It was Norma Palhares who first steered her new husband

toward the offshore oil platforms. At the time, it seemed

like a judicious course to follow. In the end, it set their marital

ship on the rocks.

Jonas would spend only two days a week at home; but the

money was good, and he’d only do it for a year or so, just until

they had enough saved up to buy a bigger house. But the kids

they’d planned on never came, so they’d never needed that

bigger house. And, in the meantime, their expenses just kept

going up and up. New cars every year, flat-screen televisions

all over the house, imported wines, designer clothing, the

most expensive restaurants, the finest club in the city, the

best hairdressers. Jonas kept bringing the money in, and

Norma kept shoveling it out. A year became two, then three.

And by the time the divorce became final, they’d been

together for more than seven.

Jonas moved in with a colleague and began to do what he’d

wanted to do for quite some time—embrace the good life.

The colleague was another petroleum engineer who had

taken a small flat on a busy shopping street in the Leme neighborhood,

six blocks from the beach. He, too, had recently separated

from his wife and, burdened by child support, would have

been happy to have Jonas stay on and help with the rent. But

Jonas, who’d managed to conceal a bundle of money from

Norma and her lawyer, had no kids and no financial problems.

He wanted a place of his own.

He settled first in Santa Teresa, taking a small house with

a high wall and a big garden. The house, situated in the

highest part of Rio’s highest neighborhood, was conveniently

located, less than fifty meters from the nearest streetcar stop.

The single-story structure was of just the right size: big

enough for Jonas’s needs, but small enough to be maintained

without a full-time maid. A cleaning lady, who came in three

times a week, kept it tidy.

From his backyard, Jonas could look down on the mouth

of the bay. The headlands, seven hundred meters below,

were so close to one another that a Portuguese navigator

had once, on a long-ago January day, mistaken them for the

entrance to a river. It was he who’d given the place a name

it would bear forever after: Rio de Janeiro, River of January.

The spectacular view was further enhanced by the Christ

Statue up on the Corcovado. The monument, almost forty

meters in height, was actually four kilometers away, at almost

the same altitude as the house. To Jonas’s visitors, it looked

like a copy in miniature set into the recesses of his garden

among the banana trees.

Excerpt ends.