A Partial History of Lost Causes

by Jennifer Dubois

  I walked over to Viktor Davidenko’s table. I crossed my arms, then uncrossed them. Then I said hello.

  “Yes?” His voice was a bit gravelly, a bit sullen—exactly the sort of voice you’d imagine. He had a heavy brow and, underneath it, fairly astonishing blue eyes. His hair was curly and, you could tell, barely subdued.

  I introduced myself. He looked me up and down, as Misha had promised he would.

  “You’re a journalist?” He’d switched to English. His accent—you could tell from even one word—was a complicated affair, incorporating multiple experiences and existences and institutions of higher learning.

  “No.”

  “Are you a blogger?”

  “No.”

  “Are you on social media?”

  “Not really, no.”

  He sighed. It was a profoundly aggrieved, hectored, performative sigh, and it made me immediately like him.

  “Can I have a few minutes of your time anyway?” I was beginning to panic mildly. This was my first interaction with an ambassador of Bezetov’s actual team, and I feared I was wildly failing to say the thing I needed to say.

  “I suppose.”

  “When? Should I come to your office?”

  “Office. Ah. No. How about right now?”

  This seemed somehow slightly less than professional, though it’s true that my reasons for being here couldn’t be construed as entirely—or even marginally—professional. But in recent months I’d taken to regarding my quest for Aleksandr Bezetov as something like my job—I avoided it like a job, at any rate, and I approached it with stress and sporadic diligence and no small amount of resentment.

  “Well,” I said. “Okay.”

  He took my hand, and for a brief, absurd moment, I thought he might kiss it.

  “Viktor Davidenko,” he said, dropping it. “Please sit down.”

  I did. There was a courtliness to all of this that felt a little silly but also highly self-aware. I sat up straighter, so as to be ready for whatever pageantry was forthcoming. Viktor ordered three shots of vodka, which I found impressive and terrifying until he passed one over to me. I took a sip and coughed.

  “Where did you learn English?” I said.

  “Oxford, most recently.”

  “What were you doing before that?”

  “I was importing Japanese video recorders.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “And now you’re the media relations person?”

  “I am that person. And you?” He looked amused.

  “Where did I learn English?”

  “What do you do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Of course. Would that be a diplomatic sort of nothing? A commercial sort of nothing?” His quasi-British accent made him sound like he was always on the brink of apology. His expression made him look like a person who had never apologized in his entire life.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “Academic? Sheer awkwardness?”

  “I really don’t.”

  “Ah. Very good.”

  I knew I was being assessed by some convoluted system of social metrics that I didn’t yet understand. I took another sip of my vodka and let the alcohol mince my mouth.

  “So, what, then? What do you want?” He held his second shot, tracing the nimbus of moisture it had left on the table. “You want me to get a chessboard signed for you or something?”

  I turned my face to the side. Something about this man made me not want to tell him everything all at once. “My father was a fan of Bezetov’s,” I said. “I just want to meet him.”

  “Your father was a fan?”

  I nodded. I knew how this sounded; I knew what particularly obnoxious fragilities in my psyche this guy was already starting to see, to think he saw. I wanted this part of the conversation to end as quickly as possible.

  “Bezetov has a lot of fans,” said Viktor.

  “Right.”

  “Presumably, a lot of people have fathers who were fans.”

  “I am sure.”

  “And they don’t all come here looking for him.”

  “Assuredly not.”

  He leaned back in his chair and took a gulp, followed immediately by a fiercer gulp, of his drink. “This is kind of a sentimental project, isn’t it?”

  I winced. I hate being accused of sentimentality. But I knew there was no way to assert that you weren’t sentimental; any attempt to do so was automatically suspect. “I guess so. I guess you could say that.” I took a moment to take another sip, flamboyantly. “He’s very busy, I’d imagine.”

  “Well, not that busy.”

  “Oh?” I waited for clarification long enough to understand that none was forthcoming. “How long have you been working for him?”

  “Two years.”

  “And how did you get hired?”

  “I went to a rally.”

  “And did what?”

  “I approached him. I gave him my résumé.”

  “I see. You showed up, you’re saying?”

  “I mean I have a terrific résumé.”

  “I don’t at all doubt it. Is that how he hires all the staff?”

  “What staff?”

  “Who works there?”

  “There’s me. There’s Nina, Bezetov’s wife. A pure joy. There’s Vlad, the security guard, two-thirds retarded. There’s Boris, my assistant. He wouldn’t tell you he’s my assistant, but I assure you, he is.”

  “What would he tell me he is?”

  “He’d likely claim to be a peer of some kind. There’s not a whole lot of logic to the decisions Bezetov makes about people. If you met his wife, you’d see. Don’t mention I said that.”

  “Of course not.”

  With a flick of his finger, Viktor ordered us another round. He sat back and looked at me for a long moment. “So that’s it? Your father was a fan and you want to meet him?”

  “Yes.” I didn’t know why I was lying to him. It could only bolster my case to tell him the truth—maybe Bezetov had some kind of Make-A-Wish Foundation for terminally ill American adults. But Viktor Davidenko was attractive, I guess, and there was an unusual clarity to his gaze, and I did not want to see what his face would do if we had to have that particular conversation. “Yes,” I said again. “I suppose that’s it.”

  He looked skeptical. “We are inscrutable even to ourselves, I suppose.”

  “More often than not, I find.”

  “But really? That’s it? You’re not here to interview him or something? Tell him how to do things differently? Offer your expert policy opinions?” All this was delivered rapid-fire, without discernible irony.

  “What? I—What? No. No.”

  “Oh.” He picked up the menu and began to study it. I waited for him to say something else and noticed, in a detached way, the wave of anxiety that was cresting in my sternum. It’s an interesting thing, to watch the discrete components of a face resolve into beauty. If there was something unusual about this man’s face, it was that its overall sternness was cut by the sweetness of his eyes. I badly wanted to steer us back into the realm of answerable questions. I said the only thing I had to say.

  “I just met with Mikhail Andreyevich Solovyov.”

  He put the menu down and eyed me with an expression that could only be described as world-weary. “Misha. I see. And how was that?”

  “He’s got a vendetta, it would seem.”

  Viktor widened his eyes into an expression of mock hurt. “Does he?”

  “I got the sense that there were, you know, factions within the camp.”

  “Factions? Dear heavens. Tell me more about that.”

  “He seems aggrieved.”

  “He was run over by a bus. That’ll make anyone bitter, I’d imagine.”

  “I didn’t know that. But I mean, that wasn’t Bezetov’s fault, right?”

  “Fault is such a fuzzy concept, don’t you think?”

  “Not really,�
�� I said. Viktor Davidenko shrugged and went back to staring at the menu. I forced my voice into a lower register than it normally wanted to go. “What’s the relationship between Right Russia and Alternative Russia, exactly?”

  He made a face. “Muted indifference. No, that’s not right. Grudging tolerance.”

  “On the part of Alternative Russia, you mean?”

  “Obviously.”

  “Right Russia is a public relations liability?”

  “In some quarters, yes, in other quarters, no.”

  “Like anything, I suppose. So why does Aleksandr tolerate Misha’s faction? Does Misha have something on Aleksandr?”

  “Some kind of blackmail, you mean?”

  “Does Aleksandr owe him a favor or something? Or does Misha know something about him?”

  Viktor eyed me wryly. “Like a mistress, you’re saying?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t suggest that—”

  “The thought never crossed my mind,” he said. “But no. I do not think Bezetov’s secrets are of the sexual variety. He’d probably be a much better boss if they were.”

  “So why associate with Right Russia at all?”

  “I can’t talk to you about that,” said Viktor cheerfully. “But this is what I’d suggest. He has a rally next week. On Saturday. At Gostiny Dvor.”

  “Right.” I’d seen the posters around the city on those aimless and glassy-eyed afternoons of wandering, in between reading and sleeping. The Assembly of the Dissatisfied, it was called. There were tiny flags and icons symbolizing various causes, some of which I was familiar with—there were environmentalists, human rights people, free-market people, controlled-economy people, and many more that I didn’t recognize—and I thought it was interesting that one march could incorporate such a wide variety of wingnuts. In the center of the poster was a picture of Aleksandr Bezetov: he peered out at me distastefully, as though he already knew that I was going to try to bother him. Above him, in surreal colors, was a distorted and x-ed out picture of Putin. His puckered, vaguely serpentine face registered a look of continual disapproval over the proceedings.

  “You should come,” said Viktor. “Wear that shirt again.”

  It occurred to me dimly that I was being flirted with. I am genuinely bad at discerning this. “Do I talk to you again?”

  “Me? No, certainly not. You never talk to me again. You’d never outsmart me, but Aleksandr is, shall we say, cautious. This conversation didn’t happen. I’m not supposed to meet with people like you.”

  “Women?”

  “Funny.”

  “Americans?”

  “Getting warmer.”

  “Who do I talk to at the rally?” It occurred to me that Viktor might not have believed a single thing I’d said to him, and then I thought to wonder for the first time whether I should believe anything he’d said, in a definitive way.

  Viktor leaned toward me. “You’ll see Nina. The wife. She has red hair. You can’t miss her.”

  “Okay.”

  “Ask her for a meeting.”

  “You’re the media relations guy and you’re telling me to accost his wife at a rally?” I had wanted to avoid doing exactly that.

  “It makes her feel important to arrange things,” said Viktor. “She’ll give you a meeting.”

  “What’s she like?”

  He looked up. “Why? You after her job?”

  My mouth fell open. I closed it. “No. No. Of course not, no.”

  “It wouldn’t be professional for me to comment on my boss’s wife.”

  “No. Of course not. I’m sorry I asked.”

  “But I’ve staked my career on pushing professional boundaries. So I’ll say she’s—she’s not making him happy.”

  I rolled my eyes. I was bored of talking about this already. Might she be castrating? Might be she be emasculating? Might she be shrill? I was sick of hearing about the failings of wives, ever, and was suddenly filled with gladness that I would never be one.

  “What?” said Viktor.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Making someone happy is such a tall order these days.”

  “You think so?” He was looking at me, I noticed, in the way I remember men looking at me, back when men looked at me. There was a brief, comical period in college when I was widely deemed mysterious. All people meant by this was that my listening face was not terribly animated. I could see Viktor Davidenko gearing up to think me some kind of puzzle, and this never works—not because people solve you, particularly, but because they learn there’s nothing much to solve. Seeing yourself through somebody else’s eyes is like taking a guest through your long-unvisited apartment. The bits of your personality that you’ve come to take for granted are like the souvenirs of a life you are already bored of remembering. This old thing?, you want to say, pointing to your personal trivia or your political beliefs or your body. Got it in Barcelona for four euros. It’s not real. This joke? I make it all the time. You’ll get sick of it. I am sick of it. But the new person doesn’t know that yet, and you are not actually about to tell him.

  “And you?” I said.

  “And me, what?”

  I realized I didn’t know what I was asking. “You’re motivated by—what? You believe in Bezetov?” I tossed this off flippantly, though I desperately wanted to hear that the answer was yes.

  “Yes.” He leaned forward. “I do.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? The lady wants to know why. It will matter, is the bottom line. I do believe it will matter. You look at the ’91 coup, the way that the demonstrators then could not be dispersed by force because there were simply so many of them. It is an enormous country. He will not win. Of course he will not win. But I do think it will matter.”

  Here, in this statement, I found my vague attraction made specific: he was a person who believed, ultimately, that Aleksandr could be important. I’d been drawn to Viktor already, maybe, but that attraction was narrowed down to that most concrete and self-serving thing: the shared affinity of vision.

  “You have someone at home?” he said.

  “I did.”

  “You left him?”

  “I did.”

  “For this?”

  I slid my tongue along my lower teeth, feeling the unevenness that had resurged in recent years. All that orthodontia, such an investment, for what? Though I knew this was a rabbit hole that did not warrant pursuing. When you thought about it, everything—all of life—could seem a series of wasted preparations. Why did you exercise, and why did you consume the appropriate staggering amount of vegetables per day? And why were you vain about your body or your brain or whatever it was you were vain about? And why did you sob for a week and refuse food and lie the wrong way in the bed and watch the necrotic light creep over the horizon only because a boy who never loved you still did not? Such anguish, such narcissism, such ahistoricism. All the grand projects were, after all, not so grand. Little petty fits, all of them, piecemeal staving off of the inevitable, scraps and dregs of self-distraction, all of it existing only to mitigate the fact, the central fact, the unbelievable irreducible fact, of our transience.

  “I suppose so,” I said slowly.

  “That must not have made him happy.”

  I shrugged in a sudden, flinching fashion. I was mirroring the way he had shrugged a moment ago. “Probably not.”

  “Has it made you happy?”

  “Not yet. I am cautiously optimistic.”

  “That is probably too optimistic.”

  There was some slyness happening on his face, like a pentimento, an echo of a previous intention. There’d been a tension in the conversation all along, running some syncopated counterpoint to the surface. We were more adversarial than was merited, that’s what it was.

  He raised a finger for the check and paid the bill before I’d even begun fumbling through my wallet. There was the sense of attraction gearing up, swinging in a new, unexpected direction, as it could. I thought briefly of that parade of men in college: insubstantial,
finally; it was hard to clearly remember a face or a personality, though it was easy enough to remember the disappointments, misunderstandings, abuses. I wondered what attenuated mini-romances of 2006 were even like—people must wonder whether they’re being dumped for not having a sufficiently robust Internet presence, or whatever. The Internet: a whole new arena in which to fail to significantly exist. As soon as I realized I was thinking about that, I knew I was drunk.

  Outside, there was too much clarity to the buildings, as though they’d been freshly etched; the stars were a degree brighter than seemed totally plausible; I felt, generally, like a recent recipient of corrective lenses. This—all of this, I knew—was silly. One thing I did not like about drunkenness was that it unlocked all of one’s self-pity at once—in my case, self-pity was vast and gnawing and insatiable; it required constant combat to subdue. When I was drunk, my defenses were down, and I could easily spend an hour staring in the mirror, thinking that I was too pretty to die.

  “Well,” I said, suddenly clunky, suddenly professional. “Thank you for your time.”

  I offered my hand and knew immediately that this was the wrong thing to do.

  “You are quite welcome,” he said, taking my hand and shaking it rather more elaborately than was required. “I will see you at the rally, then.”

  “Yes,” I said, drawing myself up into dignity, attempting to make a coherent exit. “I will see you at the rally.”

  I walked back slowly, in ever widening circles. The Neva looked colder than usual, shivering with leaves and bric-a-brac. I stopped to stare at it, trying to get my head to clear. Looking at the water, for some reason—or no reason—disinterred an image of my father. Perhaps it was a memory of a memory, or perhaps a memory of a photo. At any rate, I gazed into the water and I could nearly see him, facing some eastern window, his shadow severe in the low-hanging light. I could almost see his stooped back, the slumped angle of the shoulders. I could almost see in it some preemptive defeat. By the point the picture was taken, or the memory was formed, he knew. He knew, he must have known. And yet how impossible to parse the moment when the proper exit is before you. How impossible to know whether you’re getting out at the right time. A game of strategy, that, that no one could win. Maybe he thought about it, and maybe he miscalculated, and maybe then it was too late. Or maybe he thought about it and rejected it, nobly, with clean sagacity, accepted the indignity of insanity and death as part of life, consciously, bravely. Or maybe, maybe, he was just too terrified. At any rate, who am I to judge?