Prologue

"We have not been misled by any evil product of human skill or by any idol smeared with different colors. The sight of such things arouses the passions of foolish people and makes them desire a dead, lifeless image."  

Wisdom 15, 4-5

"I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws."

Ezekiel 36:25-27

Prologue

It was almost 5 PM of a cold winter afternoon that promised a beautiful sunset over the Copacabana Sea.

The former Socopenapã beach was only a desert area filled with cashew trees when, at the beginning of the 16th century, a small chapel was erected on a cliff to house the image of a saint. Traders from Rio de Janeiro, called “peruleiros” due to their routine of going and coming to the Viceroyalty of Peru, brought in one of these trips the image of Kopa Kawana, an Our Lady in the image of an Inca princess. The Castilian filter modified it to “Copacabana”, word that means luminous place or lookout of the blue. The statuette had dark skin and a light blue and gold dress. Her first home in Rio was one of the side altars of the Church of Mercy on the Morro do Castelo.

Religious differences made the saint lose her place in the Church of Mercy and her destiny was a small church far, far away, built by the sea specially to shelter her. Over time, this chapel designated the beach and the neighborhood. The chapel came to be demolished in 1914, to be erected, in its place, the Fort of Copacabana. The image of the saint that is currently in the church that bears her name, in Serzedelo Correia Square, is the same, the original.

Eternalized in the music of João de Barro, the "Braguinha", especially in the voice of Dick Farney, Copacabana, a Princesinha do Mar, has become known worldwide and is one of the great tourist attractions of Rio de Janeiro and Brazil.

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Sunlight was pouring through the clouds as if trying to cast them out to let the Sun rules majestically the entire celestial vault. It was in afternoons like that one that she used to appear. The Lady of the Window had become an urban legend that circulated among the tribes that frequented the beachfront of Copacabana. Some passersby were already standing on the sidewalk and looked up to find the window of the fourth floor of an old building. There were even those who brought binoculars or cameras with high zoom lenses in search of a better image of the beautiful woman. Few people knew for certain which the correct window was, and they scoured the front of the older buildings on the block, which contrasted with the modern ones on the beachfront.

            According to reports, the Lady of the Window appeared for a few minutes on the evening afternoons when there was sunset. One of the most accepted theories considered her as the ghost of a former apartment dweller who had many years ago, perhaps decades, thrown herself out of the window in despair at the death of her beloved, and that her inconsolable spirit remained trapped in the place. The apartment would have been vacant ever since - no lights were ever seen at night in their rooms. Mr. Alcides, a porter who worked for decades in the building, avoided touching the subject, but the gossip was that he confirmed to an already dead resident that there was really a strange love story involving the Lady of the Window.

Rumors circulated that on some nights the neighbors of the apartment heard footsteps in the hallway or the noise of objects being knocked down inside the apartment. Despite numerous attempts to catch the woman, she had never been seen. No one knew who was the owner of the property. Although all the fees were paid promptly, no one came to inspect it.

A homeless woman, believer and assiduous frequenter of the many Catholic Churches in the neighborhood, said she had received a divine annunciation and she supported the fact that the apparition in the Angelus was a Saint. Our Lady of Copacabana, patroness of the waters and of the neighborhood, appeared to ask for the repentance of the prostitutes, addicts, delinquents, corrupt and other sinners who infested the neighborhood mainly at night. The supposed divine revelation did not gather many followers - the time of the appearance of Saints had already passed...

Fans of the cold draft beer, irreverent goers of the kiosks and pubs of the region raised the possibility that it could be a seductive mermaid caught by a successful businessman and fisherman who would have trapped her in his apartment and kept her immersed in a huge whirlpool bath to take bath salts and serve him in sexual orgies.

He would have disappeared into the sea on one of his fishing trips and the mermaid had come since then to the window at the end of the day to await the return of her abductor in the hope of regaining her freedom. Another variant of this theory associated the Lady of the Window with the Orisha Iemanjá - divinity of the sea of Afro-Brazilian religions and protector of fishermen and sinners, thus expanding the religious syncretism of Kopa Kawana.

Iemanjá is celebrated with a great party during the passage of the New Year. Thousands of people dressed in white gather in Copacabana to sing and give Yemoja white roses and objects placed in Styrofoam boats that are set loose in the waves.
The Lady of the Window was also revered in the famous sand sculptures, one of the highlights of Copacabana and what contributes for making it the most famous beach in Rio de Janeiro. These sand artists, who work in exchange for the recognition of tourists through financial contributions, portrayed the Lady of the Window sensuously and always with her gaze lost on the high seas.

The most rational ones argued that everything was nothing more than the invention of disqualified people: drunkards, proletarians, idlers, and fanatics of all ideologies. They claimed that such woman would be just a chore girl doing the periodic cleaning of the apartment. Or perhaps everything would have been an optical illusion provoked by the sun's rays that penetrated the apartment late in the afternoon. It was refraction in the dust particles suspended in the air or in the dirt window pane that created an optical phenomenon where each one saw what he wanted to.

That afternoon, once again the Lady of the Window did not disappoint her faithful admirers. The curious and the dreamers have caught a glimpse of the silhouette of a woman of dazzling beauty behind the window pane, illuminated by the last rays of the sun. She stood still for a few minutes, her gaze lost on the encounter of the sky and sea. Excessively romantic people persisted in stating that a tear had rolled down her face. And as before, she lowered her eyes and slowly retreated into the shadows of the apartment as the last reddish gleams on the horizon dissipated in the rapidly falling darkness.

It was night.

 - Your comments are welcome! - 

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      Socopenapã - “The path of socós", in the Tupi language – Socó is a kind of bird, heron. ^RETORNAR

   The Angelus occurs at three times daily: 6:00 am, noon, and 6:00 pm, usually accompanied by the ringing of a bell, which is a call to prayer and to spread good-will to everyone. The angel referred to in the prayer is Gabriel, a messenger of God who revealed to Mary that she would conceive a child to be born the Son of God. Derives from the phrase: Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariæ – "... the Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary ..." ^RETORNAR