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wanted to buy the painting, to collect the scales after Griaule’s death, and
I do not believe he took me at all seriously. But the woman Jarcke, his
constant companion, informed him that I was a responsible businessman, that I
had already bought the bones, the teeth, even the dirt beneath Griaule’s belly
(this I eventually sold as having magical properties).
     
    “Well,” said
Cattanay, “I suppose someone has to own them.”
     
    He led me
outside, and we stood looking at the painting.
     
    “You’ll keep
them together?” he asked.
     
    I said,
“Yes.”
     
    “If you’ll
put that in writing,” he said, “then they’re yours.”
     
    Having
expected to haggle long and hard over the price, I was flabbergasted; but I was
even more flabbergasted by what he said next.
     
    “Do you
think it’s any good?” he asked.
     
    Cattanay did
not consider the painting to be the work of his imagination; he felt he
was simply illuminating the shapes that appeared on Griaule’s side and was
convinced that once the paint was applied, new shapes were produced beneath it,
causing him to make constant changes. He saw himself as an artisan more than a
creative artist. But to put his question into perspective, people were
beginning to flock from all over the world and marvel at the painting. Some
claimed they saw intimations of the future in its gleaming surface; others
underwent transfiguring experiences; still others - artists themselves -
attempted to capture something of the work on canvas, hopeful of establishing
reputations merely by being competent copyists of Cattanay’s art. The painting
was nonrepresentational in character, essentially a wash of pale gold spread
across the dragon’s side; but buried beneath the laminated surface were a
myriad tints of iridescent colour that, as the sun passed through the heavens
and the light bloomed and faded, solidified into innumerable forms and figures
that seemed to flow back and forth. I will not try to categorize these forms,
because there was no end to them; they were as varied as the conditions under
which they were viewed. But I will say that on the morning I met with Cattanay,
I - who was the soul of the practical man, without a visionary bone in my body
- felt as though I were being whirled away into the painting, up through
geometries of light, latticeworks of rainbow colour that built the way the
edges of a cloud build, past orbs, spirals, wheels of flame…
     
    — from This
Business of Griaule by Henry Sichi
     
     
     
    2
     
    There had been several women in Meric’s life since he
arrived in the valley; most had been attracted by his growing fame and his
association with the mystery of the dragon, and most had left him for the same
reasons, feeling daunted and unappreciated. But Lise was different in two
respects. First, because she loved Meric truly and well; and second, because
she was married - albeit unhappily - to a man named Pardiel, the foreman of the
calciner crew. She did not love him as she did Meric, yet she respected him and
felt obliged to consider carefully before ending the relationship. Meric had
never known such as introspective soul. She was twelve years younger than he, tall
and lovely, with sun-streaked hair and brown eyes that went dark and seemed to
turn inward whenever she was pensive. She was in the habit of analysing
everything that affected her, drawing back from her emotions and inspecting
them as if they were a clutch of strange insects she had discovered crawling on
her skirt. Though her penchant for self-examination kept her from him, Meric
viewed it as a kind of baffling virtue. He had the classic malady and could
find no fault with her. For almost a year they were as happy as could be
expected; they talked long hours and walked together, and on those occasions
when Pardiel worked double shifts and was forced to bed down by his furnaces,
they spent the nights making love in the cavernous spaces beneath the dragon’s
wing.
     
    It