His Butler’s Story (1980-1981)

by Edward Limonov

  “Good morning, Edward!” he said. “What a beautiful day!”

  “Good morning, Steven,” the servant answered. “It is beautiful!” And I continued with what I was doing — raking and putting the leaves in a bag. It was very beautiful that morning, just as in Germany, in Bavaria on the Rhine, and the variegated colors of the dying leaves put me in a festive mood. The air was heavy with the fragrance of dead plants already beginning to rot, tiny blue berries were falling in great numbers onto the terrace from the ivy on our house, and around the servant and his master, birds of an unknown species whirled, trying to grab their share of the morning’s exchange of capital and labor. I like the pastoral life very much, and although it’s usually hard for me to spend very much time in the country, I enjoy working on our terrace, and following Nancy’s example, I even plant things there from time to time, say new azalea bushes wherever there are bare spots around its perimeter, and this fall I’ll plant some tulips.

  I was just sweeping up, while Steven, his hair still wet, read his paper, when the telephone rang for the first time. It was 7:30. My ex-wife Elena on the other side of the globe would just be going to bed. Steven answered the phone himself, reaching it before I was able to, and talked for a while, and then came back out onto the terrace and said it had been Nairobi calling.

  “It was the man who may soon become the premier of Uganda, Edward,” Gatsby boasted to me — there wasn’t anybody else around.

  I thought the boss would in that case probably be undertaking some sort of business in Uganda, starting rabbit or chicken farms there in order to develop their national economy, and would be feverishly trading with them, in oil maybe, since Ghupta had some. Only recently Ghupta and his attorney had been negotiating from my kitchen phone (!) for the purchase of a new tanker. They concluded their business at two o’clock, doing the figures on a calculator and calling from the kitchen all over the world, and the next day all the necessary documents arrived by express mail and they signed them. I wondered if Gatsby was aware of it. We could therefore transport oil to Uganda on Ghupta’s tanker. Maybe Gatsby would even send me to Uganda to do something on his behalf, trading in some rubbish that was absolutely essential to underdeveloped countries. Anything was possible. I remembered Rimbaud wending his way to Khartoum by caravan, or maybe it was back from Khartoum…

  Linda arrived. Steven went upstairs to change from his bathrobe into a suit, and I finished my work on the terrace and went in to set the table, covering it with our cleanest and whitest tablecloth and putting out the flatware. We spend fabulous sums on laundry each month, and I have my own things done with Steven’s, so everything I own gleams and I look as well-groomed and fresh as our silver and tablecloths do — not like my business affairs, thank God.

  My business affairs were in a terrible state. Harper & Row had turned me down a few days before. Who hasn’t turned me down? I thought. Soon there’ll hardly be any left who haven’t. Defeat after defeat on that, my principal front. It would be better to have a falling out with Gatsby; I could stand that somehow. The main problem is that I can’t get involved personally in that fucking bureaucratic business of selling. I’m compelled to sit passively and wait.

  I put out the glasses and continued the same line of thought: Waiting for decisions from unknown office forces, from people you’ve never seen even once in your life and never will see is just like being condemned to death and sending your appeal to one court and having to wait months for an answer. In the end they send you a paper with a “no,” and you then appeal to another court, since you can. And you wait again, and then after months have gone by, another «no» surfaces from the bureaucratic depths. You are on the verge of terror and hysteria and in despair, since you still fear death, and their decisions in those Kafkaesque inner offices have nothing to do with your work, or with who you are and what you have created. Houses of Terror and Fate — that’s what publishers are.

  Long gone are the simple patriarchal times when you took what you had written directly to the publisher himself, and said, “Hi, Bob (or John or Moses)! Here’s my book. I’m convinced it will do well. Let’s make a deal! I’m young and energetic, and this is my most recent work.”

  And Bob (or John or Moses) read the book and after scratching the back of his head, said, “Okay, Ed, I think this book will bring in something, it will earn us some money, although there’s a risk of course, but all right, we’re ready take it…” Those were the good old days!

  I knew a fair number of people in Russia who were willing to sit in prison for years just so their books could be published. Many got involved in the social struggle and came into conflict with the government for that reason alone. Does that seem like a normal situation to you? But the same kind of barriers are erected in the individual’s path in absolutely every area of life, the servant thought, and such are the daily murders that civilization inflicts on us.

  The nice thing about physical labor is that sometimes it allows you to give yourself up to your thoughts while you’re doing it. I ordered lamb chops over the phone.

  “All right, Edward,” one of the Ottomanelli brothers said, “you’ll get your lamb chops. But maybe you’d rather have sirloin? We have some excellent fresh sirloin today.”

  “No thanks,” I said. “We’re conservative. The boss wants lamb.”

  “Okay!” the Ottomanelli brother laughed.

  I spent the next fifteen minutes or so trying to extract a check from Linda. She bounced around like a billiard ball the whole time as she took one phone call after another, half of them making no sense at all, while I sat disgustedly in the Chinese lacquered chair next to her desk and waited. There was no way Linda was going to interrupt one of her goddamn phone conversations just to write me a check.

  “How much do you need?” she finally asked me in a suspicious tone.

  “Give me a hundred and fifty,” the housekeeper said.

  “What do you need a hundred and fifty for? That seems like a lot. Steven’s leaving tomorrow. You’re not going to spend a hundred and fifty dollars on one lunch, are you? After all, you won’t have to pay cash for the meat, Edward. Take a hundred,” Linda said.

  “And you, my dear, aren’t you going to eat anything tomorrow or the next day? Aren’t you going to have lunch too?” I asked her snidely.

  She gave me a hundred and fifty. She’s the boss’s own Cerberus, that Linda.

  I stuck the check in my pocket and leisurely set off for the bank. When you’re around money, when you find yourself rubbing up against it all the time, you tend to have a certain unhurried confidence in yourself. Until I started working for Steven, I used to be afraid of banks and always felt like a timid pauper in them. I’m much bolder now. I even lost my temper once when a new teller asked me to endorse the back of a check for Steven made out, I think, for $1,500 — cash for one of his trips. As I signed my name, I disgustedly told the bank slave, “Listen, you, I come here, at a minimum, twice a week, and sometimes more often, and nobody has ever asked me to endorse one of our checks before.” For on its face the check carries the proud name of Mr. Grey. But I didn’t say that to the slave. I thought it.

  The produce markets in our excellent city of the devil are for some reason run by Koreans, just as in Moscow all the bootblacks are Assyrians. A Korean girl with a flat intellectual face always greets me with a smile whenever I enter her store; I’m a regular customer. I picked out my invariable romaine, some asparagus, and whatever else I felt like, and with one hand in my pocket set off for home in the same unhurried manner. On the way I dropped in on the chubby Michael at the little shop Mad for Cheese to pick up some cheese and bread, the bread so fresh that Linda has been expressing her amazement with it every day for the past year and gobbling it up as if she were mad for bread. I walked back to the house very slowly, since it was still early, and the day was the kind I like. In general I like the fall. In the fall I listen to myself with particular attention; in the fall everything’s clearer and makes more sense to m
e and is less confining.

  That day it became clear to me for the first time that I would soon be moving out of the millionaire’s little house. I still didn’t know how, and it still wasn’t even clear when, but the first signal had already reached me from somewhere. I didn’t make any decisions about it then; I just continued my leisurely way back to the house in my old Chinese jacket. I picked up that jacket after Henry had left it, or perhaps it was left by one of his friends, and the host never mentioned it. I wasn’t ready to make any decisions then, but I know myself well. I’ve moved around in my life so often and have completely changed the scene of action and the cast of players so many times, that I’ve learned that if I once start thinking about leaving, it means I will. Even the millionaire’s house has outlived its usefulness. It will be three years next spring since I entered it, and that’s enough. Other lands and countries and women, and other adventures, beckon to me. If I stay here I’ll turn out like Linda, but I don’t have the right to do that, to stay in the same place for eight years. I don’t have eight years. I need to get my ass out of here, I thought with a happy smile, as I opened the door with my key. Nearby they were shooting a commercial, and a beautiful model — they just won’t leave me alone — smiled at me as she straightened her hair while the photographer fiddled with his camera. Maybe she thought the house was mine.

  The president of Rolls-Royce came in a Rolls-Royce. But not the elegant white-lacquered and chrome-plated kind that black pimps drive around Central Park with their white girls by their sides or that high-class drug dealers use. He came in an unpretentious silver-gray Rolls of medium size, the sort that doesn’t require a chauffeur with a cap. The Rolls was driven by his business associate, and they both looked quite unpretentious. Steven even came out to meet them, something that doesn’t happen very often. He sees his guests to the door, but I open it for them, or, less often, Olga does. I think Gatsby secretly despises the Rolls-Royce company for the slightly vulgar nature of its product, maybe for precisely the fact that pimps and drug dealers drive around in their cars. Drug dealers and pimps don’t drive around in Steven’s cars, even though they’re produced in far fewer numbers than Rolls-Royces are (and cost almost as much). «Our» cars are as staid as an old English conservative tweed suit and don’t look like much at first sight, but the expert will note their restrained severity of form and color and will appreciate it.

  Upstairs in Steven’s office I served the group coffee on a silver tray and, for the president, specially brewed tea in a silver teapot, or rather, I left it with them, letting them serve it themselves since they had already spread their papers out and didn’t need my interference, and went back downstairs to the kitchen.

  After a while Steven came into the kitchen and asked, “How’s it coming, Edward?”

  I said that if they were ready, I could have lunch on the table in five minutes.

  “Excellent!” Steven exclaimed, and dove into the cellar to select a wine to go with the meal. You can always tell unerringly by the quality of the wine just how much value Steven places in his guests. He wanted these, as I guessed, to share a distribution network with him, that is, to undertake to sell his cars too. No doubt they have a very good network; indeed, as a powerful firm, why shouldn’t they? It turned out I was right. Steven came back with two bottles of Chateau Haut-Brion, 1961. Oho, I thought, he’s treating them first-class! Even the fact that Linda had warned me the day before to be sure to wear my black serving pants, white shirt, and a jacket (“Steven asked me to tell you,” Linda diplomatically put it), even that fact underscored the importance of what was taking place.

  I’ve gotten spoiled as the servant of the world bourgeoisie, and have even permitted myself to serve lunch to Steven and his people dressed in a T-shirt with the legend “Cocaine Is Hazardous to Your Health!” printed on it. Or else, East Side patriot that I am, I prance around in another shirt given to me by Bridget in her day with the words “IRT Lines” on it — the New York IRT subway line, that is, the main East Side line hidden under Lexington Avenue. That T-shirt had once belonged to Richard Hell himself, to our number one New York punk rock star. Bridget’s boyfriend Douglas had once been Richard Hell’s drummer. In that T-shirt, slashed here and there with a razor blade — intentionally slashed — Richard Hell had given newspaper interviews. And I, after sewing up just a couple of holes in that punk rock relic, wear it around Gatsby. My «fall» didn’t happen all at once, but gradually. In the beginning, I dressed every day in black pants and a white shirt.

  Gatsby and the Rolls-Royceans sat down at the table and I served them lamb and steamed vegetables, which I can’t stand myself, and then whistled upstairs, by that whistle inviting Linda to assume her place at the kitchen table with me. Mr. Richardson was supposed to have lunch with Linda and me too, since he was at the house every day now, working on Gatsby’s latest fantastical project. This one concerned the allocation of the Southeast Asian labor force. Gatsby, along with some big international corporations, wanted to put to work the unfortunate boat people who had been hacked to pieces by Malay pirates or by Thai fishermen. As you see, Gatsby thinks in global terms and strives to extend his power over mankind; he’s a typical Big Brother. Usually Mr. Richardson has lunch with Steven when the latter’s at the house, but that day was a special case. Mr. Richardson doesn’t have any part in the automobile business, so he was having lunch in the kitchen with the secretary and the housekeeper.

  Linda and Richardson came downstairs and took their places at the kitchen table. I sat down with them, chewing a piece of meat. I poured myself a bottle of Guinness and started listening to what they were saying.

  “Perf!” said Linda, after trying a lamb chop. “Perf! You’ve really learned how to cook lamb, Edward.”

  “Perf means «perfect» in Linda’s private slang. She also uses the term “delish,” short for «delicious» and no less important to her vocabulary.

  Linda was telling Mr. Richardson with a serious expression that she had the day before reheated some spaghetti and that it was better reheated than fresh. I grinned ironically. I didn’t actually believe that it was only the first time in her life that she had reheated spaghetti. She’s probably lying, I thought, pretending she lives better than she really does. But I refrained from making any comment. Let Linda tell Richardson whatever she likes and play at the high life; what difference did it make to me? If she’d started lying about politics, I’d have gotten into it, but lying about food was harmless enough.

  Linda then started describing to Richardson how she and her black belt in karate, David, had been invited for dinner the previous weekend at the house of some friends on Long Island. The dinner was a candlelight affair with classical music — Vivaldi had been playing in the living room the whole time. Right,

  I thought ironically. Vivaldi is good for the digestion. Linda and her friends can’t invite a symphony orchestra to assist with their digestion the way Gatsby does, so they eat to records.

  I left to clear away the empty dishes for the boss and the Rolls-Royceans. “Tank yu verri mach!” Gatsby said to me with a Russian accent. The Rolls-Royceans thanked me too. Since the boss was fucking around, it meant he was in a good mood. The business had therefore gone well and they would be selling his cars. I served Steven and his comrades salad and after coming back to the kitchen gossiped to Linda and Richardson about how things stood. This gave them an excuse to shift the conversation to the boss, our usual topic, although from time to time Linda and I pledge not to talk about him, at least not while we are having lunch.

  “Oh, Steven’s in a very good mood,” Richardson said. “I’ve noticed in general that he’s become more human. Perhaps because he’s getting older? He’s much less irritable than he was a couple of years ago.”

  And Linda agreed that it seemed to her too that he was getting better. We all happily started talking at once. Why not, our savage was turning into more of a human being. Excellent! Marvelous! Fantastic! And then in the midst of our enthusiasm it
suddenly occurred to me, Does that mean he won’t get pissed off? And I went to see what the gentlemen at the table were doing. The gentlemen were still confabulating over the remaining salad and cheese. I asked them if they wanted coffee, and they happily consented. After clearing away their dirty dishes once again, I served coffee and returned to the kitchen. It turned out Polly had just called, and the conversation therefore passed naturally to a discussion of Gatsby’s sexual capacities.

  I announced: “I don’t believe that Steven’s sexual indices are that high. In my view, he’s probably crude and primitive in bed. Even though he’s a strong guy, it still seems to me that all he’s capable of is very simple sex of the in and out type, and not even that for very long.”

  Linda seconded me and even generalized my thesis, saying that in her opinion all WASPS are uninteresting in bed, their puritan upbringing having deprived them of sensuality. For Linda this last remark had a particular point, since her boyfriend David was a Jew.

  I didn’t want to offend Linda, and so I didn’t tell her that I didn’t have that high an opinion of Jewish men either. And so we took up the case of Gatsby again, whom his relative Mr. Richardson defended. And of course not merely because he was Gatsby’s relative, since he often referred to Gatsby ironically, but also because Mr. Richardson was a WASP himself; he was offended on behalf of all WASPs. Which is quite understandable. After all, who wants the reputation of being worthless as a man, especially if you acquire that reputation only because the nation you belong to is regarded as undersexed? The battle began in earnest.

  I didn’t really want to insult WASPs, but I did have my own stake in the quarrel. I would like to have told them that in my opinion artistic people were much more interesting in bed than businessmen. No question about it. But I couldn’t. Mr. Richardson would probably be as offended on behalf of businessmen as he already is on behalf of WASPs, I thought. I had already tried once to talk to Richardson about Dostoevsky, stressing that the profession of writer is an exceptional one. To which Mr. Richardson answered in an irritated tone that everyone invests a part of his labor and talent in the world, and that as a businessman he, Richardson, did too. And then he brought in the usual businessman’s propaganda — that they, businessmen, are important to the world, that they give people work… and other such slogans from his arsenal.