Sitting beside her day after day, week after week, Hota grew discontented with his surroundings and thought this might be because Magali’s presence pointed up their shabbiness. He became assiduous in his cleaning, brought in flowers, new cushions for the chairs, and purchased prints to hang on the walls, brightening the long gray space. The footsteps and voices that sounded from the hallway irritated him and to mute them he hung blankets across the door. He dispersed the room’s stale odor with cachets he bought in the market. None of these improvements registered with Magali. For no reason he could grasp, she seemed interested only in the boards. Then one night while she slept, as he was pacing about, he noticed that the grain of the planking looked sharper than before, considerably sharper than could be expected to result from his daily dusting. Curious, he examined them in the light of an oil lamp and discovered that the patterns of the grain had, indeed, grown more pronounced, forming intricacies of dark lines in which it was possible to see almost shape. At least this was his initial impression. As he continued to peer at them, certain shapes came to dominate. He saw narrow wings replete with struts and vanes, sinuous scaled bodies, fanged reptilian heads. A multiplicity of dragons. Every plank bore such images, all cunningly devised. And more were emerging all the time, as if they had been buried beneath gray snow that was now thawing. Holding the lamp above his head, he studied them and began to think he was not looking at many dragons, but at countless depictions of one. There were similarities in the architecture of the scales and the birdlike profile, the…
“What do you see?”
Given a start, Hota yipped and spun about to face Magali, who had padded up behind him. Her dress was unbuttoned to her navel, exposing the swell of her breasts, and though her hair was tousled from sleep, her usual neutral stare was not in evidence. She looked animated, excited, and this acted to suppress the anxiety her nearness inspired in him. She repeated her question and he said, “Dragons…or maybe one dragon. I’m not sure. Is that what you see?”
She ignored the question. “Anything else?”
“No. Is there more?”
“There’s no end of things that can be seen.”
She stepped up beside him and ran a hand along one of the boards, as if caressing it, then pointed at one of the images. “Here. Do you see the way this fang juts out at an angle? What does it remind you of?”
Uncomprehending, he gazed at the board for the better part of a minute and then he saw it. “Griaule! Is it Griaule?”
“All this”—she made a sweeping gesture, her voice quavering as with strong emotion—“it’s his life. Ingrained within the trees that sprouted from his back. The entire inn is a record. All his days are written here.”
So, Hota thought, Benno had not lied. It was difficult to believe. In Hota’s experience, Benno had never exhibited an ounce of physical bravery, and the idea that he would chop down trees on Griaule’s back was laughable. It was equally unlikely that he could have hired anyone to do the cutting for him. Those few who claimed to have set foot upon the dragon spoke of climbing onto the tail—none had trespassed to the degree that Hota himself had. And yet he remembered the way Benno had gaped at Magali. Might that have been a recognition of sorts, evidence that Benno, being more familiar than most with dragons, had sensed her hidden nature?
“Whatever else there is to see…” Hota said. “Will I see it?”
“Who knows?” She returned to the bed and as she settled upon it, smoothing out her skirt beneath her, she said, “You’ve seen what’s necessary.”
“Why’s it necessary for me to see this much and no more? What’s the point?”
She reclined upon the bed, braced on an elbow. “So you’ll understand the extent of Griaule’s dominion. So you’ll accept it.”
This half-answer irritated him, but he was not sufficiently confident with her to express anger. “Why is that important? I already know he shapes our lives to some extent.”
“Knowing a thing is far from accepting it.”
“What are you talking about?”
She put an arm across her eyes and said nothing.
“Are you saying I need to make an acknowledgment of some sort? Why? Explain it to me.”
She would say no more on the subject and, shortly thereafter, she asked him to bring food from the tavern. Hota did not care to be treated like a child, given answers that suggested there were things he was better off not knowing—that was how he interpreted her responses—and as he waited for Magali’s food to be prepared, standing by the kitchen door, gazing through smoke and steam at the hubbub generated by two matronly cooks and several grimy children, he thought contemptuously of her. How could he doubt she was who she claimed to be? For all her good looks, the woman behaved like a lizard. Torpid the day long. Rising only to piss and stare at the boards. And the way she ate! She brought to mind geckos back in Port Chantay, clinging to the walls for hours, motionless, before finally flicking out their tongues to snag a mosquito, lifting their…One of the serving boys, carrying a plate of rice and shredded pork into the tavern, brushed against Hota’s hip. Hota snapped at him, then felt badly for having frightened the boy. What was he doing here? he asked himself. Cohabiting with a woman who had some mysterious plan for him. Languishing in a room where pictures of dragons manifested upon the walls. He should have done with her. With Teocinte. The next time she asked for food, he should take his bag of gems and cash, and head inland. Make for Caliche or cross the country altogether to Point Horizon. But could he leave? That was the question. Would he wander the valley, confused, unable to find his way out, always winding up back in Teocinte? The answer to this question, he decided, was probably yes. He was still caught in the snare Griaule had set for him the day he met Magali. If he were ever able to escape it, he assumed it would be because the dragon was done with him.
Despite his annoyance, that conversation marked a turning in their relationship. Though she remained less than talkative over the next month, now and then, in addition to asking him for things, she would inquire as to how he felt or, standing at a window, would offer comments on the weather, the unsightliness of the town, or laugh at, say, the misery of a carter whose wheels had gotten stuck in the mud. It appeared she was developing a personality. Mean-spirited, for the most part. Minimal. But a personality nonetheless. She continued her habit of disrobing in front of him and he noticed changes in her body: a faint crease demarking the lower reach of her abdomen; a hint of crowsfeet; the slightest sag to her breasts. Changes that would have been imperceptible to anyone else, but that to a man who had observed her for seven weeks, whose only occupation had been that observation, stood out like mountains on a plain. He wondered if these marks and slackenings signaled the ultimate stage of her transformation and, against the weight of logic, he began to think of her as a woman more often than not. As a consequence, his desire burned hotter, despite an apprehension that such feelings were touched with the perverse.
During the eighth week of her stay at Liar’s House, Magali became more active, sleeping less, enjoining Hota in conversations that, albeit brief, served to grow the relationship. One night, rather than sending him for food, she suggested that they eat in the tavern. Her suggestion did not sit easily with Hota. Under the best of circumstances, he preferred solitude. Further, he worried that Magali might not react well to being exposed to a crowd. But when they entered the tavern, a low-ceilinged room with the same gray weathered planking, furnished with long benches and tables, lit by lanterns of fanciful design, each consisting of frosted panes held in place by ironwork dragons, they found only five patrons in the place: two prostitutes and their clients dining together, and a burly blond man with a pink complexion and a pudgy, thick-lipped face who was drinking beer from a clay mug. They stationed themselves well away from the others, close to the wall, and ordered wine and venison. Magali sat without saying a word, taking in the scene, and Hota watched her with more than his usual fixity. The din and angry shouts from the kitchen, the laughter of the prostitutes, all the sounds of the tavern receded from him. It seemed that a heartbeat was buried in the orange glow of the lamps, contriving a pulsing backdrop for the woman opposite him, whose bronze skin was in itself a radiant value. He gazed at her thoughtlessly, or else it was a single formless thought that uncoiled through his mind, imposing an almost ritual attentiveness.