‘I’m sorry I didn’t try to find you,’ I said. ‘After the fire and everything.’
‘It was chaos,’ said George. ‘You would have been wasting your time.’
‘That wasn’t why I didn’t look for you.’
‘Oh?’
‘I was afraid you were falling in love with me.’
He nodded thoughtfully. ‘I could have fallen in love with almost anyone in those days. You happened to be in the right place at the right time.’
‘And you were acting crazy. At least you were before Griaule herded us back to Teocinte. I didn’t want to be around you.’
George let four or five seconds elapse before smiling thinly and saying, ‘Well, you’re safe from me now.’
‘I don’t feel safe.’ I waited for a response, but none came. ‘You make me uneasy.’
‘Peony says I often have that effect on other people. In your case, I imagine it’s exacerbated by guilt.’
‘Guilt? What would I have to be guilty about? I did nothing . . .’
‘It’s not important,’ he said. ‘Really. It’s quite trivial.’
‘I want to know what you’re accusing me of!’
‘Not a thing. Forget I mentioned it.’ He reached a hand into a side pocket of his jacket as if to withdraw something, but let it hang there. ‘I’ve read the little book you wrote about us.’
I was irritated, yet at the same time curious to know what he thought about my work. ‘And how did it strike you?’
‘Accurate,’ he said. ‘As far as it went. I was as you initially described me. Desperate. Desperate to escape my old life. But I would never have admitted it then.’
‘What do you mean, “. . . as far as it went?”’
‘You missed the best part of the story.’
‘I saw enough of Griaule’s death, if that’s what you’re talking about. What’s more, I’ve seen the city rebuilt, which you didn’t see.’
‘The city’s of no consequence. As for Griaule . . .’ He chuckled. ‘We’ve always underestimated him. By hacking him apart and carrying the pieces to the far corners of the earth, we did exactly what he wanted. Now he rules in every quarter of the globe.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You once quoted me a passage from Rossacher. Do you remember? “His thoughts roam the plenum, his mind is a cloud that encompasses our world.” Something of an overstatement, yet it’s true enough. Do you find it so hard to accept now?’
‘Are you telling me Griaule is alive? Bodiless . . . or alive in all his separate parts?’
He inclined his head and made a delicate gesture with his hand, as if to suggest that he had no interest in pursuing the matter.
I drained the dregs of my wine. ‘Don’t you find it strange that we’ve reversed roles? I was once the believer and you the skeptic.’
He took his hand from his pocket and held it out, his palm open to display a glass pendant in which was embedded a chip of lustrous blue-green, darkening to a dull azurine blue at the edges.
‘Is that my scale?’ I asked.
‘Peony and I have no further use for it. I think Griaule intended it to be yours.’
The glass enclosing the scale was cold and somewhat tingly to the touch. I remarked on this and George said, ‘It may be that I am mad, and that Peony is mad, and that we have not been guided in our lives ever since Griaule was disembodied. You can prove this one way or the other by shattering the glass and touching the scale. The sensation will be much stronger that way.’
‘Will it reveal the location of Griaule’s hoard?’ I asked half in jest.
‘Too late for that,’ he said. ‘But he will have something for you, I’m sure. Since we met, everything in our lives has been part of Griaule’s design.’
I tucked the scale into my purse. ‘Perhaps you can explain, since you seem so certain in your knowledge, why he deemed it necessary to uproot so many people and drive us onto the plain. Was it simply to witness his death, or was it something more?’
‘I have come to understand Griaule to an extent, but I can’t know everything he knows. Was it ego, the desire to have at least a few survivors who could bear witness to his death? Yes, I think so. But there is much more to it than that. If he wishes he can control every facet of our lives. And our lives – yours and mine and Peony’s, and thousands of others besides – have been thus controlled. We are part of a scheme by means of which he will someday come to dominate the world as Rossacher’s book claimed he already had. So far, the instrumentality he’s used to implement his scheme has been unwieldy, scattershot. He’s made mistakes. Now that he is everywhere in the world, his manipulations will grow more subtle, more precise, and he will make no further mistakes. Eventually, I assume we will be unaware of him . . . and he will lose interest in us. It may be that this is, by necessity, how the relationships between men and gods develop.’ George fussed with his napkin and said in a reproachful tone, as if talking to a child, ‘You knew all this once. Have you truly forgotten?’
‘Forgotten? Perhaps I place less value on the specific precepts of my belief than once I did, but no, I haven’t forgotten.’
George was silent for a while, silent and motionless, and I thought how restrained he had grown in his movements; yet he did not seem constrained or repressed in the least – rather it was as though he had become accustomed to stillness. He cleared his throat, took a sip of wine, and said, ‘Let us speak no more of it.’ He nudged the menu with a finger, turning it so he could more read the front page. ‘Shall I order something? The seaweed cakes are excellent here . . . and the cherries confit would go well with your port.’
When it came time for George to leave, I felt strong emotion – we had been through an ordeal together and our conversation had, despite his coolness, brought back fond memories I did not think I had – I would have liked to acknowledge the experience with an embrace and I expected George to feel the same way, but he performed a slight bow, collected Peony, and left without a backward glance.
I have not yet broken the glass in which the scale is encased, yet I know someday I will, if only to satisfy my curiosity about George. I ran into him and Peony once more before returning to Teocinte. Two days following our meeting at Silk, I took the morning air on the promenade, looking at the boats in the harbor, their exotic keels and bright, strangely shaped sails giving evidence of Port Chantay’s international flavor, and caught sight of George and Peony by the railing that fronted the water, engaged in what appeared to be a spirited conversation . . . at least it was spirited on Peony’s part. I ducked behind a small palm tree, one of many potted specimens set along the promenade, not wishing to be seen. We’d said our farewells, as belated and anti-climactic as they were, and I felt rejected – I’d come to the meeting prepared to rebuff George’s advances and had not expected to be treated with diffidence. If his cool manner had been studied, I would have chalked all he said and did up to hurt feelings; but his dismissive behavior had seemed wholly unaffected.
His back to the water, George leaned against the railing, his hands braced and his face tipped to the sun like a penitent at prayer, while Peony moved about him with quick steps, almost a dance, pacing to and fro, making graceful turns and exuberant gestures. I imagined her to be describing an event that had thrilled or elated her; but as I watched, though there was no overt change in their physical attitudes, I started to view them differently and perceived sexual elements in the dance – it reminded me of Griaule’s temple in Morningshade and how some of my sisters in the brothel would circle the dragon’s statue, caressing it from time to time. There is a sexual component in every young girl’s connection with her father and I’m sure that was all it was between George and Peony . . . even if not, she was twenty-one, old enough to do as she pleased. Like most people, I needed to think meanly about something I valued in order to walk away from it, especially something I had neglected for no good reason and such a stretch of years; so I chose to think about George and Peony as having an illicit relationship and told myself it was none of my business what they did or which god they worshiped or how they went through the world, because they were unimportant to me. Perhaps those feelings and memories that surfaced during our meeting were, as are many of our recollections, born of a marriage between false emotion and a lack of clarity concerning the facts. Perhaps our lives are contrivances of lies and illusions. Yet when I think now about George and Peony, none of this seems relevant and scarcely the day passes when I do not call them to mind.