When I came home one day last week, the door of my neighbor´s apartment was open and there were six or seven elderly ladies chanting what I am quite sure was some sort of prayer. Anything that includes the words "Ave Maria" must be a prayer, don´t you think? I didn´t want to stand around and stare, although I think a case could be made that an open door is an open invitation. It went on for another 45 minutes or so, and I decided the only thing it could mean was that the old lady or her husband who lived there had died. When Heitor came home, I described the scene and asked if it were common among religous people in Brasil to come to somebody´s house and pray when they died. He said he thought it might be in the Northeast, and that he couldn´t think of any other interpretation of what I had seen.
So we decided either the old lady or her husband had died, and we hoped it was the old lady. We had never wished the old woman dead, but who can blame us, if one of them had to die, for giving the old woman our vote? She is one of the most unpleasant, sour people I´ve ever known. Her husband, on the other hand, while not exactly a back slapper, is tolerably social. He at least will respond when you wish him "bom dia" or say thanks when you hold the door for him. They have a little yippie terrier of some kind that barks at all hours of the day and night. The next day there was no human or canine activity in that apartment and all we could do was wait and wonder. Then on the second morning, we woke up to the sound of the Little Yip and everything is back to normal. And we have no idea what the old ladies were praying about.
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