The Spectre of Alexander Wolf

by Gaito Gazdanov

  “You follow the American papers?”

  “It’s a professional requirement of mine.”

  She was silent. For some reason, I felt ill at ease in her presence, and I began to regret inviting her to the café. Whenever the taxi drove under a shaft of light from a street lamp, I saw her cold, placid face, and after a few minutes I began to think about my true reasons behind going for coffee with this unknown woman who wore such an absent expression, as though she were sitting in a hairdresser’s or in a carriage on the Métro.

  “For a journalist you’re not very talkative,” she said after some time.

  “I gave you a detailed account of why I thought Johnson would win the match.”

  “And therein concludes your ability to make conversation?”

  “I’ve no idea which topics interest you. I’d assumed it was boxing, mainly.”

  “Not always,” she said, and at that moment the car came to a halt. A minute later we were sitting at a table, drinking coffee. Only then could I duly examine my companion, or, rather, I noticed one of her peculiarities: she had a surprisingly large mouth, with full, insatiable lips, and this gave her face a disharmonious appearance, as if there were something artificial about it, since the combination of her forehead and the lower portion formed a rather painful impression of some anatomical mistake. But when she smiled for the first time, baring her even rows of teeth and slightly opening her mouth, an expression of warm, sensual charm, which only a second ago would have seemed entirely impossible, suddenly flashed across her face. Later, I often recalled how it was precisely at that moment when I stopped feeling uncomfortable in her presence—something that had bound me thus far. I felt at ease. I questioned her about a variety of personal matters. She said that her surname was Armstrong, that her husband had recently died, and that she lived alone in Paris.

  “Your husband was?…”

  She replied that he had been an American, an engineer, and that she hadn’t seen him in two years: she had been in Europe, whereas he had stayed on in America. While in London she received a telegram informing her of his sudden death.

  “You don’t speak with an American accent,” I remarked. “You have a neutrally foreign accent, if I might put it that way.”

  Once again she smiled that smile that always exuded an air of surprise and replied that she was Russian. I almost fell off my chair. To this day, I cannot fathom why it had seemed so astonishing to me.

  “So you hadn’t the slightest inclination that you were dealing with a compatriot?” She now spoke with a very pure Russian accent.

  “You must admit that it would have been a radical assumption to make.”

  “And yet I knew that you were Russian.”

  “I bow to your perspicacity. And just how did you know, if it’s no secret?”

  “By your eyes,” she said mockingly. Then she shrugged her shoulders and added, “Because there was a Russian newspaper sticking out of your coat pocket.”

  It was already past one o’clock. I offered to see her home. She replied that she would go alone, that she did not want to trouble me.

  “No doubt your professional obligations are calling you.”

  “Yes, I ought to hand in my report on the match.”

  I was determined not to ask her where she lived or to seek out any more meetings with her. We left together; I walked her to a taxi and said:

  “Good night. Goodbye.”

  A few drops of rain fell onto her hand as she offered it out to me. Smiling for one last time, she replied:

  “Good night.”

  I am unsure whether it happened like this in reality, or whether it just seemed so to me. I detected in her voice a fleeting new intonation, a sort of audible smile, which had the same effect as that first, distantly sensual, movement of her lips and teeth, after which I stopped feeling uneasy in her presence. Without a moment’s thought for the words coming out of my mouth, and, as if it had never happened, completely forgetting the decision I’d only just taken not to ask her anything, I said:

  “I’d be sorry to say goodbye without knowing your name or your address. After all, if you really are interested in sport, perhaps I might be of further use to you.”

  “Possibly,” she said. “My name is Yelena Nikolayevna. I’ll give you my address and telephone number. Aren’t you going to write it down?”

  “No, I’ll remember it.”

  “You trust your memory that much?”

  “Absolutely.”

  She said she was at home until one o’clock in the afternoons, and in the evenings from seven until nine, then she slammed the door shut and the taxi drove off.

  I walked towards the printing offices; it was a rather misty night, and the rain refused to abate for a single moment. I strolled along with the collar of my coat upturned, thinking of a great many things at once.

  “Johnson’s significance, which had until now seemed questionable, emerged last night so indisputably that now the matter has been settled once and for all. This was only to be expected, however, and to a few journalists, having at their disposal certain information regarding the career of the new world champion, the outcome of the match was obvious well in advance.”

  The way she worded “Your professional obligations are calling you” didn’t sound quite Russian. On the other hand, it was the only mistake she made.

  “Dubois’s valour can only be admired. Despite having played no part in his previous encounters with boxers of ultimately average ability, here, in a match against such a technically flawless opponent as Johnson, Dubois’s weaknesses were his undoing.”

  There’s something unnaturally magnetic about her, and perhaps that disharmony in her face might correspond to some sort of psychological anomaly.

  “What was so vehemently repeated about Johnson—that he lacked the requisite strength for a knockout blow—was, one may suppose, nothing more than a tactic that has been employed by his manager time and again with great success. It was a publicity stunt au rebours, typical of the American sporting press.”

  What will happen next? I wonder. Rue Octave Feuillet—it isn’t far from avenue Henri Martin, unless I’m very much mistaken.

  “All Dubois’s prior wins can be explained by the fact that none of his opponents has understood the simple necessity to avoid corps à corps, or else they have lacked the sufficient technique to execute such a simple plan. Deprived of the ability to initiate corps à corps, Dubois immediately lost his main advantage. Johnson grasped this with characteristic presence of mind, and from that moment on Dubois was doomed.”

  Perhaps some new spiritual journey or departure into the unknown awaits me, as has happened before in my life.

  “Let us be utterly frank: despite Dubois’s undoubted merits, his claims to the title of world champion were, of course, the result of a misapprehension. He is the honest workhorse of boxing, one of the best that we know; however, he has never had that exceptional and so very rare combination of the various qualities without which a man has no right to one of the foremost places in boxing history. Spanning many years and from among hundreds of boxers, only a few names remain in the memories of the sport’s historians, the most recent of these being Carpentier, Dempsey and Tunney. If we are to place Johnson among their ranks, albeit with a degree of uncertainty, then Dubois by comparison could only play the most pitiful of roles. This, however, should in no way detract from his achievements.”

  Had it not been for that unexpected intonation in her voice, I’d very likely never see her again.

  I entered a small café near the printing offices and dashed off the article I had composed in my mind along the way. Then I handed it in to compositing, took a taxi home and lay down to sleep at half past three in the morning. Closing my eyes, I saw before me for the last time the boxers’ bare bodies and the illuminated ring, and the unexpected smile of my companion. Finally, I fell asleep to the sound of rain reaching me through the half-open window in my room.

  Over the course of th
e following week, I was awfully busy; I needed money to pay for a multitude of things to which I had scarcely given any thought of late, and it was for this reason that I found myself having to write for a good few hours each day. Since the work more often than not concerned matters with which I was poorly acquainted, I first had to familiarize myself with a certain volume of material.

  So it was with the woman whose body had been hacked to pieces: it was necessary to go over the newspaper reports preceding the point in the investigation from which I was picking it up; so it was with the financial scandal; so, too, it was with the disappearance of the eighteen-year-old youth. Yet all my work was in vain: the woman’s killer could not be found—this was clear from the outset of the investigation, as soon as it was revealed that her assailant had left no traces. Nor did the bankruptcy of the financial enterprise lead anywhere, and journalists had been instructed not to mention any names. These names belonged to well-known and respected individuals, and so the series of articles on the bank crash was a remarkably short-lived affair, and indeed, after a few days, all mention of it vanished. Everyone knew the sum that had been paid in order to silence the press, but it did not alter the fact that the matter was closed. Lastly, the story surrounding the youth was also no secret to any of us: it could be explained by his “peculiar morals”, as they were termed in official jargon. The young man had simply been whisked away, with his full consent, to the country villa of a renowned artist, also noted for his “peculiar morals”, only with a slightly different inclination, whereby his association with the young man constituted a perfect idyll. This artist painted portraits of presidents and ministers, and was closely acquainted with many persons of state, whom he serenely continued to visit. In the reportage of the receptions they held, one could always find the words: “Among those present we noted our renowned artist…” The young man basked in his special (and peculiar) happiness, twenty kilometres outside Paris, while the papers continued to print his photographs, interviews with his relatives, statements given by inspectors from the “social brigade”, and so on. Over the course of a single week I wrote fourteen articles about these three events, and this immediately revived my finances. Dubois’s manager demanded a rematch, accused the referee of bias and even wrote Johnson’s own statement, which explained that Dubois had followed his tactics to the letter, planning to win the fight in the final rounds, and that Johnson’s knockout was a patent stroke of luck. Furthermore, the manager persisted in condemning what he called the unacceptable tone adopted by the majority of the reporters on the match, and stressed that he felt ashamed to have read them in the Parisian press. On account of this, a few more articles were published with the official aim of establishing the truth; both the manager and the journalists knew well, however, that the matter had nothing at all to do with the truth, but rather the interests of Dubois’s manager, whose fee for subsequent matches would have to be cut following this defeat. It was entirely unavoidable, but he had to do everything to ensure that any reduction would not be too steep.

  Throughout all this I felt upbeat yet anxious, just as I would do in my early youth when setting out on a long journey from which I might not have returned. Thoughts of my companion on the night of the Johnson–Dubois match kept coming back to me, and I could tell with absolute certainty of intuition that my next meeting with her was only a matter of time. Inside me a spiritual and physical mechanism had already been set in motion, against which the external circumstances of my life were powerless. I thought about this in a state of constant anxiety, since I knew that I was risking my freedom more than I had done at any other time; to be sure of this it was enough merely to gaze into her eyes, to see her smile and to feel that distinctive, somehow hostile magnetism of hers, which I had sensed on the very first evening of my acquaintance with her. Naturally, I was unaware of what she had felt for me on that February night. Despite having seen her for what was effectively only an hour, in the café after the match, I did sense that her smile and that final intonation in her voice hadn’t been accidental, and that it could lead to many other things—perhaps wonderful, perhaps tragic, perhaps at once both tragic and wonderful. Of course, it was always possible that I was mistaken and that my feelings at the time had been just as chance and unreliable as the vague, blurred outlines of the buildings, streets and people seen through that damp, misty veil of rain.

  I recalled that she had not asked my name as we were saying goodbye to one another. She would be waiting for me to pay her a visit or to call her, with that placid, almost indifferent self-assurance that seemed completely characteristic of her.

  I telephoned her at ten o’clock in the morning, precisely eight days after the match.

  “Yes, hello?” said her voice.

  “Hello,” I said, introducing myself. “I was wondering how you’ve been.”

  “Oh, it’s you? I’m fine, thank you. I trust you’ve been well?”

  “Yes, it’s just that recently there have been so many things that have deprived me of the pleasure of hearing your voice.”

  “Matters of a personal nature?”

  “No, far from it. And they’re too boring to recount, especially over the telephone.”

  “You could perhaps tell me not over the telephone.”

  “For that, I’d require the pleasure of seeing you.”

  “I’m not in hiding; it can easily be arranged. Where are you dining this evening?”

  “I’ve no idea; I hadn’t given it any thought.”

  “Come to mine around seven, half past seven.”

  “I’d hate to impose on you.”

  “If you and I were a little better acquainted, I’d say to you… Do you know what I’d say to you?”

  “It isn’t difficult to guess.”

  “In any case, seeing as we aren’t sufficiently acquainted, I’ll refrain from expressing what I had in mind.”

  “Your benevolence is appreciated.”

  “So, I’ll expect you this evening?”

  “I’ll try to be punctual.”

  At half past seven, I entered the building where she lived; her apartment was located on the first floor. The door opened as soon as I rang. I nearly stepped back in amazement: standing before me was an enormous mulatto, staring silently at me with her eyes wide open. At first I wondered whether I might have been on the wrong floor. However, when I asked if it was possible to see Madame Armstrong, she replied:

  “Yes. Oui, monsieur.”

  She turned and headed towards a second door, evidently leading farther into the apartment; she walked in front of me, spanning the entire breadth of the corridor with her enormous body. She conducted me to the sitting room: on the walls hung a few still lifes of apparently dubious merit; on the floor lay a navy-blue rug, and the furniture was of similarly coloured velvet. For a few seconds I stood examining an elliptical dish, painted yellow, on which lay two sliced and three unsliced oranges—then Yelena Nikolayevna came in. She wore a dress of brown velvet, which suited her very well, as did her hairstyle, which highlighted the tranquil charm of her almost unpainted face. This time, however, her eyes seemed a great deal livelier than they had when I first met her.

  I greeted her and said that the mulatto who had opened the door to me had given me quite a shock. Yelena Nikolayevna smiled.

  “She’s called Annie,” she said. “I call her Little Annie. Do you remember? There was a film a while back.”

  “Yes, ‘Little Annie’ is very befitting. Wherever did you find her?”

  She explained that Annie began working for her in New York, and now she travelled everywhere with her. She also explained that since Annie had lived in Canada for some time she spoke French; moreover, she cooked exceedingly well, and I would presently have the opportunity to see for myself. Annie truly was an exceptional cook—I hadn’t eaten so well in a long time.

  Yelena Nikolayevna enquired about my work over the previous week. I told her about the woman who had been hacked to pieces, about the bankruptcy, about th
e youth’s disappearance and, finally, about the statement made by Dubois’s manager in the papers.

  “So this is what constitutes working for a newspaper?”

  “More or less.”

  “And it’s always like this?”

  “More often than not.”

  “And you think you’re suited to it?”

  I drank some coffee, smoked and thought about how far removed this conversation was from my feelings and desires. I was silently intoxicated by her presence, and the longer it went on, the more keenly I felt any control over the situation slip away from me, and no amount of effort could overcome these circumstances. I knew that I was behaving properly, that my eyes were bright and that I remained good company—but I knew just as well that this artifice could not fool Yelena Nikolayevna, and she in turn understood that I knew this. The most natural thing to do would have been for me to say to her: “My dear, you aren’t mistaken in thinking that this conversation bears no relation at all to what I’m feeling now, or to what you, too, are probably feeling. And you know the words I should be saying right now just as well as I do.” Instead of this, however, I said:

  “No, of course I’d rather devote myself to literature, but unfortunately it hasn’t turned out that way.”

  “You’d prefer to write lyric tales?”

  “Why do you say lyric tales, specifically?”

  “It seems as though it ought to be your genre.”

  “You’re telling me this after having met me at the match and after, I hope, you at least rated my prediction regarding its outcome?”

  She smiled again.

  “Perhaps I’m mistaken. But for some reason it feels as though I’ve known you for so long, despite this being the second time in my life that I’ve seen you.”

  This was her first admission and the first step she took.

  “They say that’s a very dark omen.”

  “I’m not afraid,” she said with her inexplicably avid smile. I gazed at her grinning mouth, her strong, even teeth, and the dark burgundy hue of her delicately painted lips. I closed my eyes and a stormy, sensual haze washed over me. Despite this, I made an extraordinary effort and managed to remain seated with an outwardly peaceful—or so I thought—expression, although every muscle in my body was so tense that I was in pain.