Ruth was the goddess Oshun; she was Mary and Magdalene, the consummate woman—she always had been. Pride of her father, mirror of her mother, she was marriage material. She’d have been happy at any time, era, or place; she’d have suited a merchant or a warrior. She was Aphrodite incarnate, the embodiment of femininity. Future exemplary wife, she came of age in the heyday of the late 1950s, to the elegant soundtrack of Tom Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes. Love was the order of the day and adults drank away their sorrows. Ruth yearned for her own day to come. She was a prize and knew it—she was saving herself for Mr. Right. She nurtured a childish romanticism while fulfilling the requirements of the new era.
She was one of the first to know what it was to be free to drink and smoke, to sing at parties, to wear a bikini, to be courted, and to laugh without being vulgar. She was cultured and intelligent—she wouldn’t have been complete if she wasn’t. She read Nietzsche and crocheted. Her education at Colégio Sion had suppressed any excesses; she was just the right degree of easygoing, and restrained in equal measure. A nice girl. Her friends turned out to be much more brazen. Unlike Ruth, they had no choice. At the beginning of the sexual revolution, with the contraceptive pill, they were pioneers in the art of having sex without questioning whether or not it was worth it. But not Ruth. She waited patiently. And while she did, she listened to Dolores Duran.
She was still a virgin when she enrolled in university to study language and literature. The young men quickly noticed her graceful walk, broad smile, beautiful voice, and the way she put her hands on her hips when she danced samba. Ruth paraded across campus, high on the daily contact with testosterone. In response to the stimuli her hair grew thick, her skin rosy, and her nipples were permanently erect. Everything about her ripened as she waited for a moment that never arrived. She read Plato’s Symposium with her study group and discovered that she was androgynous. Some terrible god had cut her original body in two, separating her from her male half. She wanted to find him, get him back. At night, she fantasized about being sewn back together, stitch by stitch, skin on skin. A shiver would run through her and she would fall asleep aroused. But Ruth forgot to heed the wise man’s warning: “We only love what we don’t have.”
Sérgio was a sensitive, serious, attentive young man. He was studying philosophy and wanted to be a teacher. Her friends were rooting for Beto, the Alain Delon of economics, but Ruth preferred Sérgio, with whom she had discovered Symposium. Virginity was still the norm, but it was no longer compulsory. Her more progressive friends urged her to go for it and, exasperated by her reserve, called her a prude.
Her libido was threatening to burst the dike. Ruth thought about love day and night. Politics, war, Cuba, the future, and the nuclear bomb were of little interest to her. She decided it would be with Sérgio. She agreed to finish a project with him at his place and, one sunny afternoon in the spring of 1962, she lay on his bed and, with a kiss, made the invitation. Caught by surprise, Sérgio applied himself to the mission. He was shy, and tried to hide his lack of experience. He was respectful, technical, and amateur. Ruth left his room with the uneasy impression that she hadn’t changed. She was still chaste. The frustration made her balk, preserve herself even more. If she kept trying, she thought, she might not feel the impact of the big event. Sérgio had taken her hymen, that was certain, but he hadn’t even touched her restlessness. It is passion that deflowers a woman, awakens her senses: smell, touch, taste, sight, a tingling in her ears. Ruth was still virginal. Who was going to rescue her?
It was Ciro; Aristophanes had been talking about Ciro.
It was chance that brought them together, at Irene’s cousin’s birthday; Irene and Ruth were the best of friends. Juliano had noticed that his cousin’s friends were ripe for the picking and had organized for them to come to the sing-along. That’s why Ruth was there when Ciro, Neto, Álvaro, Ribeiro, and Sílvio walked into the room. She could just as easily not have been, but she was. But even if she wasn’t, Ciro and Ruth would have met one day, somehow. It was destined to be.
Today I want the most beautiful of roses
Everyone stopped talking to listen when Ruth sang. She did more than just sing, she made the song hers. The long hours spent beside the record player, the vinyl worn from being played over and over, her crystal-clear understanding of the lyrics, her identification with the sorrow of the song, her husky voice, all of it really did make one want to stop and pay attention. Near the end, when the protagonist confesses that because her love has been so long in the making, perhaps her gaze is no longer as pure as she would like it to be, Ruth looked at the people listening and saw Ciro standing at the back of the room. The floor gave way, the wall receded, and the image of the handsome man loomed, giant and glowing, before her. Her head span. She felt the blood race in her veins while her arteries constricted. The rush of hormones gave her goose bumps and a knot in the stomach, and her heart beat faster. Her poisoning began there. She finished the song to much applause and pretended to be calm, smiling and doing her best to control the whirlwind inside her, until she saw out of the corner of her eye that Ciro was approaching. She shook from head to foot. He took a guitar from the hands of one of the serenaders, sat in front of Ruth, and, without taking his eyes off her, played the first few chords of a song and sang.
Without you, I have no reason
“Samba em Prelúdio.” Ruth blushed, everyone noticed. Ciro smiled, he was irresistible. With a nod, he invited the muse to accompany him in a duet. She accepted the challenge. They sailed through the notes, savoring the poet’s words.
Without you, my love, I am no one
There was no pause. When the song was over, Ciro returned the guitar to its owner and stood while the audience applauded. Then he shouted that Ruth was his and dragged her away from the rabble. Despite their resentment, none of the other guests dared contradict the hero. Absolute lord of the scene, Ciro swept up the queen with the skill of Eros. Many couples were formed that night after witnessing their meeting.
Ciro’s hand squeezing hers—the calm it brought her. She couldn’t remember a thing, just fumbling with buttons and pressing her face against the skin of a man she didn’t know. She stayed there like that, eyes closed, breathing the same air as him, listening to the rhythmic beating of his heart. She wanted to be sewn to him forever. His large hands clasped her face and she dared look up. Ciro brought his mouth to hers and opened it with his lips, teeth, tongue. Ruth wrapped her arms around his neck and felt the roughness of his beard, took in his manly smell, the cigarettes. There’s nothing ethereal about love. It’s flesh, it’s physical, it’s brutal. Ciro ran his hands up Ruth’s legs and, without questioning whether he should or not, slid his fingers inside her. The gesture put her on guard. For the first time since she’d set eyes on him, she began to ask questions. Who is he? she thought, firmly holding the intrusive hand. Ciro understood. He was also reflecting, for the first time, about what had happened since the moment he saw her.
“My name’s Ciro, I have a law degree, and this has never happened to me before.”
It was what he could say. It wasn’t a trick; how to make her understand? Ciro was on unfamiliar terrain, but his sincere reply had the desired effect. Ruth accepted his innocence and consented.
Someone appeared on the veranda and hurried along things that were asking to be hurried along. They left without saying goodbye to anyone. In the hall outside the apartment, Ciro pressed the elevator button insistently while Ruth stared at the floorboards. She wasn’t going to his place and he couldn’t go to hers; there was nowhere, so it would have to be there. They counted the seconds with serious expressions on their faces. Anyone looking at them would have sworn they’d just quarreled. When they stepped into the mirrored cubicle, Ciro waited to ascend two floors and pressed the emergency button. The door opened, showing an ugly slab of concrete. Ruth kept still. He held her against the wall with a deep kiss and everything spun again. Exploring her breasts and belly, Ciro knelt, lifting Ruth’s skirt
up to her navel, then pressed his face into her and inhaled.
“My name’s Ruth,” she said.
Ciro stood to admire her. His hands slid up to the back of her neck, and she wrapped her legs around him. He unfastened his belt hastily and looked at her again. Now serious, he held her by the hips and forced himself inside her. It was done. Someone bellowed down the shaft for them to stop holding up the elevator. There was no time. He positioned her in the corner of the tiny square and violated her until he was finished. Ruth was no longer a virgin. She had found her reason for being.
“I saw Jesus,” she told her friends.
She liked President Goulart because Ciro liked President Goulart, Che Guevara, Bob Dylan, and Noel Rosa. Ruth was Ciro’s first lady, his Jackie, she played the perfect hostess for her beloved. She took an interest in politics again, debated the bomb, became friends with Célia, married Irene to Álvaro, laughed at Sílvio’s excesses, and never understood why Ribeiro was eternally single. She felt sorry for him, but didn’t know why. She fell in love with everything that orbited around her sun. They marched against the coup of 1964, watched the musical Opinião, starring Nara Leão and later Maria Bethânia, paraded with the Banda de Ipanema Carnival block, went to the beach, and loved each other like crazy. Their honeymoon was in Búzios. Ciro took her to hunt for that night’s lobster. They dived among the rocks and fucked on the sand, on the quay, in the bedroom, in the other rooms. Ruth had only known orgasms in her dreams, and Ciro made them real. He was a pioneer.
But it is precisely here, at the apex of romantic realization, that a woman’s fate is sealed. Drunk on love, Ruth was no longer herself. She was Ciro, she was their son, the house, the couple. She said she was complete. She had forgotten the philosopher’s warning. She never suspected that those ten years of happiness were just the opening act to Tosca, the accumulation of everything that she wouldn’t have from then on.
She woke early. Ciro was watching her in silence. It wasn’t normal for him to wake up before her. Ruth smiled and he headed for the bathroom without returning the smile.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Everything’s fine,” he replied.
For years on end, Ruth would go over that morning in her mind. She was sure Ciro still loved her when he went to bed, but he woke up changed, sullen, dry. He had come home late, he’d been drinking, and Ruth had wanted to talk, but he’d become irritated and locked himself in the bathroom. The next day, he was aloof. She demanded an explanation and heard something she’d never expected: the problem was their marriage. Ruth froze. He didn’t want to get into it now, apologized, buttoned up his suit, and left for the office. Shaken, she asked the maid to look after João, called in sick to work, and retreated to the bedroom. The maid noticed her pale face, bulging eyes, and shortness of breath, but didn’t say anything. She took care of the boy.
Ruth didn’t eat, sleep, or leave her cloister. Midnight came and went and there was no sign of Ciro. She began to panic. She fell asleep exhausted, with swollen eyes, woke up in a sweat, and began to pace back and forth. She looked out the window every minute. She talked to herself and sobbed, while insomnia came and went. The sun was about to rise when she heard the door. Like a trained dog missing its owner, she stood waiting beside the bed. She heard footsteps in the corridor, it was him, she was sure. The door opened and Ciro appeared, unsettled.
Ruth ignored the lipstick marks and glitter on his shirt. They went at it like dogs. Ruth sobbed, clinging to her husband, and he swore he’d been faithful.
The months passed uneventfully, Ciro seemed cured, and Ruth recovered her delicate pride. The television was flooded with Christmas commercials, announcing the bottleneck of festivities. Ciro said he was going to stay back late for the firm’s end-of-year shindig. Ruth didn’t mind, overwhelmed as she was with presents, tree, and turkey, with the French toast and desserts for Christmas Eve. Midnight arrived and Ciro was nowhere to be seen. She went to bed with the sinking feeling that the nightmare was back. At 4:47 in the morning, she heard the key in the lock and raced into the corridor, tail wagging. Ciro had gone on a bender, as he did occasionally. His fly down, shirt hanging out of his pants, and traces of cheap cherry lipstick gave him away. Ciro showed no sign of guilt or regret; on the contrary, he laughed and called her darling. Disgusting. She shoved him away and shouted so that the neighbors would all know what a vile creature shared her bed with her. She gave full rein to hysteria. Ciro lost his patience. He’d been up all night and needed to sleep. He grabbed a change of clothes and disappeared through the back door. Her voice quieted when she saw him take the elevator down, and she spent the night standing in the laundry room, watching the back door. The maid arrived at seven and Ruth ran to lock herself in the bedroom. She took charge of the boy, the kitchen, and the ironing, and didn’t call Ruth until late in the afternoon, to say she had to go. It was December 23. Ruth didn’t answer. The poor woman called Raquel, the boy’s aunt, to ask her to take over. Raquel sent João to stay with his cousins and tried to coax Ruth out of her refuge. It was a lengthy negotiation. Ruth said she would only leave the room if Ciro came to her. Raquel repeated that she would leave a message in the living room, in case he came back, but that she needed to keep her chin up and lean on her family.
“You need to think of João, Ruth. It’s not his fault you two aren’t seeing eye to eye. Think about it—João’s more important than Ciro.”
Ruth loved João, but she had Ciro on a pedestal. That was why she hadn’t wanted any more children—she didn’t need them. It was a character flaw, highly irrational, a curse. She came out of hiding after much insistence, pallid and almost dead. Raquel was shocked by her sister’s withdrawal. She helped her into the car as if she were made of crystal and took her to her home in Humaitá. Ruth didn’t come down for supper on Christmas Eve, nor did she want to open presents or see relatives. She stopped eating on the 29th and continued to fast until the 31st. She was admitted to Clínica São Vicente on January 1, 1981.
Ciro didn’t show up until the afternoon, in a fluster, and begged to be alone with his wife. Raquel reluctantly agreed. She needed to rest, and she really did believe her brother-in-law had an obligation to clean up his mess. Ruth woke up hours later. When she saw Ciro, she thought the sedative was making her hallucinate. He lay down beside her and swore once more that he’d never do it again. Ruth took his word for it. She had no choice, and would have done anything so as not to lose him again. Ruth belonged to Ciro. And the more she proved it, the harder it was for Ciro to love what he had.
Six more months of calm and then another silly slip, a missed dentist appointment for João, made Ruth prick up her ears. And for good reason. Ciro was carrying on with the wife of a client for whom he had won a case. Fear made her forget her dignity. She followed him in a taxi to Glória, took the elevator up to Sílvio’s lair, caught them in the act, and made a scene. Ciro acted as if there was no one else there, stood, dressed calmly, and disappeared down the corridor. Ruth screamed until she lost her voice, stumbled down the nine flights of stairs, went to the corner, wandered around in circles looking for him, came to her senses, felt ridiculous, and went home. Ciro was already there, showered and in pajamas. When he saw her, he smiled as if everything was normal. Bewildered, Ruth told him what had happened and Ciro acted indignant. He lamented the fiasco, was concerned about Sílvio, whose apartment it was, and assured her that she had disturbed the wrong couple. He had been there at home the whole time, waiting for her.
“Don’t you think you should see a doctor, my love?”
Ruth lowered herself onto a chair using the back as a support. She asked for a glass of water. If it wasn’t him, she thought, who had she seen in Glória? And if it was him in Glória, then who was the pajama-clad man standing before her in the dining room now? It consumed her to such an extent that once again she forgot to eat and sleep. She was admitted to the clinic again three days later.
Ruth came back changed. She barely spoke and
was secretive. She understood that people thought she was crazy, but she didn’t care. Her disappointment with Ciro extended to the rest of humanity. She didn’t give a damn about anyone. We only love what we don’t have. It had taken her years to heed the warning. She had done everything wrong, she had never resisted Ciro. She had given in immediately, for all time. She had lost all bargaining power. She needed to deprive him of her. Ruth stopped talking to her husband.
Ruth was wrong in thinking that she could make passion succumb to her will. The one who suffered was her. She was the one missing him. She was a masochist when Ciro wanted her to be a sadist. It destroyed their sex life. Ciro reacted with equal violence. He fucked half of Rio, while Ruth looked on in silence.
The most extreme act of romanticism is suicide. Ruth was born with the flaw of being exceedingly feminine and overly romantic. She had always seen it as an advantage, but now that she had discovered how fragile she was, she’d have given anything to be free of herself. If she had the audacity of Madame Bovary, she’d have taken hemlock; if she had the nobility of Sonya, she’d have taken on Siberia; if she were poor, like Fantine, she’d have pulled out her teeth. But no, she was a mortal, middle-class woman from Rio, like so many others. Célia, Irene, and Raquel all treated her suffering as something vulgar—it was just a separation. Wrist-slitting, hanging, gas, these were ends too grandiose for someone like her. She decided to be humble and kill her love with vestal discretion; her home became a convent. She no longer planned to win back her husband. What she wanted was to insulate herself from the noise outside; she didn’t want to care, to want, to need, to suffer. Death. She practiced indifference until she became insensitive to the smell, face, and voice of her other half. Objects began to disappear from the apartment, records, books. Ciro was preparing to move out. He hung his head and left, his suitcases full. Ruth understood that he wouldn’t be back. She was relieved, free to be unhappy on her own terms.
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