I gave him some water to drink, mixing the last of Senhora Muwulene's herbs in his cup.

Again we could hear the woman who spent the night preparing for the next day. Her pole was pounding the corn. And she was singing.

'Everything comes to an end,' Nelio said. 'Everything comes to an end, and everything starts over again.'

He raised one hand, which was terribly thin, and pointed up at the stars, so clear and close on that night. The sky had sunk down towards the roof to make Nelio's resting place smaller.

'My father was a very wise man,' he said. 'He taught me to look at the stars when life was hard. When I returned my gaze to the earth, whatever had been overwhelming would seem small and simple.'

I gave him some more water. Afterwards I felt his pulse, which was rapid and irregular. The allotted time was coming to an end.

Nelio looked at me in silence. His story had already begun, even though it was no more than a gleam in his weary eyes. But he still didn't seem the least bit frightened of what was coming. He was perfectly calm.

Is it possible to love death?

I never got an answer from Nelio while he was alive. But I still expect a solitary moth to alight next to me and give me the message from Nelio that I've been waiting for. That's why, in my loneliness, I sometimes dance on the roof and get drunk on tontonto.

I am waiting. I will always be waiting.

Nelio began to tell his story for the last time, and I knew that on that night it would be finished. He told me how they went up on to the empty stage in the glare of the spotlights. The shadows in the wings murmured, commenting on their presence. The stage breathed; every story that had been performed there over the years seemed to come alive again. The boys found themselves in the midst of a chaotic universe of plays, memorised lines, entrances and exits. It was a magic moment. Nelio gathered the others around him in the exact centre of the stage. He could see that they were frightened, that they sensed the presence of all the events which had been enacted there in earlier times and which had now been resurrected. Nelio thought that they were not just a group of street kids about to perform a play for the dying Alfredo Bomba. They had also come as an audience, and they had brought the old dramas to life by disturbing them in the midst of their long night.

They started by searching the theatre to see what things they might be able to use – discarded stage sets for old backdrops, costumes and wigs. Nelio gave strict instructions that nothing was to be touched unless he said so, and everything they used would have to be put back in the same place. That first night turned into one long game in which Nelio, from the spot where he was sitting in the centre of the stage, watched the others appear from the wings, unrecognisable in their costumes. Occasionally he had to tell them to hush when they forgot they were in the theatre illegally. He kept in mind Nascimento's warning about the armed watchmen on the street.

With the unrestrained joy of a child, Nelio watched them dressing up. Each time one of them appeared in a new costume, the whole stage would instantly change. A drama would begin, without words, without action, without any significance except that they had all been given permission to create another world from the one they normally inhabited. Pecado stepped into the light, dressed in a shimmering coat of red silk. On his feet he wore white shoes, and he moved across the stage as if prepared to defy gravity, even while waiting in the wings. A second later Nascimento appeared in the spotlight, transformed into a god, or perhaps an as yet unknown flower. He started rambling a disjointed narrative as, with great dignity, he circled around Nelio. Mandioca dressed up in various animal costumes, and also created animals that no one had ever seen before. With a crocodile's tail, a rat's legs, the breast of an insect and the head of a zebra, he crept across the stage, uttering sounds that Nelio had never heard before either.

While he watched this shifting, dreamlike parade, with one unexpected character and entrance after another, the play began taking shape in Nelio's mind. He imagined the journey, the moment when they stood by the river and glimpsed the island in the mist, the crossing and finally the arrival. He realised that it was no less than a paradise they had to try to depict. And since paradise doesn't exist, he had to conceive how it would look in Alfredo Bomba's world. He had to create a paradise that Alfredo Bomba would feel at home in. During that first night Nelio said very little. He gazed pensively, almost dreamily, at the various costumes and props that were brought on to the stage and then removed. He made a note in his mind of what he had seen. When he sensed that dawn was near, he gathered the others around him and said that now they would have to put everything back the way it was, erasing all traces of their presence, and then leave the theatre as unobtrusively as they had come.

'Tomorrow we'll start rehearsing,' he told them. 'For three nights we'll prepare. On the fourth night we'll make our journey with Alfredo Bomba.'

When they emerged into the light of dawn and returned to the place where Tristeza was waiting with Alfredo Bomba, Nelio saw immediately that he was much worse. For a moment he worried that Alfredo wouldn't live long enough for them to show him the play. Nelio told the others to keep quiet and not to make any commotion that might disturb the sick boy. Then he sat down at Alfredo Bomba's side and talked to him for a long time.

'We're going on a journey,' said he. 'We're going to carry you the whole way. The trip won't take long.'

'I'm scared,' Alfredo murmured.

'You don't have to be scared,' Nelio reassured him.

'I'm scared to have Nascimento carry me. He might drop me by mistake – or on purpose.'

'I'll tell him we'll beat him with sticks if he drops you. Nascimento doesn't like being hit with sticks.'

Alfredo Bomba did not seem convinced by Nelio's words, but he was too tired to make any further objections. Nelio gave him another pill from the paper cone, and then he called over Pecado and told him to massage Alfredo Bomba's feet.

'What good will that do?' asked Pecado suspiciously. 'He's not cold.'

'We can't let the blood collect in his feet,' Nelio said firmly. 'Just do as I say.'

Pecado rubbed Alfredo's feet while Nelio made sure the others took turns wiping his sweaty forehead and saw to it that he always had cold water to drink. Those who weren't needed to take care of Alfredo Bomba were sent out on the street to wash cars and then buy ice and bread with the money they earned. The heat hung on, and someone was always sitting by Alfredo's head, fanning him with part of a broken umbrella. When the watchmen sat down on the steps of the theatre after midnight and started playing cards, the boys again crawled in through the broken window at the back of the building.

That night they began rehearsing their play. Nelio gathered them around him onstage.

'None of us knows anything about theatre,' he said. 'We're going to have to do this without help, but that's something we can do better than anyone else – we can survive without help.'

'I want to play the monster,' said Nascimento.

'You'll get to play the monster,' said Nelio. 'But only if you don't interrupt until I've finished talking. The key thing is that we make Alfredo Bomba forget that he's sick and forget where he is. Then we can take him wherever we want. And we'll wait until he's asleep before we bring him here. When he opens his eyes, he'll think he's dreaming.'

'It'll be hard to get him through that window if he's asleep,' Pecado said anxiously.

'There's a door in the back,' Nelio said. 'The night before we perform our play, we'll leave it unlocked.'