The Dragon Griaule

by Lucius Shepard

  It is at this point that our story becomes the story of the woman who came to be called La Endriaga, and veers away from historical fact, entering the realm of supposition, anecdotal evidence, and the purely fictive, which are, after all, the most reliable forms of human codification. Her birth name was Xiomara Garza (though she was more widely known as Yara) and she was born in Barrio Zanja, a desolation of shacks and streets without names situated on a hillside overlooking the jungle. During the rainy season, mudslides intermittently cut wide swaths through the barrio, killing dozens of people and leaving hundreds more homeless; but since the shacks were flimsily constructed of plywood, cardboard, and so forth, and because moving to another location was not an option for the majority of the survivors, within a week or two a new and equally fragile settlement would be established. By many accounts Yara was a happy child, yet this might be doubted – Barrio Zanja was not an environment conducive to happiness and other accounts testify to her sullen temperament and stoicism. In sum, far more people claim to have been familiar with her as a young girl than lived in the barrio at the time, so it is probably safest to say that her early childhood is cloaked in mystery.

  Images of an eleven-year-old Yara were among those discovered in a digital camera belonging to an Austrian pedophile, Anton Scheve, whose body was found lying in a pool of blood on the floor of his hotel room, his chest punctured by multiple stab wounds. In the pictures Yara, a lovely dark-haired girl with a pellucid complexion, can be seen supine on a bed (the same beside which Scheve breathed his last) in various stages of undress, her eyes heavily lidded, this somnolence attributable to the glue-soaked paper sack crumpled on the mattress next to her. As these images were the last recorded by Scheve, the police put forth a sincere effort to locate Yara – sex tourism, while officially discouraged, constituted a sizable portion of Temalagua’s tottering economy. Yara, however, was nowhere to be found and so, prevented by her absence from demonstrating their egalitarian approach toward the prosecution of murder, no matter the despicable character of the victim, the government printed Scheve’s images (with black bars obscuring her genitalia) in the capital’s largest newspaper alongside an article decrying the moral contagion that had been visited upon the country.

  The next we hear of Yara comes in the form of a partial memoir published in An Obscure Literary Journal (both a description and the actual name of the publication) by George Craig Snow, a strikingly handsome young expatriate with dirty blond hair and weary-looking blue eyes and a wry manner who lived in Ciudad Temalagua between the years 2002 and 2008. As a child he never thought of himself as ‘George,’ a name he associated with dweebs, wimps, and insurance adjustors, and so he went by his mother’s maiden name, Craig. During the first years of his stay in Temalagua, he worked for a fraudulent charitable interest called Aurora House as a correspondent – his job was to write letters in clumsy English, in a childlike scrawl, that pretended to be the grateful, semi-literate messages of the children supported by Aurora House. These were mailed to gullible contributors in the United States who donated twenty dollars each per month in order to sponsor a Pilar or an Esteban or a Marisol. Included with the letters were pleas for more money and photographs that Snow snapped at random of happy, healthy children in school uniforms, proofs of the good effect that the contributions had on the malnourished children shown in photographs previously sent. To be clear, no child so depicted ever received a dime of charity from Aurora House, nor did any child whatsoever benefit from the enterprise. The majority of the monies collected went into the pocket of Pepe Salido, a lean, gray-haired man who put Snow in mind of a skeletal breed of dog with a narrow skull and prominent snout. The remainder of the funds were doled out in minuscule salaries to the Aurora House staff, among them several gringos like Snow, slackers who were cynical enough to find the swindle bleakly amusing, understanding that even if the money had been donated to the cause, twenty dollars a month paid by however many well-meaning housewives and idealistic students and guilty alcoholics was insufficient to counter the forces arrayed against the children of Temalagua.

  Snow lived with a woman of Mayan heritage, a leftist teaching assistant at San Carlos University by the name of Expectación (his memoir was entitled He Lives With Expectation), who made her home in Barrio Villareal, a working class neighborhood in process of decaying into a slum. When not on the job, his two preferred activities were having sex with Ex (his lover’s nickname) and smoking heroin, the latter serving to cut into the frequency of the former. Evenings he would sit on his stoop, high, shirtless, and shoeless, scuffing up dirt with his toes, studying the stars that emerged from a pall of pollution above the low tile roofs, and taking in the pedestrian parade: shop girls scurrying home with their eyes lowered and bundles clutched to their breasts; short, wiry workmen who carried machetes and nodded politely in passing; dwarfish, raggedy street kids holding paper sacks with soggy bottoms drifting along in small, disheveled packs – on occasion, sensing a kindred spirit, they would hover beside Snow’s stoop, gazing up toward the rooftops and tracking things he could not see. One evening as he sat there, joined on his watch by a wizened-looking kid who could have been ten but was likely fifteen and, except for stringy, dark hair, resembled a tiny old man in grungy shorts and a faded Disneyworld T-shirt . . . one evening, then, he spotted a teenage girl approaching through the purpling air. Slender, leggy, pale. Black curls cascaded down over her shoulders, an opulent architecture of hair at odds with her overall Goth-punk aesthetic: black jeans, black kicks, and a long-sleeved black turtleneck. Black fingernails, too. Heavy make-up. She walked with an unhurried step, yet her movements were crisp and purposeful, and she had about her such an aura of energy, it seemed to Snow that he was watching the approach of a small storm. He pictured a funnel cloud of dirt and masonry chunks flying up in her wake, an image that prompted him to grin goofily at her as she came alongside them. She did not seek to avoid his scrutiny, but stopped in front of the stoop and gave an upward jerk of her head that spoke to him, saying, You got something on your mind? Spit it out.

  ‘Buenas noches,’ said Snow.

  The kid stuck his face into his paper sack and huffed furiously, and the girl asked him in Spanish, ‘Who is this asshole?’

  ‘He lives here,’ said the kid groggily.

  ‘I speak Spanish,’ Snow said. ‘You can talk to me.’

  The girl ignored him and asked the kid why he hung out with this pichicatero. The kid shrugged.

  ‘Pichicatero? What’s that?’ Snow asked the kid.

  ‘A fucking drug addict,’ said the girl in lightly accented English.

  ‘He’s the addict.’ Snow gestured at the kid. ‘For me it’s just a hobby.’

  With its mask of mascara and bloody lip gloss, her face was trashy, beautified not beautiful, yet once he had wiped away the make-up with a mental cloth, he realized the basic materials were quality. A casual observer would perhaps have judged the face too bland, too standard in its perfection, like a schoolboy’s rendering of his favorite teenage angel vampire slut, but to Snow, a connoisseur, it was exuberantly and idiosyncratically feminine, a raptor’s purity of purpose implied by the way her lips curved above a slight overbite, the delicate molding of the tiny, tapered chin, and beside the nose flare of a nostril, the necessary flaw, a pink irregularity, a scar that, had it been treated properly, would have required but a stitch or two to close. Her skin seemed to carry a faint luminosity. Her irises and eyebrows were such a negative color they might have been cutaways in her flesh that permitted a lightless background to show through. She was, Snow decided, scary beautiful.

  ‘Dirty feet,’ she said to him. ‘Dirty fingernails. Dirty hair.’ She gave him a quick once-over. ‘Dirty heart.’

  Though too stoned to be offended, Snow felt that he should offer an objection and said mildly, ‘Hey. Watch your mouth.’

  She switched to Spanish and addressed the kid. ‘Be careful! You don’t want to wind up a shriveled soul like him.’

  ‘
Bet you used to be an emo girl,’ said Snow. ‘Then you hooked up with some Goth guy and crossed over to the dark side.’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Come see me and I’ll introduce you to him. He loves to meet new people.’

  ‘Sure thing. Give me your address.’

  Her face emptied and her eyes lost focus, as if she were hearkening to an inner voice. She was silent for so long, Snow waggled a hand in her face and said, ‘Hello!’

  She turned abruptly and strode off without another word – a man passing in the street gave her a wide berth.

  ‘That was weird,’ Snow said.

  ‘Yara.’ The kid fingered a tube of glue out of his pocket and began squeezing it into the paper sack.

  Snow said, ‘What?’

  ‘Her name is Yara. She’s crazy.’

  ‘How’s that make her different from anyone else?’

  Snow thought he would have to explain his view that human beings were no more than a collection of random impulses bound up in a net of societal constraints, but the kid may have had an innate awareness of this, because he asked for no clarification and said, ‘Yara’s not monkey-crazy. She’s snake-crazy.’ He started to bury his face in the fume-filled sack, but then offered it to Snow, and Snow, moved by this unexpected display of etiquette, accepted.

  II

  Excerpted from He Lives With Expectation

  By Craig Snow

  . . . Ex kicked me out of the house again. It was for the usual reason, an inability to balance her radical politics with having a boyfriend who espoused no political view more complex than ‘Yeah, America sucks, but so does everywhere else.’ As usual I checked into the Spring Hotel, so Ex would know where to find me once she had time to rethink her position, and spent the next few evenings playing video games in an arcade off Avenida Seis and drinking at the Club Sexy, a gay bar frequented by the wives and girlfriends of right-wing military types, women notable for their hotness and the monumental triviality of their conversation. You could hang out there all night and not hear a serious concern mentioned, though now and then things would get heated when the talk turned to hairstyles.

  The club was a great place to go should you want to commit suicide-by-babe – a big room with frigid air conditioning and subdued lighting, round tables of bamboo and glass, and a childlike mural of a tropical beach with a starry indigo sky and coco palms painted on the walls. Most afternoons this old daisy in a tux would totter onto the bandstand and play Latinized arrangements of Beatles tunes and similar shit on a Casio, his silver-gray head nodding to the whispery samba beats. If you qualified as a cute guy, the women would have sex with you, no problem, but then you risked winding up in a basement with a Col Noriega look-alike clamping electrodes to your dick. To be on the safe side I would sit at the bar, blending in with guys who were fans of the owner of the club, Guillermo, a pale youth of approximately my age with exciting hair and the look of a male ingénue.

  About four p.m. each weekday, ‘La Hora Feliz,’ the ladies would come breezing in, all bouncy in their low-cut frocks, sunglasses by Gucci and make-up by Sherwin-Williams. If you stared at them through slit eyes, it looked as though a couple of dozen spectacularly vivid butterflies had perched beside the little round tables. They were two-fisted drinkers, mainly tequila shots washed down with orange juice, and before long they’d be gabbing away happily, their chatter drowning out the Casio. I had an on-again, off-again relationship with one – Viviana, a perky blond with fake tits – and on the Thursday after Ex kicked me out I met her in the rear stall of the men’s room for a quickie. It wasn’t that I was eager to die. We’d begun our relationship before I fully understood the situation and after I became aware of what was going on . . . well, I had a self-destructive streak and a corresponding nonchalant attitude toward personal safety, and these qualities, allied with my American sense of entitlement, were sufficient to make me lower my guard. The thought of all that available pussy was too tempting to resist. Early on during the affair Viviana and I were caught exiting the women’s john by her boyfriend, a typical death-squad-loving psycho army captain. She leaped to my defense, screeching at the bewildered young sociopath, demanding that he stop beating me, claiming that I had been helping with her hair and saying, ‘Can’t you tell he’s a faggot?’ Thereafter I felt relatively secure in bending her over the toilet, though afterward I would have to re-establish my gay bona fides by acting femme and flirting with Guillermo.

  That Thursday, once we had finished our business in the ladies’ room, she joined me for a drink at the bar. I told her about Ex giving me the boot – she offered sympathy, stroking my hair and murmuring encouragement, though she did so without much sincerity. Her gaze drifted about the room and locked onto a table close to the stage.

  ‘That filthy cunt!’ she said venomously.

  The Goth girl who had insulted me on my stoop the week before, Yara, was talking to a woman named Dolores for whom Viviana had a thing (her infidelity was by no means gender specific – she had explained that many of the women, like her, felt imprisoned by their relationships and would fuck anything that moved so as to express their frustration and cause psychic damage to their significant others – Club Sexy provided them with a perfect cover). She started up from her barstool. I caught her arm and asked what was wrong, but she shook me off, beelined for the table and proceeded to chew out Yara, who regarded her with an impassive expression. When Viviana paused for breath, Yara spoke briefly. Whatever she said must have been potent, for without further ado Viviana went off to sulk at a corner table. I watched the girl for a while. Her gestures were slow, calm, languid, as if she were explaining a serious matter, taking her time, being patient. Several women at other tables watched her as well – dotingly, I thought. Intently. The way you’d stare at a movie star. This girl had a definite presence. In a room full of beautiful women, she was the one who stood out, who drew your eye.

  ‘Oh, Guillermo!’ I beckoned him over. ‘Could you make one of your elegant mango mojitos for Viviana?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I put my elbows on the bar and interlaced my fingers, using them as a chin-rest, watching him prepare the drink.

  ‘I believe I’ll have one, too,’ I said. ‘Extra sweet.’ Then, leaning close, I added in a whisper, ‘Why’s Viv so upset?’

  ‘She thinks La Endriaga is hitting on Dolores.’

  ‘You mean the girl in black? She’s La . . . what was it? La Endriaga?’

  He poured lime juice. ‘Aren’t you familiar with the story? La Endriaga’s supposed to be a creature part snake, part dragon, part female. The girl’s real name is Lara . . . or Mara. Or something. You know how I am with names. But people call her La Endriaga because she lives in the jungle, near the skull.’

  ‘I thought that was just a story . . . the skull.’

  ‘I’ve never seen it myself.’ Guillermo gave his hair a toss. ‘But Jaime Solis . . . you know, the boy who dyes his soul patch all different colors? He told me it’s real. He offered to take me to see it, but I said, “Why would I want to look at some nasty old bones? There are better ways to impress me.”’

  I had drained the larger part of my mojito when Dolores passed Yara a fat envelope, the kind that in the movies often contains a payoff. Yara stuffed it into a straw market bag, presented her cheek to be kissed, and headed for the exit. Curious, I followed her outside. It was almost eight o’clock and the sidewalks were crowded, the street dressed in neon, choked with clamorous traffic, the night air steamy and reeking of exhaust. Music from radios and storefronts contended with the crowd noise and the squeal of arcade games. Grimy children, mainly pre-teen girls of the sort Aurora House was purported to help, plucked at my sleeve, held out their hands and made pleading faces. I surrendered my pocket change and shooed them away. Yara had been swallowed up by the crowd, but I spotted the psycho army captain’s Hummer, its hood decorated by red and purple smears of reflected light. He was hunting for a parking place, leaning on his horn – instead of a
honk it produced a grandiose digital fanfare. We had long since made our peace, but I thought it best to move on. I went west along Avenida Seis, uncertain of my destination, pausing to look in shop windows, and caught sight of Yara in an otherwise empty electronics store, talking to a clerk, her black figure as slim and sharply defined as an exclamation point under the bright fluorescents. The clerk – a tall, stringy guy with a shock of white in his forelock – appeared upset with her, making florid gestures, but he cooled off when she passed him the envelope Dolores had given her. He inspected the contents, glanced about as if to ascertain whether anyone was watching, then removed a few bills from the envelope and handed them to her. She stuffed them into the hip pocket of her jeans and headed for the entrance. I turned my back and pretended to be studying a window display of cell phones, but she walked up to me and said cheerfully, ‘I wondered when we’d meet again.’

  Put off by the dissonance between her tone now and that she had employed during our first encounter, I said, ‘You wondered that, did you?’

  ‘Don’t you want to know how I knew we’d meet again?’

  ‘Sure. Whatever.’

  ‘I always know that sort of thing.’

  I waited for a deeper analysis and when none was forthcoming I said, ‘Well, this is nice, but I’ve got to be stepping.’

  ‘Don’t go.’ She linked arms with me and did this little snuggle-bunny move against my shoulder. ‘There’s something I want you to see.’

  ‘Whoa!’ I disengaged from her. ‘Last week you treated me like I was a fucking STD and now . . .’

  ‘I’m sorry! I was in a terrible mood.’

  ‘And now you’re coming on to me in this retarded way. What’s that all about?’