The building is still there, but I´m sure nobody would take the trouble to stop and take a look at it. It´s old, so old-fashioned, even ridiculous after it has been painted green and granted a title. “Blue Sea Hotel”, that´s what it says. It looks like a beggar whose clothes are too colorful and inadequate. We moved into its third floor when I was five or six years old – at the time it was a charming beige building and we were very excited about living there.

I remember my mother giving orders, boxes being opened and all the noise of heavy packages taking their places. For us, the children, everything was fun, a lot of fun. Old toys emerging from boxes, schedules being broken, and more than anything else, improvisation. Why do we always try to make our lives so permanently organized , when improvised meals taste so good?

We lived there for 13 years. Rio de Janeiro was a different city at the time, full of immigrants. Different languages were spoken in the houses of the girls I used to make friends with. And, there was a war going on. We were very far from it, but it was in the movies, in the newspapers, on the radio, in people´s conversation and in the heart of the families. Young men were being drafted and sent to distant places where they should perform actions they were certainly not prepared to perform. I saw them going and coming, I heard their fears and their jokes, I had my share of everything that happened , as if it were part of my education.

I was twelve years old when the end of the war was announced. I will never forget that moment, people looking at each other to believe it was true. And I will never forget, either, how long it took to erase the stains of the war. Maybe I can say that I grew up in the backstage of a war …