A Partial History of Lost Causes: A Novel: A Novel

by Jennifer Dubois

  He could stand to take his own advice.

  He slapped himself on the cheek lightly. He was making a list of safe lodging places and eateries for Irina, Viktor, and Boris’s trip to Perm. He assumed Irina was still going, though she’d recently disappeared for a week, and he’d never gotten a straight answer about why. He’d sent Viktor out to her hostel on Vasilevsky, and Viktor had reported back that it was a silly place, a home for wayward Westerners who wanted to suffer shallowly and temporarily in order to have stories to tell. It was no place for a person to live, as Irina seemed to be doing. But the bottom line—as Viktor pointed out—was that they weren’t paying Irina and couldn’t make any claims about employing her, and so it wasn’t any of their business. Maybe she’d gone back home. Maybe she’d moved on. And Aleksandr was struck by the realization that he didn’t know where Irina might go—where “back” was, what “on” meant.

  Eventually, she’d returned, looking pale and panicky and casting fatal looks at everybody who asked where she’d been. Aleksandr had been chasing her around the apartment for a week, trying to get a moment alone to ask how she was, but she’d avoided him assiduously. He’d mentioned it to Nina once, and she’d said, “That girl? She’s still around? Did you ever start to pay her?”

  “No.”

  “Then you can’t very well demand that she show up here, can you? That’s capitalism, grib. That’s kind of the whole idea.”

  “It’s not that. I’m worried about her.”

  Nina had looked at him disinterestedly and asked him point-blank if he was in love with the American. Aleksandr had told her no, truthfully, and turned over to look at his own wall, disappointed by Nina’s failure of imagination.

  Now he bit his lip and bent over his notes for Perm. He had no idea how they were going to get the lieutenant there to talk. Follow-up communications with Valentin Gogunov had revealed a wealth of information that might be used as blackmail, but Aleksandr was squeamish about such a tactic, and Gogunov had intimated that it wasn’t going to work anyway. The current plan was that they’d pose as film students, but he hated sending them off with so little to go on. He’d written them a list of possible questions and angles and ideas, but it was difficult not knowing the inflections and the wordings, having no way to coach them into asking spur-of-the-moment follow-up questions or detecting bullshit. Sending them was like sending a probe to Mars—he thought of its insect legs folding up into a squat, its motorized head casting this way and that. You could program it to do what you wanted, but it was no replacement for going there yourself and flinging your fingers into the red sand.

  “Grib.” Nina was standing in the doorway. She was wearing a silky nightgown, backlit by the moon, casting a sort of shaky, wan light all around her. She cocked her head to one side. “What are you doing?” She sounded like she actually wanted to know.

  He spun around in his chair and took off his glasses. “Working on getting the kids ready for Perm.”

  “Oh.” Her mouth disappeared somehow. She came to stand behind Aleksandr and rubbed her hands against the grain of his polo shirt. He sucked his stomach in before she could catch it. “Is that going to take all night?” she said.

  “What? Why? What did you have in mind?”

  Nina tossed her hair over a slim shoulder and arranged her face into what she must have thought was impishness. “I’m bored,” she said. “Let’s go out.”

  “Out?”

  “You and me? Just this once. We’ll take the car. We’ll drive somewhere. We won’t tell security.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Aleksandr.”

  “I can’t.” He rubbed his eyes ferociously. “You know I can’t. I’m surprised you’d even ask. If I can’t go to Perm, why would I blow everything to go out dancing?”

  Nina looked down, her expression flatlining.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s not that I don’t want to go out with you. It’s just that it’s not practical. I know you understand that.” He tried to take her hands, but she kept them balled up into unyielding buds. For a long moment, she said nothing.

  “Ninotchka,” he said. “Please.”

  “You think you’re going to win this thing?” she said hoarsely.

  “Win it?” He stopped trying to get at her hands. “No, Nina. No, of course not.”

  “Of course not?” She raised her face to look at him. Through her skin, he could see her veins, blue and vaguely upraised and pulsing with whatever emotions ran to that faraway, inscrutable heart. It must be strange to walk around with vulnerability like that plastered all over your face.

  “What,” he said slowly. “Didn’t you know that?”

  “I didn’t know you were so sure.”

  “I should have thought to mention it.”

  She looked down again. There was a faint kinetic charge in the air that he recalled from his chess days—from those moments when he knew somewhere deep in his pulpy cerebrum what was going to happen next, even if he couldn’t have said how.

  “You think this is a joke,” she said. “But when I met you, you were a very different man. You used to enjoy life. You used to take some pleasure in people, and in going places, and in having fun. But it’s not like that anymore. We can’t go anywhere, and we can’t do anything, and if I want to have a party, I can’t have it catered and we need to pat down all the guests before they can enter our apartment. It’s no way to live, grib.”

  He looked longingly at his notes. It would be another late night at this point. “I’m sorry, Nina.” And he was. He was so sorry. But he’d been apologizing with every gesture, with every advance and retreat, for the better part of a decade. Were there more creative ways to grovel, more imaginative modes of self-flagellation? Possibly, but his energies had to go elsewhere. Nina would have to be content with her current collection of prosaic revenges.

  “We do all this and it’s for nothing?” she said. “You say glibly, ‘No, of course I won’t win’? That’s hard for me, grib.”

  “I understand.” There was sense to this, he thought. He could squint and tilt his head and see it the way she did. But as soon as he acutely felt her problem, he could immediately see the solution. He screwed his eyes tighter, making effulgent whorls across his eyelids. Leave, then, he thought. I dare you. He stayed still. He listened. Leave, he willed her. Leave. Eventually, she did—but she only went so far as the bedroom, where he could hear the whinny of the closet door closing, the submerged whisking of nightgown against sheet. There was a silence. And then came muffled crying so earnest that it sounded, to Aleksandr, like the sobbing of a stranger.

  Aleksandr stayed in the study, barely asleep for the first half of the night, barely awake for the second. When the dawn insinuated itself over the horizon, red as a festering wound, Aleksandr gave up and tried to work. Irina and Boris came in quietly at nine and took their papers into separate corners. At ten, Viktor walked in, his jaw stiff and his movements brittle. He was holding a copy of Novaya Gazeta. “Boss,” he said. “Did you see this?”

  He handed the paper to Aleksandr. He’d brought copies for Irina and Boris, too. They opened their papers to the letters-to-the-editor section. In large font, the headline read, ALEKSANDR BEZETOV: THE RIGHT OPPOSITION CANDIDATE FOR RUSSIA? As Aleksandr read, he felt the arteries rioting and tangling in the back of his head. He recognized this as the physiology of rage.

  Sir,

  Many supporters of reform look to Aleksandr Bezetov as an important opposition figure; indeed, many hope that one day he will be our nation’s second democratically elected president. I have known Bezetov for many years, and I feel it’s time I publicly expressed my deep reservations about his fitness for this role.

  What sacrifices has Bezetov really made for our country? What has he risked and lost? Has he truly earned his status as the opposition’s cherished figurehead? Certainly, Russia needs change. Certainly, Russia needs different leadership. But I hate to see so many people staking their hope for this country in someo
ne so corrupt, so lazy—and, though it’s not popular to say so, so scared.

  It’s widely known that Bezetov is making a film about the Moscow apartment bombings, and that is a laudable project, indeed. But who has been conducting the actual interviews? Who has been doing the actual work? Not Bezetov—he sends his gang of 20-year-olds everywhere to do his research for him. Bezetov doesn’t like to be out in the world with the people because, ultimately, he is afraid of the people. It’s exactly this arrogant coldness that makes Bezetov unworthy of the reform movement’s regard.

  It is possible that Bezetov may yet be able to redeem himself. Insiders know that he has been planning an expedition to a certain military facility, and that—once again—he’s been planning to send his interns. If Bezetov hopes to win credibility among the citizens of his future democracy, he’ll realize that he needs to go there himself. Russia doesn’t need another powerful billionaire who doesn’t care about the people. Russia needs a man who will make real choices—and take real risks—on their behalf.

  Sincerely,

  Mikhail Solovyov

  Aleksandr read, and his shoulders felt rigid, as though his shirt had been pinned to a wall. He retreated to the couch, moving aside a pair of gardening shears to sit. In some part of his head, he wondered why Nina had gardening shears—they didn’t have a garden, after all, they didn’t have a front yard, and even if they did, they wouldn’t have had the leisurely security to work in it. She kept sprigs of basil along the windowsill sometimes, and maybe she’d hoped that by now they’d be summering in a beautiful, enormous dacha somewhere outside the city, with a litter of tiny children playing outside in the dirt. “Well,” he said. “That’s pretty bad.”

  “Pretty bad? We’re dead,” said Boris.

  “Not quite yet,” said Viktor.

  “You know this just made our lives infinitely harder, right?” said Boris. “You know it made our chances of getting killed incalculably higher, right? If they think you’re actually traveling with us, we’re screwed. And that’s what Misha made them think—that you’re going to Perm. That you’ll have to go now, in order to save your candidacy.”

  “I do,” said Aleksandr. “I do have to go now.”

  “You can’t,” said Irina.

  “I have to.”

  “Are you trying to be funny?” said Boris.

  “What’s funny about it? It’s my movement, right? It’s my idea, right? It’s my fucking candidacy, right?”

  “You can’t. You won’t.”

  “The idiot has a point, right?” said Aleksandr. “You’re all thinking it. You’re too afraid to mention it, but you’re all thinking it. What has he risked for this? you wonder. What grants him his authority when he’s too afraid to eat a sausage on the street, or fly an airplane to his home village, or walk around at night without his fucking security guard trailing him everywhere? This man is some sort of hero? No, you think. This man is a coward, a pampered coward, and he sends out young people to do the dangerous things for him, and then he leans back and enjoys the applause.”

  There was a pause, and what he’d said swirled around the silence in ever wider loops, until it filled up the whole room with its spiraling echo.

  “No,” said Irina finally. “We don’t think that. You’ve had hundreds of death threats. You’ve had body parts come through your window. They would kill you the second they had you alone in a hallway.”

  “Did you read this?” said Aleksandr. “Did you read it?” He was aware that he was pacing and possibly shouting. “This is going to be the line of defense. This is going to be the mantra. I have to go. He’s left me no choice.”

  Boris was shaking his head furiously. “No, no, no,” he said. “I don’t think so, no. I’m done with this. I quit. I’m not going. You can’t ask me to do such a thing after this. After the way this set us up.”

  “Put it in perspective,” said Viktor. “It’s a calculated risk, like all of them.”

  “Bullshit,” said Boris. “You think they don’t read Novaya Gazeta? You think they won’t catch this? Please.”

  “Calm down,” said Viktor.

  “Jesus,” said Boris. “What the hell did you do to that guy to make him write something like that?”

  Aleksandr winced. “I wouldn’t let him be affiliated with the film.”

  “You wouldn’t let him be affiliated with the film.” Boris kicked the couch. “Because, what, he’s a little too right of center for you? A little too nationalistic? They’re not the fucking National Bolsheviks. You could have cut him a deal. If you were any kind of politician, you would have.”

  “Boris,” said Viktor. “Stop it.”

  “Stop it?” said Boris. “Oh, I’m stopping. I’m also not going. I could die for something, maybe, someday, but not for this kind of stupidity.”

  “He’s right,” said Aleksandr. “He shouldn’t go. None of you should go, actually. You are all young. None of you should be incurring an old man’s risks. Exposing yourselves to an old man’s enemies. I’ll go. You can all take paid vacations.”

  “It’s done, then,” said Boris, standing up. “I’m done.” He walked out of the room. After a moment, Viktor followed him, casting a bleak glance back at Aleksandr and Irina.

  Aleksandr put his head on his desk. He could feel Irina staring at him, her eyes boring twin craters into his back, and he didn’t like it. Ever since she’d returned from her unannounced vacation, she’d had a stricken, mournful, darkly knowing look that Aleksandr found unnerving but didn’t know how to address. You couldn’t ask a person to make her face stop doing something that seemed involuntary. There were other things, too—her face blanching at odd intervals, as though she were going through a process of remembering and forgetting and then inevitably re-remembering something terrible. She was shakier than she’d been. Her motor skills—never stellar—were worse, and she’d taken to standing far away from things that were fragile or expensive. She was also, for the first time since Aleksandr had known her, too thin. She’d always been shaped like a bean, but now her skeletal system seemed to be issuing a protest and taking its leave through her skin. Her clavicle jutted like a continental shelf.

  “Stop,” he said. “Please stop looking at me like that.”

  “What is this?” she said. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “I just think that jaundiced schizophrenic has a point, much as it pains me to say so. I have to go to Perm. I’ve got no credibility otherwise.”

  “This country can’t afford to lose you.”

  “How do I know that? What do I have to show for all this nonsense? All I see are unreliable poll numbers, poorly conducted surveys.”

  “You see the crowds. You see how they turn out for you. I don’t need to remind you. You know this. You are being intentionally difficult.”

  “I’m not going to win.” He could hear himself being wretched—he could hear in his own voice the stomping about of a howling, unappeased toddler—but he couldn’t help it.

  “You’re not going to win this year. You know that,” said Irina. “Maybe you won’t win any year. You know what Anna Politkovskaya said about you? You’re not Thomas Paine, you’re John the Baptist? You’re right, it might not be you. But whoever it is will owe it to you. You’ve made the thought conceivable. You make it more conceivable every day. And in order to keep doing that, you need to be alive.”

  He said nothing. Alive, what was that? He’d never be alive again—feeling the exhilarating gusts of wind slamming into his lungs, reveling in the wild anonymity of being young and alone in an enormous city. It could end one of two ways, he guessed: he could wind up watching the country from the reinforced windows of the Kremlin, or he could wind up dead. He had a hazy image of himself trapped in some ornate grave, grumpily listening to the ongoing march of the city around and above him. They’d have his tomb secluded somewhere to protect it from vandalism. Nina would come once a month to sit in the rain and look at her nails.

  But no,
not really. Really, he’d wind up here, just here—growing older, watching out the window. People might forget that he was alive, when they thought of him at all. And there would probably come a day—when more relevant targets presented themselves, and vines grew over the memory of his campaign, and he became an old man on whom nobody would want to waste a bullet or a scheme—when it would be safe for him to go out again. Unfortunately, he would never know which day that was.

  “You can’t afford to be like this,” said Irina. “Stop it right now.”

  He stared out the window, where an understated sun was looming politely. He stared at the table, at the sheaf of papers before him. He stared at Irina’s hands, ten inches from his face. They were durable, inelegant hands; unmanicured, but with fingers that looked like they’d been raised fluttering along a piano or a typewriter. He was staring at the hands, he would always remember, because he couldn’t stand to look at Irina’s face. And then suddenly, one of the hands jumped—“jumped” was the only word for it, because it was obvious that it had not been moved. The hand took to the air and fell again, limply, heavily, like a frog casting itself into a pond. Irina turned the color of an onion and put her hands underneath the desk as if to hide them. Aleksandr stared at her.

  “What was that?” he said, even though he knew, and the question was horrible to ask and more horrible to hear answered.

  “It’s nothing,” she said in a voice that did not sound like her own.

  He supposed he had known it already, but seeing it was surprising and gruesome and oddly more painful than he had thought it might be. He’d thought that the inevitability of the event had inoculated him, somehow, against its potency. But then again, his whole life had been about trying—and failing—to come to grips with the inevitable. He shouldn’t be surprised that the inevitable was often the worst thing; worse, even, for the fact that it had been etched so long ago, that it was an ending that had predated its own characters.

  “Irina,” he said. He tried to take her hand, but she wouldn’t let him. He could almost see the fluttering of her ravaged fist-sized heart. He could hear the raggedy slicing of her breath. “I saw it. I saw that. You didn’t mean to do that.”