Vladimir Nabokov: "The Dragon," "Christmas," and "A Letter That Never Reached Russia"

A recent edition

Let's read three more very brief stories from my paperback copy of The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov, stories that collectively take up 16 pages of the 660-page book.  I believe "The Dragon" first appeared in English in this collection in 1995, translated by Dimitri Nabokov, the author's son.  An English version of "Christmas," translated collaboratively by author and son, appeared in The New Yorker before being included in the 1976 collection Details of a Sunset, and the English translation of "A Letter That Never Reached Russia," another father-son collaboration, I think first appeared in Details of a Sunset.    

"The Dragon" (1924)

This is a joke story about a hapless dragon the size of a small mountain.  As a baby, the dragon saw its mother slain by a knight after she had eaten the king's chef.  So, the dragon, stricken with fear, hid in his cave and lived on moss, bats and rats instead of terrorizing the countryside.  For a thousand years he has stayed in his cave, though he has had the opportunity to develop a taste for human flesh, thanks to the occasional visits to his cave of criminals looking for a hideout and spelunkers.

In the 20th century, the dragon (just twenty years old in dragon years), emerges from his cave to explore a nearby town at night when most everyone is asleep.  He devours five men as they leave a tavern--the wine in the men's systems makes the dragon drunk and he falls into a deep slumber right there in the street.  

This town is the site of two big factories owned by rival tobacco manufacturers.  One of them learns of the dragon's appearance shortly after midnight and plasters advertisements for his brand of tobacco all over the gigantic reptile, to the amazement of the townspeople the next morning.  His rival, thinking the dragon a giant rubber balloon fashioned by his competitor, is enraged and envious.  This guy's  girlfriend is a tightrope walker, and she arranges for a horseman who also works for the circus to dress up as a knight to prick the balloon.  When the dragon sees the "knight" approaching it flees in fear, killing several people in its haste.  At home the monster dies of a heart attack or something.

A pleasant enough diversion.        

"Christmas" (1925)

This story is exactly what we expect a literary story written before World War II to be.  A wealthy Russian's son has died, and he returns from the city to his snowbound country manor with the coffin to inter his son in the family vault by the village church.  It is Christmas Eve.  The story is full of descriptions of little details--the sound of chopping wood in the distance, a spot of candle wax dried on the grieving father's hand, sunlight glittering on the cross atop a church.   

The father reminisces sadly about his son, how he loved catching butterflies and moths.  He goes through some of his son's things that were left here in the cold country house, like his collection of pinned butterflies and moths, the chrysalis stored in an English cookie ("biscuit") tin, his journal.  He brings these artifacts of his son's life from the freezing main house to a small wing where a fire has been lit, to sit and read his son's journal.  The boy wrote of being in love with some local girl, but didn't use her name--his father will never know who his son was in love with, just as his son will never have a wife and children of his own.

Heartbroken, the father considers suicide--life is meaningless!  Then, a Christmas miracle--that chrysalis, in this warm room, cracks open and from it emerges a beautiful moth!  I guess we readers are to presume that this miraculous birth, taking place the day before the day set aside to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, reminds the grieving father that life and the world offer beauty as well as sadness and convince him to live on.

"A Letter That Never Reached Russia" (1925)

I assume "Christmas" is set before World War I, while "A Letter That Never Reached Russia" is set after the Bolshevik Revolution.  The writer of this letter is living in exile in Berlin; he has not seen his love, the intended recipient of the letter, in eight years.  He starts the letter with a little reminiscence of their happy days together as students, skipping school to kiss in the Suvarov Museum, then talks at length of his night walks in Berlin--the sound of trains, the way light from lamps reflects in puddles and off a woman's wet umbrella, etc.  If "Christmas" is about how the natural world is beautiful and recognizing this beauty can make life worth living, this story is about how the man-made world is similarly beautiful and similarly the work of God.  When I lived in Manhattan I would take long night walks myself and all Nabokov's little details here struck a chord with me.  

The climax of the letter is the story of how the letter-writer came to a Russian Orthodox cemetery, where the caretaker, a man maimed serving in the anti-communist forces in the Civil War, points out to him where an old woman last night hanged herself by the grave of her recently dead husband.  Her feet made little crescent marks in the dirt that remind the narrator of smiles. 

In the last paragraph of the letter the writer makes the story's themes more explicit.  References in the story to the World War, the Revolution, loss of country and of loved ones, have reminded us that life is full of horrible things, but these things are ephemeral, like fashions in clothing and music (which the writer described in one part of his letter.)  The schoolboys of the future will be bored by reading about the cataclysms we endure, just as we were bored reading about the horrible trials faced by ancient and medieval people.  What is eternal is the beauty of this world, the work of God that makes happiness possible if we have the wisdom to see it.