Jennifer duBois - A Partial History of Lost Causes

“That’s gruesomely young.”

“This is what they tell me.”

At this, the man laughed, as though somebody had told him that Aleksandr was going to try very hard to be funny and that it was best to humor him. He made a show of dragging his arm along his eyes, as though wiping away tears of mirth. “Forgive me,” he said, offering his hand and identification. “I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Petr Pavlovich Nikitin. I’m something of a liaison between the Party and the game.”

The ID confirmed him as a CPSU man, though his heavy suit and his manicured hands had already announced him. In the card’s photograph, Petr Pavlovich was younger and thinner, looking startled and proud, his epaulettes too big for his shoulders. At the time, he must have been thrilled and shy and aghast to be given such a job.

Aleksandr took the man’s hand, furious with himself for his own pathological niceness. The man’s hands felt as velvety as they looked; the coarse buildup of nicotine on his nails was an incongruity, like scar tissue from some long-ago wound. Aleksandr realized that Ivan had warned him about this exact conversation.

“We understand you’re finished at the academy,” said Petr Pavlovich. “We understand you beat Andronov.”

“That was quick. Did he call you himself?”

“Now, now. We’re going to be good friends, you and I, as long as you don’t ask direct questions.”

“Was it Oleg? I didn’t even know he could talk.”

“Let’s start over,” said Petr Pavlovich. He ordered another round of shots, then produced a lighter from his pocket and gazed at the flame a moment too long before he lit up. When he smoked, his lips made a little spanking sound around the cigarette. “Let’s start over. I’ve been unclear. A player like you, you’re a credit to the Soviet Union. You remind the world who the best chess players are.”

Aleksandr took the first of his two shots. He didn’t usually drink Stoli, but all the state-produced vodka tasted the same. He wanted to tell the man to fuck off, though it would be a shame to give up his career when it was just starting to take off. Anyway, Aleksandr had never told anybody to fuck off. Politeness was his paralysis, and he would have to abandon it someday. But not, he thought, just yet. “Thank you,” he said.

“I notice that you haven’t yet joined the Party.”

Aleksandr rotated his shot glass between his fingers. He looked at the reflection of his thumb in the alcohol, lumpy and distorted. “No,” he said. “I guess I haven’t.”

“An oversight due to youth, no doubt.” Petr Pavlovich, still smoking too loudly for comfort, smacked his lips in satisfaction at this pronouncement.

Aleksandr said nothing, which was — along with chess — one of his great strengths in life.

“You live in the kommunalka, am I correct?”

“Yes.”

“Crowded there, I’d suppose. Plumbing issues, I’d imagine.”

Aleksandr thought of the worms in the faucet. “Some.”

“You’d probably like a private apartment, I’d think?”

“I have my own room.”

“That is indeed very fortunate,” said Petr Pavlovich grandly. “But surely you’d like a little more privacy? A little more space? You have, what? Eight meters? Nine?”

Aleksandr thought of his room. He thought of its cramped dampness, the infrequent hissing of its atavistic radiator. He thought of his piles of chess magazines and how he was always sleeping on them by accident.

“A young man like you,” said Petr Pavlovich, “you probably have a special woman in your life. You’re probably thinking about starting a family.”

Aleksandr said nothing. If only the man knew how inappropriate this particular approach was.

“Or maybe I’m getting it wrong,” said Petr Pavlovich. “Maybe not one special woman but several? Even so, more space would be nice. More privacy, undoubtedly. A nice little dacha out in the woods, maybe. A gorgeous view and wildflowers in the summer. A place to play chess with designated visitors. Holidays on the Volga. Sound nice?”

Aleksandr embarked mournfully on his second shot of vodka.

“They said you were quiet,” said Petr Pavlovich. “But you’re practically catatonic. I’ll make a note of it in your file.”

“I’m quite content in my room.”

“I highly doubt that. But even if you are, you know there’s a lot else we can do for you. Travel. Exit visas for vacations. You can shop at the Party stores. Better meat, maybe? You like food? You like women? You like anything?”

Aleksandr thought of the mustard-yellow tins of stringy reserve beef at the state store; he thought of the bruised eggplants, rotting on the side that didn’t show through the packaging. He thought of the air of the kommunalka, stale with the smells of old cooking and feet wrapped in too many socks. Then he thought of a dacha in a shady woods during a cool summer; he thought of caviar and wine and fresh produce, all laid out on a table under a gently heaving tree. He thought of beautiful women who were the perfect inversions of Elizabeta — they’d be blond, where she was dark; they’d be fawning, where she was indifferent; they’d be generically interchangeable, where she was stubbornly singular.

“You understand me, I think,” said Petr Pavlovich. “You’re a magnificent chess player. But you can be better. You can be a credit to the Party, and we can be a credit to you.”

Aleksandr contemplated his empty shot glasses. “I don’t know that that’s the case.”

“Listen,” said Petr Pavlovich abruptly, and all of a sudden Aleksandr could feel the man’s energy shift gears. “You should probably stop hanging around with that Ivan Dmietrivich.”

Aleksandr put down his glass too loudly. “What?”

“Another, sir.” Petr Pavlovich tapped the bar, and Aleksandr downed another shot. His eyes watered shamefully. The lozenges of light coming through the window looked fatalistic. Petr Pavlovich stood up.

“Don’t be foolish, Aleksandr. Don’t get mixed up in all that.”

Aleksandr stood up, too, shakily. He reached for his wallet, but Petr Pavlovich stopped him with a soft hand.

“Please, Aleksandr Kimovich,” he said. “Think about what I’ve said. But the drink — accept it as a token of our hearty congratulations. It’s on us.”

Twenty minutes later, Aleksandr stumbled to the Saigon, where the bartender eyed him skeptically but said nothing. As usual, the café was filled to the rafters with smoke and conspiracy. The man in the wheelchair had positioned himself near the doorway this time; patrons picked their careful way around him and scurried past his dark pronouncements. When Aleksandr walked past, he saw that the man’s hair was flecked sparsely with bits of bread. Nobody asked him to leave. It was an unjust world.

When he saw Aleksandr, the man turned gray with excitement and leaned close, opening the black globe of his mouth. “Leonid Ilyich is here, oh, God, he’s here,” he shrieked, and Aleksandr tried hard not to stumble in surprise. He’d been expecting a whisper, some secret insane confidence, not a shriek, and the man’s shouting voice was unexpectedly shrill. It turned Aleksandr’s heart inside out in the way of ancient, irrational fears — the sight of things that crawl and skitter, the feel of a presence behind your neck.

“What?” said Aleksandr. He tried elbowing past the man, who groped for Aleksandr’s hands and missed. Aleksandr wondered momentarily whether the man could still see.

“Brezhnev. He’s right there.” The man gestured toward the depression in the wall where Ivan and Nikolai were sitting, their smoke unfurling into dust-colored fronds. “He’s here. I promise you that. He’s everywhere.”