The Dragon Griaule

‘The army now runs everything here, as no doubt you are aware. It is rumored they are planning a winter campaign against Regensburg. Can you believe it! Their fathers were ignorant, but this generation is brutally stupid. Otherwise, the work goes well and things are as usual with me. My shoulder aches, children stare at me on the street, and it is whispered I am mad . . .’

– From Under Griaule’s Wing

By Lise Claverie

3

 Acne-scarred, lean, arrogant, Major Hauk was a very young major with a limp. When Meric had entered, the major had been practicing his signature – it was a thing of elegant loops and flourishes, obviously intended to have a place in posterity.

As he strode back and forth during their conversation, he paused frequently to admire himself in the window glass, settling the hang of his red jacket or running his fingers along the crease of his white trousers. It was the new style of uniform, the first Meric had seen at close range, and he noted with amusement the dragons embossed on the epaulets. He wondered if Griaule was capable of such an irony, if his influence was sufficiently discreet to have planted the idea for this comic-opera apparel in the brain of some general’s wife.

‘. . . not a question of manpower,’ the major was saying, ‘but of . . .’ He broke off, and after a moment cleared his throat.

Meric, who had been studying the blotches on the backs of his hands, glanced up; the cane that had been resting against his knee slipped and clattered to the floor.

‘A question of materiel,’ said the major firmly. ‘The price of antimony, for example . . .’

‘Hardly use it anymore,’ said Meric. ‘I’m almost done with the mineral reds.’

A look of impatience crossed the major’s face. ‘Very well,’ he said; he stooped to his desk and shuffled through some papers. ‘Ah! Here’s a bill for a shipment of cuttlefish from which you derive . . .’ He shuffled more papers.

‘Syrian brown,’ said Meric gruffly. ‘I’m done with that, too. Golds and violets are all I need anymore. A little blue and rose.’ He wished the man would stop badgering him; he wanted to be at the eye before sunset.

As the major continued his accounting, Meric’s gaze wandered out the window. The shantytown surrounding Griaule had swelled into a city and now sprawled across the hills. Most of the buildings were permanent, wood and stone, and the cant of the roofs, the smoke from the factories around the perimeter, put him in mind of Regensburg. All the natural beauty of the land had been drained into the painting. Blackish gray rain clouds were muscling up from the east, but the afternoon sun shone clear and shed a heavy gold radiance on Griaule’s side. It looked as if the sunlight were an extension of the gleaming resins, as if the thickness of the paint were becoming infinite. He let the major’s voice recede to a buzz and followed the scatter and dazzle of the images; and then, with a start, he realized the major was sounding him out about stopping the work.

The idea panicked him at first. He tried to interrupt, to raise objections; but the major talked through him, and as Meric thought it over, he grew less and less opposed. The painting would never be finished, and he was tired. Perhaps it was time to have done with it, to accept a university post somewhere and enjoy life for a while.

‘We’ve been thinking about a temporary stoppage,’ said Major Hauk. ‘Then if the winter campaign goes well . . .’ He smiled. ‘If we’re not visited by plague and pestilence, we’ll assume things are in hand. Of course we’d like your opinion.’

Meric felt a surge of anger toward this smug little monster. ‘In my opinion, you people are idiots,’ he said. ‘You wear Griaule’s image on your shoulders, weave him on your flags, and yet you don’t have the least comprehension of what that means. You think it’s just a useful symbol . . .’

‘Excuse me,’ said the major stiffly.

‘The hell I will!’ Meric groped for his cane and heaved up to his feet. ‘You see yourselves as conquerors. Shapers of destiny. But all your rapes and slaughters are Griaule’s expressions. His will. You’re every bit as much his parasites as the skizzers.’

The major sat, picked up a pen, and began to write.

‘It astounds me,’ Meric went on, ‘that you can live next to a miracle, a source of mystery, and treat him as if he were an oddly shaped rock.’

The major kept writing.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Meric.

‘My recommendation,’ said the major without looking up.

‘Which is?’

‘That we initiate stoppage at once.’

They exchanged hostile stares, and Meric turned to leave; but as he took hold of the doorknob, the major spoke again.