Periclito saluted President Zamora and Zamora responded by dipping his white handkerchief against the side of the Royal Box.

Sitting beside Wavery, Marie Amaral repeated to herself the prayer she had uttered on hands and knees before the Virgin of Africa.

A trumpet sounded.

Afterwards, it would be said that Periclito’s elevation to matador de toros was assisted by the fact that his own stiff movements were reflected in the bull from Don Ponciano’s prestigious stable. In any event, he acquitted himself well enough, and although the crowd considered the moment not yet right to bestow on him their bouquets they called for the President to award Periclito the foot of his bull.

“Pata! Pata!” they called. It was an Abylan tradition, the foot, and President Zamora responded with another silk flutter.

Marie Amaral breathed out. Periclito waved to his mother and she waved back. She could relax. This was the first time she – or indeed any of them – had seen the Earthquake fight. Her son, her mirror-wounded son, had survived. It was a good bull which accepted the death a bullfighter gave him. She squeezed Wavery’s arm. She had remembered everything her father said at that first fight in Oran. She wanted to explain.

What they had just witnessed was not a confrontation between a spherical matador and a vital animal. No. It was a meeting between Man and his own Animality. The bull incarnated our most profound apprehensions about ourselves, the transgressions we do not dare perform from fear or desire.

“This animality must be conquered,” she told Wavery. “But it must be conquered aesthetically and harmoniously. It must be suppressed, not punished. It must be treated with courage, style, sympathy, force – all the conditions that make us fight for life.”

“Is that right?”

“It’s bad if the animality invades you, señor, but if you treat it well it’s very creative. It’s one of the most important things a man can have.”

In that moment Marie Amaral observed Wavery’s features. Had he lived, she realised, David would have been the same age. But his face, his face, she thought. It exhaled an intolerable sadness as of a portrait rubbed out with turpentine. Surely the bullfight could not have upset him so much? Had he listened to anything she had said? What was it that blighted him?

Flustered, she went on. “I can see you find this a lot of nonsense, that you might find it disgusting. But if you are too literal, you can find everything disgusting. On the other hand, if behind the person in the bathroom you see another dimension, then – ah, then life becomes a religious ceremony.”

“I suppose so,” said Wavery.

And suddenly it was more important than anything she convinced him, that she show her gratitude.

“Señor,” she began. There was concentration in her face. “It has taken me sixty years to realise something I should have known at twenty. Good and evil are not wheat and chaff. You cannot separate them. The only way you become a human being is when you do something you shouldn’t do. Like Adam and Eve. When Adam and Eve were ready to say ‘No!’ to God, they were ready to be normal. They were ready to recognise evil in themselves. Like a child when he says his first lie,” she said, thinking of Periclito.