And now Mohamed waited to welcome his master.

Behind the bar, he was excited. He had left the bullring early, to be here well in advance of Periclito – and what had happened? At the exit Mohamed had walked into the Governor, followed a step behind by his wife. As soon as he looked at Beatrice Menendez, Mohamed knew his search was at an end. At last, he had found Her. All year he had grabbed the shoulders of vexed or bewildered strangers to ask if they were “the Eyes”. In this way he had addressed himself to the wife of a Canadian geminologist; a New Age traveller from Dijon who had been abandoned by her boyfriend on Playa Benitez; an albino ethnographer whose parents, yeomen farmers from Urcos, had brought her up since childhood wearing a canary-yellow wig; and someone who turned out not to be a girl at all but Mallorca’s third greatest popstar.

But there was no time now to savour his victory. Here, coming through the doors, was Periclito! Here was the triunfador de la feria! He sat on the bar-counter, his white shirt rolled to the elbows, his fat little legs squeezed into matador’s breeches, ordering Mohamed to serve free drinks to everyone.

Soon the café was warm with the herd-breath of drinkers. They were toasting Periclito’s sacred cojones. They were raising their glasses to the matador, to the gory roan head above him, to the matadors and roan heads they saw in every spotless mirror.

The whole head!

President Zamora had responded to the crowd. He had rewarded the Earthquake not with the tail, not with an ear – but the whole head! He did not know if he had been correct, but who had ever seen such a blizzard of handkerchiefs?

Periclito lay one arm along Señora Criado’s shoulder while with his other he stroked the tanned back of his stepsister, Rosita. He raised his hand from the cook’s shoulder. Caution crept into his face. Let them not be carried away. Much had also depended on the bull. He raised his glass to the pillar where the bull’s head had been suspended below that of Lieutenant Zamora. Two wires of blood dried on the bright glass beneath the neck flap. What a wind-drinker, eh!

They toasted the wind-drinker and on behalf of the animal Periclito accepted their toast. He wiped his mouth, beaming. But how well he himself had performed. His limp had vanished before those horns. Where his paunch had been, there was a hollow. The horns had respected him. They had torn away a tassel. Look! He lifted a leg. But five minutes later – five minutes, Criado! – where were those horns?

“The hollow of my hand!”

He rotated on the counter and reached behind. In his hand he held a gold-knobbed cane.

“So that’s where it is!” exclaimed Genia Ortiz, at that moment entering the café accompanied by others from the Royal Box.

For the seventh bull Periclito had used Ernesto’s baton as a palillo from which to hang his cape. He flexed it now as a sword. He beckoned Rosita. “Put your feet together, my darling!” He poised, the baton above her, while his left hand searched for a napkin. He had performed the mariposa, the butterfly, on the bull’s nose! The bull had been no less astonished than his sister. “I landed the butterfly like this, and softly, softly I sang to him until the moment came when I did that.” The baton descended down the length of her spine. It was approaching the waist-band of her dress when Genia Ortiz seized it.