Taal is puzzled. At first he thinks that Mii is hiding in the tent in order to conceal from him for as long as possible the fact that she is incapable of accomplishing the task; but the moving, greenish shadows, the spooky squelching sounds and the night-time screams soon make him nervous. The king begins to entertain the belief that Mii is a sorcerer able to create statues out of water, that perhaps she has summoned demons to help her in her work; but then, at other times, he tells himself that the coloured shadows are part of a trick that by way of lights and green-tinted glass, Mii is hoping to create the impression that she is carrying out Taal’s orders, while all the time she is simply waiting for the right moment to attempt an escape. Taal sends reinforcements to his guards at all the palace’s gates, though there is nothing to suggest that Mii is really planning to leave the palace in secret.
On the penultimate day of the third month Mii announces that the statue will be unveiled the next evening. Shortly before sunset, Taal arrives in the courtyard alone, although he had earlier imagined inviting the whole court to witness Mii’s defeat and humiliation, her tears and pleas for mercy, all of which he had been anticipating with relish. (Such a cruel theatre would be played out on the same spot four years later.) He is far from sure what will meet his eyes when the tent is removed. He keeps imagining himself seeing the granite paving of the courtyard and nothing more, Mii kneeling down before him and beseeching him to spare her life; but then, neither did he rule out the possibility that he would indeed see a statue made of water, which by some miracle had been fashioned into human form. Taal crosses the smooth granite of the empty courtyard, half of which is bathed in warm, reddish light. Then he steps into the shadow cast by the tent.
The sculptress and her assistants are already standing in front of the tent. When Taal stops a few paces from them, Mii gives the command for her assistants to pull away the canvas with a single tug on a rope. To his amazement, Taal finds himself looking at a statuary group atremble in the evening breeze — the terrible face of the squid with its enormous eyes, the tentacles slithering about the fragile body of Isili, and — reaching for his knife — Dru, who bears the face of Taal’s dead son. The scene depicted by the statue was played out at this very hour; the sun sinks a little lower, and its red rays serve to illuminate the green matter of which the statue is made. In the glowing bodies of its figures, magical sparks and the black shadows of moving fish can be seen.
Mii had accomplished Taal’s task: she had created a statue from a material in which fish were able to live. So enchanted is Taal by this work that his hatred quite evaporates. Having no further task for Mii, he rewards her for her work and releases her. Mii sails away from Devel, never again to return to the island. Taal orders Fo’s wing of the palace to be sealed, and his courtiers quicken their pace whenever they pass the closed doors to its empty corridors — empty, that is, except for the white statues frozen forever in blocks of white marble.
Vicious fish
I folded the insertion that told the story of the statuary in jelly back into itself, and pushed it into its pocket in the Book. I was on the terrace of Karael’s house in the upper town. I knew that the plot was about to jump four years into the future, returning to Hios and Gato, who at the time I began to read of Fo’s love and death, were frozen in mid-word and gesture — as if by some fairy-tale magic — by the open window of Gato’s room, in whose frame was petrified the forked lightning of a storm fast approaching. I did not manage the transition from one level of the Book’s narrative to another with the same facility as the islanders; it induced in me a queasiness similar to that experienced by divers who come back to the surface too quickly. So I allowed myself a short break, during which I watched the metal jewel of the river work its gleaming course along the plateau and between the houses of the lower town. It was hot, so I spent some time walking barefoot among the steep lanes and up and down the steps of the upper town, the water flashing in the sunlight and maintaining the sublime cool of a mountain lake.
And then I returned to the Book and the royal palace on the island of Devel. The lightning rip in the black sky healed over and the frozen figures came back to life. Hios succeeds in procuring the jar of ointment. On the morning of the third day Gato announces to Taal that he will enter the statue and attempt to retrieve the gemstone. But Taal and Uddo anticipated that Hios would go for the duck fat and have replaced the contents of the jar with common pork lard. Taal bids Gato come to the courtyard that evening at six o’clock; he, his family and the court as a whole are looking forward to witnessing the spectacle.
As six o’clock approaches, Gato follows Hios’s instructions in smearing his wrists, ankles and neck with what he assumes to be duck fat; then he steps into Fo’s wing of the palace by the door at the end of the corridor (that day all doors are open wide) and makes his way down to the courtyard. There he sees dozens of chairs (brought by the servants from all over the palace) set in rows in front of the green statuary. The chairs are occupied by those agitated courtiers who have not dared refuse Taal’s invitation; they do not know what to expect; but as they know their king, they are not expecting anything pleasant. As Gato approaches the statuary from the aisle between the chairs, the perplexed faces of the courtiers turn towards him and then away again. He hears a murmur of voices and a scraping of chairs: it is as if he were in the theatre when a performance was due to start. On reaching the statue he turns and for a few moments allows his gaze to wander over the anxious faces of the involuntary spectators. Their eyes are lowered; across their faces there shimmers a restless green light reflected from the statue by the setting sun. As he bows awkwardly he cannot help but smile. Taal, Uddo and Hios are sitting in the front row.
He now turns to face the statue. The fish have taken notice and are swimming towards him from all areas of the jelly. The sight of this restless swarm is far from encouraging, but this time Gato is sure that Hios has not betrayed him. He steps into the statue, amid the horde of fish. To begin with, the fish scatter themselves to all corners. At the statue’s edge, Gato is standing up to his waist in jelly. The furrow his body has ploughed closes behind him; he has the feeling he is walking through an enormous dessert. In his choice of path he attempts to cause as little damage to the statue as possible. He comes to the gelatine table, which reaches up to his neck. Here he chooses to take a rest, and it appears to the onlooking courtiers that his head has left his body and is lying among the bowls of food. Gato studies the jelly plate of bread and cheese that is close to his face; he can see the imprint of Isili’s little teeth on the cheese. He turns his head and sees the famous sculpted radish, a working in miniature of the contents of the statuary as a whole. Then he continues on his way — the gemstone sank into the body of the squid, which is at the very centre of the statue.
Through the clear jelly Gato sees the fish swim back towards him and begin to circle around him. The first fish bites into his thigh and he cries out in pain; suddenly he knows that he has been betrayed. Taal and Uddo steal a look at Hios, who is sitting next to them; they are disappointed to see she does not move a muscle, that the expression on her face does not change. But Hios understands very well what must have happened, and Gato’s cry has not only shattered her world but flooded her mind with hate and a thirst for revenge. From this point on an expression of hard indifference will be on Hios’s face always; it is a precious mask she will wear with pride.