Brazilian politics has never been for prudes, but the fortunes of Senate president Renan Calheiros and his onetime lover continue to arch eyebrows. Calheiros, as this blog last reported (Aug. 13), has been under fire since May, when he was caught sending wads of cash to Mônica Veloso,

 with whom he had an extramarital affair and a child. Calheiros, who is not much to look at (below), has battled an irate public and fierce political foes ever since to save his own - how might the Brazilians put it? - "bum bum." Not so the fair Ms. Veloso, who has seen hers glorified from the printed page to cyberspace. A former journalist, she not only became one fo the country's biggest stories by revealing her ex's funny finances but now graces the cover of the anxiously awaited October edition of Brazilian Playboy, due to hit the stands on Oct. 9. Call it David and Goliath meets Beauty and the Beast. The whole imbroglio has kept a thousand gossips and eggheads busy parsing the peculiarities of politics and propriety in Latin America's biggest nation.

The scandal came to light, you'll recall, not because of Calheiros's inappropriate liaison with Veloso but due to his dubious choice of money men: namely a lobbyist for a big construction firm which does business with the government. Such promiscuity between public office and private life is not uncommon, but it raised some incovenient questions about who exactly was footing the senator's bills. "I was," volleyed Calheiros, challenging his detractors to scour his personal accounts. They did just that, and the senator's predicament worsened with every invoice and tax receipt he produced.

The paper trail led to a radio station that Calheiros allegedly bought and operated irregularly, through a front company run by relatives and aids. Another charge has it that Calheiros threw his weight around in Brasília to pardon a tax debt for a beverage company that returned the favor by buying out a local brewery owned by the Calheiros family for a fabulously inflated sum. Calheiros has stoutly denied all allegations of wrondoing and refused to step down.

The Brazilian public was incensed but legislators are a forgiving lot, and on Sept. 12 the Senate voted 40 to 35 (with six key abstentions) to look the other way. There are plenty of theories as to why, not least the festival of pork and patronage jobs Brasília dangled before wavering legislative allies, on grounds that Calheiros and his excitable Brazilian Democratic Movement Party are linchpins to president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's fragile governing coalition. But no one doubts that the secret balloting was crucial to Calheiros's rescue, allowing his cronies to wax indignant in public over collapsing ethics and then support him sotto voce once the senate chambers were sealed.

  Calheiros is not yet in the clear; he faces two more charges of violating legislative decorum, and the smart money says he will be hard put to cliing to his job as senate chief for much longer. As for his foil, the future looks brighter. Playboy reckons the October edition will be one of the year's best sellers.