The little groups of people gathered on street corners that I had found so charming when I’d first arrived revealed themselves to be highly sophisticated networks of espionage. There was a reason they dragged half the contents of their houses out onto the street every night, and it was not to amuse the tourists with their quaint Brazilian traditions. The truth was that it contained secret radio equipment that they would use to beam information through to the FBI and KGB. While Winston Churchill was hardly a man known for his discretion, even I was alarmed at the penetration of the balcony incident into the avant-garde world of Santa Teresa. People I had never met in my life, seeing me pass in the street that week, would nod in my direction. ‘That’s the one,’ they said. ‘That’s the home wrecker.’ ‘He told me he was divorced!’ I pleaded, but they would shy away from me with wary expressions. To stem the damage to my reputation, I beat a hasty retreat from the bohemian world of Lapa and returned to the socialite parties of Gustavo, but it was to no avail.
