A Partial History of Lost Causes by Jennifer Dubois

Aleksandr, and he rolled it between his fingers. The glass felt clean, and when it was full, it was just about the weight of a king in a good set. Nikolai produced a cigar from his pocket and lit it with a Saigon Café matchbook. The cigar made sweet swirls in the air. Aleksandr’s head felt as if it were attached by a string connected to the ceiling and was dangling above his torso, moving in tandem with his gestures, manipulated by an unseen puppeteer.
    “What happened to Misha?” said Aleksandr. It was hard to form words. He was coursing with a silly relaxation, a pleasant absence of energy that left only a few things thinkable: taking deep gulps of the cinnamon smell of the cigar, watching the green lights bob like buoys on a dark ocean.
    “Well,” said Ivan. “Misha got stupid, Aleksandr Kimovich. And I’m going to tell you this so you don’t get stupid, too.”
    “Okay,” said Aleksandr stupidly. His tongue was clumsy in his mouth.
    “Because, to tell you the truth, you don’t seem like the sharpest individual,” said Ivan.
    “No,” said Nikolai. “He doesn’t.”
    “I know you’re a brilliant chess mind,” said Ivan. “This is what the newspapers tell me. And I believe what the newspapers tell me, always.”
    “Always,” said Nikolai.
    “But you can be good at one thing and not so good at other things,” said Ivan.
    “Or you can be good at one thing and not so good at any other thing,” said Nikolai.
    “Misha got stupid,” said Ivan. “He got stupid. He disseminated falsehood. He made statements that are not officially recognized as truth.”
    “He circulated defamatory statements about the Soviet state and system,” said Nikolai.
    “Oh?”
    “He signed a petition,” said Ivan, “and he’s been thrown in a psikhushka. We don’t know when he’ll be back.” He rubbed his temples, his fingers fluttering against his dark hair.
    “He’s an idiot,” said Nikolai. When he turned toward the light, his scars became aubergine thumbprints across his face.
    “The point is,” said Ivan, “in seriousness, there is something of that in you, I think, and I hope you won’t mind me saying so. Don’t do what people ask you, unless they are from the competent organs. Don’t violate the traffic laws.”
    “I don’t have a car,” said Aleksandr.
    “Don’t grant favors. Don’t make assumptions. I trust you were in the Komsomol?”
    Aleksandr shook his head. “You don’t really have to in Okha. It’s such a tiny town. Why, were you?”
    “Everybody was,” said Ivan curtly. He raised his eyebrows at Aleksandr and pulled his mouth into a tight line. “All the decent students.”
    “I see,” said Aleksandr. His head was starting to clear, and the green lamps were becoming dull orbs that pulsed against the inside of his eyelids. Nikolai and Ivan started talking about music, and then about women, and then about the invasion of Afghanistan and how many months it might take the Soviet army to subdue its dusty, uncultivated landscape and people. Aleksandr hadn’t been followingthe story much, although he’d glimpsed headlines as he flipped his way to the chess coverage—an “interventionist duty,” it was called, and “an invitation from the socialist brethren of Afghanistan”—and he bobbed in and out of listening. He was thinking about Misha, in psychiatric prison for having bad luck. He thought of the countless incomprehensible papers he’d encountered in his efforts to get to Leningrad, how many he’d signed without reading, without understanding. He went to find the bathroom.
    Near the door, the man in the wheelchair was still talking to himself. “Motherfuckers,” he was saying, punching the air with his cigarette. His head was down against his chest, as though he were telling secrets to his breastbone. The man’s legs were shriveled and mostly missing, and his face had an odd flatness to it. When he lifted his head into the light, Aleksandr could see that he was missing