They were at him the next day, all the hustlers, the thieves, and the entrepreneurs, inclusive of those who had legal rights to his body and those who did not. Their awe annihilated by greed, a force nearly equal to fear, they swarmed over the corpse, cutting, prying, digging up the hillside where the dragon had rested, searching for his hoard. In light of what had transpired, it was disgusting, but it was fascinating as well. I spent much of the next decade documenting the period in my books and stories about the town’s rebirth and its newest industry, the sale and distribution of Griaule’s relics, fraudulent and real. During that time I rarely left Teocinte, but almost eight years to the day after I had last seen George and Peony in the amphitheater, I was in Port Chantay on some protracted business with my publisher and, on a whim, I contacted George, inviting him and Peony for a glass of wine. He suggested we meet at Silk, a trendy waterfront café with wide glass windows, dainty tables and chairs, and no silk whatsoever apart from the woman whose name it bore.
I’d heard that they had both been deafened, that Peony suffered from amnesia and now lived with George as his ward, and that George, who had divorced, was quite wealthy – rumor had it that he had been the one to unearth Griaule’s hoard. It was also rumored that he had an improper relationship with Peony, though on the face of things they appeared to be a typical father-and-daughter. He slurred his words a bit due to his deafness, but otherwise appeared fit; he sported a mustache and a goatee (his hair had gone gray) that, along with a tailored suit and the fastidiousness that attended his movements, lent him a cultivated air. Yet his physical changes were nothing compared to the mental. Gone was every trace of the city bumpkin I had known, the insecurity, earnestness, the paranoia. He possessed a coolness of manner that was informed, I thought, by an utter absence of emotionality, and this unnerved me. I would not have trusted myself to be able to control him as once I had.
Drastic as these changes were, Peony’s were even more extreme. She had developed into a beautiful, poised young woman who was, in every respect, quite charming. George claimed that her amnesia had wiped out all memory of abuse and thus had assisted in her maturation. Her attempts at speech were difficult to understand, for she did not recall the sound of words, and she relied on sign language to communicate, with George serving as her interpreter. After an exchange of pleasantries, she apologized for having forgotten me and went to have coffee with a friend at an outside table, leaving George and me to talk.
‘Monteverdi,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose that is your real name.’
‘Of course not! What would I be without an alias?’
I had meant this as a joke, but George did not smile – he nodded as if my statement had revealed some essential truth about me, and this caused me to think that perhaps it had.
‘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.’
