Fyodor

I met Fyodor at my local bar. I was killing time waiting for a friend to finish work. I got up to go to the bathroom, and when I returned there was a large brindled wolf sitting in my seat. He was wearing a threadbare grey suit. It had gone out at the elbows. Excuse me, I said, that’s my seat. That’s my bag. He looked up at me with the saddest eyes I have ever seen. A thousand pardons, he replied, in a heavy accent. I wished merely to rest a while. I am very weary. That’s okay, I said, you can share my table. A wolf fallen on hard times is still a wolf, after all, and there was a definite suggestion of pointy canines around his jaw. I sat opposite him and lit a cigarette. He stared mournfully at it until I offered him my pack. Many thanks, he said, and lit one for himself.

We smoked in companionable silence for a few minutes. Suddenly he fixed me with a large liquid eye and said I am Fyodor. Buy me a vodka and I will tell you a tale to make your heart break and your face peel. What could I do? When I returned with drinks he was meditatively crunching a sparrow. Apologies, he said, I have not eaten in many days. I’ll get some fries, I said. I felt like I should introduce myself too, so I said my name is Beatrice. Are you named after Dostoyevsky? Ah, so you know the literature of my country, he replied. Well, a little bit, I said, I am a literature student. Good, he said, this is very good. You know about the old country. He sipped his vodka with relish. I was about explain that I didn’t really know much about Russia at all, but his eyes had a far away misty look to them and he was already lost in his tale.

It turned out that poor old Fyodor was in fact from a very old, very powerful Russian family. They have advised the Tsars and funded the Revolution, he said. Any great moment in Russian history, my family was there. They were opportunists, political chameleons. Wherever the power was, there was my family also. He drained his vodka. His mother, it seems, had been somewhat unwilling to marry the man her family had arranged for her, and a week before the wedding had disappeared. She was found, he said, on her wedding morning, running naked through the forest. She would not speak but snarled at all who came near her. Eventually she was calmed down and the wedding went off without a hitch. Until nine months later, said Fyodor, glaring into his glass, when I was born. Of course an illegitimate son might not have been such a problem except that with Fyodor it was impossible to hide his mother’s adultery, what with him being a wolf. His mother’s husband flew into a rage when he saw the cub and attacked her so savagely that her back was broken. What happened to you, I asked.

I was thrown out into the snow to die, he said. But it is not so easy to break a Russian’s spirit! I wondered if the pelt and the general tendency of wolves to live in snowy terrain might also have helped, but I didn’t say that out loud.

Fyodor did not die as intended. He lived a rootless, wandering existence. As a cub he survived by begging and stealing. I wanted to ask why he didn’t go wolf, why he tried to live as a human. I bought us more drinks instead. Fyodor continued his story. He travelled he, said, wherever inclination and necessity took him. He made his living now by playing poker for money. I am a good card player, he said, with the ghost of a malicious smile. Nobody can tell when I am bluffing. He didn’t look that successful to me. As if he read my thoughts he sighed and continued, but always I remember what my family did to me. What that man did to my mother. And so always I drink.

With that he looked pointedly at our empty glasses. I didn’t like the look in his eye. It was a bit of a quandary, to be honest. He was only going to get angrier and more wolfish the more he drank, but refusing to buy another was just as clearly not an option. I settled for a couple of beers. What is this he said, looking suspiciously at the bottle. It’s beer, I said. It’s what we mostly drink in New Zealand. You should try our national beverage. We clinked bottles and he took a long swallow. This is fizzy stale water he said, after a pause. Well, yes, I suppose it is I replied. But it does the job. He squinted down the bottleneck. If you say this is national drink, then I will drink. I do not think much of it, however.

After that it was much easier. Fyodor was garrulous and loud, but he lost the dangerous glitter in his eyes. We had a long discussion about Isaac Babel. I told him about my life, about my thesis and my friends and my flat. It got rather late, and I was quite drunk. I asked him where he was going to sleep. He said he didn’t know. It seemed quite natural to me to offer him our place for a few nights. When we got back to my flat a friend of Callum’s was already comatose on the couch. OK, you can share my bed, I said. But no funny business. What is funny business he said. Never mind, I said. I got under the covers fully clothed and he stretched himself out beside me on top of the duvet. I must have fallen asleep almost immediately. In the morning we had coffee and bagels and smoked cigarettes on the balcony.

It’s not always easy being friends with Fyodor. The alcoholism can be a bit of a problem, and he’s always getting into fights in town. The phone will ring at 1am on a Monday morning and a bartender will say do you know a wolf called Fyodor? Well come and take him home please, he’s punched a punter and fallen through the window. He tries hard to control it, but sometimes the wolf really takes over. I’ll see him stare at me with a hungry look in his eyes, and I have to remind him not to spoil our friendship. And every now and then he’ll disappear for a few days. I’ll come home from school and find him curled up on my bed, without his suit and with a bloodstained jaw. He’s never told me and I’ve never asked. Relationships aren’t necessarily easy, either. He’s very protective, and most boys aren’t really comfortable dating a girl who has six and a half feet of grey wolf hanging round her. But I can’t imagine my life without Fyodor now. We spend a lot of time together, drinking and smoking in bars, commenting on the passers-by and laughing at private jokes. He’s made some very helpful suggestions about my thesis. On the nights when I hear him howl at the moon I know he’s homesick for Russia.