On the other side of the plaza there was a small church where a black-clad priest would from time to time peer out of the gate, as if he expected the church to receive an unannounced visit from restless souls in need of consolation. But no one came, and he would slam the gate shut, only to peer out again a little while later. The priest was a white man, bearded but with no hair at all on his head.

People lived in the other buildings surrounding the plaza, lots of people. Washed clothes hung everywhere; children screamed and played on the pavements. Whenever they got too loud, the old men would shake their fists at them, but the children hardly took any notice. Several times Nelio felt a burning desire to run over to them and take part in their games. But he knew that he could no longer do that. When he arrived in the city he left his childhood, his actual age, behind, like an invisible shell on the beach where he slept on the last night before he was swallowed up by the streets. The fact that he was sitting in the shadow of the equestrian statue alongside the old men was a sign of the great transformation that had occurred on the night the bandits burned his village down. Here in the open plaza Nelio felt for the first time that he could master the anxiety that filled him. It was as if he had found a village in the middle of the city.

That same evening he also found his home. One by one the old men had stood up and vanished into the darkness, heading towards the hovels where they spent their nights. The sun had set, the Indian shopkeepers had been reluctantly, almost remorsefully, forced to acknowledge that the last customers had gone, and they locked their doors, pulling the heavy wrought-iron gratings into place. In their stead appeared the black nightwatchmen, dressed in long ragged robes, who unpacked their blankets and greasy chicken legs. They lit their fires and began to make tea. Not until the Indian shopkeepers had left in their cars did they eat and then settle down to sleep. The children stopped playing, called inside by their mothers. The washing was taken down, and the smell of curry and piri-piri blended with the wind from the Indian Ocean. At last Nelio was all alone at the base of the statue. He had eaten a piece of chicken, which he bought from a man whose stove was an old, coal-fired oil drum. Nelio didn't want to leave the place he had found when he was fleeing from Senhor Castigo, and he thought about the fact that only in flight did you discover the world's secrets, which otherwise remained hidden.

In the twilight, he suddenly discovered a hatch under the belly of the horse next to the raised foreleg. When he pulled on the rusty handle, the hatch opened, and he saw that the horse had no entrails; there was only an empty space. He climbed up inside the horse. Faint rays of light, as if from the stars, shone in through the horse's nostrils and the eyeholes of the helmeted swordsman. Nelio knew that he had found a home. The statue was so big that he could stand up straight inside. He felt a great joy at discovering this home. Above his head there would always be a man with a drawn sword to keep watch over him. Inside the horse his dreams could safely roam. Here he could become a grown-up, find a wife and watch his children grow. He was filled with thoughts that night. His anxiety gradually receded. When at last he fell asleep, his head was resting on the left hind leg of the horse, and the bent knee formed a pillow for his head.

Nelio woke at dawn to the sound of a man laughing like a lunatic outside his statue. When he crept out of the hatch under the horse's belly, he saw that it was the black-clad priest, who was restlessly pacing back and forth near the gate outside the little church. He was flailing his arms and carrying on a mumbled conversation as if he were not alone but had an unseen companion at his side. He argued, threw his arms about in anger, and every so often he broke into maniacal laughter. Nelio thought he was arguing with evil spirits or lost souls that had assembled outside his church in the night. But later, when the old men had taken up their places again in the shade at the base of the statue, he learned that the old priest, whose name was Manuel Oliveira, had many years before lost his mind. When the young revolutionaries had seized power and marched into the city, the priest was struck by madness, whether from terror or from anger, no one could say for sure. He had preached such damning sermons against the young revolutionaries in his church that eventually none of his old parishioners dared to attend his masses, for fear that they would be seized by the security police, which the revolutionaries had immediately created and granted wide-ranging authority. The security police were supposed to watch for and arrest those who thought differently, particularly those who thought of the former colonial era as the good old days.

But Manuel Oliveira had continued to preach his sermons, although he was speaking to empty pews. Occasionally someone from the security police would attend one of his lengthy masses, whereupon Manuel, roused by having someone to preach to, would increase the intensity of his violent attacks. At first the authorities had shown tolerance towards the old priest, a victim of age and insanity. They had contented themselves with issuing a general prohibition against attending the church, and they allowed him to preach to an empty room. But when the priest began to preach out of doors, standing by the church gate on a wooden box, they had had enough. Manuel Oliveira was sent to a correction camp for those who thought differently in the remote northern provinces. The authorities also threatened to shoot him on the steps of his church if he didn't stop his wild ranting against the new regime. Nothing helped. At last he was allowed to return to his church. They thought that eventually he would grow tired, and he did. Now he spent his days in silence inside the church, waiting in vain for his God to explain to him why his church was empty and what had happened. Only in the early-morning hours would vague remnants of his former insanity return. For the nightwatchmen, it was the daily signal for them to wake up in anticipation of the return of the Indian shopkeepers. They would confirm that everything was peaceful, and that they hadn't slept but had resolutely kept watch all night long. Later, at about the same time that Manuel Oliveira disappeared into the silence of his empty church, the nightwatchmen would pack up their blankets and hurry off to the jobs they had during the daytime. All of this the old men told to Nelio, and no one seemed to have any inkling that he had found a home inside the statue which protected them from the sun. Nelio saw that one of the women from a building next to the church placed a plate of food outside the church gate, and it occurred to him again that this place was like his home in the village which the bandits had burned.

In the days that followed, Nelio learned to survive in the city by keeping his eyes open. By chance he caught a glimpse of Senhor Castigo, very drunk, his suit stained and tattered. Nelio no longer feared him.

He spent much of his time watching the children his own age who lived on the streets. From a distance he observed their labours: washing cars, begging, selling and stealing whatever they could find. He saw how the older boys ruled the younger ones, and he thought that it was among them that he belonged. During his wanderings through the city he also came upon a neighbourhood that was especially quiet, where the streets were not full of rubbish or potholes. Big white houses without cracks were nestled in wide expanses of garden, hidden behind tall wrought-iron fences. There were children there too, the same age as he was. But he quickly discovered that they didn't see him; their eyes looked right through him. It was among the other children that he belonged – among those who, like himself, were living in order to survive.