'The Dragons of Medea'

We return to Inner Europe with a Mark Valentine tale that, again, has a distinct flavour of Borges and Chesterton, though I should add that Machen is also present and correct - to some extent provides the literary air that the author breathes.

A postmaster in the Georgian capital, Tblisi, creates small books and posts them to various destinations around the world. He contrives to ensure that his books - all handmade - will be returned to him as undeliverable. Thus he feels he has travelled the globe by proxy, becoming a cosmopolitan while never leaving his homeland. He is practising a kind of magic.

As the narrator explains, Georgia is the former Colchis, land of myth. As well as the Golden Fleece, it was the home of the sorceress Medea. Her ability to ride through the heavens on golden dragons becomes central to the tale of this unassuming yet remarkable man. Following what he half-whismically sees as traces of these dragons the postmaster finds a kind of tavern where remarkable people eat, drink, converse. They are, to some extent, cultural archetypes of Georgia, the living embodiment of what is good and distinctive about the nation.

Why has the modest, rather lonely man been brought here? We discover the truth, as does he, when he takes a second look at a sign outside the mysterious establishment. The most trivial activity can turn out to have profound significance, it seems.

We are well past the halfway mark, now. Whither Europe, inner or otherwise? I can only speculate.