"When the militias are thinking of attacking they phone me first." Basilio Araujo is spokesman for the FPDK, the "political wing" of the East Timorese autonomist militias, known for their campaign of intimidation against pro-independence supporters.
But unlike his famous next door neighbour, Mr Francisco Lopez da Cruz, (Indonesian) ambassador at large with special tasks, Mr Araujo is no lover of autonomy. Mr Lopez da Cruz thinks of autonomy as a "win, win" compromise solution for the Timorese people - a way to be united.
Mr Araujo, however, is angry there was a referendum at all. In particular at President B.J. Habibie, Indonesia's first non-military leader, for giving in to international pressure to solve the Timor issue.
These neighbouring Timorese leaders tell a story about labyrinthine Timorese politics. An autonomist could be an integrationist (with Indonesia) or a gradualist separatist, (though no one here seems to like that word).
Yet another "autonomist", Mr Abilio Araujo, a FRETILIN resistance leader until he was expelled some years ago, has a "third way".
Mr Araujo, who has lived in Lisbon during the Indonesian occupation, is not taken seriously in FRETILIN these days. He believes in collective government and harps back to a 1992 "reconciliation" document.
Autonomy can be "progressive", Mr Albertino Goncalves Soares, an activist of Mr Araujo's Nationalist Timorese Party, says. A "national dialogue" over issues including Timor's oil and gas resources, over perhaps five years, with security guaranteed by UN peacekeepers, could lead to independence, he claims.
The party wants to go back to 1975, modern East Timor's first year of living dangerously, and in particular the November 24th declaration of independence.
Mr Lopez da Cruz, known to the resistance as the ultimate collaborator, lives in a very fine house in Jakarta. On the carved sideboard of his Dili residence are portraits of him with the Pope, Nelson Mandela, and Kofi Annan. A posting elsewhere as ambassador was suggested to him, he explains, but he told them "not with East Timor in its present condition."
"As Indonesians we are already independent. I am already independent," he says. And he would not accept any post in a government of national unity because he would have to renounce Indonesian citizenship.
In the mid 1970s Mr Lopez da Cruz was a leader of the conservative UDT party then favouring gradual independence from Portugal. For the one sided referendum campaign he headed the East Timorese Popular Front for Autonomy.
"We hope we will be able to influence our followers to accept the result," he says. In spite of his next door neighbour's association with militias "we try to work together for reconciliation. I try to convince him. He says he has control but the attacks go on."
Here Mr Lopez da Cruz repeats an official Indonesian view, outrageous to most observers, that "the provocation is from both sides", and that the "genocide" of the occupation was also on both sides.
He acknowledges the police and army do not control the situation either. "If we can avoid another bloodshed I will pray to God," says Mr Lopez da Cruz.
He said before last Monday's ballot that if the vote was for independence he would leave East Timor for West Timor. Only if East and West were together would he accept independence.
Boggling the mind a little further, he says that independence may be "down the line". In this he is rejecting the Habibie government's "now or never" outlook on the ballot.
As a further reminder of his Timorese identity and of an intimate society, he says that Mr Xanana Gusmao (the detained rebel leader) was "my soldier" and "the present governor was my driver" in the old 1970s days. Furthermore, he trained FRETILIN guerrillas in the Portuguese times, he said.
One of his guests, Mr Robbie McVeigh from Belfast, remarked: "You did good work", which the host took in good enough part.
Mr Basilio Araujo is a civil servant. Portuguese functionaries who found themselves in this remote colonial outpost soon knew they had drawn the short straw.
Nowadays Indonesia pays its 5,000 civil servants in Timor double the home rate. In recent weeks visiting ministers have reminded them there's a price: their duty is to vote for autonomy.
But it is history - the "civil war" of 1975, when Timorese betrayed Timorese and Indonesia invaded - and not money that seems to drive Mr Araujo's passion. He says Indonesia wants to save its own face after 24 years of bad publicity - and Portugal "is only interested in completing the process of decolonisation."
He wants "to be released from that moment" of 1975. Mr Araujo also gave his Irish guests a history lesson. "Ireland has supported independence not integration and your Minister for Foreign Affairs has taken a very strong line.
"We think it's strange that you haven't solved your own problems and you come here to tell us how to solve ours."