Jennifer duBois - A Partial History of Lost Causes

“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.”