Whirls, whirlpools, in life’s fluid futility! In this large downtown square, the soberly multicoloured flow of people passes by, changes course, forms pools, divides into streams, converges into brooks. While my eyes distractedly watch, I inwardly fashion this aquatic image which is more suitable than any other (in part because I thought it would rain) for this random movements.

As I wrote this last sentence, which for me says exactly what it means, I thought it might be useful to put at the end of my book, when I finally publish it, a few ‘Non-Errata’ after the ‘Errata’, and to note: the phrase ‘this random movements’ on page so-and-so, is correct as is, with the noun in the plural and the demonstrative in the singular. But what does this have to do with what I was thinking? Nothing, which is why I let myself think it.

Around the square the streetcars grumble and clang. They look like giant yellow mobile matchboxes, in which a child stuck a slanted used match to serve as a mast. When jerking into motion, they loudly and ironly screech. Around the statue in the middle, the pigeons are like black crumbs that flit about as if they were being scattered by the wind. The plump creatures take tiny steps with their tiny feet.

And they are shadows, shadows…

Seen from up close, people are monotonously diverse. Vieira said that Frei Luís de Sousa wrote about ‘the common with singularity’. These people are singular with commonality, contrary to the style of The Life of the Archbishop. It seems to me a pity, though I’m indifferent to it all. I ended up here for no reason, like everything in life.

Towards the east, only partially visible, the city rises almost straight up in a static assault on the Castle. The pallid sun, hidden from view by the sudden outcrop of houses, bathes them in a blurry halo. The sky is a damply whitish blue. Perhaps a gentler version of yesterday’s rain will return today. The wind seems to be easterly, perhaps because it smells vaguely ripe and green, like the adjacent market. There are more out-of-towners on the eastern than the western side of the square. With a racket like carpeted gun reports, the corrugated metal blinds of the market lower upwards; I don’t know why, but that’s the motion the sound suggests to me – perhaps because they usually make this sound when lowered, but now they’re being raised. Everything has an explanation.

Suddenly I’m all alone in the world. I see all this from the summit of a mental rooftop. I’m alone in the world. To see is to be distant. To see clearly is to halt. To analyse is to be foreign. No one who passes by touches me. Around me there is only air. I’m so isolated I can feel the distance between me and my suit. I’m a child in a nightshirt carrying a dimly lit candle and traversing a huge empty house. Living shadows surround me – only shadows, offspring of the stiff furniture* and of the light I carry. Here in the sunlight they surround me but are people.