No need for anyone to think much about why. The women affected me deeply because unlike other street people or enterprising sidewalk vendors, they were, in their shyness and solicitude, and even in their modesty, an image of myself; that is, I would have behaved the same way if I had shared their fate. I thought: They’re not good at this, and I wouldn’t be either; they’re there because they have no choice, circumstances forced them into it, as they might have forced me as well; they feel ashamed, probably unjustifiably so, but uncontrollably — just as I would have.

One afternoon I entered a small café, no bigger than four tables, near the corner where the women stood. It was going to rain at any moment and I told myself it would be best to wait it out while having a coffee. I took a seat in the back, my preferred spot for looking at everything that interests me, although, given the dimensions of the café, in this case the perspective was limited. Only after I’d been sitting there for a good while, thinking of almost nothing, did I glimpse the flower-seller hunched over the counter. At that moment she was taking small bites of something she held in her hands; I couldn’t see what it was because she didn’t once pause or lower the food from her mouth. Most likely it was a sandwich, or plain bread, the typical stale piece given to beggars. I understood that way of eating as another sign or example of her repressed state, or perhaps more exactly, inhibition, because if there was anything revealed by those minimal gestures, it was her guilt or shame. Anyhow. Afterward it began to pour outside. The woman had by now finished the sandwich and for the rest of the time she sat with her head turned toward the street, avoiding my gaze as if she didn’t want to be observed.

I now proceeded according to a territorial intuition, if you can call it that, and at the end of a new and lengthy stretch of pavement, during which I came across several bus stops that were mobbed, inevitably, with people, I finally made out the park, that large green mass inside the yellow city of the map. As I walked toward it on a heavily trafficked avenue, so wide that when I crossed at a light I hardly had time to reach the pedestrian island, the green tree tops in the distance seemed exaggeratedly compact, like gigantic broccoli, with the flattened shade of the park beneath its branches, almost cavernous or jungle-like; as I went along it occurred to me that the contrast between the voluminous green and the city encircling it was an analogy, clearly deliberate, for the physical condition of the country as a whole, and even, you could say, for its satellite image: the Amazonian jungle and its emerald-green life, extensive and complex, in contrast to the materiality of the Brazil that was economic or urban or constructed, I don’t know what to call it.

I took advantage of a path that opened off the avenue to enter the park, not far from the traffic light where I had crossed. Trees with low canopies stood on either side of the path and overarched its entire length, which at first, until my eyes adjusted, made me feel I’d unexpectedly come upon a secluded and astonishingly dense grotto. As soon as I’d stepped inside the park, I realized I had found what I referred to earlier, my secret dream: the park was too large not to have that air of abandonment which so appeals to me. The shadowy, and above all, overgrown edges of the path exuded that unique mixture of neglect, dirtiness, and danger which puts one on the alert; and the truth is, I didn’t need to go very far before I’d verified my impression, since when I looked down I saw that the faded gravel had scattered and turned nearly to dust, suggesting that the path was sporadically used and infrequently maintained. Even the shapes of those pebbles, all similarly rounded, like seeds from an almost barren tree, made me realize I was walking on a surface typical of underused parks, where dust, earth and time — the sand of cities — accumulate with nobody’s help.

As I walked on along the path, the noise of the avenue began to subside, in great part owing to a curve that as a dramatic entrance seemed, at first sight, to have been a success: visitors had to change course immediately, which not only helped them put the city noise quickly behind them, but also signaled that they could lay down whatever burdens they’d presumably carried in from the street. For the attentive observer, the biggest challenge was locating the precise boundary between path and forest, or terrain, I don’t know what it’s called, the park preserve. Because anyone who looked closely, as I did, would see a strip of diffuse matter, insistent even in its ambiguity, containing elements from both sides and impossible to classify. This can probably be said of all paths of any kind, but at that moment I interpreted it as a visitor’s second lesson, possibly harder to assimilate but perhaps more lasting in its effect; though that required greater powers of deliberation than I could imagine at that moment.

When I came out of the bathroom that morning to finish dressing and set off at long last, I heard a familiar voice on the television. It was the man who was afraid, talking about other subjects; now it was the care and feeding of animals. In the country, he was saying, livestock should be raised with care, and as for wild animals they should be regarded with respect. I guessed it was a children’s program, though why, if that were the case, was the man’s fear of the dark considered so remarkable? The interviewer, a man now, was asking about further differences between domesticated and wild animals. The answer surprised me: Wild animals never seem tired, because when that happens they hide themselves, whereas domesticated animals always move languidly, and seem tired even when they’re not. I was expecting a more classical distinction, and then, I don’t know why, I felt I had to do a recap. . I was in my hotel room, sitting on an unmade bed, in the south of Brazil, I had visited a book fair the day before after coming out of a conference, then afterward read a so-called anonymous message and before I went to sleep had listened to the same person I was hearing now, except talking about something else.

I told myself that perhaps it would be a good thing to keep on listening, and as I listened more closely I detected a certain spiritual hedonism in the voice of the man who was afraid, which made me wonder whether he might be some kind of guru or preacher, maybe a rural mystic given to changeable opinions. Very likely, I thought, he was a guest at the book fair. I was intrigued by the form of his eloquence, his nonchalant air that made no distinction between what was central and what was secondary in what he was talking about, a trait that perhaps reflected a certain insecurity or else rote memorization. In the end a rather unexpected and above all revealing thought occurred to me: I had only to use the remote control to see his face, but I didn’t because for a moment I dreaded that I would see my own image on the screen. Perhaps the anonymous messenger was about to reap his reward, because the impact the man who was afraid would have on me would be the most resounding success of his campaign. I imagined myself speaking like that from that moment on, and, still worse, writing like that, too, forever following the most haphazard thoughts in a tortuous way. But I understandably wanted to stop thinking like this, so I turned off the television, gathered my things, and went out in search of my coffee.

Generally, when I walk I look down. The ground is one of the most revealing indicators of the present condition; it is more eloquent in its damages, its deterioration, its unevennesses, and irregularities of all sorts. I’m referring to urban as well as rural ground, difficult or congenial. And I’m specifically referring to the ground of paths, to ground altered by humans in general, because ground in the abstract, the ground of the world, speaks different, near-incomprehensible languages. Walking is, in part, a kind of superficial archaeology, which I find greatly instructive and somehow moving, because it considers evidence that’s humble, irrelevant, even random — the exact opposite of a scientific investigation. It’s evidence that, because of its unimportance and its secondary nature, restores a way of inhabiting time: one is an eyewitness to the anonymous, to what history can’t classify, and simultaneously witness to what will survive with some difficulty. And for that reason, when I walk on paths I’ve been inclined to leave behind faint, minimal marks — the proverbial initials or the name drawn in the dirt with a stick, ephemera that vanish quickly from the ground or from walls, like sodden footsteps on a rainy day or shoe prints. Not because I believe someone will decipher them in my wake, but because the action implies an innate impulse, one can only hope to leave fleeting traces. Similarly, I regard the random things that make up the path as simple and moving: the blending of varied materials, the wear and tear of age, the former uses, etc., that are at times revealed and which transport me to the lethargic scale of banal discoveries, even predictable at times, yet transcendent because they evoke the secondariness I just mentioned. In fact, one of my greatest weaknesses are those paths that are sometimes traced onto sidewalks and public stairways, the result of countless steps of people in a given place, like an invisible mechanism.