How long a friendship lasts
"Trudi, get a rag from the glove compartment and wipe the windshield, please? I can't see a thing. All we need right now is to get stuck in the middle of this downpour. I've never seen the streets flood so quickly. If the water hits the car's engine, kaputz.
Ah, that's a bit better, thanks. But I don't think I'll be able to drop you off at home, because the streets near yours are all flooded. You can sleep over tonight. The water will have receded by tomorrow morning."
"Gosh, thank you Ruth. Blessed was the day I met you." "If it hadn't been for us, you'd be in your house right now, dry and warm," Ruth laughed. "Yes, dry, alone, and thinking about the death of the heifer."
"Are you enjoying living here in Rio, Trudi?". "Yes, I am. The first few months were a bit difficult. Setting up home, getting used to my job, getting used to the city, but since I met you, everything has become easier. I no longer spend all my time thinking about the 'deceased'." Rute knows very well what her friend is going through and replies without hesitation: "Yes, ending a relationship is difficult, and it's even worse when you realize that you've lost touch with your friends. You end up very lonely. But now that you've met us, don't worry about loneliness any more. Come on, let's make up your bed. I have an extra mattress for those days when my son's friends come to sleep over. You'll sleep in his room because he's traveling.
"There, all sorted. If you need anything else, just let me know." "Thanks, Ruth. Everything's fine. Good night." Trudi looks dejectedly at the thin mattress placed on the floor and thinks about her back. "I'll certainly wake up all sore tomorrow". She puts her damp clothes on the back of a chair and looks at the photos of his travels, his friends and his girlfriend that he has pasted on a board next to the bed, before finally turning off the light and lying down. Uncomfortable, feeling the bones in her hips and shoulders pressing against the hard floor, she remembers the times when she used to sleep snuggled up against Xico's warm body, and finally falls asleep.
The night is pitch black and Trudi is alone in the middle of the street where she lives, because at this time of night everyone is already at home, asleep to the sound of the rain against the window pane. In vain, she tries to free her foot, trapped by a manhole cover and, despite her cries for help, no one appears to help her. She waves her arms, pushing away the debris floating on the dark surface of the water, as she helplessly watches the water level rise rapidly. When the water finally reaches her face, Trudi covers her eyes with her hands and begins to scream with all her might, feeling her body fall into space. When she opens her eyes, she notices her still-damp clothes hanging on the back of a chair, and the echo of her screams. Still bewildered, she sits down on the mattress and feels her right hand land in the water. The urge to scream again compresses her windpipe.
Trudi's brain struggles to process the image captured by her eyes: in a room flooded with the light of a late summer morning, she finds herself stranded on her mattress. The entire floor around her is covered in two fingers of water. Moisture seeps through the corners of the sheet, soaking the place where her face used to be. "But how could the rain have flooded Ruth's apartment? We're on the 19th floor! ". She decides to snap out of her daze and go in search of her friend. When she opens the door to the room where she slept, she sees that the whole apartment is flooded and the water level is rising rapidly. From the bathroom door comes the sound of a waterfall, and when she gets closer, she sees that the water is pouring heavily from a pipe whose connection has broken. She goes through every piece of the apartment in search of her friend, feeling sorry in advance for the damage to the furniture and floorboards that the flood will cause. When she opens the door to Ruth's room, she finds her sleeping peacefully.
"Ruth, wake up! Your whole house is flooded. Do you know where the general bathroom register is?". Ruth looks at Trudi with an expression of displeasure and, with great difficulty, suppresses the urge to turn on her side and continue sleeping. She's one of those people whose brain doesn't work properly before the first cup of coffee. All that fuss about Trudi bothers her like a swarm of hoverflies. "Oh, there's no need to despair," replies Ruth calmly. "This has happened before. Let me call the janitor, because he's the one who knows where the register is. I never remember these things..."
Halfway through the morning, Trudi feels her whole body cramp up. As if a night of unrefreshing sleep wasn't enough, she's still facing a morning of hard work. They've already spent hours moving furniture and squeegeeing the entire floor of the apartment, drawing water into the drains in the kitchen and bathrooms. "Shouldn't the drain covers be kept open, since the pipe connections often break?" Trudi asks her friend. "That's because I hate cockroaches," Ruth comments with a look of disgust, as she closes the drain covers again. Trudi giggles in delight. "It's so nice to have friends again. Even their weirdness is fun," she thinks, as she combs her hair and searches for her cell phone in her purse to call a taxi.
When the taxi arrives at the corner of her street, she sees that her nightmare scenario is not far removed from reality. The rainwater has already run off, leaving a corner silted up by the sand that has come down from the hill. Halfway down her block, two trees have fallen, preventing cars from passing. The employees of the laundry and pharmacy have already removed the iron plates attached to the entrance of the store, to prevent objects brought by the current from crashing into the iron curtain.
The following Saturday, Ruth and Trudi book a movie at Botafogo Praia Shopping. They go to see 'Olga', the movie about the life of the communist militant Olga Benário, a German Jew, and her lover, the Brazilian Luis Carlos Prestes. The story is tense and Ruth fidgets incessantly in her chair. She reacts to the strong scenes as if she were Olga herself, uttering loud insults. The spectators in the nearest seats turn to see who is disturbing the audience's silence. At the height of the tension, Ruth clings to the arms of her seat, as if she had to be stopped in her impulse to intercede in the scene. "What nonsense, they're all animals," she says when the lights come on, and before the exit movement begins, she forces her way through the narrow space between the legs of the spectators next to her and the backrests of the seats in front of her. Trudi follows her, apologizing in an almost inaudible tone to the other people sitting in their row. When they reach the lobby of the cinema, Trudi asks her friend if everything is all right. "Everything's fine," she says in a changed tone, "I just wanted to have a cigarette." Trudi turns her eyes to the large glass window at the front of the shopping center. Outside, she sees Sugarloaf Mountain and a new storm advancing towards the coast. She shrugs her shoulders and hugs her chest, trying to quell the chill that only she seems to be feeling: "March in Rio sucks," she exclaims, watching as Ruth reaches into her handbag for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
It only takes three furious puffs for the mall security guard to realize what's going on. He approaches Ruth and, in a polite tone, reminds her that "Smoking is forbidden" in the mall, or in any other enclosed place in the city. She still tries to argue, but when she sees that the security guard is an immense man in every dimension, she finally gives up, throws the cigarette on the spotless white floor and twists the tip of her foot, crushing the butt to exhaustion before turning her back on the security guard and heading for the exit. Trudi just follows, docile as a lamb.
Standing on the sidewalk, while Ruth lights up a new cigarette, Trudi tries to calm her nerves, commenting to her friend: "Poor Olga, I can only imagine the suffering she, a pregnant Jewish militant, must have gone through when she was sent by President Vargas to Nazi Germany during the Second World War". But instead of calming down, Ruth finally sees the chance to vent her demons: "How could you know? You, with your German surname, are surely the daughter and granddaughter of Nazis. You never cared about the suffering of the Jews. You blamed my people for everything that went wrong in Germany and, as if that wasn't enough, you persecuted and killed all their descendants." The passers-by, surprised by Ruth's cries, look at Trudi with accusing eyes. One of them pulls the woman he is hugging closer and exclaims in an audible tone, "The police have discovered several Nazi nuclei in the south of Brazil. I didn't know there were Nazis here in Rio too", and then walks off calmly towards the metro station.
Trudi observes the small number of people surrounding them, shrugs her shoulders and opens her palms in a universal gesture of someone who doesn't understand what's going on. Most of the group disperses, leaving only two women, thirsty for blood. Trudi then musters all her calm and cold blood and asks once again, "Are you all right, Ruth?", and before Ruth can start a new raid, she says goodbye, "I think it's time for me to go home. Don't worry about me, I live very close by. I'll walk." And then she starts walking towards her house, wondering how it was possible that a war that had ended more than 70 years ago had just claimed another victim.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
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