All The Sad Young Literary Men Part 11

Bashar turned squarely to Sam. Undernourished as he was, skinnier and shorter than Sam, who was not tall, Bashar stood now to his full height. "I am a good fighter," he said. "Ask Akhmed. Look." He pulled up his jeans to his knee, exposing his ankle, and pointing. Sam saw a small dime-size circular scar on his ankle, and then Bashar turned his leg so that Sam saw a slightly larger one on the other side. "The bullet came here and out there. At Jenin Camp. So I am a good fighter," Bashar concluded.

"OK," said Sam. "But you're still too skinny." And he squeezed his arm while Bashar made a muscle.

Meanwhile Mohammed had moved on to another chat session, this one in Arabic. A girl in Muslim headdress was on the screen in the same spot as the girl in the tank top had been. Mohammed grinned and picked at the keys, not bothering now to adorn them in all the colors of the world.

"His girlfriend," said Bashar. Mohammed overheard and, perhaps it was one English word he knew, punched his brother in the leg.

Then he grew excited. He typed faster, Sam-like. He typed like the wind. Bashar, reading over his shoulder, became concerned. "She is also in Internet," he explained to Sam. "She is saying there is tank. We cannot go home."

Sam didn't understand.

"We live here," Bashar said, indicating Birqin with a stab of his finger on the monitor of the sleeping computer next to Mohammed's. "And now we are here. And she is here. Tank is here."

There was a tank between them and Akhmed's father's house, and Mohammed's girlfriend could see it from where she was. "So we'll sleep at the GIS apartment," Sam said. But if they hadn't logged on to this chat, if the American girl hadn't become spooked by the twin Arab font geniuses, then what? OK, they should not have been out past curfew-but why was there a curfew? The Israelis weren't even here. The Israelis weren't even here.

They walked back into the night. The Internet place was air-conditioned, if only weakly, and now the humidity surrounded Sam like a blanket. He tried to breathe slowly, walk slowly, like an Arab. In Jerusalem right now it was perfect-dry, balmy, a little breeze on the heights, and probably the safest time to be out, since terrorism was a daytime job. Although only here, the place from which the random violence emanated, could you really feel safe. That is, if you were American. You didn't feel safe here if you were a Palestinian, because Israelis sometimes shot at you. This was how it went: Palestinians felt OK on Israeli buses, and Sam, who was nervous on Israeli buses, felt OK in the territories. It was a very modern modern situation. situation.

They wended through various backstreets and alleyways, insofar as little Jenin had them, and emerged at last onto the main road, the next turn of which would take them to the GIS apartment and safety. And then, suddenly, right before them, a thing-an enormous, gigantic, hulking metal thing. Perhaps not so gigantic. But bigger than a horse, a lot bigger, and bigger than a pickup truck. A pretty big thing. A tank.

The four of them froze. They were out after curfew and the tank could, theoretically, open fire. Those were the rules. And Sam- Sam was not wearing an orange vest or carrying a laptop or really in any way distinguishable from a native Jeninian military-age male.

Except for his shorts. It would be embarra.s.sing to die in one's shorts, and yet-as the split second for which they'd been frozen ended, and all four dove back into the alleyway-Sam wondered whether it wasn't the shorts that had given the soldiers in the tank pause. Because as soon as they were in the alleyway a series of rounds. .h.i.t the ground where they had been.

They stood still, their backs pressed to the wall.

"Are they really trying to shoot us?" Sam asked Akhmed.

Akhmed was too out of breath to answer.

"Probably no." Bashar answered for him. "They shoot-just in case." He grinned at Sam.

Sam nodded.

Mohammed had gone farther down the alley, scoping out the situation, but now he flew by them and, without sticking his head out into the street, flung something in the direction of the tank. A rock-Sam saw it leave his hand in the moonlight. "Jesus Christ," he said, incredulous, and then the four of them waited, hushed, cringing, wondering what kind of repercussion this rock, thrown with such nonchalance, by this boy, Mohammed, the master of font manipulation, would have-and then, incredibly, a sharp metallic plunk. plunk. The rock had hit the tank! What a sound it made! And despite all the hummus he'd eaten, Sam now kept up with the brothers as they raced down the alleyway toward an alternate route back to the GIS apartment, machine-gun rounds from the tank clattering impotently behind them out on the main road. The rock had hit the tank! What a sound it made! And despite all the hummus he'd eaten, Sam now kept up with the brothers as they raced down the alleyway toward an alternate route back to the GIS apartment, machine-gun rounds from the tank clattering impotently behind them out on the main road.

Sam couldn't help but laugh and laugh and laugh, even as he ran. There was no going back now, even though he'd go back tomorrow, even though he'd spend the weekend on the beach in Tel Aviv. Now, at long last, his arms pumping at his sides, the tank still firing madly behind them, his chest heaving, he knew. The Palestinians were idiots. But the Israelis-well, the Israelis were f.u.c.kers. And when Sam saw an idiot faced with his natural enemy, the f.u.c.ker, he knew whose side he was on.

He slept in a sweaty heap that night at the GIS apartment, on a bunch of sleeping bags laid across the floor. Akhmed was to the left of him; Mohammed and Bashar on the other side, with Mohammed's leg draped periodically over Sam's ankle. Eight months later, in Gaza, a pretty American college student from the GIS was run over by an Israeli bulldozer, whose driver claimed not to have seen her. That same month, also in Gaza, an Israeli sniper put a bullet into the brain of a British GIS member, killing him. And that same month-it was the month the United States was invading Iraq, so the world was very busy-a young American in Jenin, staring down an Israeli armored personnel carrier in broad daylight, had part of his face taken off by a round it fired. Sam recognized the name of the street. But he was in New York by then, where he'd moved shortly after returning to the States, and found a job paralegaling. Sam was preparing for law school. It was important that he knew what he knew, though how exactly it would come into play was impossible to tell. For the moment, on weekends, he kept up with the news, sipped his beer, and thought about the future.

Phenomenology of the Spirit

I found the Mensheviks kind, intelligent, witty. But everything I saw convinced me that, face to face with the ruthlessness of history, they were wrong.

-Victor Serge

Mark's dissertation, in the end, was about Roman Sidorovich, "the funny Menshevik." Lenin had called him that, menshevitskiy khakhmach, menshevitskiy khakhmach, in 1911. Sidorovich was tickled. "I'd rather be in 1911. Sidorovich was tickled. "I'd rather be menshevitskiy khakhmach, menshevitskiy khakhmach," he said (to friends), "than bolshevitskiy palach. bolshevitskiy palach." I'd rather be the Menshevik funny-man than the Bolshevik hangman. Oops.

They were all in Switzerland then, having fled the scrutiny of the tsar's secret police. In 1917, they all, Lenin and Trotsky and Sidorovich, returned home after the tsar abdicated. Or anyway Mark thought they did. The truth is, Sidorovich was too minor a figure for anyone to have noticed when exactly he returned, what exactly he was wearing, his friends and his widow gave contradictory accounts, and his personal papers were confiscated in the 1930s. But Mark thought he could see him in the doc.u.mentary evidence, cracking jokes. It was in fact the task of his dissertation to prove that many of the anonymously attributed humorous remarks of 1917 ("someone joked," "a wit replied") were attributable to Roman Sidorovich.

In 1920, after securing power, Lenin exiled many of the Mensheviks. The Sidoroviches found themselves in Berlin, where Roman briefly succ.u.mbed to the temptation to write humorous book reviews for Rul', Rul', the liberal paper a.s.sociated with, among others, Nabokov's father. In 1926, however, Sidorovich grew bored and depressed and asked to be allowed back into the country. He was allowed. Five years later, he was arrested, and his "humorous remarks," the ones Mark spent all his time authenticating, were spat back at him during his interrogation. It turned out the Bolsheviks had a very good memory for humorous remarks. the liberal paper a.s.sociated with, among others, Nabokov's father. In 1926, however, Sidorovich grew bored and depressed and asked to be allowed back into the country. He was allowed. Five years later, he was arrested, and his "humorous remarks," the ones Mark spent all his time authenticating, were spat back at him during his interrogation. It turned out the Bolsheviks had a very good memory for humorous remarks.

"I confessed to the good ones right away," Sidorovich said later.

"Then they tortured me, and I confessed to the bad ones, too.

"Then they tortured me some more," he also apparently said, a few times, "and I blamed the bad ones on my friends."

The record of the interrogation had not survived. But it was known that Sidorovich received a five-year sentence in Verkhne-Udalsk. He returned to Moscow in 1936 and was rearrested in early 1941. He was on his way back to Verkhne-Udalsk, or beyond, when the Germans invaded. At this point history lost track of Roman Sidorovich, and so did Mark.

It was now the spring of 2006, and in a flurry of activity over the course of two weekends, Mark had actually finished the dissertation that for so long, over the course of so many days and nights, so many hockey practices and midday jogs, so many arguments with Sasha, poor Sasha-and then after she left, all the wandering through the apartment, all the fruitless trips to the library during which he looked at photos of naked women, if no one was around-that through all this had occupied his mind. It was over. He was done; he had affixed all the proper footnotes, the appendices, the (possibly dubious) methodological explanations, and then he'd affixed all the proper postage and, from the giant post office in Madison Square, mailed the dissertation to his saintly adviser, Jeff. As a kind of joke, Jeff decided to schedule his defense for May 1, International Workers' Day. Now it was getting on toward the end of April. All that remained for Mark to do was produce a short talk in his own defense and take a bus up to Syracuse.

But it was not so simple. Life, Mark's life, had thickened somehow, had expanded greatly in its complexity without expanding simultaneously in capacity and means. He was embroiled in a situation, in short, and afraid to leave New York.

Mark had spent his twenties, even that portion of his twenties that he spent married, preoccupied with the problem of s.e.x. He considered it in the positivist tradition of how to find it, of course, but also, and more significant, in the interpretivist or postmodernist tradition of how to think about it, how to ponder it historically, how to discourse about and critique it. This was, again, both during and after his marriage to Sasha. To be outside of s.e.x, Mark believed, to be outside this great procession, this great unfolding of man's freedom, was to be reactionary, irrelevant. Did he exaggerate the importance of s.e.x because he himself, trapped in marriage and trapped in Syracuse, was so far removed from it? Perhaps. And yet the fact that s.e.x eluded him seemed only to indicate to Mark his historical position. Who was he to argue? He kept his mouth shut and searched the Internet for dates. No wonder he couldn't write his dissertation.

Then-eighteen months ago-he moved to Brooklyn. Historical periods, according to Marx, produce both recognizable types and anti-types, and late capitalism, at around the time Mark was moving to Brooklyn, was producing its own antibodies, its ant.i.theses, in the form of young women who thought that Mark was just fine, that Mark was just dreamy. They loved that he didn't have any money; they adored that he didn't know how to go about getting it. He was so cute! thought the women. Where did you come from? thought Mark. The answer was that the colleges produced them. Then bought them plane tickets, gave them Mark's address. "The workers have no country," wrote Karl Marx-but Mark Grossman did have a country, as it turned out, and that country was New York. In his first two weeks there he met more attractive, articulate women, in person, than he had in the previous four years of multimedia dating in Syracuse. He bought a cell phone and the women of Brooklyn called him on it, texted him on it; he set his ring tone to the opening theme of the television show Dynasty, Dynasty, and they caused it to chime from his phone at all hours of the day. What could he do? He canceled his Internet dating profiles, ceased his interminable e-mail negotiations with girls he'd never seen. At the age of thirty, Mark Grossman had finally solved the problem of s.e.x. and they caused it to chime from his phone at all hours of the day. What could he do? He canceled his Internet dating profiles, ceased his interminable e-mail negotiations with girls he'd never seen. At the age of thirty, Mark Grossman had finally solved the problem of s.e.x.

Too late, it turned out. Life worked by a series of compensatory measures. You had to wait and wait, and while you waited you worked in libraries on your dissertation and occasionally logged on to the Internet to watch the trailers for the latest p.o.r.nographic films. And now? Now behold Mark in bed with Gwyn, his beautiful former student. His beautiful twenty-two-year-old former student. An impossibility in Syracuse; an everyday occurrence all across New York. No wonder they charged such rents. But behold Mark staring up at the ceiling queasily. Behold him making inadequate mumbled responses to her questions. Behold Gwyn asking directly if he would please make love to her. Behold Mark saying no!

Oh, if Mark's teenage self had seen him doing this-why, if Mark's self of just eighteen months ago had seen it-those Marks would have shaken their fists at this Mark. They'd have called him terrible names. But they didn't know the situation! thought Mark. "Listen," he wanted to plead with the teenage Mark, "don't spend the bar mitzvah money on a car. Let Dad Dad buy you the car. He won't mind. Save the money for when you're thirty years old and living in Brooklyn. You'll need it." "You're pathetic," teenage Mark would no doubt answer. He was a c.o.c.ky kid. "I need that car to get to hockey practice. Are you going bald?" "I'm not sure," grown-up Mark would say. "It's been like this since I was twenty. Kind of a mystery." Then he thought of something. "Listen!" he called out to disappearing teenage Mark. "Don't go to grad school!" But teenage Mark was already gone, that little snot, leaving grown-up Mark to face the present. In the present things had come to a sorry pa.s.s. He was running out of money. He was dating two women, causing him to feel guilty, causing him to spend more money, causing him to experience what Americans call buy you the car. He won't mind. Save the money for when you're thirty years old and living in Brooklyn. You'll need it." "You're pathetic," teenage Mark would no doubt answer. He was a c.o.c.ky kid. "I need that car to get to hockey practice. Are you going bald?" "I'm not sure," grown-up Mark would say. "It's been like this since I was twenty. Kind of a mystery." Then he thought of something. "Listen!" he called out to disappearing teenage Mark. "Don't go to grad school!" But teenage Mark was already gone, that little snot, leaving grown-up Mark to face the present. In the present things had come to a sorry pa.s.s. He was running out of money. He was dating two women, causing him to feel guilty, causing him to spend more money, causing him to experience what Americans call stress. stress. Mark was an American himself, and not immune to it. Mark was an American himself, and not immune to it.

He woke up a few hours later, late and alone. Gwyn had gone off to her interns.h.i.+p, and he had a lunch meeting with his adviser, Jeff. After that he had to watch the hockey game, it was the play-offs, and tomorrow night he'd have dinner with Celeste-his old beloved Celeste-possibly their last. And he had many e-mails to write in the interim, he knew.

He got up and showered. The door to his roommate Toby's room was closed, meaning Toby was inside looking at computer models of global warming. A novelist by trade-he had sold his novel about Milwaukee to a major publisher, who had then failed to publish it, so that Toby-like the screenwriters in Hollywood who live off options-was now in the process of selling the very same novel the very same novel to another publisher ("No publisher wants to be the publisher who turned down my novel," he explained), and so on-but in the meantime he'd become obsessed with the impending climate catastrophe. He had been a computer wizard once, and now he would spend hours in his room looking at the catastrophic climate models, modeling them. "At this rate," he would sometimes say, meaning the rate of global climate change, "my novel might never even be published." Toby was in a better situation than Mark, because he didn't spend so much money on dates. This wasn't because he didn't go on them-as a matter of fact he went on dates with a girl named Arielle, who was, incidentally, the high school ex-girlfriend of Mark and Toby's mutual friend Sam-but she was a lawyer now, and paid for them. to another publisher ("No publisher wants to be the publisher who turned down my novel," he explained), and so on-but in the meantime he'd become obsessed with the impending climate catastrophe. He had been a computer wizard once, and now he would spend hours in his room looking at the catastrophic climate models, modeling them. "At this rate," he would sometimes say, meaning the rate of global climate change, "my novel might never even be published." Toby was in a better situation than Mark, because he didn't spend so much money on dates. This wasn't because he didn't go on them-as a matter of fact he went on dates with a girl named Arielle, who was, incidentally, the high school ex-girlfriend of Mark and Toby's mutual friend Sam-but she was a lawyer now, and paid for them.

"Jog later?" Mark called through Toby's closed door.

Toby answered momentarily: "When?"

"Six?"

Toby agreed, and Mark was out the door. On his way down St. John's-the street got leafier, livelier, even the sounds carried more musically, the closer one got to Park Slope-he took out his cell phone and flipped it back and forth in his hand. His first phone had broken after he dropped it to the pavement, but he'd since replaced it with a st.u.r.dier Samsung model, and now he happily threw it up in the air and caught it again as he walked, knowing it could survive anything.

But riding the Q train over the Manhattan Bridge, Mark became depressed. There had been a time, upon moving to New York, when he would stand at the Q train window looking in awe and deference at the glory of the downtown skysc.r.a.pers, the huge art deco Verizon building, Pier 17, the cars moving, with wild abandon, on the FDR. Also, when he'd sometimes been on a date and forced to take a cab back across the bridge from Manhattan, it had been a consolation for the fifteen dollars he was spending to look out from that bridge after his six or seven drinks. Now the memory of those fifteen-dollar rides cut him to the quick. Syracuse had funded him longer, and more generously, while asking fewer questions and making fewer demands (though forwarding an obscene amount of departmental e-mail) than he could ever have hoped-and still it was about to end. With his defense, or without it, the money would now stop coming. Mark stayed glumly in his seat, counting how much longer he could remain in New York at his current rate of spending. He had $2,000 in the bank, and one more stipend check ($1,200) coming. That was it. And he was thirty years old.

Jeff Sterne, his saintly dissertation adviser, was already at the University Diner when Mark showed up ten minutes late. He had heard the trembling in Mark's e-mails and taken the train down to see him. Jeff was a wonderful man!-a professor who did not like the university, a Democrat who could not stomach the Democrats, and a vegetarian who did not like vegetables. While Mark chomped on a bacon cheeseburger ("Go ahead!" Jeff had said. "You look pallid. It's on me"), Jeff ordered a plate of rice and then coffee after coffee, into each cup of which he bravely poured sugar as he tried to convince Mark that the dissertation defense was nothing to fear.

"All you need to do is sit there," he said, pouring sugar. "Nod when they say you've done something wrong; apologize when they say you've offended them. It's like-a Komsomol court."

"I know," said Mark. "I know. It's just . . . Syracuse."

"Oh, it's not so bad."

"Do I really look pallid?"

"No. You look like a former athlete, gracefully aged."

"Thank you," said Mark.

They talked about Sidorovich, about some of Mark's former fellow graduate students, still trapped in Syracuse, still snorting pharmaceutical medications. Jeff told a funny story about the great Ulinsky. Mark watched him; Mark may not have been pale but Jeff really was. He was also broad-shouldered, gray-eyed, bespectacled, a surprisingly good-looking man, given his reticence, his kindness. "In a way I understand," he said now. "Once you enter the academy, it's hard to get out. They expect things from you. And you might get a job-or, put another way, they might a.s.sign you to a post-somewhere that is not New York. That too is like the Soviet education system. And I could see how one wouldn't want to leave."

Jeff looked around. Just then a very attractive forty-year-old woman in a thin leather car coat walked into the diner and made her way over to a booth and kissed-on the cheek-an older, rough-looking man. What was their relations.h.i.+p? Where did such women come from? Mark's adviser sighed. "You forget about death here," he said. "You might even forget about defeat." He spoke with the knowledge of twenty-five long years of political and academic defeat; with the disappointment of having written one good book in his career, about the Mensheviks in exile ("in autumn," he'd called it), which was one good book too few. He had contributed articles to Debate, Debate, a gentle, intelligent journal of the Left. One time-and one time only-he had been asked by the a gentle, intelligent journal of the Left. One time-and one time only-he had been asked by the New York Review of Books New York Review of Books to write up a biography of Stolypin. But he'd already agreed to do it for to write up a biography of Stolypin. But he'd already agreed to do it for Debate. Debate. It was typical of Mark's adviser that it was not he, but someone else, who had told Mark that story. It was typical of Mark's adviser that it was not he, but someone else, who had told Mark that story.

Mark was not worthy to sit at the same booth in a diner with this man. Looking down at his plate he saw that he'd devoured the burger but there were still some fries left, and he nudged the plate to the middle of the table to suggest that his adviser have some, too.

"You know," Jeff said finally, folding his arms on the table and leaning in toward Mark. "We always think we can save people. I mean we on the Left. And men too, I guess. We men.

"But I'm your adviser, right? I'm going to give you some advice. I came down here on the pretext that I I was going to save you. But actually I just wanted to see the city. People are going to do what they do, and aside from a social safety net and not bombing them, it's out of our hands. You have to save yourself, man. Each of us does. Save yourself." was going to save you. But actually I just wanted to see the city. People are going to do what they do, and aside from a social safety net and not bombing them, it's out of our hands. You have to save yourself, man. Each of us does. Save yourself."

He poured a mound of sugar into his coffee and smiled ruefully.

"Anyway, enough of that," he said. "Tell me about your life here. Are you in love?"

Was Mark in love?

He pondered the question on the ten blocks down from the diner to the NYU library. From Syracuse, over the course of several maddening weeks, he had once claimed, with mounting fervor, to be in love with Celeste. And then, four months ago, he had walked into a party in Park Slope and seen her at the other end of the room. His heart leaped to his throat. There she was! She was laughing. She didn't see him. They hadn't talked since the night she left those messages on his machine while he was-the thought pained him even now-at Leslie's place. Seeing her to his right across a room in Park Slope he turned left, put down his coat, found a drink, drank it, found another drink, and only then, when he suspected she might already have seen him, finally approached. He was no longer the awkward recently divorced graduate student trapped in Syracuse; he was a man with half an apartment on St. John's between Was.h.i.+ngton and Cla.s.son, a real person. And yet he felt like a boy.

She was delighted to see him, however. She'd heard he was in New York. What was more, she managed to add quickly enough, she had broken up with her boyfriend, the very boyfriend Mark had so zealously tried to chase away.

"What happened?" Mark was shocked. In his way he'd developed an attachment to the boyfriend, as the revolutionaries might be said to have developed an attachment to the tsar. Whenever anyone tried to include a clause in the old social-democratic charters, long before the Revolution, banning capital punishment, the cry would go up, "What about Nicholas II?" This was always argument enough. Then the Bolsheviks murdered the entire royal family in a blood-soaked bas.e.m.e.nt in Yekaterinburg and, you know, after s.e.x all animals are sad.

"Oh, G.o.d," said Celeste. "It was like dating, I don't know, Peter Pan. No, not like that. It was like dating Kafka!"

Mark didn't understand.

"No, you're right, he wasn't like Kafka. It was just-I'm out of literary allusions. It was like Charlotte's fiance in s.e.x and the City. s.e.x and the City. Have you seen that one? Anyway, Tom, my ex, he can't stop seeing his mother. He visits her like every weekend. He's a thirty-year -old man. Is that normal?" Have you seen that one? Anyway, Tom, my ex, he can't stop seeing his mother. He visits her like every weekend. He's a thirty-year -old man. Is that normal?"

"It's not normal."

"I agree. So . . . here I am." She laughed, and appraised him. "Look at you! You're like the Count of Monte Cristo escaped from prison." She fingered some fabric from his sleeve. "Nice s.h.i.+rt!"

Mark was, in fact, wearing his nice s.h.i.+rt. "Thank you," he said.

And they were off, talking about their lives. Was it too late? Celeste looked-she was Celeste. Her laugh that he had never forgotten, throwing her head back, glamorously; her sense of fas.h.i.+on, both new and old and flattering and unflattering in all the right measures. She was three years older than she'd been when they had spent all those hours on the phone together, but she was alive, she was all and always herself, as none of the women Mark had known since moving to New York had been. She wore a short dress and tall boots; her hair was cut short. She lived in Fort Greene, and they made a plan-it wasn't even like he was asking her out-to meet up and get drinks. Mark walked home from the party with a whole new idea of life, of what life could do. Was it too late? He didn't know. Then they met for drinks and got so drunk! That was the thing about New York. Everyone was drunk all the time. But it was all right. It was discreet. It was upscale. It was not like in Syracuse, or Moscow, the drinking in the middle of the afternoon, the roving bands of drunks and the random violence. People were drunk in couples; they emerged from bars, quickly kissed, hailed a cab: and you never saw them again.

That's what Mark and Celeste did, too, though they were already close to her apartment, and so they walked.

Mark entered the NYU library with his visiting scholar pa.s.s and headed straight for the beautiful iMacs in the reference room.

So he had found Celeste. She lived in a large sunny studio on the third floor of a big Fort Greene building and her place was filled with her smells. Her shower curtain was a work of art. There were scattered papers from all her traveling and a backlog of the higher-brow magazines, but otherwise it was a lovely apartment, and as for her moods, which had sometimes been destructive, she had stabilized them masterfully with a dozen mood stabilizers. And so, old and experienced, they dove right in. Celeste did not like the Brooklyn weekend eating scene-"compet.i.tive brunching, " she called it-and instead on weekend mornings she sent Mark to the gourmet deli on Lafayette for egg sandwiches and in the meantime made French press coffee; then they sat on her big L-shaped couch, next to the window, reading the enormous New York Times. New York Times.

Recently, however, there'd been some kind of s.h.i.+ft. Celeste, truth be told, wasn't quite who Mark thought she was, from Syracuse; or rather he wasn't quite who he he thought he was. Too long a sacrifice, Mark sometimes said to himself, when he began to notice their problems, can make a stone of the heart. But that wasn't really it. Objectively they were in trouble. "We're not twenty-three anymore," Celeste said once as they settled down at Frank's, in Fort Greene, to get drunk. "And I'm tired." She kept having to fly off to Chicago, to Miami, to cover their so-called news. Mark's roommate, Toby, would have known that the only news that mattered was the daily increasing hegemony of the global corporations and their destruction of the earth. But still Celeste had to fly. And her sleeping pills and eating habits, and above all her many mood stabilizers, had some troublesome effects, inhibiting important intimate functions in addition to the depression and anxiety ones. "Can you stop taking them?" asked Mark. "I'd be weepy all the time," said Celeste. Mark said, "That sounds nice." "What about curled up in the corner with a knife?" "Less nice." "OK then." They sat in Frank's and eyed each other semi-warily. The newspapers, the magazines, the television, and Mark's in-box were selling youth elixirs and p.e.n.i.s extenders. One possible explanation was late-imperial decadence and corruption: life was too easy. Another explanation tended in the opposite direction. The television sold youth because life was thought he was. Too long a sacrifice, Mark sometimes said to himself, when he began to notice their problems, can make a stone of the heart. But that wasn't really it. Objectively they were in trouble. "We're not twenty-three anymore," Celeste said once as they settled down at Frank's, in Fort Greene, to get drunk. "And I'm tired." She kept having to fly off to Chicago, to Miami, to cover their so-called news. Mark's roommate, Toby, would have known that the only news that mattered was the daily increasing hegemony of the global corporations and their destruction of the earth. But still Celeste had to fly. And her sleeping pills and eating habits, and above all her many mood stabilizers, had some troublesome effects, inhibiting important intimate functions in addition to the depression and anxiety ones. "Can you stop taking them?" asked Mark. "I'd be weepy all the time," said Celeste. Mark said, "That sounds nice." "What about curled up in the corner with a knife?" "Less nice." "OK then." They sat in Frank's and eyed each other semi-warily. The newspapers, the magazines, the television, and Mark's in-box were selling youth elixirs and p.e.n.i.s extenders. One possible explanation was late-imperial decadence and corruption: life was too easy. Another explanation tended in the opposite direction. The television sold youth because life was not not simple and simple and not not easy; because you did not emerge from your twenties smiley-faced and full of cheer and love for all existence. easy; because you did not emerge from your twenties smiley-faced and full of cheer and love for all existence.

"You know," Mark began, "the Mensheviks would have said that-"

"Will you stop it with the Mensheviks? I mean, can we have one conversation where we talk about something else?"

Mark was hurt. "OK," he said meanly, "how many men have you slept with?"

Now Celeste was hurt. "I don't know," she lied. "Four?"

"Yeah," said Mark. "Sure. Me too."

So that was Celeste and Mark, six weeks ago. Not long after, Mark had received an e-mail.

Dear Mark, Hi, it's Gwyn, from your European history section in the spring of 2004. (In case you don't remember me, I wrote a paper on the Russian Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly. Poor Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly!) I just graduated and am about to move to New York to intern in publis.h.i.+ng. I heard from Professor Sterne that you're living there. I don't know the city very well, so I'm hoping that you might meet me for coffee next week-to help a girl get her bearings in the city. Are you available to meet?

I hope you're doing well.

Best, Gwyn Mark was all alone that week-Celeste was in Miami to write about Cubans, and Mark was supposed to be finis.h.i.+ng his dissertation-and he must have read the e-mail a hundred times. He looked under it, he looked around it, he sniffed and searched. A girl in the city? Available to meet? It could not mean what it looked like it meant. Gwyn had been so much more attractive-and, in her way, aloof, self-contained, cool-than any student he'd taught at Syracuse that it had never occurred to him that something other than just teaching and learning about the Bolshevik Revolution could go on between them. Her paper on the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly was clear, sharp, dutiful; at times it bordered, when it dealt with a really major text like Ulinsky's, on the wors.h.i.+pful. Maybe it had occurred to Mark, momentarily, that this wors.h.i.+p could be redirected. But he'd dismissed the thought, or anyway the thought as it pertained to Mark. And he dismissed it again three years later, despite the e-mail. So great is the power of human self-deception-ideology, the old revolutionaries would have called it-that even as Mark sat drinking coffee with Gwyn, her strong half-bare shoulders, her pure perfect skin, her chin like Ava Gardner's chin, her thick sensual lips-a girl from Minnesota-and all of it was shocking, to Mark, at his age, he was ten years older than she was, almost-even then, even as she told him that the publis.h.i.+ng house's idea of an interns.h.i.+p was that she put on high heels and go around to boutiques in Soho, seeing if they'd agree to sell some of the publisher's books, she had a kind of reserve, he'd really not thought anything could happen, which is why he didn't think it necessary even to mention this meeting to Celeste when she'd called him from Miami earlier in the day. In the coffee shop on Elizabeth they talked about the history of the Mensheviks: "I miss our cla.s.s," Gwyn said. "I miss the Mensheviks. " After coffee they walked out into the afternoon, it was still light out, and Mark-he had learned Old World manners, a little, from reading so much about the Old World-was politely walking her back to her new place on First Avenue, she was new to the city after all and might not find it, when she said, "You know, I kind of want a beer. Would you mind?" So they had gone to a bar. It was five o'clock; it was happy hour. At this point, something began to dawn on Mark. He drank four beers. Actually, he drank five and a half beers, approximately, because he drank so much faster than Gwyn, and she kept playfully topping him off from her own. The whole event cost him $20, plus $6 in tips, $26, barely more than a pair of movie tickets, and by the time they walked out they were both plastered. And somewhere back there he'd begun to suspect that Gwyn was not just innocently soliciting information about neighborhood restaurants from him. After a while her beauty, too, did not seem so incongruous. If you hung around with a very pretty woman in a dark bar during the afternoon, Mark found on this afternoon, you began simply to think that that's what people looked like. And so it was in kind of a spirit of experimentation that Mark leaned forward toward Gwyn on her landing and kissed her. the old revolutionaries would have called it-that even as Mark sat drinking coffee with Gwyn, her strong half-bare shoulders, her pure perfect skin, her chin like Ava Gardner's chin, her thick sensual lips-a girl from Minnesota-and all of it was shocking, to Mark, at his age, he was ten years older than she was, almost-even then, even as she told him that the publis.h.i.+ng house's idea of an interns.h.i.+p was that she put on high heels and go around to boutiques in Soho, seeing if they'd agree to sell some of the publisher's books, she had a kind of reserve, he'd really not thought anything could happen, which is why he didn't think it necessary even to mention this meeting to Celeste when she'd called him from Miami earlier in the day. In the coffee shop on Elizabeth they talked about the history of the Mensheviks: "I miss our cla.s.s," Gwyn said. "I miss the Mensheviks. " After coffee they walked out into the afternoon, it was still light out, and Mark-he had learned Old World manners, a little, from reading so much about the Old World-was politely walking her back to her new place on First Avenue, she was new to the city after all and might not find it, when she said, "You know, I kind of want a beer. Would you mind?" So they had gone to a bar. It was five o'clock; it was happy hour. At this point, something began to dawn on Mark. He drank four beers. Actually, he drank five and a half beers, approximately, because he drank so much faster than Gwyn, and she kept playfully topping him off from her own. The whole event cost him $20, plus $6 in tips, $26, barely more than a pair of movie tickets, and by the time they walked out they were both plastered. And somewhere back there he'd begun to suspect that Gwyn was not just innocently soliciting information about neighborhood restaurants from him. After a while her beauty, too, did not seem so incongruous. If you hung around with a very pretty woman in a dark bar during the afternoon, Mark found on this afternoon, you began simply to think that that's what people looked like. And so it was in kind of a spirit of experimentation that Mark leaned forward toward Gwyn on her landing and kissed her.

That was a month ago, and it had inaugurated a period of Mark's life that was bound to end badly. If meeting Celeste post-boyfriend was like arriving in Russia in March 1917, hopeful March after the tsar's abdication, the appointment of the provisional government, the short-lived democratic process, then they were well into anarchic June or even forbidding July. Was Gwyn his Kerensky? His Kornilov? Ekh. Ultimately these historical parallels were of limited use in figuring out your personal life.

Mark checked his e-mail in the NYU library. He had fourteen new messages, though no one had anything in particular they needed to tell Mark-except Celeste, who was checking on tomorrow's dinner, and Gwyn, who was sending some nice photos of them together at a bar. He hammered away at the replies, the loudest typist in the reference room by far. NO E-MAIL ON THIS COMPUTER said a little piece of paper affixed to his monitor. GO f.u.c.k YOURSELF, thought Mark. This isn't the Soviet Union. He would e-mail wherever he felt like it.

So was he in love? Perhaps rather than historically the answer could be formed mathematically. If he looked inside his heart, Mark could see that he did not quite love Celeste; and he did not love Gwyn. He had tender feelings, of different kinds, for both of them. Celeste was so funny! Gwyn was an angel. If you combined these feelings, they would add up to one unit of love. Possibly more more than one unit; definitely more than one unit. But-and this was the sign of Mark's maturity, on which Mark congratulated himself-he also knew that if he ended it with Celeste, or he ended it with Gwyn, he would still have one unit of love to give, and he would give it to Gwyn, or Celeste, respectively. than one unit; definitely more than one unit. But-and this was the sign of Mark's maturity, on which Mark congratulated himself-he also knew that if he ended it with Celeste, or he ended it with Gwyn, he would still have one unit of love to give, and he would give it to Gwyn, or Celeste, respectively.

Except how was he going to do this? He didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. He did not want to be denounced by anyone, especially Celeste. Or especially Gwyn. The world was full of so much pain and the thought of adding to that pain-again-was hard to bear. Oh, Mark thought as he headed for the subway. If only he could be as brave in his personal relations as he was in his defiance of anti-e-mail librarians!

In the history of Menshevism, there were exactly three great events: the break with Lenin in 1903; the walkout from the Soviet on the night of October 25, 1917; and, of course, the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly in January 1918.

Sidorovich was definitely not in Brussels in 1903; he may or may not have been in Petersburg in October; but he was, finally, at the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly in January. He had even produced a witticism on the subject. "The Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly was like the opera," said Sidorovich. "It was very boring but you felt, given how much it had cost, that you had to stay." It had cost nearly a hundred years of tireless labor; the fight for an all-Russian democratic congress-which is what the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly was-had destroyed the lives of countless men and women. And when it finally came, during the early months of the Bolshevik dictators.h.i.+p, it lasted exactly one day. When it became clear to the delegates on that day that they would not be allowed to return, they decided not to leave. At 4:00 a.m. they were expelled from the building. And it was over. A Bolshevik, asked by a journalist before the event what would happen if the Mensheviks and others tried to protest against the regime, had made a witticism of his own. "First, we will try to dissuade them," he said. "Then we will shoot."

Sidorovich didn't really have a comeback for that one. Neither did the Mensheviks. Even in Russian, some things aren't all that funny.

Mark emerged from the subway back in Brooklyn to find a voice message on his magic phone. "Hi, it's me," said Gwyn. "Just wondering what you're doing. I'm thinking of going to a movie. Do you want to come? There's this old movie playing at the Film Forum."

How young people loved to watch movies! And how their days had become strangely distended, and his days too, with their cell phones for calling each other on. He called back and told her he had blocked off tonight as defense preparation.

"OK," she said, sounding sad.

"Don't sound sad!"

"Are you almost done with it, though?"

"Yes," said Mark, honestly enough. "I'm almost done."

"Well," she said, "I can't wait to read it."

They hung up and almost immediately the Dynasty Dynasty theme song was playing again. Mark listened to it for a little while. What if Sidorovich had had a cell phone? He could have called home from Berlin in 1926. "Hey! How's the Revolution going? Oh really? That sounds terrible. Gosh. I guess I'll stay here for now." theme song was playing again. Mark listened to it for a little while. What if Sidorovich had had a cell phone? He could have called home from Berlin in 1926. "Hey! How's the Revolution going? Oh really? That sounds terrible. Gosh. I guess I'll stay here for now."

He looked at the phone. It was Sasha. His dear Sasha.