The Dragon Griaule

‘We owe you so much,’ he said; he wore an expression of mingled pity and respect that further irritated Meric.

‘How many men have you killed, Major?’ he asked, opening the door.

‘I’m not sure. I was in the artillery. We were never able to be sure.’

‘Well, I’m sure of my tally,’ said Meric. ‘It’s taken me forty years to amass it. Fifteen hundred and ninety-three men and women. Poisoned, scalded, broken by falls, savaged by animals. Murdered. Why don’t we – you and I – just call it even.’

Though it was a sultry afternoon, he felt cold as he walked toward the tower – an internal cold that left him light-headed and weak. He tried to think what he would do. The idea of a university post seemed less appealing away from the major’s office; he would soon grow weary of worshipful students and in-depth dissections of his work by jealous academics. A man hailed him as he turned into the market. Meric waved but did not stop, and heard another man say, ‘That’s Cattanay?’ (That ragged old ruin?)

The colors of the market were too bright, the smells of charcoal cookery too cloying, the crowds too thick, and he made for the side streets, hobbling past one-room stucco houses and tiny stores where they sold cooking oil by the ounce and cut cigars in half if you could not afford a whole one. Garbage, tornadoes of dust and flies, drunks with bloody mouths. Somebody had tied wires around a pariah dog – a bitch with slack teats; the wires had sliced into her flesh, and she lay panting in an alley mouth, gaunt ribs flecked with pink lather, gazing into nowhere. She, thought Meric, and not Griaule, should be the symbol of their flag.

As he rode the hoist up the side of the tower, he fell into his old habit of jotting down notes for the next day. What’s that cord of wood doing on level five? Slow leak of chrome yellow from pipes on level twelve. Only when he saw a man dismantling some scaffolding did he recall Major Hauk’s recommendation and understand that the order must already have been given. The loss of his work struck home to him then, and he leaned against the railing, his chest constricted and his eyes brimming. He straightened, ashamed of himself. The sun hung in a haze of iron-colored light low above the western hills, looking red and bloated and vile as a vulture’s ruff. That polluted sky was his creation as much as was the painting, and it would be good to leave it behind. Once away from the valley, from all the influences of the place, he would be able to consider the future.

A young girl was sitting on the twentieth level just beneath the eye. Years before, the ritual of viewing the eye had grown to cultish proportions; there had been group chanting and praying and discussions of the experience. But these were more practical times, and no doubt the young men and women who had congregated here were now manning administrative desks somewhere in the burgeoning empire. They were the ones about whom Dardano should write; they, and all the eccentric characters who had played roles in this slow pageant. The gypsy woman who had danced every night by the eye, hoping to charm Griaule into killing her faithless lover – she had gone away satisfied. The man who had tried to extract one of the fangs – nobody knew what had become of him. The scalehunters, the artisans. A history of Hangtown would be a volume in itself.

The walk had left Meric weak and breathless; he sat down clumsily beside the girl, who smiled. He could not remember her name, but she came often to the eye. Small and dark, with an inner reserve that reminded him of Lise. He laughed inwardly – most women reminded him of Lise in some way.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked, her brow wrinkled with concern.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said; he felt a need for conversation to take his mind off things, but he could think of nothing more to say. She was so young! All freshness and gleam and nerves.

‘This will be my last time,’ she said. ‘At least for a while. I’ll miss it.’ And then, before he could ask why, she added, ‘I’m getting married tomorrow, and we’re moving away.’

He offered congratulations and asked her who was the lucky fellow.

‘Just a boy.’ She tossed her hair, as if to dismiss the boy’s importance; she gazed up at the shuttered membrane. ‘What’s it like for you when the eye opens?’ she asked.

‘Like everyone else,’ he said. ‘I remember . . . memories of my life. Other lives, too.’ He did not tell her about Griaule’s memory of flight; he had never told anyone except Lise about that.

‘All those bits of souls trapped in there,’ she said, gesturing at the eye. ‘What do they mean to him? Why does he show them to us?’

‘I imagine he has his purposes, but I can’t explain them.’

‘Once I remembered being with you,’ said the girl, peeking at him shyly through a dark curl. ‘We were under the wing.’

He glanced at her sharply. ‘Tell me.’