The Spectre of Alexander Wolf
GAITO GAZDANOV
THE SPECTRE
OF
ALEXANDER WOLF
Translated from the Russian by
Bryan Karetnyk
PUSHKIN PRESS
LONDON
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Title Page
THE SPECTRE OF ALEXANDER WOLF
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THE SPECTRE OF ALEXANDER WOLF
OF ALL MY MEMORIES, of all my life’s innumerable sensations, the most onerous was that of the single murder I had committed. Ever since the moment it happened, I cannot remember one day passing when I haven’t regretted it. No punishment for it ever threatened me, because it occurred in the most exceptional of circumstances and it was clear that I couldn’t have acted otherwise. Moreover, no one other than I knew about it. It was one of those countless episodes of the Civil War; in the general course of contemporary events it could be looked upon as an insignificant detail, all the more so as during those few minutes and seconds prior to the incident its outcome concerned only the two of us—myself and another man, unknown to me. Then I was alone. No one else had any part in this.
I couldn’t faithfully describe what led up to the event because everything was such a blur, a mark of almost all fighting in any war, the participants of which least of all conceive of what’s happening in reality. It was summer, in southern Russia, and we were on our fourth day of continuous, disorderly troop manoeuvres, to an accompaniment of gunfire and sporadic fighting. I’d completely lost all concept of time; I couldn’t even say where I was exactly. I remember only the sensations, which could just as easily have been elicited in other circumstances—the feeling of hunger, thirst, terrible fatigue; I hadn’t slept these past two and a half nights. There was a torrid heat, and the air hung with the faint smell of smoke; an hour previously we’d made our way out of a forest, which was ablaze on one side, and there, where the sunlight couldn’t penetrate, a great straw-coloured shadow slowly pressed forward. I was so desperate for sleep; I remember thinking at the time that it would have been utter bliss to stop, lie down on the scorched grass and drop off, forgetting about everything. However, this was the one thing that I couldn’t do, and so I continued through the hot, drowsy haze, swallowing my saliva and periodically rubbing my eyes, which were irritated by the heat and a lack of sleep.
I recall that when we were passing through a small grove, I leant against a tree and, standing for what I thought to be only a second, I drifted off with the long-familiar sound of gunfire in the background. When I opened my eyes there was no one around. I cut across the grove and set out on the road, in the direction I thought my comrades to have taken. Almost immediately I was outstripped by a Cossack astride a swift bay horse; he waved to me and shouted something I couldn’t make out. After some time, I had the good fortune to come across a scraggy black mare whose rider obviously had been killed. She was bridled and had a Cossack saddle on her back, and she was nibbling at the grass, constantly swishing her long, wiry tail. As soon as I mounted her, she set off at a gallop.
I rode along a deserted winding road; every now and then the occasional little grove would obscure a bend in the track. The sun stood high in the sky, and the air almost hummed from the heat. Although I was riding quickly, I still have a false impression of everything happening in slow motion. I was still desperate for sleep; this longing filled my body and my consciousness, and because of it everything seemed lingering and drawn out, although in fact, of course, it couldn’t have been so. The fighting had ceased; all was quiet. I saw no one either behind or ahead of me. Suddenly, at one of the turns veering off almost at a right angle, my horse fell hard, at full tilt. I went tumbling down with her, landing on a soft, dark—because I closed my eyes—patch, but managed to free my leg from the stirrup and escaped almost unharmed by the fall. The bullet had hit her right ear and passed straight through her head. Getting to my feet, I turned around and saw, not very far off, coming towards me at what seemed a slow, heavy gallop, a rider astride a great white horse. I recall that my rifle had been missing for quite some time; I’d most probably left it in the grove where I fell asleep. I still had a revolver, though, and with some difficulty managed to pull it out of its tight, new holster. I stood for a few seconds, holding the revolver in my hand; it was so quiet that I could distinctly make out the dry sobbing of hooves against the cracked earth, the horse’s heavy breathing, and another sound, similar to the rapid jingling of a little bunch of metallic rings. I saw the rider let go of the reins and shoulder his rifle, which, until that point, he had been carrying atilt. It was then that I fired. He jerked up in his saddle, slumped down and fell slowly to the ground. I stood motionless next to the body of my horse for two or three minutes. Still I wanted to sleep, and that same agonizing weariness persisted. I managed, however, to consider the fact that I had no idea what lay ahead of me or whether I would even be alive for much longer, but the irrepressible urge to see just whom I’d killed compelled me to stir from my spot and approach him. No other distance, anywhere and at any time, has been as difficult for me to traverse as those fifty or sixty metres that separated me from the fallen rider; nevertheless, I walked towards him, dragging my feet over the hot cracked earth. Finally I reached him. He was a man of around twenty-two or twenty-three; his cap had blown off to one side, and his head, fair-haired, lay at an awkward angle on the dusty road. He was rather handsome. I leant over him and saw that he was dying; bubbles of pink foam frothed up and burst on his lips. He opened his dull eyes, said nothing, and closed them again. I stood over him and looked into his face, still clutching the now superfluous revolver with my numbing fingers. Suddenly, a light gust of warm air carried to me the scarcely audible clatter of horses’ hooves, and then I remembered the danger I could yet face. The dying man’s white horse, pricking up its ears in alarm, stood only a few paces away from him. It was a great stallion, very well groomed and clean, its back a little dark with sweat. Of particular note were the horse’s exceptional speed and endurance; I sold it a few days before I fled Russia, to a German settler who supplied me with an enormous quantity of provisions and paid me a vast sum of worthless money. The revolver I used to take the shot—it was a wonderful Parabellum—I cast into the sea, and from all this I was left with nothing more than a painful memory that haunted me everywhere Fate took me. However, the memory grew dimmer by and by, and with time it almost shed that initial feeling of constant, burning regret. But I was never able to forget it entirely. Many a time, whether it be summer or winter, by the sea or deep within the continent of Europe, I, mind empty, would close my eyes, and suddenly from the depths of memory that sultry day in southern Russia would draw once more into focus, and then those same feelings would re-emerge with all their former intensity. I saw again the enormous rose-grey shadow of the forest fire and its gradual progression amidst the crackle of burning twigs and branches; I felt that unforgettable, agonizing weariness and the almost overwhelming desire to sleep, the merciless brilliance of the sun, the ringing heat, and finally the mute recollection of the revolver’s weight in my grasp, its rough grip as if for ever imprinted on my skin, the slight swaying of the black foresight in front of my right eye—and then the fair-haired head on the grey, dusty road, and the face, transformed by the approach of death, that very death that I, only a second ago, had summoned out of the untold future.
I was sixteen years old when all this took place, and, as such, this murder marked the beginning of my independence; I’m not even certain that it hasn’t left an unconscious mark on everything I was destined to learn and see thereafter. In any case, the circumstances accompanying it and everyt
hing in its connection all came to the fore with particular clarity many years later, in Paris. It transpired because I fell into the possession of a collection of short stories by an English author, whose name I had never before heard. The book was entitled I’ll Come Tomorrow, after the first story in the collection. There were three stories in all: “I’ll Come Tomorrow”, “The Goldfish” and “The Adventure in the Steppe”. They were exceptionally well written, and of particular excellence were the narrative’s taut, flawless rhythm and the author’s distinctive manner of seeing things in quite an original light. However, neither “I’ll Come Tomorrow” nor “The Goldfish” was able to stir any personal interest in me other a passing one, typical of any reader. “I’ll Come Tomorrow” was the ironic tale of an unfaithful woman, of her failed deceit and the imbroglio that ensued. “The Goldfish”, which was set in New York, was, strictly speaking, a dialogue between a man and a woman, with a description of a musical melody; a housemaid forgets to take a small goldfish bowl off the radiator, and the fish jump out of the hot water and thrash about on a rug, dying, while the participants of the dialogue fail to notice this, as she is engrossed in playing the piano, and he in listening to her playing. The story’s interest lay in its introduction of a musical melody as a sentimental and irrefutable commentary, and in the unintentional participation of the fish in this, thrashing around on the rug.
I was struck, however, by the third story: “The Adventure in the Steppe”. A line of Edgar Allan Poe’s provided an epigraph to the tale: “Beneath me lay my corpse, with the arrow in my temple.” This alone was sufficient to attract my attention. Although, I cannot convey the sensation that gripped me as I read. The story concerned an episode from a war; it was written without any reference whatsoever to the country in which the narrative took place or to the nationality of those taking part in it, yet it would seem that the title alone, “The Adventure in the Steppe”, suggested that it might have been set in Russia. It began thus: “The finest horse I ever owned was a white stallion, a half-breed of impressive dimensions, of note for its particularly broad, sweeping trot. It was so beautiful that I am inclined to compare it with those horses mentioned in the Book of Revelation. This similarity, incidentally, is highlighted—for me personally—by the fact that I rode this horse, galloping towards my own death, across the scorching earth, during one of the hottest summers I have ever known in my life.”
Herein I found an exact reconstruction of everything I’d experienced during the far-distant times of the Civil War in Russia and a description of those unbearably hot days when the fiercest and most protracted fighting was taking place. Before long I reached the final pages of the story; I read them with bated breath. There I recognized my black mare and the turn in the road where she was killed. The narrator of the story was convinced from the outset that the rider who had fallen with his horse had been at least seriously wounded—since he had shot twice, and he thought that he had hit both times. I don’t know why I noticed only a single shot. “But he was not dead, nor even apparently wounded,” continued the author, “because I saw him stand up; in the bright sunlight I noticed what I thought to be the dark gleam of a revolver in his hand. He had no rifle—I know that much for sure.”
The white stallion carried on at a heavy gallop, drawing nearer to the spot where, with an incomprehensible—as the author described it—immobility, paralysed perhaps by fear, stood a man with a revolver in his hand. The author then checked the horse’s swift pace and shouldered his rifle, but suddenly, without hearing the shot, he felt a deathly pain he knew not where and a burning mist in his eyes. After a while, consciousness returned to him for a short, spasmodic moment, and it was then that he heard the slow steps approaching him; just as quickly, however, he fell back into oblivion. Again, after some time, finding himself already in a dying state of delirium, he—it’s unimaginable how—sensed the presence of someone standing over him.
“I made a superhuman effort to open my eyes and see, at last, my death. So many times had I dreamt of its terrible iron face that I could never mistake it; time and again I would have recognized those features, known to me down to the smallest detail. But now I was astonished to see above me a youthful, pale face, completely unfamiliar to me, with distant, tired—or so they seemed to me—eyes. It was a boy of probably fourteen or fifteen, with a commonplace, ugly little face that expressed nothing other than manifest fatigue. He stood thus for a few seconds, then placed his revolver back into its holster and walked off. When I opened my eyes again and with the last of my strength turned my head, I saw him astride my horse. Then I blacked out again, regaining consciousness only many days later, in a military hospital. The bullet from the revolver had hit my chest half a centimetre above my heart. My horse of the Apocalypse hadn’t quite succeeded in carrying me to the very end. However, I believe that it was not very far from death and that it continued onwards on its journey, just with a different rider on its back. I’d pay dearly for the chance to know where, when and how they both met their end, and whether that revolver was still of use to the boy as he shot at the spectre of death. I don’t imagine him to have been a very good shot at all; he didn’t have that air about him. That he hit me was most likely a fluke, but then again I’d be the last person to reproach him for this. I’d also refrain because I think he probably perished long ago, vanishing into oblivion, astride that white stallion, as the last phantom of this adventure in the steppe.”
There remained little doubt for me that the author of the story really was that same pale stranger whom I’d shot. To explain the complete convergence of facts with all their inherent peculiarities—right down to the colour and description of the horses—by pure coincidence was, to my mind, impossible. I took another look at the cover: I’ll Come Tomorrow, by Alexander Wolf. This, of course, could have been a pseudonym. But I wouldn’t let that stop me; I was determined to meet this man. That he was an English writer was also surprising. True, Alexander Wolf could have been a compatriot of mine with a decent enough command of English not to have recourse to the aid of a translator; this was the most probable explanation. In any case, I wanted to clarify this at whatever the cost, because after all I’d been connected to this man too long and too inseparably, without knowing him at all, and his memory had pervaded my entire life. Besides, judging by his story, it was also clear that he ought to harbour almost the same interest towards me, namely because of “The Adventure in the Steppe” having had such a significant bearing on his life and, probably, having predetermined his fate to a greater degree than my memory of him had predetermined that evanescing shadow that had been cast over many years of my life.
I wrote a letter to him, care of his publisher in London. I outlined the facts unknown to him at the time and asked him to send me a response, stating where and when we could meet—if, of course, such a meeting interested him as much as it did me. A month passed without any reply. It was always possible that he’d thrown the letter into the waste-paper basket without reading it, supposing it to have been sent by some female fan of his, with a request for a signed photograph and asking his opinion on the correspondent’s own novel, which she would send or even read to him personally, just as soon as she had received his reply. This seemed in some way probable also because, despite the undoubted and real artistry with which the book had been written, it did contain, I think, a particular appeal for women. For one reason or another, however, I received no answer.
Precisely two weeks after this, I came upon an unexpected opportunity to travel to London for a spot of reporting. I was there for three days and found the time to drop by the publishing house that had printed Alexander Wolf’s book. The director received me. He was a corpulent man of around fifty, with an air of something between a banker and a professor. He spoke French fluently. I outlined to him the reason for my visit and told him in a few words that I had read “The Adventure in the Steppe” and why this story had interested me.
“I’d like to know whether Mr Wolf received my l
etter.”
“Mr Wolf isn’t in London at the moment,” said the director, “and we, I’m afraid, are without the means by which to contact him right now.”
“This is beginning to resemble a detective story,” I said, not without some vexation. “I shan’t abuse your time, leaving you instead with my best wishes. May I count on your reminding Mr Wolf of my letter, once you resume contact with him—that is, if that ever happens?”
“You may rest assured,” he replied hurriedly. “But I would add one thing more. I understand that your interest in the identity of Mr Wolf is of an entirely benign nature. And so I ought to tell you that Mr Wolf cannot be the man you’re looking for.”
“I had, until now, been completely convinced of the contrary.”
“No, no,” he said. “Insofar as I understand, he’s supposed to be a compatriot of yours.”
“That would be the most likely scenario.”
“In that case, it’s quite out of the question. Mr Wolf is an Englishman; I’ve known him for many years and can vouch for that. What’s more, he’s never left England for more than two or three weeks at a time, which he spends mostly in France or Italy. He hasn’t travelled farther; I can say this with certainty.”
“Then this has all been a misunderstanding, although it does surprise me,” I said.
“As far as ‘The Adventure in the Steppe’ is concerned, it’s fictitious from first to last.”
“That, ultimately, isn’t impossible.”
In the final moments of our conversation I stood up, preparing to leave. The director also rose from his chair and said suddenly, markedly lowering his voice:
“Naturally, ‘The Adventure in the Steppe’ is a work of fiction. But if it were true, then I can only say that you’ve acted with unforgivable carelessness. You ought to have taken better aim. It would have spared both Mr Wolf and certain other parties unnecessary difficulties.”