“Is he here? Has my brother come yet?” She ran to the door, and there saw a timid young man, taller than his father, holding his battered canvas bag and now looking at her for the first time as a young woman, not the skinny little girl he had embraced on the Manaus Harbor quay. He didn’t know what to say: he dropped the bag and opened his arms to enfold her slim body, lengthened by her dignified pose; her slightly upturned chin gave her an air of self-confidence, perhaps a little distant or standoffish. Rânia was hypnotized by her brother’s presence: an almost perfect replica of the other, without being him. She observed him, trying to find something that would differentiate him from Omar. She looked at him closely, very closely, from several angles; she saw that the greatest difference was his silence. However, she heard her brother asking, “Where’s Domingas?” in a mature voice, and saw him walk to the garden and embrace the woman there waiting for him. They went into the little room where Domingas and Yaqub had once played. He saw the drawings he had done as a child up on the wall—the houses, the buildings, the colorful bridges—and he saw the pencil for his first writing exercises and the yellowed notebook that Domingas had kept, and now handed to him as if she was his mother, not the maid.

Yaqub lingered in the garden, then paid a visit to every room, familiarizing himself again with the furniture and objects there; he was overcome as he went into his bedroom. On the wall he saw a photograph: himself and his brother sitting on a tree trunk over a creek. Both of them were laughing: Omar, mockingly, his arms stretched upwards; Yaqub, his laughter checked and his hands grasping the trunk, looking apprehensively into the dark waters. When was that photo from? It had been taken a little before or maybe a little after the last Carnival party in the Benemous’ mansion. In the background of the picture, at the edge of the creek, were the neighbors, whose faces seemed to be as blurred in the photo as they were in Yaqub’s memory. On the writing desk he saw another photograph: his brother sitting on a bicycle, his cap cocked on one side, with shiny boots, and a watch on his wrist. Yaqub went closer and scrutinized the photograph to see his brother’s features, his brother’s look, and got a shock when he heard a voice: “Omar will be coming in at nightfall, he’s promised to have dinner with us.”