Dragon's Eye

by Christopher Stasheff

  Prague had always been beautiful. The most beautiful city in the world, even the other dragons agreed. "The Light of Europe" the people called it. Its amazing clock and gilded and painted buildings had never been destroyed by any enemy. Even the basest invaders could not remain unmoved by this place. No wonder such art came from here, such love of elegance, such avant-garde arrogance. Czerny's oversized dragon heart was full of the glory of his home, full even beyond his capacity with awe at his city.

  Yes, it was beautiful. But it was also different. When he looked carefully he could see the grim faces on the people, the digging in the streets. There was no music on the bridge any more, no twinkling in the coffeehouses where he had once heard Kafka converse with intellectuals and anarchists.

  Czerny had been asleep. But, as the shadows of night deepened against the glowing streets, he thought Prague looked to be asleep now too. As if his own sleep had been part of the slumber of the city, that its pulse had slowed. Prague was now a place of ghosts and memories, where the past haunted the present. Where there was no present that mattered.

  No one was in the streets that he could see. No neighbors tossing sticks for their dogs on the public green, no children playing ball in the streets, ignoring the calls of their mothers to dinner. There were no old men outside the study house in the Josefov, the Jewish Quarter, discussing some point of law, No one lingered on the bench where Rabbi Loew had once told jokes to his students and wondered what was for dinner.

  Czerny saw all of this. He wondered where the people were, or if without his conscious presence the city had simply ceased to be. Then he saw a flicker of light down by Wenceslas Square. From the clock-tower square below it was only a short way to the great boulevard where the elegant hotels and chic shops had once rivaled Paris.

  As Czerny came lower he realized that the darkness of the square was not empty pavement and plantings, but the packed bodies of a hundred thousand people. All kinds of people, working men and women in the uniforms of hotel maids, students in black hanging on street lights waving the Czech flag, whole families holding hands as if on a Sunday afternoon outing.

  Czerny landed on the ornate facade of the Hotel Europa. He always thought that the elegant architecture set him off to advantage. It had been his favorite perch ever since it had been built as a hotel to match anything in Paris.

  "Remember the martyrs," people screamed. And "Havel to the Castle," and "Russians go home."

  So was it the revolution, then? Czerny had heard a lot about revolutions before he had gone to sleep. In the coffeehouses of the Mala Strana, university professors and artists and musicians talked about revolution all the time. Revolutions in art, revolutions against complacency, against the bureaucracy, revolutions against the concept of order itself.

  Czerny had heard it all and it confused him. As a dragon he was somewhat conservative. But as the Dragon of Prague, he was proud of his stance on the cutting edge. He was the one dragon with true taste in the moderns, who understood the point of deconstructionism.

  He was part of his city. Its being was his breath, its will was his mind, its will was his soul. And he had slept while Prague had slept the deepest dream, had rolled over once for water and was thwarted while martyrs burned themselves to death in Wenceslas Square. Now he had awakened again, he and his city together.

  "They took my Picasso," he screeched to the crowd below. 'They took it away to someplace called the Hermitage. My Picasso and the Cezanne and Matisses and the Renoirs. Even the Braque cubist pieces, and those were not the best."

  "They took everything else, too," a man yelled up at him. "They took our best students, our industry. Everything."

  "Not the Skoda!" another man screamed into the conversation. "We still have our cars."

  Czerny blinked his oversized insect eyes. Everyone had lost precious things. All of them. His hoard was gone, all except the crown jewels. Those even the Russians dared not take.

  "Russians go home," the crowd started chanting.

  Czerny joined in with the rest of them, his bellow rumbling like the whole mob together. "Russians go home." He was part of the mob, but his anger was swallowed by sorrow. All the beautiful things that had been stolen from him were gone. And he didn't know how to get anything back again.

  The Museum of Art is sandwiched between the castle and the winding streets of the Mala Strana, about halfway up Castle Hill. The number 22 tram line runs up there where the hill is too sharp to walk comfortably. Czerny, of course, could never fit in a tram. But he followed the twenty-two dejectedly up toward his lair under the cathedral.

  He didn't want to go back. He wasn't sleepy and he didn't want to be alone. Especially not with the blank walls and the memories of the art that should have hung there. That he now knew had gone, like all their dreams, into Russia. He barely had the desire to fly up the hill. If a dragon could trudge, he would have. The fire, the energy of the evening had died suddenly inside him. It was going to be sixty-eight again.

  He had heard plenty that evening about sixty-eight. About how the people of Prague had gathered nightly in Wenceslas Square and the Soviet tanks had rolled in and fired into the crowd. How one commander had mistaken the National Museum for the Parliament and ordered his heavy armor to fire at the Baroque building that housed what paintings were left and scraps of the past. Fired on the museum. Czerny felt the rounds as if they had pierced his own scales.

  And then there were the martyrs. Jan Palach, a student, who had immolated himself in front of the museum. His picture was set up in the carefully groomed circle and flowers smothered the spot. The next night, five more martyrs had repeated the action. The Soviets had not moved at all. They had crushed the nascent Czech nationalism with heavy tanks that had ended up in a working-class district well away from the heart of the city.

  Soviet Tank Drivers' Square it was called, in the area known as Smichov. It was a place where Czerny had never been, far from the castle and the bustle of downtown. And it bothered Czerny that there was an area of the city he did not know, though much of the outlying areas had changed.

  As the rally died, Czerny took off from the roof of the Europa Hotel, circled Wenceslas Square twice, and flew down over the river to Smichov. He had heard of the district, he knew where it was supposed to be. And it unfolded to his right, though his eyes were on the rustle overlooking the water.

  Even in the dark there were lights focused on the cathedral. The twin spires glowed against the indigo sky, brooding on the city. Seeing home so proud against the night, Czerny felt a surge of power so strong it made his ayes sting.

  Home. There had been invaders. He had fought them off. He remembered the troops threatening the Charles Bridge, fighting over the cobblestones to cross the river and take the castle. Rabbi Loew's golem stood under the bridge tower while Czerny had attacked from overhead. They had stopped the invaders cold, and won the banner and perpetual protection for the Josefov. And Czerny had won a special commendation, too, with a glittering decoration set with blood dark garnets to add to his hoard.

  Remembering this made Czerny happy. For a moment he was able to forget this disgrace, his defeat, and the pillage of his treasure.

  "And all because of those Russians," he thought, furious. He remembered the tanks rolling up the hill, great metal monsters belching fire as hot as his own. As if they could not enlist their own dragons in their fight and so had created machine replicas of what a guardian dragon could do.

  Just the thought of the tanks shot a stream of flame from his nostrils that lit the Smichov streets like lightening. Two men wearing caps stared up at the fire-breathing dragon gliding over the drinking clubs and the silent tram tracks in the middle of the street. Czerny came lower. They had been drinking, he could see from the uneven way they walked, and he wondered if these would be good people to ask. Then he realized there was no one else around.

  "Excuse me, could you direct me to Soviet Tank Drivers' Square?" he asked.

  The two men blinked and looked
at each other. They looked up at Czerny, who could not hover long and had perched on the top of an automobile. One of the men shook his head and started to walk away. The other blinked and pinched himself as if he thought Czerny might not be quite real. Then he mumbled something unintelligible and waved in the direction of tall buildings.

  He really should make a point of getting away from the castle and the Mala Strana, Czerny thought. People didn't seem to expect him to show up any place in the city. He was supposed to be asleep in the cathedral so that teachers and tour guides could talk about waste in the past. No one seemed to expect him to do anything. No one expected him to be able to help.

  Czerny blinked his great rolling eyes, trying to shield himself from the knowledge. He had become superfluous. He could no longer defend the city, He couldn't even keep his hoard. He was defeated, a failure.

  Other dragons had never considered him quite their equal, either, he thought. For all his knowledge of art, for all his sophistication, he had only rarely repelled invaders, and that with the help of golem. He had never wrestled with knights or fought on pretenders as had other dragons. He had never been hunted, had never been the object of a quest. Indeed, everything in Prague had always known precisely where to find him. Children in the royal family grew up sliding down his tail and pulling on his ears.

  He was a failure. The only thing he knew, the only thing he understood, was art. Which was not his fault. He lived in a city that was better known for art than for war, and Czerny was proud of that. Just as he had been proud of his own collection, the finest in Prague.

  No young artists would come to him any more, the way they had before his long sleep. How he remembered them trudging up the hill from the cafes to see his paintings. They sometimes brought wine down into the crypt and talked with him about art, about what was happening in Paris and New York and in their own studios in Prague.

  Czerny must have been the only creature who didn't mind the sharp vinegar wine and the day-old bread the art students brought. He had enjoyed listening to them talk, argue with passion about expression, nature and the mechanization of humanity. He had even contributed his own opinions, and more than once he had seen one of his ideas expressed in some gallery show that he could see only dimly through the windows, even when he had received an engraved invitation to the opening and they were serving champagne inside. He was too large to fit through the doors of any gallery in Prague.

  Lost in his thoughts, Czerny flew over all of Smichov. He wheeled over a great open square filled with hulking sculptures that threw crazy shadows over the pavement. Then he suddenly realized where he was. Soviet Tank Drivers' Square. He flew lower to get a good look.

  Indeed, there were tanks lined up in the square. A single one in the center was mounted on a concrete stand like a monument. Czerny thought it was a terrible monument, and that some poor sculptor who didn't get a commission had gone hungry so that an ugly pile of metal could sit in the middle of the park.

  Tank Number 23, read a plaque on the cement mounting. The first tank to break the Nazi occupation of Prague, the first tank through the gates to liberate the Czech people. Their friendly Slavic neighbors in Russia had come to Czech aid, and this tank was their pledge to do so again, whenever needed.

  The plaque made Czerny want to spit fire and melt the whole thing down right then. He wanted to do to Tank Number 23 what he couldn't do to the Nazi tanks that had come up the hill. He wanted to flame down all the Russians he had seen, all the soldiers standing in the shadows in Wenceslas Square while the people had held their rally, all the Russians to whom people yelled, "Go home."

  Everyone go home. Prague for the Czechs, Czerny thought. Prague for us.

  But he didn't know what to do, what one dragon against the forces of history and technology could do. What one dragon whose true love was art could accomplish. Though, he remembered, he had often told the other dragons that art was more important than war. That art was eternal and victory was brief, that art could turn the world around.

  He had said all those things in Paris, when the Grand Dragon of Paris had invited them all to see the fireworks and feast for the hundredth anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. Paris had done a great deal in a mere hundred years. But even the Grand Dragon of Paris had listened and agreed with Czerny on that evening while the fireworks over the Champs de Mars had glittered around them.

  He had believed it then. Now the words seemed so naive, so hollow. So self-seeking. Czerny had been the only dragon there who had never killed a human in single combat. He couldn't explain to the others that, where he was from, it simply wasn't done. No one had come to kill him, he was simply an integrated part of the life of the castle, of the eternal bureaucracy of government. Like all the others, he did his job.

  So, in the silent dark he flew back to his home. But he did not crawl into crypt and he did not go to sleep. Instead he perched on one of the tall spires and looked down at the city, watching over its sleep and watching it rise.

  In the courtyard of the Museum of Art, Czerny saw them gather. Even from his distant perch he could see quite clearly the group that assembled between the fountains behind the high concrete walls that already were covered with graffiti. They were young and many of them dressed in black, just as they had before he had gone to sleep. Many of the young men had long hair tied back, the young women all carried their portfolios under their arms.

  The young artists, the avant-garde, were meeting in their accustomed place. Czerny could not help it, he had to be with them. He unfurled his wings and launched off the cathedral tower to glide lazily halfway down the hill. The high courtyard wall was a perfect perch. He could hear everything. He could look at each portfolio as the students showed their best work and decide which of the aspiring painters he should watch.

  And, of course, he was quite visible on the wall. When he had come down to the Art Institute regularly, collectors came to consult with him and students would shyly open the large black folders and show him a drawing, a study, and ask his opinion on composition.

  That was a long time ago, Czerny reminded himself. He had slept for a very long time. He had at least managed to sneak a look at the newspaper someone read while sitting on a bench in the sculpture garden and he knew it was 1989. He had slept for forty-four years.

  Suddenly he wished he could talk to the Great Dragon of Britain about coming back to the world after sleeping so long. No doubt that archdean of dragons would say something cryptic and profound that would take Czerny another forty years to decipher.

  "We should do something about the tanks," one of the long haired young men in black was saying. "The Russians might say they're there to celebrate the liberation of Prague, but they're also there to remind us that they can roll in any time. Like they did in sixty-eight."

  Czerny's ears perked up.

  "Be careful, Vasclav," said one of the young women with a large folder. "You don't know who's listening."

  "I don't care who's listening," Vasclav said in a very loud voice. "I'm sick of worrying about what I say and who's listening." He raised his volume to a full yell. "I hope you are listening, because I have a message for you. Go home. Leave us, go home. Take your tanks somewhere else!"

  Hesitant applause punctuated the speech. Czerny found himself nodding in agreement. He had seen enough of what the Russians had done. They had taken his hoard, and that was more than any dragon could bear.

  A dragon without a hoard was like, was like anyone here, he realized, amazed. He had been treated exactly like the humans. For a second he was furious. And then he was proud. Maybe they didn't see him so much as human as Czech. Czerny sat a little straighter on the wall.

  The girl who had spoken before smiled now. "There's more than tanks," she said cheerfully. "Its just because you live down the street from them and have to look at them every day. The rest of us can just ignore it."

  Vasclav turned back to the crowd, his mouth tight with fury. "No, we cannot just ignore it," he said. Ther
e was menace in the low rumble of his voice. "We've just ignored too much for too long. The Wall is down, the Germans are free. Are we anything less than the Germans? But every day in our city we have those damned reminders of how easy it is for them to crush us. I say we should go there now and turn them all over. Tear Tank 23 to pieces!"

  "I wonder if we tore it to pieces and painted it, if it would make a good mobile?" the girl said.

  The group in the courtyard of the Art Institute turned to her in silence. She looked over their faces and shrugged. "Well, it's one thing to act on the symbol. It's another thing to change the symbol, turn it into something that is ours. That's all."

  Heads shook. Vasclav sneered. The girl faced him down. "If you react to what the monument means, then you are building up the symbolic value," she said firmly. "The only way to disarm it is to turn it around and make it ours."

  "Sometimes I can't figure out if you're stupid or if you're just scared," one of the crowd yelled.

  "Shove it, Peter," the girl replied. "If you ever bothered to study symbolism instead of your idiot color wheel all day, you might grow some brains."

  Czerny had heard enough. He knew student distractions, knew how they wouldn't resolve anything. They were art students, after all. Just the fact that every night they went down to Wenceslas Square to join the rest of the population of Prague in demonstrating for their freedom was more than art students usually did.

  Except make art, of course.

  He opened his wings and the span of them shadowed the courtyard as he left. Eyes turned to the sky, as they always had. He was, after all, the Dragon of Prague.