perhaps in all the world
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no Rio de Janeiro, e talvez neste mundo.
in Rio de Janeiro, and perhaps in all this world.
…perhaps the very last anywhere.
The little flourish 'e talvez neste mundo' — and perhaps in all the world — is the narrator himself reaching for a small superlative, gently catching José Dias's own habit. It is a fond exaggeration: maybe no man anywhere still wore those straps. The joke doubles back with affection; having just defined José Dias by his love of overstatement, Bento indulges one on his behalf. Across the whole book the narrator's relation to José Dias is exactly this mixture — he sees through the man completely and cannot help being charmed by him, and the wry hyperbole here holds both feelings at once.
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