‘And now you do,’ she said.
‘No, I don’t. There’s a law against it. The fine houses belong to those with status, with history on their side. There are laws against people like me, laws that keep us in our place.’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I know that.’
He told her about his first interest in the law, how it had seemed in its logical construction and order to be a lever with which one could move any obstruction, but how he had discovered that there were so many levers and obstructions, when you moved one, another would drop down to crush you, and the trick was to keep in constant motion, to be moving things constantly and dancing out of the way.
‘Did you always want to be a lawyer?’
He laughed. ‘No, my first ambition was to be the man who slew the dragon Griaule, to claim the reward offered in Teocinte, to buy my mother silver bowls and my father a new guitar.’
Her expression, happy a moment before, had gone slack and distraught; he asked if she was all right.
‘Don’t even say his name,’ she said. ‘You don’t know, you don’t know . . .’
‘What don’t I know?’
‘Griaule . . . God! I used to feel him in the temple. Perhaps you think that’s just my imagination, but I swear it’s true. We all concentrated on him, we sang to him, we believed in him, we conjured him in our thoughts, and soon we could feel him. Cold and vast. Inhuman. This great scaly chill that owned a world.’
Korrogly was struck by the similarity of phrasing with which the old woman Kirin and now Mirielle had referred to their apprehension of Griaule, and thought to make mention of it, but Mirielle continued speaking, and he let the matter drop.
‘I can still feel his touch in my mind. Heavy and steeped in blackness. Each one of his thoughts a century in forming, a tonnage of hatred, of sheer enmity. He’d brush against me, and I’d be cold for hours. That’s why . . .’
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’ She was trembling violently, hugging herself.
He crossed to the sofa, sat beside her, and, after hesitating for a few seconds, draped an arm about her shoulder. Her hair had the smell of fresh oranges. ‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘I can feel him still, I’ll always feel him.’ She glanced up at Korrogly and then blurted out, ‘Come to bed with me. I know you don’t like me, but it’s warmth I want, not affection. Please, I won’t . . .’
‘I do like you,’ he said.
‘No, you can’t, you . . . no.’
‘I do,’ he said, believing it as he spoke. ‘Tonight I like you, tonight you’re someone it’s possible to care about.’
‘You don’t understand, you can’t see how he’s changed me.’
‘Griaule, you mean?’
‘Please,’ she said, her arms going around his waist. ‘No more questions . . . not now. Please, just keep me warm.’
Three
As Korrogly began his opening statement, half his mind was back in the gemcutter’s apartment with Mirielle, still embraced by her white arms, nourished by the rosy points of her breasts and her long supple legs, finding that beneath her veneer of depravity there existed a woman of virtue and sweetness, replaying in memory the joys of mastery and submission. None of this posed a distraction, but acted rather to inspire him, to urge him on to a more impassioned appeal than that he had originally contrived. Strolling alongside the jury box, stuffed with twelve pasty-faced models of good citizenship culled from an assortment of less worthy souls, he felt like a sea captain striding the deck of his ship, and the courtroom, it struck him, was essentially a cross between church and vessel, the ship of state sailing toward the coast of justice, with white walls for sails and boxy divisions of black wood holding a cargo of witnesses and jurors and the curious, and lording over all, the judge’s bench, an immense teak block carved into the semblance of dragon scales, where sat the oracular figurehead of this magical ship: the Honorable Ernest Wymer, white-haired and florid, an alcoholic old beast with a cruel mouth and tufted brows and a shiny red beak, hunched in the folds of his black-winged gown, ready to pounce upon any lawyerly mouse that should happen to stray into his field of vision. Korrogly was not afraid of Wymer; he, not the judge, was in command this day. He knew the jury’s mind, knew that they wanted to believe Griaule was the guilty party, that this suited the mystical yearning of their hearts, and with all his wiles, he set about consolidating that yearning into intent. There was urgency in his voice, yet it was neither too strident nor too subdued, perfect, a blend of power and fluency; he felt that this harmony of intent and skill stemmed from his night with Mirielle. He was not in love with her, or perhaps he was . . . but love was not the salient matter. What most inspired him was to have found something unspoiled in her, in himself, and whether that was love or merely a place left untouched by the world, it was sufficient to renew his old enthusiasms.
‘We are all aware,’ he said toward the conclusion of his statement, ‘that Griaule’s power exists. The question remains, is he capable of reaching out from the Carbonales to touch us here in Port Chantay. That is a question we should not need ask. Look there.’ He pointed to the judge’s bench and its carved scales. ‘And there.’ He pointed to crude representations of the dragon carved twining the lintel posts at the back of the hall. ‘His image is everywhere in Port Chantay, and this is emblematic of his propinquity, of the tendrils of his will that have infiltrated our lives. Perhaps he cannot move us with the facility that he does those who dwell in Teocinte, but we are not so far beyond the range of his thoughts that he does not know us. He knows us well. He sees us, he holds us in his mind, and if he requires something of us, do you really believe he is incapable of affecting our lives in a more pronounced fashion? Griaule is, if anything, capable. He is an immortal, unfathomable creature who is as pervasive in our lives as the idea of God. And as with God, we do not have the wisdom to establish the limits of his capacities.’ Korrogly paused, letting his gaze fall on each of their rapt faces in turn, seeing therein a measure of anxiety, understanding how to play upon it; the slants of winter sunlight made them all look wan and sickly, like terminal patients hopeful of a cure. ‘Griaule is here, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. He is watching this proceeding. Perhaps he is even involved in it. Search inside yourselves. Can you feel secure that his eye is not upon you? And this’ – he picked up The Father of Stones from the prosecution table – ‘can you be sure that this is not his eye? The prosecution will tell you that it is only a stone, but I tell you that it is much more.’ He held it up to their faces as he passed along the jury box and was pleased to see them shrink from it. ‘This is Griaule’s instrument, the embodiment of his will, the vehicle by which his will has been effected here in Port Chantay, miles and miles beyond the range of his usual sphere of influence. If you doubt this, if you doubt that he could have formed it and injected it with the complex values of his wish and need, then I urge you to touch it. It brims with his cold vigor. And just as you now perceive it, so it is perceiving you.’
The prosecution’s case was elementary. A constable testified to the authenticity of Lemos’ confession; several witnesses were called to testify to the fact that they had seen him working at cutting The Father of Stones; the old drunkard related his story of Lemos throwing stones on the beach; others claimed to have seen him breaking into the temple. Korrogly limited his cross-examination to establishing the point that none of the witnesses had known the gemcutter’s mind. No more was needed. The defense would rise or fall on its own merits.