“Give her to me, Edward,” Stanislaw said, as if joking.
I knew he wasn’t really — I’d seen how hard he struggled to get back his lost connections again. But as the cunning and wise Oriental Ghupta had said, “If you’re gone from New York for a month, all the girls are gone and have made other arrangements for themselves.” It will be the same after our deaths, brothers, I wanted to say cheerfully to both Ghupta and Stanislaw — a few days after our deaths all our girls will have found new dicks for themselves, and the livelier ones will have made other arrangements the very same day. Nature leaves nothing of our sentiments behind, and all is reduced to dust and ashes, regardless of what you hold on to or use as your foundation.
“Take her,” I said to Stanislaw. And I asked Natashka, “Would you like to go to bed with Uncle Stanislaw?” My girls are all very well trained now, and Natashka looked inquiringly at me.
She didn’t need Stanislaw; she needed me, who could calmly send her off to the Pole’s bed or anyone else’s. He wasn’t a bad sort, the Pole, and probably was a good lover, but she was mine. I didn’t want her to go to bed with the Pole, and she said, “No, I don’t want to.”
As soon as I stopped paying attention to them, to my girls, they completely changed the way they behaved with me, and inflicted scenes of jealousy and outraged love on me, although without any response on my part. They love me and reproach me now, and are afraid of losing me. Whereas before it irritated them when I asked them where they went without me and whom they were seeing, now they get angry that I don’t care at all what they do outside the confines of the millionaire’s house — whether they’re fucking somebody else or not. When they start telling me what they’ve been doing, my face clearly shows my boredom, as a result of which as a rule they suddenly stop in dismay and ask me, “Don’t you care, Edward?”
“No. Why do you say that?” I ask. “Go on with what you were saying.”
It’s clear I’m not interested. It’s always the same story, and how many have I heard in my dismal bedroom by the glow of cigarettes and to the background music of wine gurgling down my throat? Their stories are all alike, and even if I wanted to sympathize with what they’re saying, I still wouldn’t be able to, since it’s all so trivial. Almost every one of them carries the burden of an unhappy love affair and some kind of grudge against the world. A grudge against her parents or, more often, against her husband or her lover. «He» is either mean-spirited or callous, and as a rule doesn’t understand anything about «her» life.
They’ve devised the same kind of unhappy lives for themselves that I devised for myself with Jenny — we’re all the same, only besides my prick I have will and talent, while they have their cunts and sometimes talent, but no will. Their lives are probably more tranquil in reality than they seem from my bed.
I don’t treat them badly; oh no, I share everything I have with them — the house, wine, marijuana, money. I take them all to P. J. Clark’s on Third Avenue, a former Irish bar turned restaurant.
There’s nothing particularly special there, but the checkered table cloths, the old gravures, and the jerk-off waiters all create a sense of human comfort. Besides, they have very good steak tar-tare — not the slush they serve you at other New York restaurants.
I sit in P. J. Clark’s with my girls and drink Beaujolais Villages.
We look at each other with friendly grins and touch each other’s hands from time to time. Having just emerged from bed, we feel for each other the tenderness of animals who have been fucking each other, the affection of little dogs who have just fucked each other well. I always share with my girls my misfortunes, my ideas, and my little stories. I don’t pretend my life is cloudless. “My agent called yesterday,” I complain, “and told me another publisher has rejected my novel, a very progressive publisher that’s published some good books in the past, but now that they’ve made some money, they’ve gotten lazy and are very careless about reading manuscripts. Liza doesn’t want to drop me, she wants to continue working on it, but she admitted to me, ‘To be honest, Edward, I don’t know where to send the book anymore. Maybe you have some ideas? “
Together my girls are like a wife to me — one woman with many faces and bodies. I can share with them my anger about my most recent setbacks, and I don’t get depressed anymore. I can tell them about my feverish plans for the future, and they understand; they aren’t all that normal themselves. For some reason they come to me almost immediately after their attempts to kill themselves, or from deep depressions, or even from psychiatric clinics. It’s obvious I don’t attract healthy girls, or maybe healthy ones don’t interest me, or maybe, gentlemen, there just aren’t any healthy girls in the world?
Love? I love them in my own way, only I allocate my love among them. Would it really be fair for only one to have it? I feel the same tenderness for them that I felt for Jenny when I looked at her for the first time in our garden — a tenderness for those creatures who are alive at the same time I am, the tenderness of a male dog for his bitches. I service them and protect them from enemies. I would live with them all in one house, but they rebel, almost every one of them wanting all of me and not satisfied with merely a part. Then it’s necessary to get rid of the rebels, to replace them with fresh young girls.
They often get drunk, my girls, because it’s hard for them to have a normal relationship with me; they get drunk and take drugs for courage, and that’s when they decide to rebel.
Even the little pianist Natasha rebelled against me in a way. I was sitting with her in a dark barn-like bar on the Lower East Side and drinking J & B, of course (their company should send me a case of whiskey once a month for the publicity I give them: “Edward Limonov drinks only J & B”). Natasha, as I’ve already mentioned, looks about twelve, an exaggeration of course, although she’s almost young enough to be my daughter, and that isn’t an exaggeration.
We were on a spree, although where we drank before that I don’t remember. My girl, drunkenly puckering her little face, berated me for my indifference to life, for my lack of curiosity. The accusation of a lack of curiosity was unjust, but I didn’t say anything: She wanted to fight. The fact is that all her grievances came in the end to something like, “You’re special, you’re unique, you can be, so why aren’t you what I need?” Translating it all into normal language meant, “Why don’t you love me?”
The bar was huge and cold and dated back to hippie days, and a gigantic bartender of about forty with hair as long now as it had been back then served punk boys and girls in leather jackets and multicolored tufts of hair. There were a few older types in the bar too, unshaven and with dark circles under their eyes. I said nothing, smoking one cigarette after another and drinking my J & B. As I get older I feel less and less the need to explain myself, especially since I know from long experience that you can’t explain; everybody understands the words differently, and it’s useless.
Natasha covered her face with her hands and then uncovered it and said I was empty and cynical and would never write anything interesting and would only repeat myself. She was angry and wanted to hurt me. I wasn’t fucking her as much and was getting tired of her. I didn’t object: probably I was empty and bad, and maybe I didn’t have any future, either literary or human.
I went to the toilet. Its door was crudely fashioned from boards. Over the urinal somebody had written the words “Fuck you!” in bold letters. But a little below them somebody else’s kind hand had written, “That’s not nice.” Exactly, it wasn’t nice to write “Fuck you.” When I came out, an affectionate ginger-haired dog was running around the bar.
My companion was already behaving a little better and started telling me very insistently that I should get myself roller skates and/or a car. There wasn’t, she thought, enough speed in my life. While listening to her I drank another J & B, but I didn’t get any drunker. But at least sitting with Natasha was better than drinking alone. After that we left, I first with my hands in my pockets, and she a little behind with h
er purse. For some reason I’d gotten interested in the purse phenomenon, and I thought to myself, a woman without a purse is always defenseless. That’s why they all carry them. They have everything they need in them to make themselves up in the morning. Girls in jeans, however, have only their keys and a couple of dollars but no purse. As soon as they become women, the purse appears. Natasha has become a woman, since she’s carrying a purse now.
She had become one, and with a vengeance. We went back to my place. Stanislaw was still there, I think, but I didn’t want to see him, and so we went quietly up to my room and added to what we’d already had — we smoked a joint and had some more to drink. Then I think we flicked, although I don’t remember. The next morning Natasha wasn’t in bed with me. Well if she wasn’t there, then she wasn’t — she’d obviously left while I was still asleep. I shrugged and went into the bathroom to wash under the skylight. I opened the door, and…
The whole bathroom was spattered with blood. Lying on the floor were my knife and two pairs of manicure scissors covered with blood, and there was blood on some pieces of a razor blade that had come from who knows where. There was also blood on the floor and on the fluffy yellow rug and the tiled walls. My sandy-haired little girl, my little pianist, had obviously tried to kill herself or, more likely, had wanted to show me how serious our relationship was.
I sat down on the bathtub and thought. The little fool, I thought, why get mixed up with me, an angry thirty-six-year-old cynic? I certainly never had any desire to hurt her, but I live my life according to my own separate rules and, I think, separate from other people. I had told her at the start, “Watch out, Natasha, don’t fall in love with me!”
“No, I’m the same way you are, Limonov; I’ve had a lot of men, as many as you like!” she had answered.
I called her at home and then at the school where she taught music. She was at school. I didn’t get angry but only said, “Well, are you still alive?”
“Still alive,” Natashka said self-consciously. “Forgive me, Limonov. I got so drunk last night and I shouldn’t drink at all. I left a letter for you on the desk, but please don’t read it, all right?”
Of course I read the letter; I am a writer. It was a long one; I think she spent the whole night writing it while I slept, bastard that I am.
Limonov [the letter began], since you usually don’t pay any attention to what I say and don’t let me speak and make bored expressions, here’s a letter for you.
The fact that I made a pest of myself recently after drinking, saying you’re not such and such and you don’t do such and such, etc., whereas I’m “good,” doesn’t mean I’m in love or that I love you. No, it was because I was deeply offended by the way you treat me. And it isn’t that I need you to love me or sleep with me. You don’t really suit me as a lover at all — you’re monotonous, unattentive, brutal, and ungrateful… I’d very much enjoy coming over to talk with you and then sleep in one of the children’s rooms, which is where my place is with you! But no, one has to pay for your attention by making a certain part of one’s body available. Even though your attention is in fact directed at yourself, and I’m a spectator, a silent participant, which is very valuable to me, especially now, when I happen to be surrounded by so many worthless men and women.
I admire you, Limonov, but no more than that — I’m not a girl who’s in love with you. I believe and feel myself to be someone who has excellent talents, and I like very much what you write, and I know why. Despite my age, I understand a lot more in general and have more taste and sensitivity than most of the people around you. For me you’re not just a talented writer — otherwise there wouldn’t have been anything to attract me to your person; I could have read your books at home — but I repeat, you’re an exceptionally talented person, infectious, lively, and stand out to advantage from the feeble, silly, dreary people your own age.
The time I’ve spent with you has always given me the maximum pleasure, unless you start sulking and get depressed. What I’m trying to say is that I love you, or not even that I love you, but that I’m terribly curious about you, although you’re not a man to me, Limonov, oh no! My attitude toward you is enthusiastically rational, I would say, and the pleasure I’ve gotten from you is of a purely intellectual quality. And I don’t consider myself undeserving of your attention. I deserve it a lot more than those idiots around you who don’t even have the sense to understand or appreciate you. It’s incomprehensible to me the way they permit themselves to carry on around Limonov. You think the fact that they’re older requires them to understand, although my age says just the opposite, but there are exceptions to every rule.
I’m a big fan of yours, Limonov, and of your books, both present and future, and I’d be happy to be of use to you, only not in bed; I’m not up to it anymore, unfortunately. I don’t even want to get into bed with you anymore. You are really insulting in bed — unsatisfied and with absolutely no reason to be. If you don’t want a woman, then don’t fuck. Who do you think you’re doing a favor? I get the feeling in bed that you’re using one woman to revenge yourself on the whole female race. What I’d really like is for your Elena to finally come back to you so you could “live happily ever after and die the same day,” and then Limonov would stop taking revenge on women as a group, and wouldn’t be in such a hurry to take personal revenge on as many as he could, and would be kinder and more attentive and would write different kinds of books.
Excuse me for my hysterics, they’re just temporary, and don’t think they’re because of you, Limonov! It’s just that I shouldn’t drink at all, and it’s happened to me before that after I’ve got drunk I have for no reason started cutting my legs and arms, not to commit suicide but to hurt myself.
You’re far from being the main thing in my life, in fact. I have my own life as a musician. You say I’m not a woman; I’m glad to hear it, since that would only interfere with my creative life. Because the music I play and care about doesn’t include the lower part of the body, the sexual equipment, but the head and some organ of feeling in the chest. And it’s a great thing if you can keep your sexual characteristics from interfering with your music. That’s the reason you don’t like classical music, in fact — there isn’t any place in it for your prick — and why you like rock ‘n’ roll, where there isn’t room for anything but your prick. It would be good for you, in fact, not to fuck for about two years; then you’d learn to like music and something else useful. Wouldn’t that be nice!
I like to fuck, I like it a lot, but it’s not all the same to me who I do it with, Limonov. And in bed it’s not enough for me to have “cruel,” dry orgasms. I also need lots of things I don’t get from you, tenderness, for example, and I also need to have a desire for a particular man, and I don’t feel that kind of attraction for you — I don’t desire you and I never have.
I feel insulted by you. You’ve never even once asked me about anything and you don’t know anything about me. You haven’t even once looked in my direction with interest. But you’re so sure that at twenty-one I don’t understand anything, don’t know anything, and am just a weak little infatuated idiot. My answer is that you’re a conceited fool. It’s just a lot more pleasant for you to have a girl like that around so you can surround your self with a picture of complete incomprehension and women who aren’t worthy of you. I know I’m an independent and strong person. I have enough problems of my own. I’m alone, and I don’t ask anybody for help, and I make all my own decisions by myself and suffer all my misfortunes by myself, and so I make some mistakes and have my disappointments, but I can say that I do understand something about life. I am, you could say, a kind of hero for my age and sex. It doesn’t bother me that you don’t have time for that — I’m interested in you and I don’t care whether you’re interested in me. It’s just that it’s unpleasant for me to have to listen to such baseless garbage about myself. You’ve found a little idiot who’s also young.
I’m a musician, Limonov, a mature, thinking musician, and it
isn’t my profession to be a woman. My life is not for men, and I don’t exist for them. And you’ve never been just a man with sexual equipment for me either. This is all true, which I think would have been apparent to you if you had paid a little more attention to me instead of just classifying me as a “twenty-one-year-old girl with a big ass.”
Natasha
Natasha was wrong to say I never paid any attention to her. I did and was even very proud of her virtuosity on the piano, and often asked her to play for my guests, if any were at the house. She was, moreover, a Russian girl, and I felt a sort of responsibility for her — I don’t know before whom; all right, before God, although I don’t believe in Him — a responsibility for my little sister Natasha, a girl from my own tribe. I tried not to hurt her. Sometimes she would spend several days at the house with me, and besides not having to fuck me, she played the piano for hours, and walked in the garden, and rocked in the rocking chair, and read if she wanted to, or listened to recordings of her beloved classical music, and in general had a good time.
Although many of the things Natasha accused me of were ridiculous and clumsy, I still gave her letter a lot of thought. The Limonov in her letter was after all very like his employer, Gatsby. That fact both pleased and troubled me, for I wanted to be both like Gatsby and not like him.
Chapter Nine
Henry always stands off to the side in family photographs. He has a separate, naive, but also slightly sardonic expression on his face. The other members of the family, and the younger children too, are much less refined than he is. He’s as tall as his father, Steven, but extraordinarily thin, even for his seventeen years, so that it seems he is about to break in two at the waist. He has short blond hair like his mother, Nancy, and on his nose he wears the delicate glasses of a Parisian student. He hardly looks like a typical American boy.
His Butler’s Story (1980-1981) Page 26
