Fardwor, Russia!: A Fantastical Tale of Life Under Putin

XXVII

TALKING ABOUT THIS guy makes me feel kind of uncomfortable–it’s always awkward to talk about something that no one would ever believe to be true, and I, in principle, could avoid this awkwardness by calling my hero by his real name but, first off, he’s already sued journalists and bloggers who unveiled his identity, and second, even his friends are used to calling him by his LiveJournal nickname, which is Close to Zero, therefore, you could go ahead and not believe me, but what can you do, even I’m used to it.

It’s funny, but Close to Zero was once even acquainted with Karpov, LiveJournal is generally conducive to creating the most exotic circles of acquaintances; but they had a fight long ago about some political crap, and not only did they stop communicating, but from time to time, not calling each other by name of course, they would exchange painful personal attacks against each other on LiveJournal. In general, it seems to me that Karpov is a bit less to blame in this conflict, but I’m also ready to agree that in any conflict both sides are equally guilty, therefore, I confess, I just don’t like Close to Zero, but I’ll try to control myself n describing him.

A graduate of the Department of Sociology at Moscow State University, his roots are in Kemerovo, but he was born in Mongolia; his parents worked in the Federal Trade Agency. He started to work in the ‘90s, I believe in ‘98 as a layout designer for a classifieds tabloid, then he worked in some elections, ended up in the Foundation for Effective Politics, worked there in various positions for six years or so, then he was let go–technically because of his weakness for participating in a historical re-enactors’ movement, combined (for some reason among the fans of war games this was fairly common) with the filming of gay porn–but in fact, the official wording was for “amoral polemicizing methods”; still, he remained in political circles, he now belonged to the semiofficial circle of “realists”, aka: “amoral reactionaries”, whatever that meant, and as for how he earns a living, I heard from the guys at the bookstore Falanster about him writing some reviews on non-fiction that are published once a week on some infrequently-visited websites. That’s Close to Zero for you.

And now he was riding in a truck that he had flagged down with a raised hand (he called this “doing a Roman salute”) on the Novaya Riga Highway, watching road signs and when the number on the kilometer marker matched what he had been told in Moscow, he got out of the truck and lit up a cigarette on the side of the road. He had no doubt that this was the start of a new life.