him too. He came to the city. He became the leader of the kids sleeping over there on the steps. We would sometimes meet in secret. He said that I could come here after he had set off on his journey. He was the one who taught me to read and write and count.'

'But how could he know that I would take you in?'

'He thought that you would.'

Nelio kept thinking about this strange piece of news.

'Was that why Cosmos set off on his journey?' he asked. 'So that you could come to us?'.

'Maybe.'

'Cosmos ought to be hung on the wall of a church,' Nelio said. 'Not Cosmos himself but his picture. His face carved out of wood, like a saint.'

They left the botanical gardens and crept out through the same hole they had used to get in.

'When I grow up, I'm going to sing for the whole world,' Deolinda said as they made their way through the empty streets.

'Can you sing?'

'Yes,' said Deolinda, 'I can sing. And my voice is very black.'

'Everybody's tongue is red,' Nelio said. 'Just like everybody's blood. There's so much to think about. So much that is strange.'

Deolinda wrapped herself in her blanket next to Mandioca. Tristeza and Mandioca lay on either side of Nascimento, who had crawled into his cardboard box and pulled down the lid. They lay there like two guards, ready if Nascimento should be attacked by the monsters that were always lurking in his dreams. Nelio stared thoughtfully at the ragged band. Then he went to his statue, thinking about what Deolinda had told him. On the way he passed a big hotel where festively dressed people were getting into their cars. He stopped for a moment and stared at all that wealth. Then he continued on his way.