One afternoon when he’d escaped right after the siesta I found him on the bank of the river Negro. Beside him was his old friend Pocu, surrounded by fishermen, fishmongers, boatmen, and peddlers. Dumbfounded, they were watching the destruction of the Floating City. The inhabitants were swearing at the demolition men: they didn’t want to live far away from the little harbor, far from the river. Halim was shaking his head, disgusted, watching all those little houses being knocked down. He lifted his stick, spitting swearwords, and shouting, “Why are they doing that? We’re not going to let them,” but the police prevented people getting into the neighborhood. He was choking, and began to cry when he saw the bars, and his favorite, the Siren of the River, being chopped down with axes. He wept while they ripped the partitions and cut the ropes tying the logs, smashing the thin wooden pillars. The roofs slumped inwards; beams and joints fell into the water and floated away from the edge of the river Negro. It was all finished in a day; the whole neighborhood disappeared. The logs floated on, till they were swallowed by the night.

Only once was my search fruitless. On Christmas Eve morning 1968, he went out, and we all expected him to come back at nightfall, carrying boxes of presents, ready to eat rice and lentils, roast leg of lamb, and other delicacies that Zana and Domingas were preparing. At the end of the afternoon, when the neighbors came by and asked after him, Zana said: “Don’t you know Halim? He pretends to disappear and then comes back …” Before night came, Talib rang to say that his friend hadn’t come for his Christmas game of backgammon. Talib and I looked for him all over, from the gullies of the Educandos to the bars of São Raimundo, until Talib, exhausted, realized that Halim wouldn’t be back for a while. “When someone wants to hide, the night gives them shelter,” he said.

Zana wanted to avoid a scandal, and didn’t tell the police. Sooner or later he’d be back, she said. “His place is here near me, it always was,” she said over and over. At other moments, she’d never been upset by Halim’s wanderings; he preferred to seek comfort for his sorrows far from home. But now Christmas dinner was nearly ready, and at midnight we ate in silence. The dinner was gloomy, hardly anyone spoke, without Halim’s voice and the chatter of the friends he invited. Zana didn’t touch the food: she’d wait a little longer. “He knows this night’s important to me … He never failed to come, never …” She sat alone at the table, looking at the chair at the head, his place.