A Book Dragon

by Donn Kushner

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  That was a queer conceit of Mercedes: a dragon in the fire. It must be an old Indian belief; he could ask her about it, but he preferred never to admit being ignorant of anything. The university library would certainly have something about it or even—he grinned—the bookshop. Perhaps when the old man finally gave up, he would sell it books and all.

  On the table beside him were two decorating schemes, already submitted to him for the hotel’s lobby. One was silver and blue, sea colors. He had almost chosen this one, but now the second, of silvered mirrors, black, and old gold, appealed to him more. The photographs made him think of palaces of Renaissance Italy, of rulers who were absolute tyrants, answer-able to no one. He would think about this on his evening walk. A scheme like a Renaissance palace was not ideal for a seaside hotel, he knew, but the view would more than make up for that, and, really, he need please no one but himself.

  That period of history must have been on his mind. On the table was also a copy of Machiavelli’s The Prince. Now he leafed through it to the passage that told how princes should deal with conquered people: “For it must be noted, that men must either be caressed or else annihilated; they will revenge themselves for small injuries, but cannot do so for great ones;

  the injury therefore that we do to a man must be such that we need not fear his vengeance.”

  He himself hardly need fear vengeance, be the injuries he had done small or great, Mr. Abercrombie thought. In these tame times people were civilized and slow to vengeance—or at least vengeance of the kind the Italian diplomat had meant.

  He put The Prince on the decorators’ files and set off for his evening walk, his head still buzzing with thoughts of times long past. He was in the wrong century, he told himself, one in

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  which he still had to observe some forms of law and pay some lip service to what was called “democracy.”

  Mr. Abercrombie followed his customary route: down the gate to the main road, along it for a quarter-mile, back into his own property by a hidden path, through a meadow to a small forest of spruce trees. There was a clearing in this forest, around a grove of three old willows that filled up most of the space. From the center of these willows he could look back at his own house; at Raoul spreading mulch on the rose beds; at Mercedes up on a stepladder polishing the glass door to the terrace, glancing fearfully at the reflection from the fire. In the other direction, he could look across the bay to the harbor, and to the hill above it, which, in one way or another, would soon be his. This was his view every evening: he could look over his property, present and future, without saying a word.

  But he did say a few words as the great green shape rustled through the spruce trees and fixed him with its golden eyes. “A dragon,” Mr. Abercrombie said. “Ridiculous!” The dragon moved closer.

  ‘ ‘I don’t believe in you,” Mr. Abercrombie told the dragon “You are an illusion. You can’t possibly exist. I don’t accept you,” he stated boldly to the gaping mouth, to the fierce, pointed teeth.

  CHAPTER XV

  A

  BOOK DRAGON

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  EATENG MR. ABERCROMBIE^ WAS THE HARDEST ACTION

  of Nonesuch’s life. Killing him was no problem: his head came off at the first snap, and landed in a bed of chrysanthemums, looking very surprised. If that had been all there was to it. Nonesuch could have taken the proper satisfaction in dealing with his mor-tal enemy, roared in victory, spread his wings, and flown away. But he knew he couldn’t just leave Mr. Abercrombie’s two parts lying there. This might give him away or, worse, implicate his friends of the bookshop terrace. No, Mr. Abercrombie had to disappear completely; and in a few minutes he had done so: cashmere sweater, gold Rolex wrist-watch, and afl, everything went down the dragon’s throat. He made a very large, full meal. Before it was over. Nonesuch, who was still no more than twelve feet long, began to think he should have waited until he was larger still. But he had not dared. Huberman’s threat of fire, an attack on both his home and his treasure, had made it imperative that Nonesuch deal with the source of these threats as soon as possible. “Get your tasks done as well as you can, even if not as well as you like.” Had his grandmother said that? She might well have done so.

  But he learned, as he could have done in no other way, the real reason that dragons in their wisdom had stopped eating people. After he had clawed up the ground to cover Mr. Abercrombie’s blood — the police would wonder about these marks, but what could they make of them, after all? — he paused to look around him. How the world had changed! At some distance was Raoul, the gardener, quietly weeding the chrysanthemum beds. Before, Nonesuch had always liked to watch this man at work because of his skill, his love for growing things, and the deep sadness in his eyes. Now he thought, “The ignorant peasant. From the way he looks at me, he doesn’t appreciate how well off he is here. He must have forgotten about the death squads. I should remind him.”

  Nonesuch looked at Mr. Abercrombie’s house, built fifty years before by a wealthy man who loved beautiful work. ‘ ‘It’s all mine,” he thought.’ ‘All the carved-walnut shelves in the library, all the planning of the gardens, the ornamental shrubs that took thirty years to come to full beauty: they are mine, I bought them.” He looked at the city. A new hunger seized him, full as his stomach was, as if he could never be satisfied. “It is not mine yet,” he thought of the city. “I hate everything that is not mine!”

  Nonesuch shook his head at this new madness. It cleared sufficiently for him to realize he must hide. He had already picked out an almost deserted island offshore on which he had planned to stay, fasting, until he had regained his old, small size. The rational part of his mind told him he must go there as soon as possible, even though another part suggested that he wait here until people came looking for Mr. Abercrombie and give them a real surprise. He waited impatiently for darkness. Automobiles passed on the through highway half a mile away.

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  The idiots, he thought, going from one place to another, as if it mattered where they went! He was grateful when an evening fog came down, masking his flight out to the island.

  The reason dragons should not eat people, he said to himself, as he lay among sumac bushes not far from an empty cottage, was that they took in the people’s thoughts along with their flesh. How long would Mr. Abercrombie’s thoughts stay with him?

  During the following days. Nonesuch rested within sight of a quiet tidal pool full of seaweeds and starfish. He sneered at any fishing boats that passed, but was careful to keep out of sight. At night he set out on long flights, to use up as much energy as possible and reduce his size more quickly. He soared along the coast, just within sight of land, not wanting to approach the world of men any closer. Always he returned to the tidal pool. It was so exposed to any passing boat that at first he had to look at it from a distance. Later, when he had shrunk enough so that the tall grass hid him, he would lie by the pool for hours in the daylight, watching butterflies flit along its surface. Mr. Abercrombie’s thoughts had, at last, vanished along with the rest of him.

  It took Nonesuch several weeks to reach his old size, but before that, while his wings still spanned a foot, he flew back to the bookshop. He knew it would be more prudent to wait longer, but he was quite unable to keep away. “Wen, you’ve certainly grown,” the parrot told him.’ ‘If it’s stiB you.”

  “It is.”

  ‘ ‘You really do look like a dragon now.”

  • ‘I always was a dragon,” Nonesuch said. • “I always wffl be.”

  “I never really doubted it,” the parrot told him. “My eyesight must have been at fault. Why are you larger now?”

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  • ‘In fact,” said Nonesuch, “for a time I had to be a great deal larger than this; there was something I had to do. I’m growing smaller again.”

  “By choice?”

  “Yes; it’s a question of diet.”

  The parrot shook his head. “Well, whatever suits you,
” he said politely.

  Nonesuch flew out over the parapet to look into the bookshop window, then returned.’ ‘I’m eager to get home again,” he confessed. “I’ve been worried about my people. These ones know how to live but sometimes they need help. I have to look after them. And my book too, of course,” he added dutifully.

  The parrot looked at him with new respect, then cleared his throat. “In your present size,” he observed, “you might teach that cat a lesson. He’s become very aggressive.”

  Nonesuch’s eyes gleamed. “I’ll consider it.”

  The parrot nodded, then changed the subject.’ ‘You certainly missed a lot of excitement around here.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  The main events, the parrot said, were visits from the police inquiring about the man who had wanted to buy all the property, Mr. Brian Abercrombie. He had simply disappeared, without apparent reason and leaving no clues. He had gone for a walk one evening and never come back. It was true that the surface of the earth had been disturbed in a small grove of trees on a remote part of his property, but further digging did not turn up a body. Certainly, the police had said, he would have been unlikely to leave of his own accord just when he was on the verge of completing an important business deal.

  “My master said to your bookseller afterwards, ‘Maybe the Devil himself carried the wretched exploiter away. If so, I’ll thank him.’ “

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  Mr. Gottlieb had seemed relieved, but less happy, the par-rot said. Perhaps he had been moved by the plight ofHuberman, who had been hanging around the terrace like a lost soul ever since his employer had vanished. Huberman had lost his center. He bothered the police with so many questions and fruitless leads that they told him to keep away from the station. He begged those he had threatened and harassed before for any news, for any suggestions of the cause of Mr. Abercrombie’s departure. He kept coming back to the bookstore, which seemed to provide some contact with his departed master. He also took the opportunity to sell back the Booke of Martyrs and other historical books, all excellent editions, which Mrs. Gotdieb suspected he had stolen from Mr. Abercrombie. “From what I hear, he must have had quite a library,” she remarked. “I hope we have a chance to bid on it.”

  ‘ ‘Why do you think it will be for sale?” Mr. Gottlieb asked her.

  “I just have a feeling. Wauld that fellow dare sell any books if he thought his boss was coming back?”

  Huberman apparently did not think Mr. Abercrombie would return, for after two weeks he had gone in search of his lost master. “I’ll seek him throughout the world,” he had told the shoemaker at this very spot on the street, just in front of the parrot’s perch.

  “It may be his fate to search a long time,” the dragon remarked. “Possibly he’ll never stop looking.”

  The parrot had still other news, much of which he had learned first-hand. The shoemaker, not feeling it safe to leave him alone, had started to bring the parrot to the restaurant table on the terrace on Friday evenings. When it had become clear to the PickersgiB sisters that no further attempts were being made to take their restaurant from them, Mrs. Amanda began to think more seriously of her health. She and Mrs.

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  Eliza were now planning an automobile trip to the deserts of New Mexico, which, they understood, combined warmth and dryness with space, a view of mountains, and a sense of history. If they found a place they liked well enough, they would retire there. For the time being, they had asked the Gottliebs’ daughter to manage the restaurant in their absence. Rachel, who had found that the bookshop did not keep her busy enough, had accepted gladly. There had already been some talk that if the Pickersgill sisters did decide to retire, they would sell the restaurant to Rachel and her husband. The bookseller and his wife had already told the young couple that they could help them make this purchase.

  Nonesuch learned all this in conversation with the parrot over several days. While he was still as large as a pigeon, he stayed on the flat roof of the shoemaker’s shop beside a tiny greenhouse full of cucumbers. He watched all the comings and goings from a concealed spot beside a drainpipe. Once, when the white cat, Powder-Puff, who would climb anywhere in pursuit of a bird, disturbed his rest, Nonesuch sent him off screaming across the rooftops and down to the ground by the restaurant’s back shed. Cats in this century didn’t show as much fight as they had done five hundred years ago, he reflected: perhaps the earlier felines were more accustomed to the sight of dragons. From then on, Powder-Puff took so many precautions to assure himself that any bird he stalked was not really a dragon that most escaped him.

  By eating nothing and by flying vigorously at night and on misty days, Nonesuch soon became small enough to slip through the crack in the wall over the Distant Voyages sign and enter the shop again. He is there to this day.

  So far, with the help of the humans in the shop, he has kept quite busy enough. Perhaps he has had help from another source, too. When the weather became cold. Mr. Gottlieb decided

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  to reduce his heating biDs and installed an efficient wood-stove in the bookshop. The stove’s fire shines brightly through its glass front, and it gives out enough heat to warm the upstairs apartment as well; the basement furnace is seldom needed. Professor Ash, who has been finding the cold weather harder to bear, likes to sit by the stove, reading and dozing, sipping occasionally from his bottle and watching fire shapes through the glass. The old man talks more and more with Samson, whose reading has branched out from geology to paleontology and archaeology; now he is back to reading myths, which he once considered too childish. He has become bored with school, always does his homework at the last minute, and as a consequence is only third in his class. One day he spoke to Professor Ash about the belief of some primitive tribes in taboos and evil spirits.

  “They see nature that way,” Professor Ash told him. ‘ ‘But some spirits are friendly as well. The Irish peasants put out milk for the fairies, the ‘Little People.’” He laughed. “If I was superstitious, I’d put out something for the spirit that helped us when it seemed we were going to be replaced by a hotel.”

  ‘ ‘Do you mean the big financier who disappeared?” Sam-son asked him. “Do you think the Little People carried him away?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  Samson made a face. “He’ll come back yet.”

  ‘ ‘I wouldbe surprised at that. I had a feeling of finality about his departure.”

  “So, are you putting out a bowl of milk?” Samson asked.

  “No, that wouldn’t be suitable. In fact,” and here the professor laughed, embarrassed, “I don’t quite know why, I think the right thing is a book.”

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  “Well, there are plenty of those.”

  “No, I mean to put a book out. I had that idea, somehow. I left a book open on the table there.” Professor Ash pointed to a small desk by the window. “I was interested to learn that the late Mr. Abercrombie, or at least the departed Mr. Abercrombie, had been reading Machiavelli’s The Prince on his last day with us.”

  “What’s that about?” Samson asked.

  “Oh, how people act; how to keep power in the real world. You’d like it.”

  “I’ll put it on my list,” Samson said. “But did the Little People read it?”

  “The pages were turned, but that might have been the wind.”

  ‘ ‘Didn’t you watch?”

  “Oh, you mustn’t do that,” Professor Ash said anxiously. “The good spirits don’t like that, and you might lose the blessing.” He yawned. “But I’m becoming forgetful. You’ll have to remind me from now on; or you can do it, when I can’t.”

  So, certain books have been left lying out on the little table near the stove, towards the end of the day when it is unlikely that the Gottliebs will replace them on the shelves. Sometimes the pages have been turned, and sometimes not; from the number of pages, Professor Ash and Samson can judge the progress and the literary tastes of the invisible reader
— if it is not all an effect of the wind. After The Prince, they tried the short stories of Guy de Maupassant (in English translation), some novels of Dickens and Mark Twain, and a history of Rome by Tacitus and of Greece by Thucydides. The invisible reader apparently preferred history to fiction. Special interest was shown in the first part ofMacaulay’s History of England.

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  though eventually even this reader found it heavy going. One day Professor Ash had the idea of taking the Booke of Martyrs again from the shelf. In the morning it was found open to the account of the deaths of Bishops Ridley and Latimer. One page was weighted down with a small pebble; on the facing page was a fragment of a gold chain bracelet that must have fallen through a crack in the floor.’ ‘Someone must want to give us a present,” Professor Ash said.

  After other books, other gifts arrived, also presumably from beneath the floorboards: a sapphire that must have fallen out of a brooch and a rare 1914 quarter. Professor Ash looked it up in the coin catalogue and whistled at its current price, but neither he nor Samson has any thought of selling it.

  No one else has been let into the secret of this game. Mr. Gottlieb may suspect something, but he has the feeling that when good luck has come, it is foolish to endanger it by too close questioning of any little local mysteries. At times, Sam-son is sorry that he cannot come back to the shop at night to discover the reader. But he does not even think of discussing the question of its identity with anyone besides Professor Ash. He is especially afraid that if Peter Levy learns what is going on he will lie in wait for the reader, or even set up an infra-red video camera to observe what occurs at night.

  During all this time, Nonesuch has kept a good watch on Brother Theophilus’s Book of Hours, his treasure. It is as beautiful as ever, and he regards it with deep affection, since it brought him into the present world of books, which, frankly, interests him more now.