'I don't have any money to spare,' he said. 'The little I have left, which you see here, is already spoken for. And I can't go with you on your journey either. Beyond these doors all those who wish me ill are waiting. At night I hear them scratching and scraping on the walls of the house. They've lured my watchdogs away with poisoned pieces of meat.'

'We could leave after dark,' Nelio suggested.

'Even worse,' Suleiman said. 'It might have been possible in the daytime, in bright sunlight, but I don't dare. And besides, I'm too fat and my eyes are too feeble. I have to stay here and guard the money that's left. Once I was a wealthy man, as rich as Khan. Now my wealth has made me poor by dwindling away in some manner that I don't fully comprehend. Everything is already spoken for.'

'I believe one of the small bundles would be enough,' Nelio said cautiously, lowering his voice so that his request would seem smaller because it was presented so quietly.

'I have no money to give away,' Suleiman said, and Nelio could tell that he was beginning to get annoyed. 'Everybody wants money. I can't leave the house without being surrounded by all the beggars. It's easier to count the ones who don't want anything. The beggars even beg from each other. The dead in the ground shout for money. I've given away everything I once owned. What's left here is for paying my debts after I'm dead. The money in the corner by the window will pay for my funeral, the money beyond the door there will pay for my cousins' weddings and for my faithless sons' illegitimate children, whom no one will acknowledge except me. I have the alms ready, the fines and the bribes, and everything is spoken for. There's no money for a suit for your father or for a journey to the island that you're talking about. Even if it doesn't exist, even if you're actually a con artist and I choose to let you deceive me, I have no money to give you.'

'A little boy is going to die soon,' Nelio said. 'His soul could protect you.'

'My house is full of all the dead souls that people who have asked me for money have given to me as guarantees which I can redeem when they die. But what good have they done me?'

Nelio left Suleiman's house. The paths he had taken during the past few days had not led him any closer to his goal.

That evening Nelio gathered the group. He waited until Alfredo Bomba was asleep before he began to speak.

'Abu Cassamo couldn't find the place that Alfredo Bomba's mother talked about. Since Abu Cassamo never has customers who want to be photographed, he has been able to devote all his time to studying the maps. So it won't do any good to ask anyone else. And we don't have time to go searching for Alfredo Bomba's mother; no one even knows if she's still alive. We haven't managed to get hold of any money, either.'

He looked around. They all avoided meeting his gaze since they had nothing to say.

It was Tristeza who broke the silence. 'Maybe it would be better if we gave him my trainers after all. Now that he's so sick, maybe his feet have grown bigger.'

'Why would that happen?' asked Nelio.

'Sick people swell up,' muttered Tristeza. 'The blood hides from death in their feet.'

Nelio pondered Tristeza's strange remark for a while. He had learned that Tristeza, even though he thought slowly, sometimes could say things that were worth considering.

'Alfredo Bomba doesn't want trainers,' he said. 'He wants to visit the island where people lose their fear. Our first problem is to find out where it is. Our second problem is that even if we find it, we have no money to pay for the journey.'

'There's no such island,' Nascimento said.

'Maybe not,' said Nelio thoughtfully. 'But that's a only minor problem.'

They were looking at him with surprise. What did he mean? Nelio raised his hand dismissively. Right now he didn't want to hear any more questions. Somewhere inside his head a plan was being hatched. He had discovered an unknown path in his mind which he was now following, and it would give him the answer to how they were going to grant Alfredo Bomba's wish. Nelio stood up and walked past the petrol station out to the street, and crossed to the other side where Abu Cassamo's photographic shop stood, next to the bakery and the theatre. One of Dona Esmeralda's performances had just finished. The audience was pouring out and heading off in the dark in various directions. The watchmen were starting to lock the doors, and the lights outside the entrance were extinguished, one by one. Nelio stood and watched all this at the same time as he followed a winding path between dense brambles in his head. He was seeing with his gaze turned inward, and he now knew how they would make the journey to the island in an unknown part of the world, or maybe in a world that didn't actually exist.

He went back to the waiting boys. Alfredo Bomba was asleep.

'I've found the island,' he said. 'It's not on the maps that Abu Cassamo tried in vain to read. And it's so close that we don't need any money to make the journey.'

'Where?' asked Nascimento.

'Right across the street,' Nelio said. 'It's right where Dona Esmeralda has her theatre. At night the theatre is empty. The stage is deserted, because the actors are asleep. What doesn't exist you have to create yourself. Even an island that no one can find can be created. Even a dream can be plucked out of your head and shaped for a purpose. Tonight when the watchmen outside the theatre are asleep, we'll climb in through one of the broken windows in the back, where Dona Esmeralda has her wardrobe room. Then we'll turn on the lights on the stage and start rehearsing a play about Alfredo Bomba's visit to the island that his mother told him about.'

'None of us knows how to do that,' Mandioca said.

'Then we'll have to learn,' Nelio told him.

'Some of the watchmen outside the theatre have guns,' said Nascimento.

'We'll be quiet,' Nelio said.

That same night, just after midnight, when the watchmen had fallen asleep outside the theatres entrance, they sneaked round to the back and climbed in through the broken window of the wardrobe room. They had assigned Tristeza to stay with Alfredo Bomba, since he would never be able to learn to say lines or to move in a disciplined way onstage. They found their way by striking matches, and then turned on the glaring spotlights that hung above the stage.

The stage was deserted.

They stood below in the house. At that moment Nelio thought that the stage looked like a mouth, an open mouth waiting for the food they would give it.

Then they began creating the island.

Nelio smiled his weary smile in the dawn light. In the distance, on the other side of the river, a thunderstorm was brewing. I realised that we were now approaching the end, both of his story and of his life,

I said nothing. I just looked at him and smiled. What was there to say, after all?

Then I got up and went down the stairs to the bakery.