Irène can’t remember how it started – at what precise moment the joy began to leak out of her, like air from a punctured tyre. Did she glimpse her reflection in a shop window one gloomy afternoon? Did someone make a hurtful remark that slowly abraded her heart? Or did her melancholy have a purely physical cause: the diminishing flow of a certain secretion; some hormonal imbalance or neurological disorder?

Leaning her forehead against the window of the underground train, Irène broods over the source of her malaise. She tries to trace it back through time, naïvely hoping that, if she can only put her finger on the origin of her sadness, she will be able to cure it. Irène is a scientist; a physician attempting to heal herself. A few months ago, when she noticed the first symptoms of her depression – a sinking feeling when she woke in the morning; tears on her pillow as she fell asleep – she decided she should consult an endocrinologist, a gynaecologist, even a psychiatrist. ‘It’s nothing that can’t be solved by a course of medicine,’ she told herself. After a few weeks of treatment, everything would be fine; she would be herself again, a woman with a renewed lust for life, a woman who did not regard all her plans as empty gestures.

She calls her friend Michèle, who has been her GP for almost thirty years. They were students together at medical school in Montpellier, and Michèle had helped Irène through both of her pregnancies. Sitting in her friend’s office, Irène tells her about the crying fits, the feeling of hollowness, the loss of her élan vital. Michèle writes all this down. She talks to her about the menopause. ‘But let’s take a look,’ she says, inviting Irène to undress. Irène drapes her blouse over the top of the screen, followed by her bra and her sensible knickers. She lies down on the examining table and spreads her legs. She feels cold when her friend palpates her breasts. Afterwards, they sit on either side of the desk and while Michèle writes her a prescription – ‘Don’t worry, everything’s fine’ – she pulls a cardboard folder from a stack of files and, chuckling, hands it to Irène.

‘This is a patient I saw yesterday,’ she says with a knowing smile.

At the bottom of the first page is a line handwritten in black ink: ‘Patient has never had sexual intercourse. Total fusion of the anterior and posterior vaginal walls. Impossible to carry out a gynaecological exam.’

Irène puts the document on the desk without looking up at her friend.

‘She’s a nun,’ explains Michèle, who now appears embarrassed for having laughed at the unfortunate woman, not to mention the breach of professional ethics. She slides the folder back into the stack. ‘I just thought it was an interesting case…’

Irène shrugs, her eyes still riveted to the orange rug that has covered the floor of this office for almost twenty years. She doesn’t want Michèle to see her crying.

She leaves the building and, a few streets later, tosses the prescription her friend has given her into a bin. On the way home, she thinks about her own vagina. For the first time in ages, she feels a throbbing sensation between her legs. But it is not desire insinuating itself between her thighs – it is death. Yes, death has begun its work, she thinks, eating away at her sex organs, closing them up like a scar. The Grim Reaper does not kiss you on the mouth; he penetrates your lower lips, his cold touch withering the flesh, drying up the mucous membranes, extinguishing all desire. Irène remembers seeing her mother’s vulva when she was a very old woman and needed to have her incontinence nappy changed. It was nearly bald, and pale as a corpse. A sex organ that no longer served any purpose. She feels that a part of her own life has ended, as if a heavy door has just banged shut. Passion and desire are feelings that belong to those lost times. When she watches a film with her husband and the characters make love, she feels jealous and resigned by turns. Her life now revolves around other people, around platonic tenderness and self-sacrifice.

*

And then an email arrives inviting her to a cosmetic surgery conference in Brazil. Normally, she would delete the message without a second thought. She hates that kind of professional gathering. She doesn’t like her colleagues, or the way that they make such a display of their success and wealth. As for her scientific curiosity, it has grown dull over the years. She is already working part-time, and soon, she knows, she will quit her job for good. The truth is that she no longer enjoys being a doctor. But she does not delete the email. In fact, she reads it several times that day. She looks online at photographs of Rio de Janeiro and the small town of Paraty, where the pharmaceutical company sponsoring the conference is offering a two-day excursion. She has never been to South America. When she was younger, she used to dream of foreign trips and adventures, but her husband always refused to go. He came up with various arguments over the years. At the start of their careers, they couldn’t afford it. Then: ‘The children are so young – it would be a risk to take them with us. And who could babysit them if we left them here?’ After that, Jacques had insisted on burying a luxury home near Honfleur, on the Normandy coast, which put a strain on their finances for years. He loved that house. He was forever inviting friends to stay with them. ‘Why bother flying for miles on uncomfortable aeroplanes? Why eat crappy food and stay in soulless hotels? Why put up with crowds of stupid tourists when we could be here, in our own house, in our own bed, enjoying this view?’

A week passes, and Irène can’t stop thinking about Brazil. She buys a travel guide, which she reads on the underground while she commutes to work. She feels ridiculously proud when she catches other passengers glancing at the book in her hands, with its shimmering cover photograph of Rio’s Guanabara Bay. ‘Yes, I’m going to Brazil soon,’ she wants to tell these curious strangers. The thought fills her with joy. As the days pass, she starts to imagine the trip in ever greater detail. It’s like a film projected in front of her eyes, a film in which she is the lead actress, playing a character to whom the most extraordinary things happen. She doesn’t dare admit it to herself at first, but she dreams of having an affair. Then this fantasy becomes a premonition, which is soon transformed into a certainty. This trip will change her life. She will meet someone there, a man, and she will know at first sight that he is the one. There will be no need to speak; this will be one of those encounters when time slows, when her hands start to shake and her heart races. She feels like a fifteen-year-old girl again. This man will place his hand on her waist, touch his lips to the back of her neck… He will undress her, and her body – her body that has not been caressed for so long – will come back to life. At the end of the week, Irène replies to the email from the pharmaceutical company, informing them that she would be delighted to attend the conference.

Going home that evening, she feels nervous. She doesn’t know how she will break the news to Jacques. She already feels like she is cheating on him. Her fantasy is so real that when she tells him about the conference, a voice inside her head whispers that she is a liar, a Machiavellian manipulator. She starts to stammer some nonsense about how highly advanced the Brazilians are with regard to several interesting procedures. And then there’s this trip, she adds. Jacques shrugs. He’s against the idea, but she can tell from the look in his eyes that it is not jealousy that drives him to dissuade her. It wouldn’t even cross his mind that she might have a lover. His arguments are banal and pragmatic. He reminds her of things she’s said to him before. ‘I thought you said you weren’t interested in your work anymore? Why are you suddenly so eager to learn new techniques?’ He raises his voice ironically when he pronounces these last three words, signifying both his own disdain and the ridiculousness of Irène’s ambition. ‘You say you hate your colleagues, that your ultimate dream is to stop working, and now you want to go and see what the Brazilians are doing? Okay, whatever…’ Jacques’s condescension only intensifies her erotic daydreams. In the days that follow, she savours her secret longings, enjoying the knowledge that she is – at least in thought – an unfaithful wife. At the dinner table, while her husband is noisily chewing his food, she imagines another man’s hand on her pussy. When he snores, in the darkness of the conjugal bedroom, she conjures a tongue to lick her breasts, and moans softly. During Sunday lunch, as Jacques arrogantly interrupts her to enlighten her with his political opinions, she smiles, picturing herself on her knees, another man’s erect penis in her mouth.

She feels certain now. This trip will offer her an astonishing surprise, an incredible opportunity not only to avenge herself but to rediscover how it feels to be alive, to truly inhabit her own body. Nervous as a schoolgirl, she enters a department store and walks around the lingerie aisles. Her fingertips graze the lace and silk of low-cut teddies and babydolls. She admires their artistry, their delicacy, then gasps when she sees how much these tiny strips of fabric cost. It has been so long since she bought lingerie. She didn’t remember it being so expensive. In the end, she doesn’t buy anything. She feels ashamed when all these beautiful young sales assistants come over and say: ‘Can I help you?’ She imagines that they must be laughing inside at this tired-looking menopausal woman hoping to make herself desirable by clothing her sagging body in fine lace. To spare herself further humiliation, she uses her work computer to order two pricy outfits. A garnet-coloured silk bra and matching knickers, and a pearl-grey babydoll with an exquisite little bow between the breasts. Two outfits should be enough, she calculates, because after two nights of making love, they won’t have any need for such fripperies. They will live in a state of nature together, barely able to breathe for their insatiable desire, like two rutting beasts. The film in her head grows ever more graphic.

By the day of her departure, she is feverish with anticipation. At the airport, in the check-in queue and then at the boarding gate, she looks around at the other passengers with a mixture of avidity and panic. ‘Maybe he’s here, among all these people? Maybe my story is about to start, in this soulless airport terminal, between a bookshop and a fast-food restaurant?’ She is ready, as alert as a guard dog. But things don’t happen the way she imagined, and the first few hours of her trip are a series of disappointments. On the plane, she drinks two glasses of wine. But instead of knocking her out as she hoped, the alcohol makes it impossible for her to fall asleep. She suffers from heartburn throughout the flight, and two sachets of Gaviscon are not enough to ease the discomfort. When she sees her reflection in the bathroom at Galeão Airport, she feels utterly dejected. Her face is deathly pale and there are dark bags under her eyes. Two deeply etched lines, radiating from the corners of her mouth, give her a sad, bitter expression. ‘Who would want a woman like that?’ she thinks.

In the arrivals hall she spots a man holding a sign bearing the name of the pharmaceutical company. Irène pushes her trolley slowly towards him. She greets him in bad English, and her cheeks burn red. She wishes she could disappear. The man, whose English is even worse than hers, explains that she is the first to arrive. He shows her a clipboard with a long list of participants. Irène sits on an airport chair and waits, staring at the flood of passengers as they pour through the automatic doors. Is it possible that her lover will appear before her eyes, here and now, in this noisy hall, while she feels nauseated in her wrinkled navy-blue dress? Every five minutes, someone asks her if she needs a taxi or wants to change some money. She shakes her head and raises her palm to ward them off. Nao, obrigada.

An hour later, the driver comes over. He is followed by three men whom she would have guessed were cosmetic surgeons even without the obvious clue of the conference. They are ugly, she thinks, swollen with self-assurance. She smiles, holds out her hand and introduces herself, but in that instant she regrets having come, regrets being part of the same group as these boring, despicable men. In the minibus that takes them to their hotel, she closes her eyes but the laughter of her companions keeps her awake. They talk in loud voices and make jokes about Brazilian women. They ask the driver to turn up the volume of the radio. They’re in Rio de Janeiro, after all. They feel obliged to be happy.

Nothing happens the way it’s supposed to. She has to wait for a long time in the hotel lobby, and when she is given her key, nobody offers to help her with her bags. In the end, she drags them into the lift herself and along the plum-coloured carpet of the corridor leading to her room. There, at last, she is pleasantly surprised: the room has a balcony overlooking a lush tropical garden. She takes a shower, puts on a green silk dress, and later that evening, goes down to the opening night party beside the swimming pool. She drinks a caipirinha and looks around. Her colleagues’ faces have all been remodelled, and so have their bodies. But it isn’t physical perfection that she is seeking. She dreams of another kind of beauty: the beauty of two pairs of eyes meeting, of a smile that suddenly melts her inhibitions and gives her the courage to do anything. The beauty that resides in the feeling that something is about to happen.

She goes to bed, exhausted by travel and alcohol. At one fifty-three in the morning, she is abruptly woken. She grabs her mobile from the bedside table. She has not yet fully emerged from her dream; she has lost all sense of space and time and doesn’t know where she is. She can hear music coming from outside. No, it isn’t music – it’s the sound of an animal, the crying of a baby. She sits up, slowly realising that it is a woman sighing. A languorous moan of pleasure. She switches on the bedside lamp and the sound seems to move closer. This woman is having an orgasm only inches away from her. How ironic that, on this of all nights, she should so clearly hear a couple making love. The woman cries out: once, twice. The man murmurs something and she starts to moan again. Irène is petrified, her chin on her knees. She pictures them. She cannot see their faces, only the woman’s body, lying on its side, and the man, behind her, holding her tightly. He speaks into her ear, and she can almost hear the words he utters. Tender words, dirty words. Beautiful and obscene words. The woman bites her pillow. Irène is hardly breathing. She puts a hand over her mouth. She can almost recall the smell of two intertwined bodies, the scent of sex and pleasure.

Alone in her bed, in the depths of this sweltering night, she feels sullied and fascinated. Hours pass, and the couple fuck endlessly. Is she the only one who can hear them, or are other guests listening too, admiring the man’s impressive endurance, the woman’s breathtaking sensuality? Irène starts to imagine them in different positions. She fights the urge to laugh, to touch herself. Her emotions are all over the place. She turns off the light, covers her head with a pillow, and tries to fall back asleep. But her heart begins to pound, and she feels like she is suffocating. She thinks about calling the hotel’s reception desk, but she is afraid that they will make fun of her, that the receptionist with her lilting Brazilian accent will remind her that there is nothing more beautiful in the world than love, her voice insinuating that Irène – this middle-aged woman with lacy lingerie hidden at the bottom of her suitcase – is ugly and pathetic. She takes a sleeping pill, but she knows that she has become habituated to them and that if she takes a second pill, she will be exhausted tomorrow. She lies back, closes her eyes, and reaches down between her legs. How long has it been since she did this? Years, probably. She hasn’t even thought about it recently, as if it was too embarrassing, but tonight, in this room with its view of a tropical garden, she comes in time with the woman in the room next door.

Irène wakes early the next morning. She can’t remember how she fell asleep, but she is relieved to see that the sun has risen, that her nightmare is finally over. It is only six-thirty, but she takes a shower and goes down to breakfast. She has always hated eating in the company of strangers. Especially in the mornings, when coffee and silence go perfectly together. The hotel restaurant is beautiful and welcoming. As she expected, at this hour she is the only customer. The waiter gestures for her to sit wherever she likes. She chooses a corner table, beside the glass door that offers a view of the garden. She eats a tropical fruit salad and feels comforted by its delicious sweetness. The bananas taste so good that they remind her of the boiled sweets she used to suck as a child. A couple enters the restaurant and sit at the table facing hers. A man and a woman in their fifties, who hold hands as they eat. Is it possible that this potbellied man was the stallion who made love all night? That it was this small, mousy woman who moaned in the darkness?

It’s early, but she decides to smoke a cigarette in the garden. Usually, she doesn’t allow herself this pleasure until late afternoon, but everything is different here: she is in a new hemisphere, a new timezone, a new landscape, and she tells herself that she can do whatever she wants. It rained last night, and there is a constellation of puddles in the garden, each one reflecting palm leaves and crane flowers. She walks towards a beautiful jacaranda and squints. Her eyes must be playing tricks on her: she sees a black shadow suddenly appear before her. The shadow takes shape, and Irène freezes. In the large puddle at her feet, she glimpses the reflection of a monstrous bird with hunched black shoulders and a hooked beak. In the water, it looks like some old lawyer from a Dickens novel.

‘Urubu.’

Irène is so startled that she cries out. A hand has just touched her shoulder. She turns around and finds herself looking up at a man.

‘I’m sorry. I should have known you would be afraid.’

The man is very slender and towers above her. His grey hair is a little too long, but it shines silver in the morning sunlight.

‘They’re vultures,’ he whispers in lightly accented French. Apparently, he is worried that the bird will take off. His lips are almost touching Irène’s ear. ‘Extraordinary animals. Look over there.’ He points at a palm tree in whose branches several vultures are perched. A shiver runs down Irène’s spine. ‘They’re extremely intelligent, you know. They’ve learned to economise their energy. They don’t really fly – they just glide wherever the wind takes them.’

Irène looks up at the sky and watches the black creatures circling high above them. She should be like these birds, she thinks. Stop resisting. Let the wind take her. Surrender herself to its strength.

‘Irène,’ she says, holding out her hand.

‘Mauro. Muito prazer.’