Previously unafraid of crossing oceans, now I start to break out in a cold sweat if I go to the bakery. And look, I only need to cross the street to get to our daily bread – transformed into monthly bread by the quarantine, to avoid unnecessary trips. The bread arrives warm, but it’s not quite cold yet and it’s already enjoying the wintery climate in the freezer, where it will wait to be shared.
I lie. If it were just the street, I would go with caution, but without trembling, I mean, fearing. The problem is that in the middle of the way there is the corridor to my floor, the elevator, twenty floors and 45 seconds locked in a cubicle. Locked up with who? The neighbor on the 18th doesn’t stop celebrating and receives visitors every day. There are so many people that that apartment must already be experiencing community transmission, if not of viruses, certainly of stupidity.
See too:
• It is necessary to keep a close eye on these disobedient gentlemen
• Quarantine diaries: 5 reports of social isolation around the world
• In times of pandemic, a little fear never hurt anyone
• What it was like to fly from Europe to Brazil during the pandemic
But come on, the food won’t cross the street alone. I put on my clothes to go out thinking about how crazy it is to have clothes like that. And that, total madness, is the worst thing I have. That rag that until the other day was my Monday night outfit at home, lying on the couch.
I put on the mask and also the glasses, not because of myopia, but to serve as a spill catcher. I take a toothpick to avoid touching the elevator button and protect my hand with a plastic bag to open and close doors. I’m preparing to take a small step for humanity, but a gigantic one for a man: I’m out of the house. Once there, I avoid thinking about terrible, invisible creatures that I don’t know if they are living beings. It goes for spirits and the coronavirus.
I enter the cubicle. I take a deep breath on the 19th, I breathe a sigh of relief as we pass the 18th of so many parties and I don’t know how many viruses. By the 16th level, my glasses are already foggy, a consequence of the combination between the mask and all that exaggerated breathing on the previous floors. We stopped.
The lady from 15th enters and, within seconds, starts talking. “Hi my son! How are things going, my son? I have seen little of you, my son. I miss a bar, right, my son?” Sometimes she has a mask on her face, other times with a mask around her neck, often with a hospital bandana on her head. She can’t blame her, after all we live in a country where not even the Minister of Health knows how to wear a mask. If he doesn’t know, Dona Vera won’t know either.
She’s a talker, a lot. I usually agree – in normal times, we share gossip, that is, news throughout the 36 seconds we share the elevator. But not today: I focus my attention on keeping a certain distance and hoping no one else enters. From my corner, I breathe a sigh of relief as we pass the 5th (shit, it got more blurry), where Damião lives, a man in his 80s who goes out every day. “Always without a mask”, Dona Vera complains indignantly, as she adjusts her bandana.
“Coronavirus won’t get me, boy. And let him take care, boy! If he messes up, I’ll catch him, boy.” That’s what Damião would say if he were in the elevator. As he is not there, in 9 seconds we stop at the ground floor. I run out, say goodbye from a distance, cross the street and, outside, do the shopping. I pay without touching the machine, just swiping the card over it, a technology that until recently was somewhat useless – “I never thought this contactless payment would catch on”, says the girl.
I come back counting the steps, 1, 2, 13, 20. Wow, don’t forget that you’re not wearing a mask! I stand on the sidewalk for a few seconds to contemplate the street. Mine is empty, there are few cars. The cycle path is busy, it’s almost a motorcycle pilgrimage of app delivery people, heroes without capes – and often without even a tip.
It’s time to go up. In order not to share the elevator with people or some stray (note: good name to put on a dog), I wait for the voices to disappear in the lobby. I open the door, use another toothpick to call the elevator, I go in.
I count to 45 hoping there won’t be anyone in my hallway, but soon my thoughts migrate to a theory that involves the coronavirus transforming the world into an even more antisocial place. I miss Dona Vera’s gossip, right, my son? Small talk has always scared me, but this is already ridiculous.
We arrived, me and the shopping. I open the door, get rid of my clothes and mask, wash my glasses, hands, arms, elbows, head, in short, I take a shower. Shoes are in a dirty area, near the door, which is marked – stepping there is the same as touching the lunar soil: you can, but you have to be prepared.
I fill the room with the smell of alcohol gel and, just in case, I clean door handles. All. The virus may even have an existential crisis, without knowing whether it is a living being or not, but in this house the corona will save money with therapy. Here he is always dead, a layer of fat dismembered at all costs.
The girlfriend was waiting for me with a bucket, disinfectant and a science fiction plot. As a child, I used to imagine what life would be like in 2020. Flying cars? Human being on Mars? America Brazilian champion? Reality overcame even my childhood imagination when Covid-19 institutionalized bathing in a jar of tomato sauce. And in terms of milk, cookies, coffee and cheese. There is the baby boomer generation, X, Y, Z… Now, they all bathe in alcohol gel in the alcohol gel packaging.
Everything sanitized, we had dinner. Next week I need to go to the pharmacy. Fuck it, I’m taking the stairs.
