When Nelio saw Cosmos being beaten by the police, he knew that he had to help, even though he didn't know what had happened. Quickly he tried to work out what he could do. Once again chance came to his aid. He was standing on a street corner where there were traffic lights and an extremely busy intersection. One day a few weeks before, he had watched the light being repaired. Two men in overalls had opened a rusty iron box that stood next to the traffic light, and they controlled the light by flipping several circuit breakers off and on. Ever since, the lock had been broken, but no one would suspect this unless they knew about it. Nelio didn't stop to think any further. He knelt down next to the metal box, as if, like any other street kid, he was just sitting down or stretching out right there on the pavement to sleep because he felt tired. He prised open the metal door, stuck his skinny arm inside, found the circuit breakers and began wiggling them as he pretended to sleep. The traffic instantly erupted into chaos. The red and green lights seemed to be engaged in some sort of contest, and cars came to a halt in a complicated tangle in the middle of the wide intersection. Everyone was honking; the cars backed up farther and farther. The people who were sitting in the cars and couldn't see what was going on, got out and started yelling at bystanders. The police noticed that something was happening; they saw the violent turmoil that had developed at the intersection, released Cosmos, and plunged into the fray. By then Nelio had slipped away from the metal box, the lights were functioning as they should, and no one could later explain what had happened. Cosmos, who was swollen-faced and red-eyed and furious, was sitting on the curb when Nelio went over and sat down beside him. He told him what he had done. Nelio did not doubt that he would be believed and he was not disappointed. Cosmos began to laugh, and when the other boys in the ragged group had gathered around, he told them what had happened.

'Who do you belong to? he asked Nelio.

'I don't belong to anyone.'

'Now you belong to us.'

From that moment, Nelio left his great loneliness behind. He began a life with Cosmos, Tristeza, Mandioca, Pecado, Nascimento and Alfredo Bomba. With them he shared almost everything. The only thing he kept for himself was his statue. At first Cosmos wondered why Nelio didn't sleep with the others on the cardboard boxes in the stairwell of the Ministry of Justice. Nelio told him that he had a sickness that required him to sleep in a different place every night. He said it so convincingly that Cosmos believed him. He even suggested that they should try to collect enough money to visit a curandeiro who might be able to cure this strange illness. Without hesitation, since he knew that they would never manage to find the money, Nelio replied that he had no greater wish.

Nelio took his place in the group without encroaching on anyone else. Everyone had his position to guard, and it could be weakened or elevated, although it was always Cosmos who decided, sometimes on a whim, sometimes wisely and with good judgement. But from the very beginning Nelio went his own way. First Cosmos, then the others – even, at last, Tristeza, who was slow-witted – understood that Nelio was not like anyone else. As a person, he was his own breed. He acted like the others, learning their language and their customs quickly, but he was still an outsider, though in such a manner that no one even thought to ask him why this was so.

One night Cosmos had a dream which he told to Nelio much later on, but never to the others. He dreamed that Nelio was a sun-dried person, like a fruit or a fish, that tasted better than anything else and that lasted for as long as anyone was hungry. Cosmos asked Nelio whether he could explain this dream. He asked him about it when they happened to be alone, since it wouldn't look good for him, as the leader of the group, to be asking questions. He was supposed to have all the answers. Nelio said the dream was surely a divine revelation that only Cosmos could interpret. Nelio himself did not have the power to do so; he came from the remote regions where people very seldom received divine revelations in their dreams. Cosmos was so moved by Nelio's answer that on the following Sunday he ordered the whole group to get cleaned up and accompany him to the big cathedral to attend evening prayers. But when Tristeza could no longer hold back his laughter and when Alfredo Bomba fell asleep on the stone floor of the church, they were all thrown out, and they never went back.

'God exists even in the rubbish bins,' Cosmos had shouted derisively at the church officials who had angrily expelled them. They ran as fast as they could, scattering in all directions to avoid arrest, and later they regrouped outside the theatre. Cosmos was so mad that he even forgot to give Mandioca a thrashing. And he forgave him for losing during their hasty retreat the liturgical book which Cosmos had swiped from the wide pocket of one of the dark-clad padres and then passed swiftly over to Mandioca, who had the biggest trouser pockets. For a long time afterwards Cosmos mulled over the idea of starting his own religious movement, which would be devoted exclusively to the street children. Through him the ragged bands' god, who must exist somewhere, would be reborn. But since they were heading into the hottest time of the year, he decided that the whole thing was far too strenuous, and he let the matter drop.

Cosmos recognised early on that Nelio had not come to the group in order to challenge his leadership or to seize power at some advantageous moment. At first it made him uneasy, since he had never experienced this before or even heard of such a thing. In the beginning he suspected that Nelio was deceiving him, and in secret he told Pecado and Mandioca to ask sly questions and to try to work out whether Nelio was other than the modest and reserved person he appeared to be. But at last Cosmos was convinced that Nelio was exactly the strange person he seemed to be. Nelio was nothing other than what he was. Cosmos had never met such a person before. How could someone be exactly what he was? Apart from his peculiar sickness, Nelio did not seem to have any unexpected secrets. Cosmos told Nelio about all these thoughts much later on, when he was planning, in great secrecy, to leave the group and start off on his long journey to another world. Nelio was surprised by what he heard. He had never imagined that his presence in the group could have aroused so many emotions in Cosmos. On the other hand, he had felt for a long time that the others in the group, especially Nascimento and Pecado – and later Deolinda, after she had forced her way in among them – had great difficulty accepting his presence. That was when the rumour was born that he had an unmatched ability to avoid being beaten.

Nascimento was the one who challenged him most, the aggressive Nascimento who could barely speak, who instead used his clenched fists and leaps and kicks as the language with which he described and commented upon the world he was forced to live in. He bore the name of his own origins. Everyone in the group had his own story; everyone, in spite of his youth, was a full-grown personality. And they were regarded as the most filthy but also the most respected group of street kids in the whole city. Much later Nelio came to understand that it was this respect, clothed in filthy and threadbare rags, which had so provoked the police that they decided to pound some fear into Cosmos, a fear that he would then spread to the others of the group. But the police had never succeeded, and Nelio felt as if he were living inside a roaming, jumping, dancing, laughing fortress under whose protection he and the others were invulnerable. Gradually he came to know them all, one by one, and he discovered that they were grown up even though they were kids, that they were old men even though they had scarcely reached puberty. Their stories stretched over infinite spaces of experiences, and each was a hero, a scoundrel and a victim in his own drama. Their names and their black bodies were as if celebrated in song.