CREDITS:

Story by talitavasconcelos

Traduction by Gabriela Silva

It was a Friday night like any other, except for two details: the first was that the power had gone out around six in the evening and showed no signs of coming back anytime soon; the second was that I suspected the neighbor across the hall had entered my apartment in my absence, which, in itself, was already quite disturbing — and it felt even worse in the darkness. After all, how had he managed to get through the door without breaking the lock?

But I had found indisputable proof of his presence there: a single slipper, missing its twin, which I'd seen countless times on his foot. It was one of those old-style slide slippers, with a rubber sole and a wide foam strap covered in waterproof fabric, in a satin brown color.

The discovery of the slipper first surprised me. Then it raised the question of how it ended up there. And finally, it made me worry about whether I'd left a spare key lying around somewhere. I'm not the kind of person who frequently loses keys and needs to leave an emergency copy under the doormat. In fact, I don't even have a doormat at my door! But there was no other explanation: if he entered my apartment and there were no signs of forced entry, he must have used a key, right?

I don't pretend to be a Sherlock Holmes, but you must admit the deduction was obvious.

Which also raised another question: what had he come here to do? I had inspected every room, and, as far as I could tell in the dim light provided by two battery-powered emergency lamps, nothing seemed to be missing.

Eventually, I wondered if he might have left something else behind in my apartment, aside from the slipper. Call me paranoid, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility that he'd installed a camera to spy on me.

Not that Mr. Adamastor Franco — yes, that's the neighbor's name, and as you can tell, he's no digital native — had ever shown any signs of being a creep, or even of knowing anything about installing surveillance equipment. To be honest, I knew little to nothing about this neighbor, with whom I'd exchanged no more than a few words here and there over the four years we'd lived across from each other. In fact, the only reason I know his name is because once, one of his letters ended up in my mailbox by mistake.

Either way, we live in a world that doesn't allow us to trust even our own shadow. Why not imagine that the solitary, reclusive neighbor across the hall — practically a hermit — might be as disturbed as Norman Bates peeping at Marion Crane in the shower?

My first instinct was to call the police and ask them to search the apartment for any sign of such a camera, but there was a problem: if I was wrong, Adamastor could sue me for defamation. And that would be just as awkward.

I decided to handle the matter myself. I couldn't properly search for the supposed hidden camera until the power came back on, but nothing was stopping me from shoving that slipper in the shameless creep's face!

So, armed with one of the emergency lamps, I crossed the hall and went to knock on the neighbor's door, his slipper in hand, ready to raise hell and force him to tell me what the hell he was doing in my apartment in my absence and, more importantly, how he got in.

I rang the doorbell once, twice, three times. Nothing. Then I remembered, of course, that we were without power. Force of habit. So I knocked on the door. Nothing. I pounded on it, calling his name. No response. I slammed my fist against the door, shouting his name and every curse word I could think of. Still, nothing.

I started to get worried. If there was one thing I knew about Adamastor, it was that he never left home, except to go to the grocery store twice a week, always in the morning — according to the doorman's gossip. So where could he have gone in the middle of a blackout?

By this point, I suspected that the neighbors upstairs and downstairs were already gathering in the hall, each on their own floor, trying to figure out why I was shouting obscenities like that.

Since I got no response, I figured it was one of two things: either he was still in my apartment — a theory I almost dismissed, since I had already searched every corner for any other sign of the intruder — or he was dead in his own apartment.

It was this second possibility that made me rush down the four flights of stairs to get the night doorman, Clóvis, to break down Adamastor's door.

At first, he tried calling out to him, just as I had done. By then, a crowd had started gathering on the stairs, trying to understand what was going on. Finally, realizing the man wasn't going to answer — and worried, given that he was an elderly resident — Clóvis mustered the courage to break down the door.

And imagine our surprise when we found the apartment almost completely empty!

There was nothing in the living room but an armchair, a small table, an old desk, and two bookshelves — everything impeccably clean and neatly arranged. No television or any electronic devices. In the kitchen, just cabinets, a stove, and a fridge. Not a sign of a microwave or any other appliances.

"Oh no..." I muttered. "I think the intruder in my apartment cleaned out the old man's place..."

"Come again?" asked the doorman. "Someone broke into your apartment?"

"That's why I was calling Mr. Adamastor. I found this slipper of his by my bedroom door, and I thought he'd entered without my permission. But now it seems like someone else might have robbed his apartment and, for some reason, wasn't able to do the same to mine."

"Is there an intruder in the building?" asked another neighbor, peeking out from their door.

"We're not sure yet," the doorman said evasively.

"Look around!" I snapped. "Does this look like the normal state of this apartment to you?"

"Seems like they took all the electronics," the neighbor observed.

"Bingo!" I agreed.

"Let's focus on what's most important! Let me find Mr. Adamastor; we'll deal with the rest later."

Armed with his phone's flashlight, Clóvis pressed on, making his way through the apartment. The bathroom was empty. He headed to the bedroom, and there was the old man, sprawled out on the bed.

Carefully, Clóvis walked around the bed and leaned in near the headboard.

"Mr. Adamastor?" he called. But the old man didn't wake up. So Clóvis touched his shoulder, and suddenly the old man stirred, startled.

"Are you okay?"

"What?" the old man mumbled, groggy. "Clóvis? What are you doing here?"

"Miss Alexia, your neighbor, was knocking on your door, and since you didn't answer, she got worried," the doorman explained.

Adamastor still looked confused. Shaking off his drowsiness, he reached for the nightstand and grabbed a small object, which he positioned in his ear.

"What did you say?" he asked, now with his hearing aid in place.

"You couldn't hear me..." Clóvis realized, relieved.

"I can hardly hear a thing without my little device," Adamastor explained. "Why is everyone here?"

His eyes landed on me. Mine, however, were fixed on the last thing I expected to find in the neighbor's apartment.

"Weasley? What are you doing here?" I asked, stunned.

My cat was simply sprawled out on the bed, right next to the old man. Making himself at home, the shameless little thing.

Oh, yes, his name is Weasley, after the family of Harry Potter's best friend, because my cat has a reddish coat.

"He always hangs out here when you're not home," Adamastor explained, now sitting up in bed, stroking the cat's head. "Is that my slipper you've got there?"

"It is," I replied, holding it up like evidence in a courtroom. "Care to tell me why it was by my bedroom door?"

The old man's gaze immediately fell on the cat.

"Got anything to say about that, little buddy?"

Weasley just blinked a few times, loving the attention he was getting.

And then it hit me: Weasley had a habit of carrying my slippers to his sleeping basket when I wasn't home. Judging by how comfortable he was in Adamastor's apartment, I realized he'd been hauling the old man's slipper too. After all, his basket was right by my bedroom door — where the slipper had been found.

The jury finds the defendant — Weasley — guilty!

"And what about the intruder?" asked the neighbor who had followed us into the old man's bedroom.

That's when I noticed there were five or six people crowded around the doorway, watching the night's developments unfold.

"Intruder?" Adamastor asked.

"Looks like they took everything from you," the neighbor informed him.

"What do you mean?" Adamastor, surprisingly agile for a man in his seventies, got up and headed to the living room to check what had been stolen. Suddenly, he frowned. "It doesn't seem like anything's missing."

"Where's your TV?" asked a boy of about thirteen, closely followed by his mother.

"I don't have a television," Adamastor chuckled.

"What about your microwave? Your phone?" the boy continued.

"I don't have any of those either."

The boy looked him up and down as if Adamastor were an alien.

"Nothing against technology, but I prefer to keep it out of my home," Adamastor explained. "In my day, we didn't have any of that, and life was much more productive. Nowadays, you all spend your time glued to screens and can't accomplish in a week with all this tech what I used to do in a day, by hand."

"And what do you do here all day?" the boy asked, despite his mother's hand squeezing his shoulder, silently urging him not to be rude. But Adamastor didn't take offense.

"Look at these shelves."

"You read?!" The boy wrinkled his nose.

"I wrote almost half of these books. You could learn a lot from them. I was a university professor for forty years. And a writer, on the side. These days, cataracts get in the way, but I still try to type a few lines now and then."

"Cat... what?" the boy asked, as the old man pointed to the typewriter on the tiny desk.

"Shouldn't you be writing on a computer?" the boy asked, puzzled.

"The fewer distractions, the better."

"Well, I think we've bothered Mr. Adamastor enough for one day," Clóvis said. "Now that we've seen he's fine and that nothing was stolen, we'd better get going."

Just then, the hallway lights flicked back on, drawing cheers from everyone present.

"Weasley!" I called. "Your home is right across the hall, sweetheart."

"But you can come visit me anytime, little buddy," Adamastor said as I handed him back his slipper.

"I'll fix your lock tomorrow, Mr. Adamastor," Clóvis assured him.

"Thank you," the old man said, now informed that we'd had to break down his door.

I collapsed onto my couch as soon as I locked the door and turned off the emergency lamps. What a situation! It's not every day you barge into someone else's apartment to accuse your neighbor of being a pervert and a home invader, only to leave with a lost cat and a life lesson.

That's when I realized that, barely finished reflecting on this, I already had the TV on and my phone screen lit up in my hand, checking messages. Two screens at once. Two distractions. And soon I'd switch on the third, my computer. And as always, at the end of the day, after failing to complete my spreadsheets because I couldn't take my eyes off my favorite Netflix series while debating next episode theories with my friend Claudia over the phone, it dawned on me that Adamastor was right: my life would be much more productive if I didn't have so many screens on at the same time to distract me.

Technology makes life much easier for us humans. But too much of it — what a hindrance it can be!