Ezequiel de Sousa Escobar is Bentinho's best friend. The two meet at the seminary, where the narrator describes him as "a slender young man, with light eyes, a little evasive, like his hands, his feet, his speech, like everything." He is three years older, the son of a lawyer from Curitiba, and he confesses to Bentinho that he too does not intend to be a priest: what he wants is commerce.
It is Escobar who suggests the way out of Dona Glória's vow: give the Church an orphan ordained in place of the son. Afterward he leaves the seminary, becomes a coffee merchant, and marries Sancha, Capitu's friend. The two couples come to live almost as one household, and Bentinho gives his son his friend's name, Ezequiel.
Escobar drowns in March 1871, in the rough sea of Flamengo, where he used to swim. It is from his death that Bentinho's suspicion arises: at the wake, Capitu's gaze on the body, and afterward the resemblance of Ezequiel to the dead man, convince him that his wife and his friend deceived him. The novel shows no scene of the two of them alone.