The Spectre of Alexander Wolf

by Gaito Gazdanov

  The sun was beginning to rise; we were walking home. We sauntered through the dim mix of lamplight and dawn, down the steep streets descending from Montmartre. After such a noisy and tiring evening, I found it difficult to follow what Wolf was saying. I do, however, remember some snatches of conversation. He was interesting to talk to, he knew a great deal and saw everything in a very distinct light, and so gradually I came to understand how this man could have written such a book. That night, I gained the impression that he was fundamentally indifferent to all earthly matters: he spoke as though nothing could possibly have any direct bearing on him. His philosophy was distinguished for its dearth of illusion: individual destiny was unimportant, for we each always carry our own death—that is to say, the generally instantaneous termination of life’s habitual rhythm. Every day, dozens of worlds are born and dozens of others die, and yet we pass through these invisible cosmic catastrophes, mistakenly supposing the modest little area that falls within our field of vision to be some sort of replica of the whole world in miniature. Still, he believed in some elusive system of general laws, far removed, however, from an idyllic state of harmony: what seems like blind chance to us is most often inevitability. He theorized that logic couldn’t exist outside conditional, arbitrary, almost mathematical constructs, and that death and happiness were fundamentally of the same order, as both one and the other involve the same notion of fixity.

  “And what of the thousands of happy lives out there?”

  “Yes, people living like blind puppies.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “If we’re possessed of that tragic, ferocious courage that forces man to live with his eyes open, can we really ever be happy? It’s impossible even to imagine that the world’s most extraordinary people were happy. Shakespeare couldn’t have been happy. Nor could Michelangelo.”

  “What about St Francis of Assisi?”

  We were crossing a bridge over the Seine. An early-morning mist hung above the river; through it, one could just about glimpse the semi-spectral city.

  “He loved the world as people love little children,” said Wolf. “But I’m not sure that he was happy. Remember that Christ was everlastingly sad; Christianity is altogether inconceivable without this sadness.”

  Then he added in a different tone of voice:

  “It’s always seemed to me that life is somehow like a train journey: the slowness of individual existence, imprisoned within an impetuous outer motion; that apparent safety, that semblance of duration. And then, in a split second, a collapsed bridge or a loose rail, and that same termination of rhythm—death.”

  “Is that how you imagine it?”

  “Do you see it any differently?”

  “I don’t know. But if it weren’t for this violent termination of rhythm, as you call it, then perhaps it could be different: a slow departure, a gradual cooling and an almost imperceptible, painless slide into a world where the word ‘rhythm’ is probably meaningless.”

  “To each man, of course, his own death; however, his conception of it can be mistaken. I, for example, am sure that I’ll die just like that—suddenly and violently, in much the same way as when we first met. I’m convinced of it, despite its improbability amid the peaceful, happy circumstances of my present life.”

  We parted at length, and then I went home. As there had still been no discussion of the main issue—that being “The Adventure in the Steppe”—we agreed to meet in the restaurant at three o’clock the following afternoon.

  During the meeting Wolf seemed a little livelier than before; there was a spring in his step, and this time I didn’t notice the usual, distant expression in his eyes. Only his voice remained as flat and inexpressive as always.

  I told him of my fruitless attempts to find out the information that had interested me, making special reference to the visit I paid the director of the publishing house in London. I felt bound to tell Wolf how I had been astonished by this man’s parting words to me.

  “I must admit,” replied Wolf, “that he does have some grounds to speak in that vein. He held me responsible for a certain, very tragic, episode. Unfortunately, I cannot go into any detail on the matter; I have no right to do so. His opinion of me was, on the whole, mistaken, but I quite understand it.”

  “There’s still one aspect of this that I cannot fathom,” I said. “It’s something that’s difficult to account for purely in psychological terms, if you will. I never doubted that Vladimir Petrovich’s version of Sasha Wolf corresponded with reality, but how could that same Sasha Wolf, partisan and adventurer, write the book I’ll Come Tomorrow?”

  He smiled grimly, using only his lips.

  “Sasha Wolf, of course, couldn’t have written I’ll Come Tomorrow; I don’t believe he could have written anything at all. However, he ceased to exist a long time ago: it was a different man who wrote this book. I think you have to believe in fate. Thus you’ll also believe, with that same classic naivety, that you’ve been its pawn. Then everything falls into place: chance, the shot, your sixteen years of age, your youthful aim, and this same”—he touched me below the shoulder—“unshaking hand.”

  I unwittingly thought how wild his words sounded. We were sitting in the Russian restaurant; I could hear the clatter of crockery and the chef’s angry voice coming from the kitchen:

  “I told her—schnitzel first, push the schnitzel.”

  “You said you remembered everything as if it were yesterday. I, too, remember everything. I thought you were frozen with fear after you got up from the fall and just stood there. Weren’t you afraid?”

  “Apparently not. At first I was stunned, but I don’t have a clear memory of what happened next; I was so desperate for sleep, and all my strength was being sapped in the struggle with that desire. At any rate, I’m not afraid of death, or, rather, life has never seemed all that precious to me.”

  “And yet it’s the sole thing whose value we can truly comprehend.”

  I looked at him in astonishment. Such a phrase sounded particularly unexpected coming from his lips.

  “I realized this as I lay dying on the road. In those few moments it seemed clear to me—clear to the point of blinding me. But later I could never recapture this feeling, and because I could never recapture it, I turned into the author of that book. I waited my whole life for something unexpected to happen, something entirely unforeseen, some incredible shock, when I’d see anew what I’d once loved so much: the warm, sensual world that I lost. I don’t know why it slipped away from me. But it happened at that very moment. I cannot tell you how terrible it was, the disappearance of the world I was living in: the road, the sun, and your sleepy eyes looking down on me. I thought you’d have died long ago. I pitied you; you were my companion, and yet you fell into some abyss of time and distance, and I was the only person to have seen your departure. Had I been able to speak, I’d have shouted to you to stop, that it was waiting for you, as it had been waiting for me, and that it wouldn’t miss a second time. And so, you see, I’d have been wrong. If you only knew how many times I thought about you! I wanted to turn back time. I wished I hadn’t your death on my conscience, that I hadn’t made a murderer of you.”

  “I, too, often thought about this,” I said. “I’d have given so much not to have been haunted all these years by your spectre.”

  “How hypothetical all this is!” said Wolf. “You were convinced that you’d killed me, I was sure that you’d died as a result of my actions, and yet neither of us was right. But what difference does it make, I ask, right or wrong, when you spent so many years in vain regret, and I waiting for a second miracle? Who will give us back the time, and who will change your fate or mine? And do you think, after all this, that it’s still possible to harbour any naive illusions?”

  “It is possible to understand that all illusions are vain and that in the end there’s no consolation. Firstly, however, that doesn’t help matters, and, secondly, if we were incapable of even the smallest, most insignificant illusio
n, then all we’d be left with is what you call the termination of a rhythm. So, as we’re still alive, perhaps not all is lost.”

  Wolf remained silent awhile; he sat with his head lowered, propped up by both his hands, like a schoolboy trying to solve a difficult problem. When he raised his eyes to me, I once again glimpsed that same terrible expression I first saw after revealing that it was I who had shot him. Oddly, however, his manner towards me didn’t tally with this.

  “My dear friend,” he said, “do you know why I came to Paris?”

  What further admission could this man possibly make?

  “The solution to a complex psychological problem rests on my stay here. It has a twofold interest: a personal one, which is of the utmost importance, and an abstract one, which isn’t entirely devoid of meaning either.”

  “Forgive me for asking, but to what extent does the solution depend on you personally?”

  “In its entirety.”

  “Then it isn’t a problem.”

  “Un cas de conscience, if you will. But there’s no greater temptation than that of forcing events to take the course you wish, stopping at nothing to achieve this.”

  “And if that should prove impossible?…”

  “Then all that remains is to destroy the cause of these events. It’s one solution, certainly, albeit the least desirable.”

  I left the restaurant immediately after Wolf. I saw him hail a taxi and get into the vehicle. Then, with a sobbing sound, I heard the door gently slam shut. It was a warm day in May, and the sun was shining brilliantly; it was around five o’clock in the afternoon.

  I returned home and sat down at my writing desk, but I was unable to work. I closed my eyes, and before me appeared the distorted face of the publisher in London. “Of course, one must take into consideration the exceptional circumstances and your age at the time. But if your shot had been more accurate…”—“Beneath me lay my corpse, with the arrow in my temple…” Once again I saw the forest and the road—it was right there, in my room, reaching me across the vastness that separated me from far-off southern Russia. I felt truly sorry for Wolf. “The world that I lost I know not why.” And then this comforting philosophy: every day we pass through cosmic catastrophes, but the misfortune lies in that the cosmic catastrophes leave us indifferent, whereas the slightest change in our own insignificant life can provoke our pain or regret, and yet there’s nothing to be done about this. “Who will give us back the time?” No one, of course. However, if it were possible to work this miracle, we would surely find ourselves in someone else’s strange, distant life, and who knows whether it would be better than our own. And what does “better” mean, anyway? The life to which we’re destined can be no otherwise; no power is able to alter it, even happiness, which is of the same order as death, as it contains that element of fixity. Without fixity there can be nohappiness—the very thing that some Oriental ruler was unable to find “in the books of wisdom, on the back of a horse, or even at the breast of a woman.” Lenochka might say: “Later, when you and I are no longer together and I have another lover…” Perhaps she won’t tell him anything about me, perhaps she’ll remark laconically: “I was having an affair with a certain man at the time,” and this single phrase will encompass all those nights when she belonged to me, her flushed face, her breasts squeezed in my embrace, her grimace at the final moment, and everything that came before it. All this will be followed by someone else’s embraces and again that voice of hers with those same, almost impersonal intonations, the voice she used when speaking to me and, before this, to others; it had probably always sounded just as sincere. What a wealth of sensual possibility, and what poverty of expression! Yes, of course, even the most wonderful girl cannot give more than she has. Most of the time, though, she has enough spirit to allow us to construct and imagine her; it was on account of this that Dulcinea was beyond comparison. It’s another delusion to think that reality is more just than imagination. Perhaps, though, Lenochka doesn’t merit my censure: what’s to prevent me from thinking that she’ll for ever belong solely to me, that she’s loved no one other than me, and that if she believes she did or will, it’s a monstrous and patent error, even if she doesn’t understand it herself? And if parting and betrayal were inevitable, there was still a period of time in which the whole fabric of her being would belong to me, and that was the main thing. Thereafter, there would be only fragments: these would fall to the lot of others, and these others would never know what she had given to me—all the spiritual and physical riches that I accepted from her as a gift. What more could remain of her after this? Suddenly, I felt her presence so close to me that I developed the absurd desire to turn my head to see whether or nor she was really there; so distinctly could I sense her perfume, the movement of her body under a dress; I thought I could see her eyes and hear those abrupt falling intonations in her voice, which my indebted memory had preserved for ever. I loved her more than anyone else and naturally more than myself, and so, for once in my life, on account of this desire for her, I was drawing nearer to the Gospel ideal—that is, if the Gospel had ever spoken of such love. “Remember that Christ was everlastingly sad.” And there again was the spectre of Alexander Wolf. There was something about the author of I’ll Come Tomorrow that I didn’t want to dwell on; however, I had to see this through to the end. I felt a constant sense of guilt for what I’d done to him. Yes, undoubtedly so. Twice I’d marked that terrible expression in his eyes: for the first time when he learnt that it was I who shot him, and later when he said to me, “My dear friend…” Of course, back then in Russia it was he who’d ultimately come galloping after me on his white stallion: in fact I ought to have been the victim, not he. But then, it wasn’t without reason that he kept returning the conversation to this instantaneous and violent termination of rhythm—most instantaneous and violent.

  Yes, of course. He bore the standard of that ineradicable and indomitable idea. An English writer, the author of that book, the spectre of Alexander Wolf, the rider atop the white horse of the Apocalypse, the man lying there on the road after I shot him—this man was a murderer. Perhaps he had no desire to be one; he seemed much too clever and cultured for that. However, it seemed impossible for him not to be familiar with the impersonal lure of murder, which I too knew so vaguely and theoretically: the lure that set the history of the world in motion that day when Cain killed his brother. That was why my imagination had returned so persistently to him all these years. His memory had always been linked so closely to the idea of murder. The idea itself was all the more tragic precisely because it was inescapable, being vested in the form of a double inevitability: carry death with you or move towards it, kill or be killed. There was no other means of stopping this blind action that Alexander Wolf personified. It was one of the thorniest concepts, simultaneously containing both the question and the answer: people have forever answered killing with killing, be it in a war or at trial, a conflict of emotions or one of interests, retribution or justice, attack or defence.

  Where exactly did the allure of this type of crime lie, irrespective of how it could be interpreted or which external factors or motives brought it about? Those few seconds it takes to terminate a person’s life comprise the idea of an incredible, almost superhuman, power. If under a microscope every drop of water is a whole world, then every human life must contain an enormous universe within the bounds of its transient, arbitrary casing. Even if one rejects these exaggerated—as if under a microscope—impressions, yet other evidence still remains. Every human life is connected to other human lives, those in turn are connected with others, and when we reach the logical end of this sequence of interrelations, we approach the sum total of people inhabiting the vast surface of the terrestrial globe. The constant threat of death in all its endless diversity hangs over every man, every life: catastrophe, train crash, earthquake, tempest, war, illness, accident, all manifestations of a blind and merciless power, a peculiarity of which consists in our inability ever to predict the mome
nt when it—this instantaneous break in the history of the world—will happen. “For ye know neither the day nor the hour…” And so, to him among us who has sufficient strength of mind to overcome a terrible resistance to this is given the opportunity to become, for some short space of time, more powerful than fate and chance, earthquake and tempest, and to know the exact moment when he’ll put a stop to that long and complex evolution of thoughts, sensations and lives, the movement of life in all its variety of forms, which otherwise would have crushed him in its relentless march forward. Love, hatred, fear, regret, remorse, will, passion—any feeling and any aggregate of feelings, any law and any aggregate of laws—all is helpless before the momentary power of murder. This power belongs to me, and I, too, can become its victim. Having experienced its lure, all that remains beyond its limits seems spectral, immaterial and unimportant to me; even now, I cannot share any interest in the multitude of trivialities that constitutes the purpose of life for so many millions of people. From the moment I experience it, the world will become alien to me and I shan’t be able live as they do—the others who lack this power, this understanding, this awareness of the strange fragility of everything, and even this constant, icy proximity to death.