Also known as: V-Man (to Baroane), the proprietor, the most powerful man in Romania (his estimate, frequently confirmed)
Occupation: Owns newspapers, television stations and most of the rooms he walks into. My employer.
First appears: Chapter 005
Status: Counting my words.
Usually seen with: Factore, two steps behind. Mrs. Buțu, one step ahead.
His philosophy of life, as far as I could reconstruct it
Van D. does not believe in contradiction. He believes in possessing more than one truth, and he has never thought a fact should be wasted on a single interpretation. History, to him, is an unfinished manuscript whose author was negligent enough to die before appointing a suitable editor; he considers himself eminently qualified for the vacancy. Everything else is a deal. When two men sit across a table, there can be no other reason.
What I think he thinks of me
An intelligent nastiness. He told me so the first time we met, in an office that turned out to be a painter’s studio, under a private Last Judgment in which he had given himself the face of the Righteous Judge. He needs someone to point out when he has gone too far. As far as I know, I am the only employee who has made a career of it. He gave me a coloring book, so that I would not forget how to be good, and a full-size copy of Klimt’s The Kiss, and told me where to hang it. I hung it there.
What I think of him
I was twenty-one when he published my first investigation, which he had excellent reasons to leave in a drawer. That is the problem with Van D.: he is occasionally right, and never for the reasons you would like. His freedom seems older than money, older than morality. From a distance it looks like magnificent indifference. At close quarters it becomes something else, and I have no desire to discover just how close. I have always preferred a spectacularly deranged individual to a moderately deranged society, if only because the former is easier to recognize. He is the reason I still hold that view, and the reason I hold it from across the table.
Things he said to me, which I am still paying for
“An intelligent nastiness. Perfect. I always need someone to point out to me that I have gone too far.”
“You’re still naive. Which is a good thing.”
“Everything is a test of character, my boy! Particularly the things we’d rather have someone else do.”
“Ever heard of an attention span? It’s what people with something to say are supposed to consider before opening their mouths.”
“They usually have the decency to die one at a time.”
“My dear boy, I’ve been perfectly civil. I haven’t even asked whether they left you anything.”
“One of us has misunderstood the nature of the relationship.”
“Journalism is a complicated and demanding trade, and it can leave you jaded. And the only remedy against that state of affairs is being good.”
Andrei’s footnote: He counts words. This card has too many.
