Jennifer duBois - A Partial History of Lost Causes

Putin knew that, too, of course. Aleksandr often wondered if there was something of that primordial death fear in Putin — behind his flat affect, his reptilian sneer. The man must lie in his silken sheets, knowing that he’d lied and wronged and suppressed and assassinated his way across the biggest country in the entire world, and that country was at his back as he fell asleep facing the sunset — and he must wake up sometimes gagging on the smell of sassafras.

At the end of the day, though, it had worked. Putin had won the country. Self-satisfied, smiling that sour subsmile, walking away with the nation’s trust and democratic mandate. One had to wonder. These terrorists, these bombings. These Chechens, who had come all this way to do it. Nice of them to do such a great favor for Putin right before the election. One just had to wonder.

So Aleksandr was going to make a film that would voice some public findings, some public wonderings. His first idea had been to publish an article about it, but Boris and Viktor — his post-adolescent but obnoxiously intelligent advisers — had looked bored when he discussed it. Their eyes had glazed over. They’d recently been watching a documentary about the origins of 9/11, they said. In it, a schlubby American filmmaker made wounded faces as he interviewed politicians and men on the street. He was polite. He asked literal-minded questions. He somehow made the other people look stupid.

“We should do something like that,” Viktor had said. “Something accessible.”

“You know that guy’s a socialist, right?” Aleksandr had said.

“He makes effective films.”

“He makes montages. He puts clips of horrifying historical events against pop songs. They’re music videos.”

“People watch these films. These films change public opinion,” said Boris.

“I didn’t see this film sinking Bush’s second term.”

Boris had looked at him and said the one thing that could have persuaded Aleksandr: “When have we talked seriously about sinking Putin? Or whoever he appoints next? I’m saying that this film will make them uncomfortable .”

They’d been at work on the film for a few months, and Aleksandr had to think that if anything would get him killed, this would be it. But he did not expect the film to have a magic effect. He did not expect it would appear and suddenly usher in decentralization, the end of censorship, the dismantling of the current regime, free and fair elections. All he could hope was that a few people would see it on YouTube, and that, as Viktor said, it would make the administration uncomfortable. All would be different if there was free television. One month of free television and there would be a coup d’état.

Aleksandr went back to bed. Nina was asleep, her red hair a spray against the Egyptian-cotton pillow, her arms locked at her sides as if holding a yoga position. It was amazing how silently she slept, with such ferocity of purpose. The woman did nothing with nonsense. But that was why he’d married her, after all. He’d had enough of silly girls, young women who fell over themselves and spilled their drinks on their expensive blouses and laughed too loudly at the wrong part of a story. Nina was trivial, perhaps, but she was unapologetic about it, and poised, and pragmatic, and she did nothing to flatter him. At his age, at his income bracket, there was nothing better for a man.

It was true that he still sometimes thought of Elizabeta — not often, not obsessively, but more frequently than he thought of any other woman besides Nina. It was embarrassing to admit it, even to himself, in his own head, and remembering her was like simultaneously remembering all the worst shames of his life: the day he lost to a computer program; the fact that he’d once slept on a dirt floor and broken the necks of chickens with his bare hands; his personal conduct for the entirety of the 1980s. Why — as he lay next to a beautiful woman in classy, suggestive pajamas — did his thoughts turn to a nonromance three decades old? But they did sometimes, not often, not often, and he’d be back in the old kommunalka, watching her bang her hand against the steward’s door, listening to her shout some spirited entreaty, messy hair flying everywhere.

Such thoughts were a waste of energy, and Aleksandr knew he needed to save his energy for more complicated difficulties, more interesting problems. He clasped his hand around Nina’s torso and held her until she shoved him off in her sleep.

The day of the meeting with the American woman, Aleksandr entered his office to find Boris playing video games. Boris often played video games during working hours; it was, he said, when he did his best thinking. (“What thinking is that?” Viktor would often say.) Next to him, Viktor was scribbling notes on a napkin.

“What is this drivel you’re writing?” said Boris, not looking at Viktor. On the screen, what looked to Aleksandr like a soft-featured gnome bopped across a chartreuse landscape.

“Just thanking your mother for last night,” said Viktor.

“I’m relieved to hear that your impotence problem has been resolved.”

Aleksandr had found them at a protest eighteen months earlier, and he’d made them run errands until he knew they were serious. Viktor had a heavy brow and blue eyes; Boris was shorter and had a crooked nose that Aleksandr thought odd but that the women seemed to find heartbreakingly attractive. They were arrogant and brilliant and in constant competition; Aleksandr often remarked loudly that if they were his sons — if he’d had sons — he would have volunteered them for the land forces of the Russian Federation as soon as they turned eighteen. As it was, they were not his sons, thank God, and he let them bully and cajole each other as much as they wanted, as long as it kept them sharp.

“Who bought you that pen, goluboi?” said Boris. “I’ve never seen such an affectation.”

“You’re just jealous of my literacy.”

Nina had thought he was crazy for taking in Viktor and Boris so readily. He often talked about how they’d kicked the energy of the outfit up a notch, and how he’d often thought that even if they were FSB, it might have been a fair trade. Aleksandr understood better — now that he was older than Ivan would ever be — how desperate Ivan must have been for a confidant in Nikolai, how greedy he’d been for reassurance. Aleksandr made Viktor and Boris work together because he knew they would fight; after having watched Nikolai’s slavish devotion to Ivan, Aleksandr believed in the importance of a certain standing hostility between co-workers. They were also young — too young to carry the weight of having behaved wrongly during Soviet times — and they annoyed everyone else with their entitled idealism, their freedom from a history of crushing moral calculations. But then, as Aleksandr often remarked, Alternative Russia needed a few people who hadn’t been ethically compromised. Among them were those who’d publicly sold out and those who quietly pretended they never had (himself among them); there were those who’d once believed and had officially come around; there were those who would always, always do whatever was most pragmatic, and who (today) found something practical in a contrarian stance. Then there were the types like Misha — Misha, who had gone ultranationalist in his old age, and who did nothing to discourage Right Russia’s more racist, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic edges, and who occasionally showed up at Aleksandr’s rallies to shout disruptive things and wave implausible signs.

“You seem to be taking your time there. Are you struggling with the spelling?” said Boris. The video game issued cheerful synthesizer sounds.