Konrad and Alexandra (PDF) - Rolf Gross

survived the Bolsheviks, the Fascists, and the Second World War.What a temptation to play the sleuth and to uncover the stories hiding behind this lapidary history. But the actors were alldead. To my father’s distress, I would, once again, have to intuit the details of what happened to Alexandra in Paris.Years later, among Alexeandra's letters to Otto, I found the postcard from Paris which father had mentioned. A short notefrom the eloped Alexandra. Had I not known of Modigliani’s painting, I would not have been able to decipher her crypticmessage.Liebster Mann, V. 15. 1911We arrived safely. H.’s suggestion was excellent, we reached P. without a hitch. The city is full of expatriates from everycountry of Europe. I was introduced to S. I. M., interesting man but deeply depressed, and I also ran into my patient andscientific subject A. who is having an affair with an Italian painter!I feel remorse for having overruled you so high-handedly in my restlessness, and also because my heathen soul refusesto recognize neither sin nor guilt.I love you truly and dearly. A.So she had met Sasha Manovsky in Paris, where, I learned, he had taken refuge from the Okhrana in 1907! At first, thisfact and that he had bought Alexandra’s painting, led me to some wild speculations.And with her patient A. she could only have meant Akhmatova. But how could Akhmatova have had an affair with anItalian painter in Paris in 1911, a year after she got married to Gumilev? Were the times even more corrupt than I hadassumed?I ordered a biography of Akhmatova from the library. My eyes grew large. Akhmatova had visited Paris with Gumilev inearly May 1911! Gumilev had been called back to Russia by some family matter. He had left Akhmatova behind.Independent, young, and lovesick as she was, she sought consolation in the arms of charming Amedeo Modigliani.Modigliani made several drawings of her in the nude. Resolute Akhmatova never made a secret of this affair, one of thedrawings remained in her possession until her death.Later I would find that the postcard showed a photo of the Isle Saint Louis. Strange, why not the Eiffel Tower? DidAlexandra stay on fashionable Isle Saint Louis? I searched a map of Paris, on Quai d’Orleans, which the postcardshowed, are no hotels, only private houses. And finally, why should she have carefully kept this postcard with theconfession of her remorse?Simple, this card was the only memoir of Paris she had!She had sold Modigliani’s painting to Manovsky.Ingeniously Alexandra had made a tiny pinhole through the photo which connected a house at 16, Quai d’Orleans withthe M. on the other side! That I found out only on a second, careful examination of the postcard. Manovsky rented thathouse in 1911!53.Alexandra in Paris1911Alexandra sat across the table from a sagging, old Manovsky at the opulent Tour d’Argent. She looked onto the Seineand the lighted windows of the houses on the Isle St. Louis flickering through the plane-trees. A steady stream ofdroshkis flowed across the Pont de la Tournelle, and the Bateaux Mouches came and went like fireflies at the Quai belowher window.She had met Sasha Manovsky two days earlier at a get-together of a group of painters to which Izabel had taken her.Cheap red wine, conversations on painting and women accompanied by eloquent gestures, nostalgic memories of losthomelands, heavy cigarette smoke filling the room. Except for an intellectual French writer all the men were expatriates:a short Spaniard with the build of a prizefighter and piercing black eyes, a handsome, boyish-looking Italian withdisheveled locks, an older, deeply depressed Polish sculptor, whom she avoided, two mistresses of these men, andManovsky.Manovsky, his jacket open, dressed in tie and starched shirt, a golden watch chain on his belly, looked like a sitting bullamong these bohémiens. His French was pitiful. When he discovered that she spoke Russian, he clung to her. Theyoung men treated him with condescension. He was the patron who bought their paintings and paid for their debts. Aloof,they talked over his head.She observed Manovsky now. She had agreed to this dinner invitation, because of an undefined titillating fascination with165