Jennifer duBois - A Partial History of Lost Causes

I had just about talked myself out of it when Viktor grabbed my hip and stared at me hard. He leaned in. And then we were tearing at seams and hair and skin, and I was on top of him, and we wrestled each other as though we were fighting with our own mortalities: it was high-stakes sex, it was execution-day sex. We clung to each other’s bodies: unfamiliar because we were strangers in this way, familiar because we were both human and both still blessedly alive. He smelled like basil. We yelled into each other’s shoulders, and it was terror, I’m sure, as much as it was joy. It was like shouting into the apocalypse.

Afterward, he tapped me on the shoulder. “Another question,” he said.

“Yes.”

“All this stuff about wanting to know how to face defeat,” he said. “You think you learned something from Aleksandr about that?”

“I’m here, aren’t I? We both are.”

“And that’s it?”

“I think the only way to properly face doom is to be on time.”

Outside, bats made shadowy filaments against the sky. I burrowed into Viktor’s shoulder and tangled in the scratchy sheets. It was still early, for a certain demographic. Down on the street, the city geared up like a rusty engine, and I heard mirthful hilarity in the streets all night long.

For the conversations with Simonov, we’d booked a hotel room in downtown Perm. The day after our arrival, Viktor and I drove there in silence. Outside the window, the town petered into white fields and enormous white sky. The sun emerged and began sweating tenuous light. I rolled down the window and smelled cold mud and the bloody smell of rusted automotives.

At the hotel, we promptly ordered decadent room service on Aleksandr’s credit card. After half an hour, Simonov arrived. He knocked on the door. “You’re the film students?” he said.

We let him in. He had a weathered, tumorous face, spackled with a stingy assortment of zinc-colored teeth. A Kalashnikov rifle was hanging from his hand, limp as a dislocated elbow. It was an odd way to hold a gun.

“Thank you for meeting with us,” we said, and then we watched Simonov eat and drink and smoke for a while. He poked at his pork and sucked on his shots. We set up the camera, and it stood splay-legged in the corner. Simonov eyed it and began tapping his knee with the wretched repetition of an autistic child. It was possible, I realized, that he had stage fright.

After we’d all done a couple more shots, we started to ask Simonov our questions. We asked him about his childhood, his rise to power, his thoughts on the greatness of the Russian armed forces. He drank. We drank. We turned off the camera, and Viktor made off-color jokes. Simonov laughed. We turned the camera back on and asked him his thoughts on tensions with Georgia. At one point he banged on the table and started yelling about how Russia was the number one exporter of weaponry in the world. We turned the camera off. He got misty about his children, about his wife. “She looks like a potato,” he said. “But God help me, I love her.” I glanced at Viktor. We turned the camera back on.

“You’ve been working here at Perm for a long time,” said Viktor carefully.

“Yes,” said Simonov. He leaned back. “Ten years.”

“So you were here in 1999, then,” I said.

“That’s what ten years means.”

“So you were here on September 3, 1999, then,” I said.

He stiffened. “Yes,” he said slowly. In the silence, it felt as though the camera were emitting its own tiny sound — the barely audible breathing of febrile ground, or of something waiting to capture something else. “I suppose.”

“Were you aware of the disappearance of a significant amount of RDX in the middle of the night on that date?” said Viktor.

Simonov laughed, but it sounded like a warning. “That was a very long time ago,” he said.

“You might remember it,” said Viktor, “as the night before the bombings started.”

Simonov’s voice went quiet. “Turn off the camera,” he said, and Viktor did as he said. Simonov looked at us differently — his mouth hung open, but his eyes were narrowing into an expression that was cold and, implausibly, quite sober. Then he smiled. “Kind of an odd question for students.”

I looked at Viktor. He turned his head slightly to the side.

“I know who you are,” said Simonov. “I know who you work for.”

I started to speak, but Simonov waved his hand at me. “He will not win,” he said.

“No,” said Viktor.

“Then there’s something we can agree on,” said Simonov. “And he’s making this film. You really thought I hadn’t heard of this? You really thought I didn’t know?”

He leaned back and looked at us. His gaze was stricken and faltering, as though he’d been waiting his whole life for this moment, and now that it was upon him, there was nothing he could do with it. For a long time he looked at us, his mouth puckering. “Lucky for you,” he said at last. “My daughter was killed in Buynaksk.”

I leaned back. “She was?”

“She was.”

“I’m so sorry.”

He looked down. I looked at Viktor. I could tell that he wanted to turn the camera back on, but he didn’t. “They announced it two days early,” said Simonov. “Gennadiy Seleznyov announced it to the Parliament, that there’d been an explosion in Buynaksk, and I was so afraid for her. But then she called me and said, ‘Papa, I’m fine. It was Moscow. It was a mistake.’ Two days later she was gone. They must have gotten their dates mixed up.” He chewed on his knuckle. I tried to imagine it. It was hard to imagine what that might take from a person.

I leaned forward. “Can you talk to us?” I said.

Simonov stared. “I loved my daughter.”

“Of course,” said Viktor.

He shook his head. “I loved my daughter,” he said again. “But I have other daughters. I have a wife. I enjoy my own life, if that’s not too tawdry to say. I cannot talk to you. I’m sorry.”

Viktor looked at me a little hopelessly. “Talk to us,” he said. “Talk to us now, for your daughter.”

“I didn’t know what they were going to do with it,” said Simonov miserably. “I thought it was for the Dagestan incursion. I thought it was for some business abroad. I swear to you, I did not know.”

“We believe you,” said Viktor. “We believe you.” He leaned forward. “What was her name, your daughter?” This was a little callous, I thought — but then it was also pretty smart.

Simonov looked down. “Valentina,” he said finally.

“That’s a pretty name,” I said. Viktor gave me a look that told me I was pushing it. There was another long silence.

“I can’t talk to you,” said Simonov. “Though I can’t help it if you break in.”

Viktor raised an eyebrow and looked at me.

“I can’t help it if you break in,” said Simonov again. “But if you do, you need to make sure to really break the windows.”

We did it at night, when Simonov had told us he’d get the guards drunk. We could hear them carousing off in the corner of the facility, singing some vigorous military songs and slamming bottles heartily on tables. Next to the office building, rows of Gelandewagens crouched half buried in the muck. Snarled bits of equipment poked out of huge squares of blue tarp. We did break the windows, and then we climbed through — first me, then Viktor. I was bleeding from above my navel, a little. The office was small and organized, with short file cabinets squatting darkly against the walls. We didn’t switch on the lights, but we didn’t need to. Simonov had made it easy for us. On the desk, he’d set out the papers that dryly noted a request by the FSB for one metric ton of the explosive RDX, signed by himself, and dated September 3, 1999.