The Spectre of Alexander Wolf Read online

  I hung up, took the revolver out of my writing desk, checked that it was loaded, put it in my coat pocket and left the building. Then I took a taxi to Jean’s.

  All this distracted me from the mental anxiety I’d been feeling; sitting in the car, I now gave some thought to the fate of Curly Pierrot, “Pierrot le frisé”, whom I knew so well and pitied so much, although perhaps by the standards of classical justice he didn’t merit any pity at all: he was a professional looter with several lives on his conscience. I met him around six years ago, after he shot dead his first victim, an ex-boxer by the name of Albert. By pure chance—it was four o’clock in the morning—I wound up in the café that housed his secret headquarters, although I hadn’t the slightest idea of this at the time. I sat down at a table and began to write. There were some drunkards shouting and arguing at the bar, when a deathly silence suddenly descended. With uncommon expressiveness and what was an unexpectedly humane tone of voice after all these howling voices, someone (I had no idea who he was back then) said:

  “Do you want what happened to Albert to happen to you?”

  There was no answer. I carried on writing, keeping my head down. The café emptied.

  “Well, I’ve scared them off,” said the same voice, “but who’s that one over there?”

  He was talking about me.

  “I don’t know,” replied the owner. “This is the first time I’ve seen him.”

  I could hear footsteps approaching my table. I raised my eyes and saw a man of average height, very solidly built, with a clean-shaven, solemn face; he was wearing a light-grey suit, a navy-blue shirt and a canary-yellow tie. I was struck by the plaintive look in his eyes, evidently accounted for by the fact that he was drunk. He met my gaze and asked without any lead-up:

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Writing.”

  “And? What are you writing?”

  “An article.”

  “An article?”

  “Yes.”

  This seemed to surprise him.

  “So you aren’t from the police?”

  “No, I’m a journalist.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “No.”

  “They call me Curly Pierrot.”

  Then I remembered that a few days previously there had been articles in two newspapers about the death of a boxer called Albert, who had stood trial fourteen times and had been incarcerated in a variety of prisons. The headlines read: “Gangsters at War” and “Boxer Murdered in Revenge Attack”. There had also been mention of some woman who was the alleged cause of all this. “The police have little doubt that the perpetrator of the crime is Pierre Dieudonné, alias ‘Curly Pierrot’, who is wanted urgently by the authorities. According to latest reports, he has managed to leave Paris and is located, most probably, on the Riviera.”

  Yet here that same Pierrot was standing in front of me, in a café on boulevard Saint-Denis.

  “So you haven’t gone to the Riviera?”

  “No.”

  He sat down opposite me and began to think. After a few minutes he asked:

  “What actually do you write about?”

  “About whatever I have to, about a lot of things.”

  “But you don’t write novels?”

  “I haven’t written one yet, but maybe I’ll write one someday. Why do you ask?”

  We talked as though we were old acquaintances. He enquired after my name and which newspapers I worked for; he said he could tell me a lot of intriguing stories, given the occasion, and invited me to drop by the café sometime. Then he and I parted.

  We met many times after that, and indeed he did tell me some interesting anecdotes. Thanks to his candour, I often had at my disposal certain information that the police lacked, since he was so exceptionally well informed in this particular area. He was without doubt an outstanding man; he had a natural intelligence, and by this he distinguished himself sharply from his “colleagues”, who mostly stood out just as much for their unquestionable stupidity. Like most men in his trade, he gambled recklessly at the races and was a daily reader of the newspaper Veine; that aside, however, he did occasionally read books, and in particular novels by Dekobra, which he liked very much.

  “That’s how it’s done!” he would say to me. “Eh? What do you think?”

  I always imagined that he would meet a bad end one day, not only because his profession was a dangerous one, but also for another reason: he was forever attracted to forbidden fruits, and yet he understood the difference between his life’s pursuits and the pursuits of others—people who were infinitely far beyond his reach.

  One day he showed up in a red Bugatti. He was wearing a new fawn suit with his beloved canary tie, the customary rings glittering on his fingers.

  “What do you think?” he asked me. “Could I go to a reception at the embassy like this, just like those guys they write about in the papers? Eh? ‘We noted…’”

  I shook my head. This surprised him.

  “You think I’m badly dressed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Me? Do you know how much I paid for this suit?”

  “No, but that’s beside the point.”

  I would never have suspected my negative appraisal of his mode of dress capable of causing him so much disappointment. He took a seat opposite me and said:

  “Tell me, then, why you think I’m inappropriately dressed.”

  I explained to him as best I could. He looked puzzled. I added:

  “Anyway, it’d be easy to single you out just by looking at those clothes. Anyone with a certain understanding, shall we say, wouldn’t need to recognize you or ask for your papers. He’d know the sort of man he’s dealing with just by the suit, the tie and the rings.”

  “What about the car?”

  “It’s a racing car. What’s the use of it in a city? In any case, they’re a rarity. Take an average dark-coloured car; no one will notice it.”

  He sat in silence, propping his head up with his hand.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m at sixes and sevens when you talk like that,” he said. “I’m beginning to understand what I shouldn’t. You tell me the books I like are bad. You know more about this than I do. I can’t talk to you as an equal because I don’t have the education. I’m a low-down guy, je suis un inférieur, that’s what’s the matter. Besides, I’m a gangster. And other people are just better than me.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. He looked at me intently and asked:

  “Tell me frankly: do you agree with me?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Yes, you’re a gangster,” I said. “You don’t dress as you ought to, and you don’t have a certain education. That’s quite true. But if you think that any big name you read about in the papers—a banker, a minister, a senator—is your better, then you’re wrong. He works and, more importantly, takes fewer risks. He’s addressed as ‘Chairman’ or ‘Minister’. He dresses differently, and better, and indeed he does have a certain education, although that’s far from always the case. But as a man he’s no better than you, so you needn’t worry. I don’t know whether this will console you, but it’s my opinion nonetheless.”

  Pierrot had a great weakness for the fairer sex, and the majority of the “scores” he had to settle—those which ended so tragically—came about namely as a result of these women.

  “They’ll be the end of you one day—peut-être bien, tu mourras par les femmes,” I said to him. “What’s more, it’ll be down to the ones who aren’t worth the trouble in the first place.”

  It wasn’t difficult to predict. Even now, as I approached Jean’s office in the taxi, it was on account of a woman that Pierrot’s hideout had been let slip to those from whom he needed to conceal it most of all.

  The position was hopeless. His activities had become particularly violent of late; robbery followed robbery, and the police were finally cracking down on all those from whom they could expect some as
sistance in the matter. The woman who had caused all this was the wife of Pierrot’s deputy, Philippe. Philippe was an enormous man, a Hercules, fearing, in his own words, nothing and no one on earth, apart from his boss, who was renowned for being a superb shot.

  I had seen this woman a number of times; she had recently become Pierrot’s lover, and I’m of the belief that it was precisely for this reason that Inspector Jean managed to obtain a confession from Philippe. With the same inalterable poor taste that distinguished her whole milieu, she was given the nickname “the Panther”. She had enormous, wild, dark blue eyes behind eyelashes that were painted a similar shade, her hair was black with tight curls and never had to be styled, she had a large mouth with impressive, heavily painted lips, her bust was small and her body lithe; never did I see a more ferocious creature. She bit her lovers until she drew blood, she screeched and clawed, and no one recalled ever hearing her speak with a calm voice. Around three weeks previously, she left Philippe; it was she who answered the telephone when I rang through to Sèvres before going to Inspector Jean’s.

  When I entered, Inspector Jean was sitting on a chair with his cap tilted back. Opposite him, with his elbows on his knees, sat Philippe in handcuffs. He had a pallid, dirty face, which bore traces of dried perspiration running down it. He was very dirty and smelt strongly of sweat; the atmosphere in the room was hot and stifling. Jean said to him:

  “That’ll do for now. You did well to be honest. If you’d kept quiet, I’d have easily had your hide. Now you’ll do some time inside and that’ll be the end of it. It’s nothing to a man of your health.”

  I looked at Philippe; he lowered his eyes. Two policemen led him away.

  “I suppose,” said Jean, turning to me, “and flatter myself with the hope that you’ll share my supposition… I suppose that Pierrot is sleeping the sleep of the righteous at present. My, how many of today’s phrases are so relative! Our mutual friends called to say that you want to come with us. Do I understand correctly?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I have a taxi waiting.”

  “We’ll leave in five minutes.”

  It was around seven o’clock in the morning when the police car stopped a few metres from the small villa that Pierrot lived in. The shutters were closed. The morning sun, already warm, lit up the narrow street. It was so quiet at this early hour.

  I stopped the taxi behind the police car and got out, slamming the door behind me. A heavy, languid weariness gripped me. I imagined Pierrot alone (because, of course, he couldn’t count on the help of his lover) in this dark, closed-up house that he was trapped in. Of course, it might have been possible to jump out of the low side window into the little garden adjoining the house, but there were policemen stationed along the railings. There was no hope of escape under these circumstances.

  There were six policemen in total. Each of their faces was inscribed with the same mixed expression of gloom and loathing. I’m sure that my face bore exactly the same expression.

  One of the policemen knocked at the door and shouted for Pierrot to open up.

  “Step aside,” said Jean. “He might shoot.”

  But there was no shot. I began to hope that maybe they had managed to warn Pierrot. Following the inspector’s words, a tense silence descended; from the outside, they could feel the presence of a man with a revolver, lurking inside the dark house. Each of the policemen was familiar with his reputation as a marksman.

  “Pierrot,” said Jean, “I advise you to give yourself up. You’ll save us a difficult job. You know you can’t escape.”

  There was no reply. Another minute of agonizing silence passed.

  “I repeat, Pierrot,” said Jean, “give yourself up.”

  Then a voice cut through the silence; the initial sound of it sent a shiver down my spine. It was undoubtedly Pierrot’s incomprehensibly calm, humane voice, which I knew so well and which now seemed so particularly terrible, because in a few minutes, lest there be some miracle, it would fall silent for ever. The fact that the energy of a young and healthy man could be heard in this voice was unbearably painful.

  “What difference does it make?” he said. “If I give myself up, I’ll be for the guillotine. I don’t want to die that way, je voudrais mourir autrement.”

  What came next happened with incredible speed. I heard the snap of branches in the garden, then a shot was fired, and one of the policemen standing by the railings slumped to the ground. I saw Pierrot scramble up the railings—he was hindered by the revolver he was carrying in his hand—then he jumped down into the street, and that very second shots began to ring out from all sides. Apart from the policeman who had been killed, no one else was wounded, which seemed utterly astonishing. They all threw themselves at the spot where Pierrot had fallen. Later I realized why not a single one of them had been injured: the very first bullet had hit Pierrot in the hand he was using to hold the revolver, smashing his fingers. He was lying literally in a pool of blood: I never knew that there was so much blood in the human body. I went up to Pierrot. There was a gurgling noise coming from either his throat or his lungs. Then the gurgling stopped. Pierrot’s eyes met mine, and he wheezed:

  “Thank you. It was too late.”

  I cannot comprehend how he found the strength to utter those words. I stood motionless and heard my teeth chattering from a feeling of helpless agitation, anger and an intolerable inner chill.

  “You warned him?” Jean asked me.

  I remained silent for a few seconds. Pierrot made one last spasm and died. Then I said:

  “I think he was delirious.”

  Pierrot’s body was taken away. The policemen left. Two men in workmen’s clothing came with a wheelbarrow full of sand and scattered it over the pool of blood in the road. The sun already stood high in the sky. I paid the taxi driver and departed on foot, heading back towards Paris.

  The feeling of nausea and dull sorrow was unrelenting; periodically I’d experience chills, even though it was quite a warm day. An article about Pierrot was to appear in the newspaper the following morning. “Tragic End to Curly Pierrot”. I imagined the editor and his perpetually excited face, and again I could hear his hoarse, desperate voice: “Half the success is in getting the headline right; it hooks the reader in. Then it’s your job to keep him with you until the very end. Nothing too literary. Got it?” In the beginning, when I hardly knew him and depended on him, I would just shrug my shoulders in vexation. Later on I realized that he was right in his own way, and that attempts at great literature were quite out of place in newspaper articles.

  As was my habit, I went into the first comparatively pleasant-looking café I came across, asked for a coffee and some paper, and, chain-smoking, set to work on the article about Pierrot. Naturally, I was unable to write it as I would have liked to write it, or say in it what I would have liked to say. Instead, however, I gave a detailed account of a sunny morning in a peaceful suburb of Paris, of the villas on the quiet streets, and of this unexpected drama that was to be the culmination of Pierrot’s tempestuous life. I couldn’t resist dedicating a few lines to the Panther, the very thought of whom provoked nothing but loathing in me. I wrote about Philippe, about the bar on boulevard Saint-Denis, and about Pierrot’s life story, which he had told me, interjecting every minute: “Just imagine!”

  Later, I found a telephone box and called Inspector Jean:

  “Any news?”

  “Nothing special. Although the Panther assures me that early this morning someone made a telephone call to her, insisting that she warn Pierrot.”

  “Well, why didn’t she do it?”

  “She claims that Pierrot got back only a minute before we showed up.”

  “That seems unlikely to me; it’s too much of a coincidence. I don’t even know whether it’s worth mentioning in the article. Anyway, I’m giving your role in this a special mention. No, no, I couldn’t let it go unnoticed.”

  I hung up, paused for a few moments and, overcoming my initial reluctance, added four l
ines about a “mysterious telephone call”.

  By the time I had finished the article and sent it off to the editorial office, it was already nearing midday. I felt so ghastly; the state of depression I had been in during my bout of insomnia the previous night had intensified so much that I hardly noticed what was going on around me any more. Thinking only of that distressing feeling, I automatically entered an unassuming little restaurant not far from boulevard Montmartre. Scarcely had I let the first piece of meat pass my lips than suddenly I saw Pierrot’s corpse right before me, and just then the pungent stench of sweat coming from Philippe at the end of his interrogation hit my nose. It took a great effort to stay the urge to vomit. I gulped down some water and made a swift exit, telling the proprietress that I felt ill and had stomach cramps.

  It was a hot day, and the streets were full of people. I walked unsteadily, like a drunkard, vainly trying to shake off this unbearable sense of weariness and an impenetrable fog that was enshrouding my senses. As I walked, I was unconsciously absorbing all this noise, unaware of its exact meaning. The nausea would occasionally rise up in my throat, and at those moments I felt that there could be nothing more tragic than these crowds of people in the midday sun on the boulevards of Paris. Only then did I realize how terribly tired I was and how I had felt this way for so long. I thought how pleasant it would be to lie down and fall asleep, and to wake up on the other side of these events and sensations that afforded me no rest.

  Suddenly, I remembered that I was expecting Yelena Nikolayevna at four o’clock. She was the only person I wanted to see, and so I decided to go to her directly rather than wait. But even as I ascended her staircase, this dull, aching weariness refused to leave me. When at last I reached her apartment, I took out my keys and anxiously turned them in the lock. I was unable to account for this peculiar anxiety, but I understood it soon after having flung open the door: I could hear raised voices coming from Yelena Nikolayevna’s room. Before I could think about what might have been the cause of this, I was seized by an inert horror. I had no time to think. Yelena Nikolayevna’s desperate cry reached me; her terrible, unrecognizable voice was shouting: