Greeted and called from tables all around, admired by men and women, waiters and musicians, the toreros made of their entrance a kind of triumphal progress. Even Ravioli had a soft spot for them, and the police leaned against the wall to get out of their way. The toreros, haughty and boastful, accustomed to the applause of the bullring, basked in the warm welcome, and circulated through the bar and around the dance floor before taking their place at the round table in the corner, where they asked for cigars, served themselves glasses of wine, and began to converse noisily, knowing that they would be the object of everyone's attention, the center, pride, and splendor of the party. They never failed to be encircled by admirers, principally of the fairer sex. But how difficult it was to get them to dance! They sneered at the undulations of the danzón and paid scant attention to admirers of either sex. Instead, as they drained glass after glass of Spanish wine, their nostalgia grew, melancholy memories loomed in their Arabian eyes, and they felt the tender tug of their homeland in their hearts, dreamed of crisp dawns in the villages of Andalusia, of twilight conversations at the window grates of Andalusian beauties. They were not good singers, but at these moments one of them, the least tone deaf of the lot, would sing a song of home, and the others would vigorously keep time, with clapping hands, of course, but also by beating a rhythmic accompaniment with their walking canes on the floor and with empty glasses on the marble table tops, punctuated with shouts of olé and other expressions of encouragement:

“That's it … now … that's the way!”

And then, waxing sentimental and poetic, they all took turns singing verses, someone about his mother, someone about his sweetheart, someone else about prison. There was a death and a cemetery in almost every verse. They became increasingly absorbed in their song, for that reason paying scant attention to friends and lovers. They sang at first with a puerile desire to garner applause, a bit theatrically. Later, in the grip of their memories, they closed their eyes as they sang the intense lyrics, so better to see inside of themselves. El Jarameño stood on his dignity as matador, a headliner in the city's bullfight billing, and mainly just drank and announced judgments to which everyone else agreed.

“That's the way to sing a malagueña! No kidding!”

Aware that el Jarameño went to Tivoli to see her, and only her, Santa prohibited her elegant followers from approaching the matador.

“Go listen to them if you like, but I'm staying at my own table. I hate that weird flamenco singing!”

She lied, of course, when she said that she hated the toreros' singing. Why, if she hated it, would she hardly reply to the flirtatious comments of her rich-kid followers? Why would she become nostalgic and even sigh aloud, the way she did when the toreros sang, and forget she was holding her champagne glass in mid air? El Jarameño turned from time to time toward Santa, who, like a coward, refused to meet his gaze and slightly shrugged her shoulders to indicate that she remained unimpressed.