Vladimir Nabokov. The Dragon
© Copyright 1924 by Vladimir Nabokov
© Copyright by Dmitry Nabokov, english translation
He lived in reclusion in a deep, murky cave, in the very
heart of a rocky mountain, feeding only on bats, rats, and
mold. Occasionally, it is true, stalactite hunters or snoopy
travelers would come peeking into the cave, and that was a
tasty treat. Other pleasant memories included a brigand
attempting to flee from justice, and two dogs that were once
let loose to ascertain if the passage did not go clear through
the mountain. The surrounding country was wild, porous snow lay
here and there on the rock, and waterfalls rumbled with an icy
roar. He had hatched some thousand years ago, and, perhaps
because it had happened rather unexpectedly--the enormous egg
was cracked open by a lightning bolt one stormy night--the
dragon had turned out cowardly and not overly bright. Besides,
he was strongly affected by his mother's death. . . . She had
long terrorized the neighboring villages, had spat flames, and
the king would get cross, and around her lair incessantly
prowled knights, whom she would crunch to pieces like walnuts.
But once, when she had swallowed a plump royal chef and dozed
off on a sun-warmed rock, the great Ganon himself galloped up
in iron armor, on a black steed under silver netting. The poor
sleepy thing went rearing up, her green and red humps flashing
like bonfires, and the charging knight thrust his swift lance
into her smooth white breast. She crashed to the ground, and
promptly, out of the pink wound, sidled the corpulent chef with
her enormous, steaming heart under his arm.
The young dragon saw all this from a hiding place behind
the rock and, forever after, could not think about knights
without a shudder. He withdrew into the depths of a cave,
whence he never emerged. Thus passed ten centuries, equivalent
to twenty dragon years.
Then, suddenly, he fell prey to unbearable melancholy. . .
. In fact, the spoiled food from the cave was provoking
ferocious gastric alarms, revolting rumblings, and pain. He
spent nine years making up his mind, and on the tenth, he did.
Slowly and cautiously, gathering in and extending the rings of
his tail, he clambered out of his cave.
Immediately he sensed that it was spring. The black rocks,
washed by a recent downpour, were ashimmer; the sunlight boiled
in the overflowing mountain torrent; the air was redolent of
wild game. And the dragon, broadly inflating his flaming
nostrils, started his descent into the valley. His satiny
belly, white as a water lily, nearly touched the ground,
crimson blotches stood out on his bloated green flanks, and the
sturdy scales merged, on his back, into a jagged conflagration,
a ridge of double ruddy humps, diminishing in size toward the
potently, flexibly twitching tail. His head was smooth and
greenish, bubbles of fiery mucus hung from his soft, warty
underlip, and his giant, scaly paws left deep tracks,
star-shaped concavities.
The first thing he saw upon descending into the valley was
a railroad train traveling along rocky slopes. The dragon's
first reaction was delight, since he mistook the train for a
relative he could play with. Moreover, he thought that beneath
that shiny, hard-looking shell there must surely be some tender
meat. So he set off in pursuit, his feet slapping with a
hollow, damp noise, but, just as he was about to gobble up the
last car, the train sped into a tunnel. The dragon stopped,
thrust his head into the black lair into which his quarry had
vanished, but there was no way he could get in there. He
dispatched a couple of torrid sneezes into the depths, then
retracted his head, sat on his haunches, and began waiting--who
knows, it might come running out again. After waiting some time
he shook his head and moved on. At that instant a train did
come scurrying out of the dark lair, gave a sly flash of window
glass, and disappeared behind a curve. The dragon gave a hurt
look over his shoulder and, raising his tail like a plume,
resumed his journey.
Dusk was falling. Fog floated above the meadows. The
gigantic beast, big as a live mountain, was seen by some
homeward-bound peasants, who remained petrified with awe. A
little auto speeding along the highway had all four of its
tires blow out from fright, bounced, and ended up in the ditch.
But the dragon walked on, noticing nothing; from afar came the
hot scent of concentrated crowds of humans, and that is where
he was headed. And, against the blue expanse of the night sky,
there loomed before him black factory smokestacks, guardians of
a large industrial town.
The main personages of this town were two: the owner of
the Miracle Tobacco Company and that of the Big Helmet Tobacco
Company. Between them raged age-old, subtle hostilities, about
which one could write an entire epic poem. They were rivals in
everything--the motley colors of their advertisements, their
distribution techniques, pricing, and labor relations--but no
one could say which had the upper hand. That memorable night,
the owner of the Miracle Company stayed very late at his
office. Nearby on his desk lay a stack of new, freshly printed
advertisements that workmen from the cooperative were to
plaster around the city at daybreak.
Suddenly a bell pierced the silence of the night and, a
few moments later, entered a pale, haggard man with a
burdocklike wart on his right cheek. The factory owner knew
him: he was the proprietor of a model tavern the Miracle
Company had set up on the outskirts.
"It's going on two in the morning, my friend. The only
justification I can find for your visit is an event of
unheard-of importance."
"That's exactly the case," said the tavern keeper in a
calm voice, although his wart was twitching. This is what he
reported:
He was bundling off five thoroughly soused old laborers.
They must have seen something highly curious outdoors, for they
all broke out laughing--"Oh-ho-ho," rumbled one of the voices,
"I must have had one glass too many, if I see, big as life, the
hydra of counterrevo--"
He did not have time to finish, for there was a surge of
terrifying, ponderous noise, and someone screamed. The tavern
keeper stepped outside to have a look. A monster, glimmering in
the murk like a moist mountain, was swallowing something large
with its head thrown back, which made its whitish neck swell
with alternating hillocks; it swallowed and licked its chops,
its whole body rocked, and it gently lay down in the middle of
the street.
"I think it must have dozed off," finished the tavern
keeper, restraining the twitching wart with his finger.
The factory owner got up. The robust fillings of his teeth
flashed with the golden fire of inspiration. The arrival of a
live dragon aroused in him no other feelings than the
passionate desire that guided him in every instance--the desire
to inflict a defeat on the rival firm.
"Eureka," he exclaimed. "Listen, my good man, are there
any other witnesses?"
"I don't think so," the other replied. "Everybody was in
bed, and I decided not to wake anyone and came straight to you.
So as to avoid panic."
The factory owner donned his hat.
"Splendid. Take this--no, not the whole pile, thirty or
forty sheets will do--and bring along this can, and the brush
too. There, now show me the way."
They went out into the dark night and were soon at the
quiet street at the end of which, according to the tavern
keeper, reposed a monster. First, by the light of a lone,
yellow streetlamp, they saw a policeman standing on his head in
the middle of the pavement. It turned out later that, while
making his nightly rounds, he had come upon the dragon and had
such a fright that he turned upside down and remained petrified
in that attitude. The factory owner, a man with the size and
strength of a gorilla, turned him right side up and leaned him
against the lightpost; then he approached the dragon. The
dragon was asleep, and no wonder. The individuals he had
devoured, it so happened, were totally impregnated with wine,
and had popped succulently between his jaws. The alcohol on an
empty stomach had gone straight to his head and he had lowered
the pellicles of his eyelids with a blissful smile. He lay on
his belly with his front paws folded under, and the glow of the
streetlamp highlighted the glistening arcs of the double
vertebral protuberances.
"Set up the ladder, '" said the factory owner. "I'll do
the pasting myself."
And, choosing flat spots on the slimy green flanks of the
monster, he began unhurriedly brushing paste on the scaly skin
and affixing ample advertising posters. When he had used all
the sheets, he gave the brave tavern keeper a meaningful
handshake and, chomping on his cigar, returned home.
Morning came, a magnificent spring morning softened by a
lilac haze. And suddenly the street came alive with a merry,
excited din, doors and windows slammed, people poured into the
street, mingling with those who were hurrying somewhere,
laughing as they went. What they saw was a perfectly lifelike
dragon, all covered with colorful advertisements, slapping
listlessly along the asphalt. One poster was even stuck to the
bald crown of his head. "smoke only miracle brand," rollicked
the blue and crimson letters of the ads. "only fools DON'T
SMOKE MY CIGARETTES," "MIRACLE TOBACCO TURNS AIR INTO HONEY,"
"MIRACLE, MIRACLE, MIRACLE'."
It really is a miracle, laughed the crowd, and how is it
done--is it a machine or are there people inside?
The dragon was feeling rotten after his involuntary binge.
The cheap wine now made him sick to his stomach, his whole body
felt weak, and the thought of breakfast was out of the
question. Besides, he was now overcome by an acute sense of
shame, the excruciating shyness of a creature that finds itself
amid a crowd for the first time. Frankly speaking, he very much
wished to return as soon as possible to his cave, but that
would have been even more shameful--therefore, he continued his
grim progress through the town. Several men with placards on
their backs protected him from the curious and from urchins who
wanted to slip under his white belly, clamber onto his lofty
backbone, or touch his snout. Music played, people gaped from
every window, behind the dragon automobiles drove single file,
and in one of them slouched the factory owner, the hero of the
day.
The dragon walked without looking at anybody, dismayed by
the incomprehensible merriment that he aroused.
Meanwhile, in a sunlit office, along a carpet soft as
moss, paced to and fro with clenched fists the rival
manufacturer, owner of the Big Helmet Company. At an open
window, observing the procession, stood his girlfriend, a
diminutive tightrope dancer.
"This is an outrage," croaked over and again the
manufacturer, a middle-aged, bald man with blue-gray bags of
flabby skin under his eyes. "The police ought to put a stop to
this scandal. . . . When did he manage to cobble together this
stuffed dummy?"
"Ralph," the dancer suddenly cried, clapping her hands. "I
know what you should do. We have a number at the circus called
The Joust, and--"
In a torrid whisper, goggling her doll-like, mascara-lined
eyes, she told him her plan. The manufacturer beamed. An
instant later he was already on the phone with the circus
manager,
"So," said the manufacturer, hanging up. "The dummy is
made of inflated rubber. We'll see what's left of it if we give
it a good prick."
Meanwhile the dragon had crossed the bridge, passed the
marketplace and the Gothic cathedral, which aroused some pretty
repugnant memories, continued along the main boulevard, and was
traversing a broad square when, parting the crowd, a knight
unexpectedly came charging at him. The knight wore iron armor,
visor lowered, a funereal plume on his helmet, and rode a
ponderous black horse in silvery netting. Arms bearers--women
dressed as pages--walked alongside, carrying picturesque,
hastily devised banners heralding "big helmet," "SMOKE ONLY BIG
HELMET," "BIG HELMET BEATS THEM ALL." The circus rider
impersonating the knight spurred his steed and clenched his
lance. But the steed for some reason started backing, spurting
foam, then suddenly reared up and sat heavily on its haunches.
The knight tumbled to the asphalt, with such a clatter one
might think someone had thrown all the dishes out the window.
But the dragon did not see this. At the knight's first move he
had stopped abruptly, then rapidly turned, knocking down a pair
of curious old women standing on a balcony with his tail as he
did so, and, squashing the scattering spectators, had taken
flight. He was out of the town in a single bound, flew across
the fields, scrambled up the rocky slopes, and dove into his
bottomless cavern. There he collapsed onto his back, paws
folded and showing his satiny, white, shuddering belly to the
dark vaults, heaved a deep breath, closed his astonished eyes,
and died.
