Genia Ortiz attended Mass on Sundays, but the smoke from the Grau had so affected her she had forgone yesterday’s service. Suddenly she felt a desire to sink on her knees before the Virgin of Africa and bother her to be a dear and bring Tromso home this Christmas.

She prepared herself to go out and collected a black wool cape and a shopping bag. In the bag was the only possession of Ernesto’s she could bring herself to touch. It was his gold-knobbed baton presented to Ernesto by the Teatro Amazonas, where in 1921 he had conducted seven performances of Ponchielli’s La Gioconda. She used it to tap melons in the market and to smack the hands of pickpockets.

She removed the baton from the bag and opened the door.

Senator Zamora, dressed in his purple cardigan, listened to the bell as he ate dinner. His ancestor, the quinologist, had transported the entire mechanism from a chapel on the banks of the Amazon near Manaus. Possibly it was ringing for Mass. He looked at his watch. It was ten past seven.

Clotilda, the younger of his two daughters, was out. Please God, a date. Asunción had telephoned from the British Consulate to say she would be working late. Her son, Pablo, was in disgrace after it was discovered the baby daughter of Porcil, the banker, had been baptised with Seven-Up.

Clearly, Abyla was no place for an energetic fatherless eight-year-old. Which was why at the weekend Senator Zamora had driven him to the promontory west of Tangier to see the rock formation known as the Footstep of Hercules. Hercules constituted one of Senator Zamora’s few successes with his grandchild. On the subject of Hercules’ labours (not least his tenth labour), Pablo never failed to be enthralled.

Varro had mentioned twenty-four different Hercules. Senator Zamora’s hero was the man who first sailed this coast and opened up Africa to trade. At his death, a violent death, the Phoenicians deified him. He became the protecting divinity of navigators, the god of the purple dye, and the patron saint of promontories similar to this one. Nevertheless, he could not be certain of his divinity. Every year, in summer, he had to die. He was resurrected in the spring.

On Friday afternoon, as they drove towards the cave, Senator Zamora told Pablo how on each of his two pillars Hercules had inscribed a warning not to proceed further westward. Beyond was the Green Sea of Darkness where the ocean boiled and where mountains magnetised the nails from ships at the same time provoking men to laughter.

“They sailed towards the shore grinning and sinking,” said Senator Zamora.

Pablo was sceptical. “You mean the mountains made people laugh, even if they didn’t want to?”

“That’s right.”

“And you say these mountains could remove metal from wood up to ten miles away.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” repeated Senator Zamora. They stood in the cave where Hercules had squeezed Antæus to death.

“Who was Antæus?”

“He was a Libyan giant and the son of Neptune. He wished to build Neptune a temple made of skulls, so he killed anyone he met.”