“I have the right,” I said gravely. “After all, he’s my wife’s ex-lover.” “I’m sorry, Edichka,” he said.
We began haggling over the marijuana and decided we would each get a separate cigarette, although Kirill tried to insist on smoking them both together. I threatened not to show him where the cigarettes were if he didn’t give in.
“We’ll each do what we want with our own cigarette,” I said. “You can throw it out or shove it up your ass.”
After that we went up to the studio.
I went to the office and got the cigarettes from the box, and we returned to the kitchen. I gave him the cigarette that was due him, and my own I lit up right away. It turned out to be amazingly strong – I had never had anything like it, thick and fat. By the time I had sucked it down to the end, so that I could no longer hold it with my nails, all I could do was struggle the six or seven meters to the couch and collapse in hallucinations.
I heard all that went on in the studio, and at the same time I had dreams, fantastic ones made up of what was past and what had never been. A maniacal girl was trying to open a little box in which lived a thinking being. Her hair flying, she bent over the box, gnawed at it, but could not get it open. Finally, by some sort of trick, by turning a mechanical device, the maniac opened the box, and out poured a stinking brown liquid similar to semen – the being had been killed. I was horror-stricken, but the maniac bared her teeth in a grin.
I heard all that went on in the studio, and at the same time Kirill, who had smoked only half his cigarette, was making phone calls and debating whether or not he should go to the party, his pants were dirty and unpressed. Then Slava-David arrived. He asked what was the matter with me, and they hauled me up, laughingly hoisted me from the couch, then let go of me. I floated and swayed. “Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell” – Eliot’s lines surfaced and disappeared, succeeded by my Moscow friend the poet Heinrich Sapgir wearing a yellow tiger face.
It was morning before I could stand up. Although I tried to get up twice in the night, it was eight in the morning before I could do it. Slava-David made me some toast in the toaster. The toast burned and scraped my throat. I took my umbrella and left.
Luz, Alyoshka, Johnny, and others
I took my umbrella that day and left. I was still reeling from the evil weed. But, to avoid returning to my garret and the routine third-day depression, I walked out Spring Street to Sixth Avenue, got on the subway, and went to my English class. It was a gift to me from my solicitous welfare office.
I had my class at the Community Center on Columbus Avenue near 100th Street. The Community Center was not of such ancient construction, but our classroom windows looked out on what were almost ruins – broken windows, fire-blackened walls, all sorts of mold and vermin, creeping right out to the street. New York is rotting around the edges. Its clean blocks are much smaller in area than the already boundless sea of uninhabitable and semihabitable neighborhoods, terrible in their state of near-wartime destruction.
There were about a dozen such buildings where I went to school, between Columbus and Central Park. The reason I mention this is that even the little book we used – “we” being ten women from the Dominican Republic, one from Cuba, one from Colombia, and the only man in the class, namely me – well, this book was entitled Every Night There’s No Hot Water. The book told about people who lived in a neighborhood roughly like this one, and how they were surrounded by misfortunes of every description. There was no hot water, they were afraid to step outdoors at night because of crime, a father of two girls felt annoyed that their home had been taken over by a certain Bob, a ne’er-do-well and dangerous character, leader of a youth gang. There was an open implication that the father of the two girls was simultaneously the father of this Bob. All the residents of the neighborhood described in the sentences and exercises of this book were linked to one another by nearly incestuous relationships, and watching over all was an old procuress and scandalmonger in a shawl (the illustrations showed her in a shawl and with a face like a fox). A jolly little book.
I was slightly late that day; they were already writing a composition based on the teacher’s questions. The teacher had a surname of Slavic origin, Sirota, although she could not recall that anyone in the family had been a Slav. Women of various hues greeted me joyfully; they were sincerely disappointed when I didn’t come. Luz threw me a smile. She very much liked to smile at me, arching like – forgive me this very vulgar and trite simile, but she arched like the stem of a rose. Luz was altogether white, the perfect Spaniard, though she too was from the Dominican Republic. Luz had a child, though she herself was still a child, small and thin; her earrings did not help, nor did her high heels. Her earrings were cheap little things, but she always changed them if she put on a new blouse. She and I were almost lovers, though we never once kissed, and I told her only once that I liked her very much. But we always watched each other all through the three hours of the lesson, and we smiled at each other. One time, in response to the teacher’s questions, we were all pointing out on an atlas where we had been born, and I saw Luz hastily jot down in her notebook the name of my hometown, Kharkov. I am probably a modest and inhibited person at heart, and as I have said, I am a long way from total freedom. And Luz was a modest girl – woman. Therefore we simply couldn’t clasp each other close, as we would have liked. I endlessly regret that we couldn’t. She might have loved me. And that’s the only thing I need.
They all had children, some as many as four. Candida’s girls were lovely. So whimsical, so mannered, so unnaturally vivacious and elegant were the faces and figures of Candida’s girls that when they came to class with their mother I thought of them as works of art. A blend of different bloods had produced this unexpected effect. An exquisite effect, ancient Egyptian I should say; they resembled Ikhnaton’s daughters, although Candida herself was a shortish woman with ordinary light brown skin and a kind, simple face. The faces of her little girls, their hair, the shape of their eyes, held a sort of poesy… morning, daybreak, a fragrance of delicacy. I shall allow myself a flourish: they were like coffee beans, like spices, her children were.
Anyway, when I came in they were writing a composition. They had never seen me so handsome and elegant. Usually I came to school in sandals and jeans – wooden platform sandals, my only ones, and blue or white jeans. But here the Russian fellow had arrived in colorful boots and denim suit, with neckerchief and umbrella. They discussed my appearance animatedly in Spanish. To judge by their tone I pleased them, they approved.
I told the teacher that I had had a job interview that morning, and then got busy on the composition. We were supposed to write about the neighborhood we lived in. I wrote that I lived in a neighborhood where there were mainly office buildings; the world’s most expensive companies, perhaps, had their offices in my neighborhood. Next came the question of whether I was afraid to walk in my neighborhood at night. I wrote that I was afraid of nothing and walked all over the city. There was nothing to fear – I had nothing. As she read my composition and corrected the mistakes, the teacher laughed.
Many in my class wrote that they were not afraid to go out in the evening or late at night. They too had little, I think, and that was why they were unafraid.
The oldest person in our class was the gray-haired Lydia. She was gray-haired and black, but her face, her figure, her gait, her habits, reminded me of a neighbor we had in Kharkov, when I was still a little boy living with my papa and mama. English came harder to her and the two Candidas than to the rest of us. The two Candidas also reminded me of some of my neighbors in the Kharkov apartment house, only their skin was a little darker. I should mention that from walking one hundred and thirty to one hundred and forty blocks a day in the scorching sun with my shirt unceremoniously removed I had become so dark that I differed little from my classmates. Luz, in fact, was much lighter than I.
Luz always sat next to Rosa, an utterly black girl, t
all and svelte. She had a stern and independent air, but I always felt she was unhappy for some reason. After having several conversations with her in our common pidgin English, or not even having conversations, simply consulting her and receiving answers, I saw that she was a benevolent and likable girl, she merely took a cautious attitude toward our world. Every recess Rosa twisted the head off another little bottle that had something black in it. She did this very adeptly with the hem of one leg of her very wide-bottomed slacks. It was some special Latin-American drink. Rosa and I were considered the class alcoholics. When the teacher asked the class who liked what, I said jokingly that I liked vodka, and someone else, I think it was Luz, spoke up for Rosa: “Rosa likes drink!” I found Rosa agreeable, and her independence too. Sometimes she chewed gum and became totally unapproachable.
I sat next to yet another utterly black woman, Zobeida. As a well-read Russian, of course, I knew that one of Voltaire’s heroines had borne this name. It is hardly likely that Zobeida herself knew this, but she was one of the best pupils in our class. She and I were often assigned to read a dialogue, usually between a husband and wife who constantly spilled things on themselves and on each other and then advised each other what cleaner to go to. These married couples in the book were complete idiots. Everything fell from their hands, they could not convey a morsel to their mouths; God knows how they managed to stay alive; their coffee spilled, the cups broke, greasy sandwiches fell butter-side-down on their new clothes. Things were grim.
When Zobeida and I went up to the teacher’s desk and read this dialogue of two idiots, we gave it our best and were evidently funny. In any case, blond short-cropped Mrs. Sirota rolled with laughter as she listened to my menacing “Vot?” and the wife’s no less stupid answer, which Zobeida read. “You’re like a TV couple,” she told us.
Zobeida was tail, and her rear end, as is sometimes true of black women, was very large and seemed to exist independently of the rest of her. She had a beautiful face, and like most blacks, delicate hands. I talked to her more than to anyone else. She too had a child. Her husband had been born here in America; she had tried to take him back to the Dominican Republic, but then they had returned; they found it hard to live there after the United States.
Once our conversation turned to education. Ana, a dried-up, bespectacled, sarcastic little creature of indeterminate age, from Colombia, began to talk about her brothers and sisters. She wrote their names on the blackboard, and then wrote how many children they each had. Ana herself had no children. But all in all her three brothers and two sisters had forty-four children. I asked Ana when they would all come from Colombia. Ana said that they might not all come, but that most of them, as they grew up, wanted to have a higher education, and things were tight for her brothers and sisters – they had to work very hard so that the children could have more education.
“Is that the fashion in Colombia, to have a higher education?” I asked Ana.
She replied gravely that if you wanted to be somebody you needed a good education, and it cost a lot of money. Then she reported how much a higher education cost in Colombia and how much it cost in the Dominican Republic. Then I chimed in and said that in the USSR, where I came from, higher education was free, and all other education too. The effect was greater than I expected. They were staggered. Free! It was a good thing they didn’t ask why I had left such a wonderful country.
Mrs. Sirota smiled in embarrassment. Maybe she felt uncomfortable for her fat, rich country, where the level of education you can get depends on how much money you have. A lot of money – graduate from Princeton. Some – go study in Canada, it’s cheaper there. None – go uneducated; sometimes you might manage to get a scholarship. I took considerable malicious pleasure in listening to their lively discussion in Spanish, exulted maliciously over Mrs. Sirota and all the learned gentlemen who alleged that socialism was practically allied with the devil. To add fuel to the fire I told them that medical treatment was also free. That really started something. I exulted maliciously and was satisfied.
I liked my class. Margarita – a stout, dark-eyed woman with a lovely face, who had three boys from eleven on down and a little girl – smiled at me, showed me photographs of her children. Painstakingly-made color photographs, specially posed, they bore witness that the children had been photographed not by chance but in order to fix their image, reflect and preserve it. As in the Russian provinces. The little girl, the youngest, was all in laces and frills and stood in a self-important pose, like a celebrity. I said, “You have beautiful children, Margarita.” She was very pleased.
Sometimes it seemed to me that Margarita liked me. She smiled at me just as often as Luz did, and furthermore she gave me homemade treats now and then. But they all treated me frequently to their Dominican dishes: roast yams and roast bananas, and meatballs something like our golubtsy. Margarita treated all of the students, not just me, but I doubt I’m mistaken, she obviously liked me, it was plain to see. In that period of my life I did not understand how anyone could like me. I held a very low opinion, an utterly scornful opinion, of myself as a man. She may have liked my green eyes or dark skin or abundantly scarred wrists – God only knows what a woman will like.
I was Russian; they liked that too. I doubt they knew there was such a thing as the Jewish emigration from Russia; it was pointless to explain that I was Russian by nationality but had come here on a visa fictitiously sent to me from Israel and with the consent of the Soviet authorities. Superfluous information. I was Russian, and that was that. As Mrs. Sirota explained to them and to me, Russia was located in Europe. Thus I became a man from Europe. They were from Central and Latin America. And we were all from the world.
I, a man who had fled here from the USSR in search of artistic freedom, that is, the opportunity to publish my works here – it was a rather frivolous act, my works being unneeded here, needed only there, in Russia – I was compelled against my will to be a representative of my country, the only representative of Russia, the USSR, that they had ever had in their lives.
As God is my witness, I tried to represent my country decently. I did not fuck around showing off to them or, first and foremost, to myself; I did not view the world from imaginary standpoints, I tried to view it honestly. It was no concern of these women whether I had been published or not; after all, there are hardly thousands like me.
What they did understand was something else. A land in which higher education was free, medical care was free, where rent amounted to an insignificant fraction of one’s pay, where the difference between a worker’s 150-ruble paycheck and the 500-ruble paycheck of an academician or even a KGB colonel was only 350 rubles – these, gentlemen, are not the astronomical sums at which the fortunes of America’s wealthiest families are estimated, alongside the pitiful $110 to $120 a week that Eddie earned as a busboy at the Hilton – such a land could not be a bad one.
Unlike the Western intelligentsia, they had not been through the long journey of enchantment with the Russian Revolution and Russia, and disenchantment with it. They had been through none of this. Vague rumors circulated among them about a land where people like themselves led a good life. Always the rumors.
I did not go into details, and could not have explained to them the last sixty years of Russian history – Stalinism, the victims, the prison camps – they would have turned a deaf ear to all that. Their own history, too, was rich in victims and atrocities. They were not proud and ambitious, they and their husbands did not write poetry and books, did not paint pictures; they had no rabid desire to squeeze their names, at all costs, into their country’s history, or better yet the world’s; therefore they wouldn’t even have recognized the prohibitions and obstacles in this path, which they had no use for at all. They lived and were kind and treated a Russian to roast yams and loved their Joses and bore children and photographed them in their best clothes, and this was their life.
Much more natural than mine, I confess. I drifted around the world, because of ambition lost
my love, and having lost it, realized that love was far dearer to me than ambition or life itself and began to seek love anew; and that is the state I am in now, searching for love. As regards love in this world, there is more of it in Russia, of course, than here. That is plain to the naked eye. Forgive me, but though they may say that Eddie-baby knows little of America, there is less love here, gentlemen, far less…
I gave myself over to all these thoughts as I returned from my class. I walked down Columbus. I always walked without hurrying, I read all the signs; if it was very hot I took off my shirt. That day, however, I was wearing a suit; when the sun came out it was scorching, and I took off my jacket. The Dominican women always hurried home when they got out of school, their children were waiting for them. Sometimes I walked with Luz, Colombian Ana, Margarita, or someone else – perhaps dark-eyed Maria with the face of a saint – to the subway, half a block from our Community Center, and elicited Spanish words from them on the way. I know perhaps two dozen words now and take pleasure in pronouncing them. I would much rather study Spanish, on the whole. It is richer and more congenial to me, just as all Spanish-speaking people are more congenial to me than buttoned-up clerks in neckties, or disciplined, Skinny secretaries. I make an exception only for Carol, only for her.
When I lost my unhappy Russian maiden, who was driven out of her fucking mind by this country, I also lost interest in cultured white women. In my morbid view, many liberated ladies, or ladies in the process of liberation, are liberating themselves from the love of another person, not from love of the self. Monsters of indifference. “My bread, my meat, my cunt, my apartment,” the monsters say. I hate the civilization that has generated monsters of indifference, the civilization on whose banner I would write the most murderous expression since the origin of mankind: “That’s your problem.” Horror and evil are contained in this short formula, which unites all the Jean-Pierres, Susannas, and Elenas of the world. And I, little Eddie, am terrified: What if my soul finds no one here to devote itself to? Then it is doomed to eternal loneliness even beyond the grave. And that is hell.
It's Me, Eddie Page 18
