It was Rosita’s prerogative, as the owner’s sister, to sing whenever she chose. For Mohamed, the sounds she expelled from her throat lacked unambiguously the power to seduce, reminding him rather of her brother’s cries as he lunged at the central pillar on those afternoons in the locked café when Periclito practised his mariposas, raising Mohamed’s black apron behind his back, first one side, then the other, like a butterfly. In his mirrors, Periclito could see himself from every angle, front back and in paunchy profile. In those mirrors, he discarded his limp, and the bull’s head he alone could see, eternally ready for Periclito’s truth, exposed its neck. That’s it, my darling, put your feet together. Hand me the sword – my sword, Mohamed!

“Mohamed!” Panteco was calling. Mohamed nodded. All right, he’d seen him.

“Enough?” But Ghanem was engrossed in The Strong Tend to Leave.

Mohamed planted the pepper grinder on the table, then swerved around the pillar to where Panteco stood beside Dolores. The librarian wore a new indigo blouse and gold windmill earrings. She scratched her throat, tossing the hair she had half-twisted into a bun and half-permitted to hang down one side of her face so that everyone could see her burnt-sugar eyes. On her arrival the whole café had fallen into a library hush.

Mohamed inspected her closely as he smoothed out a fresh tablecloth and, bowing, announced to the Captain and his pretty companion, as if they did indeed merit the attention of the entire café: “Señores!”

But her eyes were not the eyes featured in the biro competition.

Wavery stood at the bar next to a vase of wild berries and a stand containing hard-boiled eggs. It was lit by the same coloured lights that gaudied the empty stage. Several of the lights were broken, making it the darkest part of the café.

He waited for someone to serve him.

“Señor?” Mohamed appeared at last.

Wavery ordered a cognac.

“Naçional?”

Wavery nodded. Above the bottles, the stuffed head of a bull was repeated in the glass, its horns tossing a battered sombrero.

“Jam de kiam okazis la akcidento li etas malzata.”

Beside him a man leaned down, to give a potato crisp to the dog Wavery had seen on the esplanade. The dog’s lead was attached to the leg of a barstool. The man sat up and his face came blue, red and yellow into the lights.

He was small, about fifty, with a crease about his eyes as if he might have been wearing a ski-mask. His hair was thinning on top, but elsewhere needed a trim. He was dressed in a long grey T-shirt, and jeans which had been tucked into a pair of cowboy boots stamped with black cartwheels. A gold propelling pencil was clipped to his T-shirt at the throat. On his chest Wavery read the words VIRGIL IS STILL THE FROG BOY.

“Ever since the accident, he’s been hungry.”

He spoke English, with the trace of a west country accent. Wavery looked away. Below the bull’s head there was an enlarged photograph of a rotund man in matador’s uniform. Wavery read: “Periclito Merimée Amaral, triunfador de la feria de Chinchero, 1987”.