Sila's Fortune (5 page)

‘What about Gorbachev?' he was asked.

‘Naturally, the President of the Soviet Union remains our guide, our leader,' he answered. ‘It is our responsibility as advisors, allies, ministers, to ensure they work well together.'

At this point, Lev produced a document outlining the division of spheres of influence in Russia. He knew the proposal would not last two weeks and that, as President of the Russian Federation, by far the largest and most powerful state in the Union, there would be a permanent rivalry between Yeltsin and the President of the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, he proposed the paper with some success.

He did not report the details of these negotiations to Elena. He told her he was trying to get Boris Yeltsin elected but obviously without specifically admitting that he, a professor of economics, was resorting to nothing less than threats and corrupt practices.

The terms of the negotiation had occurred to him effortlessly, without the need to dwell on them, and with no sense of moral
repugnance whatever. The means had come naturally to him and his first step on the path to corruption cost him nothing.

By the time Gorbachev came back, the die was cast. A number of deputies had switched their loyalties and were prepared to vote for Yeltsin.

So began a period of great expectations for Lev. He knew he had done an excellent job. Yeltsin had not actually said thank you, but the resounding clap on the back had said more than words could. Yet still there was no offer of a post. Or at least not the one he had expected. The newly elected President saw in Lev an invaluable treasure-trove of ideas, but not the minister he had hoped to be. Hiding his bitterness, Lev worked at developing Russia's power – and hence Yeltsin's – in the hope that the President's power would shore up his own. But he was aware that an advisor had no claim to power but had to content himself with that vague, illusory notion that is influence.

Yeltsin wanted Russia to be a sovereign state. This was the goal. Lev, at the head of a pyramid of experts and constitutional lawyers, was charged with finding the means. This entailed expanding his proposal on the laws and spheres of influence, proclaiming that in all cases Russian laws should take precedence over those of the Soviet Union, something that amounted to a covert declaration of war. The sheer scope of the task appealed to Lev; it allowed him to demonstrate his intellectual superiority over Yeltsin's other advisors. He alone was capable of steering this immense project, of putting flesh on its bones, without ever losing his way. His knowledge of the law – though he was not a lawyer – was considerable, and, more importantly, he learned quickly; he seemed more impressive with each
passing day and within two weeks of beginning work, he could discuss every last detail with the punctiliousness of a constitutional lawyer.

Yeltsin, for his part, wasted no time. Like all good political philosophers, the ex-foreman realised that power tends inexorably towards the absolute. He held constant meetings with the Russian parliamentary deputies to persuade them to support his bid for Russian sovereignty. On 8 June 1990, the Russian parliament decreed the primacy of Russian over Soviet law, and on 12 June Russia became a sovereign state. The battle was won.

But what had they won? On the evening of 12 June, having celebrated this great victory, this was the question that nagged at Lev's brain as his chauffeur drove him home. What had they won? And what exactly had
he
won? Was the demise of the Soviet Union – and what they had done was clearly the death knell of the Union – really a victory? And if so, what kind of victory? The overthrow of a dictatorship? Would another not come along to replace it? Had he not simply worked for the victory of one man over another?

He pushed aside these questions. Forgot them because he had to forget them, because tomorrow work would begin again and because, in a month, Elena would give birth to their son Yevgeni. Just as they had married as the Berlin Wall fell, so their first child was born into the ruins of the Soviet Union.

‘An epic birth,' Elena said.

Yes. An epic birth just as a new battle was beginning: privatisation. An escape route presented itself. Lev began to feel that perhaps politics did not interest him as much as he had thought.
It was something that once upon a time he had dreamed about, argued about passionately at the Institute of Economics; he had dreamed up a thousand projects in preparation for the future. Every day he was reminded of the usefulness of politics at key moments in history, but the struggle was so intense that he was already exhausted. Yeltsin drew his strength – a fighter's strength though he often reeled as much from exhaustion as from alcohol – from the conviction that he was loved, that he was indispensable to the country's fate. Standing in the shadows, Lev received no acknowledgement, no contact with the crowds and he was ill-disposed by temperament to believe that any individual was indispensable. It was probably, Lev thought sardonically, the last vestige of his Marxist beliefs: the individual was nothing, there was always someone to take his place.

The new task the government had set itself – the move to a free market economy – opened up new prospects for him: he could take over a business. Especially as those who had recently come to power included the economic reformers, like Gaidar, whose views he shared. Granted it was not the fate of a country, but at least it meant real power, actual control and the possibility of a sizeable income. After all, it was not as though he earned a particularly good living and he was a father now, a family man. And to think that Elena had given up political science and decided to do her Master's degree in literature.

‘You're the one who should be in politics,' Lev told her. ‘We need an idealist in the family.'

‘You're already in politics.'

‘I'm thinking of packing it in.'

‘That's it? You don't want to influence things any more?'

‘I want to influence them in a different way. And not through politics.'

‘So you're abandoning your ideals?' said Elena mockingly.

‘I didn't have many to start with and I have a lot fewer now, as you well know, though I like to think that I've haven't been entirely useless. And I realise that I don't enjoy politics, but I think that maybe you might. You're more than capable.'

‘I've watched you at it, I'd rather not.'

Lev closed his eyes.

‘Why not go back to teaching?' he thought. ‘I could get a senior position at the Moscow State University. Professor Lev Kravchenko.'

But this was something Lev obviously could not do. He had had a taste of an intoxicating drug. Through Yeltsin, he had tasted power, its fears, its victories, its defeats, the constant feeling of being in the eye of the storm, at the point where decisions were made. He could not go back to being a spectator. Not yet, at least. ‘Later,' he thought, ‘when I've really made the most of things, when I've made my fortune and enjoyed everything the battle has to offer.'

Rousseau insisted that man is born innately good only to be corrupted by society, a theory many philosophers have striven to refute. Researchers and writers have also studied how the steady progression of Evil, in its banality, gradually changes a very ordinary man.

Clearly there have been insufficient studies in the case of the idiot.

Mark Ruffle would present an interesting specimen. The scene at the restaurant captured him in all his brainlessness, his brutality, his constant self-assertion. Characteristics further emphasised by his square jaw, his low brow and his broad shoulders. Ruffle, for his part, insisted on only one thing: ‘Mark Ruffle is tough and everybody better get that through their thick skulls.' It was a theory he propounded from childhood, probably from his first day at elementary school, to the first child who dared to sit in a seat Mark had chosen.

His father was a property tycoon in Florida, an ex-foreman grown rich by dint of hard work and greasing the palms of local officials; strategies which over the course of twenty years had made him one of the most important businessmen in the state. He had built a lavish mansion with a huge swimming pool in Clarimont, a little town that was provincial, narrow-minded
and pleasant, with manicured lawns and carefully tended gardens. In fact, with its elegant town centre, its vibrant colours, its upmarket stores, its polite, congenial residents, it might have been perfect were it not for the fact that sooner or later you had to wonder whether it was
real
. Whether these people were not simply being paid to
pretend
. Paid to pretend to be polite, to tend their gardens. To live.

To understand Mark Ruffle, it's important to understand the most important day of his life: Sunday. In Clarimont, Sunday was the day when football was played, the curious variant played only by Americans according to rules incomprehensible to the rest of the world which, though vaguely related to rugby, requires so much protective padding – shoulders, elbows, head – that it looks as though it is being played by robots.

On weekdays, Mark was simply a second-rate student forced to pay attention to lessons that clearly went in one ear and out the other. He was not particularly popular with other boys, who disliked his aggressiveness and his arrogance, while girls made fun of his bulldog physique. None of this mattered however: Ruffle knew no doubts. He had his own gods: his father and his football coach, whose opinions alone mattered to him and who together seemed intent on cultivating his aggressiveness and his arrogance the way you might train a pitbull.

Then came Sunday. A day prepared for by his training during the week on the football field and in the long sessions at the gym that made Mark so proud of his admittedly impressive pecs and biceps. On Sunday, one of the finest running backs in the history of the school displayed a thirst for battle, an obsessiveness and a stamina that were remarkable, to say the
least. From the moment he woke on Sunday morning, he felt a feverish excitement. Today was his day. His father would make breakfast for him, his mother would ask if he felt at the top of his game, ready to win. He would grunt with conviction. His parents would drive him to the football field where his coach would ask if he felt at the top of his game, ready to win. At which point he would ball one hand into a fist and furiously thump his open hand.

He would change into his football gear, put on his pads, listen to the pep-talk of the coach, fleetingly aware of the man's flushed cheeks, look round at his teammates, then the team would troop out onto the field.

And then Mark would hurl himself into the fray. And he could not have demonstrated greater passion in the kickoffs, greater ferocity in the tackles. What was most surprising was that despite his heavy build, he was very fast, easily managing to outrun much leaner opponents. And in these bursts of speed, as he raced down the gridiron, his wiry legs supporting a heavy, muscular torso made all the more impressive by his warlike gear, a cheer would go up from the stands. Yes, Sunday was his day. The roar from the coach's bench and from the crowd – admittedly just players' families and a handful of fans from Clarimont, but it was enough, especially when his mother clapped, when his father leapt to his feet yelling above the cheering of the crowd – this was what filled him with joy, what reminded him that life was worth living, that he was Mark Ruffle, powerful and admired by everyone in spite of his fucking teachers. He felt a vital spark kindled in him, the exhilaration of self and of the struggle and, the roar from the stands
accompanying him like a victory parade, he would run, swift, strong, invincible towards the Grail that was the goal-line and, with an animal cry, score a touchdown.

And that cry, when he was sixteen and had his first girlfriend, that cry was an assertion of masculinity addressed to the whole world and in particular to the big-breasted cheerleader he thought of as his reward for his role on the team. She was the sister of one of his teammates, the sort of girl who in middle school wouldn't have given him a second glace but now, spellbound, would jump up and down clapping and giving little squeals of delight.

Yes, Sunday was his day. The exhilaration of anticipation. The pleasure of a victory won by sheer force, the one feeling he truly gloried in, the one he would have liked to be able to experience every other day of the week without being forced to pay lip-service to duty, respect and education.

But Sunday drew to a close. And with it the match, the victory, the post-match analysis and congratulations as his father drove him home, having hugged him hard as he came off the field. In spite of his efforts the next day to talk about his win or at least his perfect performance on behalf of the team, the feeling wasn't the same. Off the field, his enthusiasm seemed excessive or stupid or simply laughable to others. And as the voices of his teachers grew louder, drowning out the roar from the bleachers, the vital spark within him flickered out.

What could he do to keep Sunday alive?

What could he do but go on to play pro football so he could experience to the hundredth degree the glorious feelings he had tasted?

What could he do but explain his plans to his father, whose reaction was enthusiastic, though the enthusiasm seemed a little phony, as though other plans had already been made for him, as though – a hideous thought –
they didn't believe in him
?

What could he do but prolong his high-school career at a university to which he was admitted by virtue of his sporting prowess and – though he didn't know it – a generous donation from his father to the institution. Curiously, though not the one he had applied to, it was a good college, and the coach there had known his high-school coach for years.

What could he do but try to keep the flame of Sunday alive now when, more often than not, he found himself sitting the game out on the bench, when in spite of his aggressive temperament he found himself crushed by monsters who were bigger, stronger and faster than him?