Nikolai bit his lip and held his tumbler so tightly that his fingers turned nearly purple. Ivan swirled his vodka absentmindedly with his finger, drawing his hand to his mouth every so often to chew on an alcoholic fingernail.
“At first,” said Misha, “I tried to explain that there was a mistake. At the very beginning, especially, when they were cutting off my buttons. I thought if I was very good and reasonable and intelligent and calm, everybody would see that a mistake had been made.” He issued a great cloud of smoke that nearly obscured his face, and when you couldn’t see him, it was almost possible to believe that he was some unnerving prophet come to tell the present about the future. “But this was not the case. Everything I said—everything—was treated as nonsense. Some of the nurses were kind and gave me pieces of candy, and some nurses were cruel and slapped me across the face with the hard side of their hands while I was tied down or when nobody was looking. Most were indifferent and gave me pills—these enormous brown pills that choked me on their way down and that made the room around me shimmer and disappear. But what they all had in common was that they treated me as though I were absolutely mad. And you know the funny thing, Ivan?” He leaned forward, and Aleksandr could again detect the yellow smell of fatigue, shallow breaths, and narcotics.
“No,” said Ivan, resigned to answering rhetorical questions. “What was the funny thing?”
“The funny thing, Ivan, is that I finally started to wonder if I actually was mad. You’d think I’d have a pretty good handle on my own sanity, but not so. Having everybody treat you as though you’re crazy is an interesting psychological experiment. Everyone should try it sometime. And wondering whether I was crazy made me crazy. I started to get obsessed with my own language, with forming words perfectly. I rehearsed what I’d say to the nurses in my head all day, writing it down, getting it right. I pored over sentence construction and grammar. I had it in my head, see, that this problem of mine—this failure to communicate—was just a sort of mechanical malfunction.”
Ivan shook his head and pressed his soaking fingers against his temples. Nikolai glared at the green light above Misha’s head. Aleksandr stared straight at Misha, trying to form his jumbled face into a shape he might someday remember.
“But when I tried to talk to the nurses at the end of the day,” said Misha, “they blinked at me. Or they petted me cruelly, like I was a stupid dog that the whole family loves to make a joke of. I started to chew my hands. After that, I stopped trying. I stayed very quiet and still and mostly spent my days looking out the window. I made up mental games to pass the time: in my head, I’d replace all the greens in the courtyard with reds, and all the browns with blues, until I created a new design to look at. I counted the words spoken to me in a day—let it be known, friends, that it wasn’t that many. When my bedmate addressed me as Stalin, I started to answer.”
Ivan brought his hand to Misha’s shoulder, to the place where the reef of his clavicle disappeared under his thin shirt.
“Eventually, once they’re quite sure all your mental resources are spent, they’ll come invite you to talk. Everything is up to you, they’ll say. Do you like coffee, tea, meat? Let’s go get some, shall we? We might be able to find civilian clothing in your size. That Ukrainian you room with? You know how much he hates Russians? You have a real shot at rehabilitation, Misha. The others, no—but you, you’re special. And then they’ll take you out, and maybe you’ll say some things, and maybe some of them will be about your Ukrainian roommate, and maybe they’ll be true or maybe they won’t be, but it won’t matter to you anymore. You care only about this promised tea. It becomes the highlight of your week. You wait for it like a schoolgirl waiting for her young man. You wait for it like a dog waiting for his bell.
“And so when I was released—abruptly on a Tuesday, with no warning, just handed the clothes I’d come in wearing and given a discharge form and no responses to my questions—I found myself clinging to the bars of my bed. It was just past lunchtime, you see, and I’d been looking forward to my pill. So you’ll have to forgive me if I’m somewhat skeptical about your efforts here. Your discretion. All due respect, Vanya, of course.”
Aleksandr looked to see what Nikolai and Ivan would do. Nikolai gulped the last of his vodka. Ivan pressed his hands into Misha’s shoulders as though offering some kind of atheistic benediction, then removed them.
“Well,” he said. “I suppose I can see your point.”
In the apartment the following week, surrounded by great stacks of waxy carbon paper, Aleksandr told Ivan what Elizabeta had said, and Ivan told Aleksandr to stop worrying. “Look,” he said. “If they want to get us, they’ll get us.”
Misha had gone to stay with his mother, who cried when she saw him and tried to buy him all the potatoes that were left at the market. Work on the next issue had been suspended for a few days. Nikolai and Ivan skulked around Ivan’s apartment looking shifty and depressed. Aleksandr spent most days that week sitting in a corner of Ivan’s apartment, pretending to play a game of chess against himself but really thinking secret thoughts about Elizabeta. After a week Ivan stood up, slapped himself lightly on the face, and said enough was enough. They had to keep working, he said, if only because none of them had anything better to do.
Ivan placed a sheet of carbon paper in the typewriter and started to recopy the issue. The copying required attention, but almost nothing could keep Ivan from talking when he wanted to. “They’ve probably got bigger problems than us. More expedient examples to make,” he said. The typewriter issued a shuddering whinny. “Goddammit.” He tore the paper from the typewriter, tossed it in a parabolic arc toward the trash, then looked at Aleksandr, who was sitting on a pile of books and stroking Natasha with his toe. “Honestly, I don’t know what I pay you for.”
“You don’t pay me.”
“Oh. That’s right. I knew there was a reason.” Ivan inserted a new piece of paper, and his typing became rhythmic and impressively fast, as though he were playing a sonata on the typewriter. “Where did you hear this, anyway?”
“Elizabeta. My friend. What? She lives in my building. What?”
“Who is this woman?”
“In my building. Like I said.”
“Something you want to tell me, Alyosha?”
“No.”
Ivan’s face was awash with glee, and Aleksandr knew that was a bad sign. “I trust you’ve been following the recent reports on sex in the Soviet Union.”
Aleksandr shook his head miserably.
“You haven’t? Oh, how have you missed it? It was in all the papers. The Party has found that premarital sex causes impotence, neuroticism, and frigidity. The Party has determined that the ideal length of the sex act is no longer than two minutes. I think it very wise that you consult these findings before getting to know your friend any better.”
“Stop it.”
“At least you’re not living in an Intourist hotel where all the prostitutes are KGB.”
“You need to stop it, please.”
“Okay. For now. So, you heard this from your friend Elizabeta. And how did she hear it?”
Aleksandr swallowed and pulled at his thumb. “From someone she knows.”
“An official?”
“I don’t know.” The cat issued a high-pitched protest, and Aleksandr realized he’d been stroking her too hard with his foot.
Ivan raised his eyebrows and let a small percentage of the amusement go out of his voice. “Okay,” he said. “And how did she figure out you were involved?”
“Because of the chess essay. Because of my schedule.”
“She must be paying very close attention to your schedule.”
Aleksandr swung off the book pile he was sitting on and stood up. “I guess so.”
“They know. Of course they know. But I don’t flatter myself that we’re worth the trouble yet.”
The typewriter clicked and whirred.
“Seen Misha lately?” Aleksandr said after a moment.
> “I brought him a tart yesterday. He’s still furious, still crazy. He keeps raving about these big plans to do something serious, something disruptive. They took away his internal passport, you know, and gave him a wolf ticket. He’ll never work. His poor mother just sits and tries to get him to stop talking. He still weighs about six kilos. I think he’s developed a morphine addiction. I don’t know how he manages to keep talking as much as he does.”
“Aren’t you worried about it?”
“I don’t worry, if you’ve noticed. Misha’s not going to do anything that gets him put back there.” Ivan stood up quickly and turned on the television. It was Vremya. It was always Vremya. A sour-faced anchor issued a battery of talking points. Ivan turned down the volume and handed Aleksandr a sheaf of papers. “Here. There are five. Do Vasilevsky Island, and when you come back, I’ll have five more. And Aleksandr? It probably makes sense for you to try to ask your friend Elizabeta exactly where she heard this. Just for security purposes.” Ivan winked.
“Shut up,” said Aleksandr, but hearing her name made him stupidly happy. He sped through Vasilevsky Island that day in an uncommonly good mood and got back to the apartment before Ivan had even finished copying the next sheaf.
And then, as suddenly as Elizabeta had started coming, she stopped. Aleksandr didn’t see her in the hallways. He didn’t see her in the kitchen. He lingered outside the bathroom, sure that she’d eventually turn up there, until the steward chased him away. He didn’t knock on her door, though he did walk by it several times. Her slippers were always there, which meant she was always out.
It was possible that he should knock. But he wasn’t sure. He waited and agonized about the waiting. He hemmed. He weighed the competing considerations. She had started the whole thing, so it was gentlemanly to let her come back on her own. Better not to push it. As the days stretched to weeks, however, and as the weeks compressed into a series of unending moments in which he was not with Elizabeta, his rationale changed. She’d come to see him the first time, after all. She was probably waiting for him to come to her. It was only diplomatic, and chivalrous, to return a visit with a visit—or, in this case, many visits with one. He’d be rude not to, and he so hated to be rude. And after further philosophical revision and fretting—and an attempted oblique consultation with Nikolai and Ivan that ended in their laughter and Aleksandr’s deep embarrassment—he swallowed down his terror and approached her room.
Outside apartment nine was a man leaning against the door. His hair and eyelashes were almost ice-white; his eyes were such a beautiful blue that they seemed wasted on a man. His coloring could be Slavic, but his demeanor absolutely was not. There was too much relaxation in his pose, too much openness in the way he watched the people pass him in the halls, unafraid to meet their eyes. Clearly, he wasn’t concerned he’d be noticed. Clearly, he was from the West.
“Are you waiting for Elizabeta?” said Aleksandr. He tried to speak slowly; he knew that Russian could be one interminable word if one talked too quickly.
“Yes,” said the man. He was young, though his hair was cut with mild gray around the temples. Up close, the blueness of his eyes was irrepressible. Even from a single word, Aleksandr could note with a marginal thrill that the man’s accent was quite poor.
“Where are you from?”
“Brussels.” The man sneezed and looked wary. “Excuse me.”
“Why are you here?”
“That’s what everyone wants to know, isn’t it? Every time I’m stalled in traffic, somebody in a black raincoat approaches me and asks why I’m here, why I’m not in a tourist zone, why I’m not with a group. You people certainly know how to make a man feel welcome.”
Aleksandr took a step back. Outside of the Saigon, he hadn’t heard anybody complain so loudly about anything since he’d arrived in Leningrad. It was galling to realize that it made him nervous. “Don’t ask me,” he said. “I just play chess here.”
The Belgian nodded. “You waiting for the girl?”
“I guess so.”
“Then you don’t just play chess here, eh?” said the man. A look of self-amusement illuminated his eyes like the blue flash of a passing ambulance.
“I suppose.” The man was awfully nosy and tactlessly quick to issue his own opinions. Aleksandr was used to being treated with indifference; he was used to people avoiding each other like the wrong ends of magnets. It was a frightening way to live, but at least it wasn’t vulgar.
The Belgian blinked his eyes, the blueness of which was starting to feel intrusively Western: his eyes were becoming the blue of cornflowers and van Gogh paintings and United Nations helmets. “She’s a nice girl,” he said. “It really is too bad she’s getting married.”
“No. What? No.”
The Belgian shrugged and put his cigarette in his mouth to show that he didn’t care. His eyes were becoming the blue of oxygen deprivation. “She is. You didn’t know? To some Party official, I hear, who looks like a prehistoric beast. Large man. I’ve seen him. You’d think he walked out of a museum for dead things.” Aleksandr said nothing; the thought of saying anything about the subject—or maybe about anything else ever again—suddenly seemed monumentally taxing. The Belgian wore a bewildered expression, as though Aleksandr were just the latest of the Soviet Union’s mounting mysteries. “Sad, isn’t it?” he said. “I rather like her myself. But what can you do? The woman’s got to look out for her own interests.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Aleksandr, although he was already starting to believe it.
The man released a whoosh of smoke-free air from his mouth. He rolled his eyes. He kept talking around the cigarette. “Suit yourself. That’s kind of your thing, isn’t it? The Soviets?”
“What?” said Aleksandr miserably.
“Believing whatever you want to, regardless of the facts. Please don’t let me stop you. Please don’t let me get in the way of this. It’s your great national tradition, I understand.”
Maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe the Belgian was mistaken, or maybe he’d meant the other girl, the roommate, and had gotten them confused. Elizabeta would never marry a Party official, for one thing, and—Aleksandr hoped savagely, then felt sorry for hoping it—a Party official would never marry her. It just could not be a good move professionally.
“Hey,” said the Belgian. “Where’d you go?” He waved his hand across Aleksandr’s face, snapped his fingers several times in quick succession. His eyes were the blue of fingers in winter on hands that nobody held. Elizabeta and a Party official. Maybe it was a good match after all. Maybe they’d have lots to talk about.
“You people,” the Belgian was saying. “You people are a weird bunch. Getting sentimental about your whores.”
Suddenly Aleksandr was seized with an overwhelming desire to hit this man, to pummel him with an aggression that was neither intellectual nor metaphorical. Games were pacified war, and no game was more overtly warlike than chess. But sometimes you needed violence to be real and losses to count. Sometimes you needed to defend something that really mattered, and not only because it symbolized something that mattered.
Also, the Belgian was smaller than Aleksandr.
Aleksandr’s fist clicked against the knob of bone below the man’s eye. The Belgian looked startled, then emotionally wounded, then resigned. He gave Aleksandr an almost fraternal slap across the chest. Aleksandr tried to yank some hair and only grazed the Belgian’s head. The Belgian tried to get a handle on Aleksandr’s rib cage with one hand while trying to tangle one of his legs around Aleksandr’s. Aleksandr tried to knee the Belgian in the balls and missed, and he was glad he’d missed. It was over in less than a minute, the two of them standing feet apart, relieved that no one had seen it.
“Sorry,” muttered Aleksandr.
The Belgian blinked, and his enormous light eyebrows seemed to waggle under the weight of his umbrage. He clicked his neck to one side and the other, rolled his shoulders back, inspected himself for damage. Aleksandr watched hi
m. There was a soreness growing behind his kneecap, a stillness blooming in his heart. “Can I—Are you hurt?” said Aleksandr.
“Please. Don’t flatter yourself.”
“I’ll go. If you could tell her I came by, maybe.” But he didn’t care, really, whether the Belgian did or not.
Aleksandr began to walk away. “Hey,” said the Belgian, but Aleksandr didn’t turn around. There was nothing to see behind him, he knew, nothing the Belgian could tell him that he wanted to know. “I wouldn’t want you to have to take my word for it,” the Belgian yelled, his accent flattening through his anger. Aleksandr walked faster, then started to run. The bruised soft side of his knee was pulsing and the neighbors were slamming their doors around him and the plaster molding was dropping white chips on his head and his run was opening up into a sprint. But he couldn’t get away fast enough to miss hearing the Belgian shout at him that the next time he saw her, motherfucker, he should look for the ring.
8
IRINA
Moscow, 2006
Elizabeta lived a few miles north of my hostel, out in a gray neighborhood with rows of identical flats that expanded outward like the units of a self-replicating virus. The streets became narrower and more finicky the farther north we got, and after a while I relieved my indifferent taxi driver of his duties and struck out on foot. I took several wrong turns as I hunted for Elizabeta’s apartment, searching through sixteen-letter street names that often differed by only one vowel. I looked down alleyways at fluttering clotheslines, schools of androgynous blond children, large dark dogs that seemed to answer to no one. Above me, apartments were stacked on and over each other like cliff dwellings.
A Partial History of Lost Causes: A Novel: A Novel Page 12