And in the morning the sun rolled in through the window and spread out on the blanket.
Mumbling something, my child rolled over, pressed herself against me, and fell asleep again, breathing heavily. And she has the reputation of an out-and-out whore!
*
Those haughty rich. They ride horses wearing made-to-order beautiful suits. In the magazine pictures, they stand around in evening wear; their diamonds glitter from their ears, necks, and fingers; their hair is beautifully cut. They sit at snow-white tables. They’re protected by the army, police, and hired bodyguards. And we, the hungry, look at them with envy. You just wait!
*
If you love money, why don’t you get involved in counterfeiting? This polysyllable will bring you a pretty hefty profit. Counterfeiting successfully, you could travel, fall in love, live at ease, stay at better hotels and avoid the Nordic zones, slush and blizzard. Plying this trade you can randomly point with your aristocratic finger to a spot on a globe: «Let’s go here. No, better, let’s go there!»
You’ll cultivate your whimsy. You’ll devote a lot of time to science. In this way, you’ll be able to turn yourself into an astronomer or a sailor.
*
I love the smell of black pepper, of perfume and liqueurs, and the smell of small extremist newspapers which call for destruction and for building nothing.
At the present I’m in love with young Z. I met him at one poorly attended gathering. He wears an English hat (he came from England a few years ago), he’s poor and very handsome. He’s talented, he writes his articles like a poet. I remembered one of his passages – this is where the snail is crawling up the sleeve of a dead guerrilla fighter and a butterfly is landing on his neck – and now keep repeating: «The snail is crawling and the butterfly landing» – and the dead man’s nose has pollen on it.
The photographer is in love with me. One morning, when it was dawn, after a night at a big discotheque, I told him that I didn’t want to fuck him, that I’m erratic and very capricious, and that, after all, I’ve switched to women (which was partly true), and that I was very sleepy.
If you’re in love with someone, how can you fuck with others? I do, however, need a picture of myself shot in his misty, decadent style.
The discotheque
You, Eddie, good-for-nothing, spoiled fellow that you are. And the city where you live, the one you’ve chosen, resembles Sodom. It does take after it. What a perverse town! It’s true, there’s no denying it, you felt great at the discotheque yesterday, it was fun. But if you look at it with another pair of eyes something quite different turns up, doesn’t it?
It’s as though all the characters came out of Fellini’s «Satiricon.» The in-your-face hairdos of different kinds, the whoreish little faces, brazen, made-up; everyone, of either sex, is elevated by high heels. One black fellow has taken off his pants and is dancing with just a white T-shirt covering his ass – it’s not clear whether he has any underpants on. The right-hand section of the hall is gay: some are wearing lipstick; boys and men dance embracing each other – they gaze at each other lovingly and smooch. One guy has a wide, especially-designed suit, a black shirt, and a white silk scarf; another, with a sweaty, damp-haired chest, is in briefs; a third one…
The music is deafening, the air – hot and savage – is filled with marijuana. Everyone smokes openly. And everyone drinks. It’s badly over-crowded.
The females – indecent, alluring – wear wanton attire, representing every epoch and nation. Many have only stockings on. And you, Eddie, are here as well. And you too frisk around convulsively, morbidly, and have already smoked some grass, and don’t feel tired at all. And the woman with you, though she’s seven years younger, she’s too old for you: it’s obvious – she’s tired. And so, instead of going home at 6:00, when they close, you go at 4:20. For this kind of place people must be real young. No older than twenty, with stamina.
Oh dear, there’s no avoiding it – our Rome will fall. It’s not for nothing that these lesbian cuties, these delicate girls rub against each other’s bellies and do not look at the boys. In this multi-colored, pulsating light, the faces appear odd and savage. The only thing lacking here is a good bloody fight.
Even if you’re a philosopher, go ahead, visit a discotheque, and don’t be standing there as if you’re rooted to the ground – dance, then you’ll learn something.
I saw my ex there that night. Smoking from a long black cigarette-holder, surrounded by a retinue of black guys (one was wearing a scintillating trench coat), she was in a white hat.
And you love it, Eddie, admit it.
I do confess that I wanted to stop the music and make an announcent: Guys, the machine guns will be distributed at the door in ten minutes. Our target is Fifth Avenue. I’ll be in charge!
And out they run…
*
A car speeds up a parkway. This is the state of New Jersey. I’m drinking an expensive Italian wine straight from the bottle. The housekeeper is at the helm. We’ve made up. What can you do? I need her, and she needs me.
The bright patches of autumnal plants strike the eye. The car stops at my request. I take a few steps into the woods and having unbuttoned my white trousers, I let out a jet and notice an abnormal multitude of huge toadstools in the woods.
Done with the jet, my prick back in the pants, I tear away one huge mushroom and carry it as an ironic gift to the millionaire’s housekeeper. She’s irritated and I laugh under the setting sun over the spacious state of New Jersey. Our relationship is almost that of a loved but naughty son with a loving long-suffering mother, though I’m older than she by twelve years.
And we’re going to some hospital where her eighty-eight-year-old grandfather is recuperating from his heart attack. She turns the ignition, and I take the bottle again. The car speeds off on the parkway.
*
My last wife, Lenka, she was a whore by nature, I think. Yet there was something in her – elusive – that made me happy. Maybe that’s what it was – her being a whore. After all, I too am a whore by nature.
She was exceptionally beautiful, it was flattering. I was enormously ambitious but that wasn’t the most important thing. She, as it turns out, was right for my love.
My image of love – I admit it now – was and is vulgar in a folksy kind of a way. You know the kind: blonde, slender, seductive girl-lady wearing a hat. And indeed Lenka wore a hat; she also was a poet.
So, what do you expect from a provincial junior poet? Eddie fell head over hills for Lenka. And to be honest, even now my heart skips a beat whenever I glimpse in a crowd a tall, shapely figure wearing a hat.
*
Life is given to you, go ahead, live!
Oh mother, I’m afraid!
Live! Don’t be afraid!
I’m afraid, afraid of yellow drawings, of dusty beams of light, of headaches, of the old people, of pills, of children crying in the morning, of puppies’ shit, of a dead bird, and of a broken blue family vase. I’m also afraid of my real surname, of my past’s scum, of the letter «p,» of rolled-up blueprints, and of white bread, when it’s very, very white.
This is what saves me: hearing; lemons and oranges; a new sunny morning; dad’s revolver; fine, well-knit clothes; speeding in a car.
*
Germany once again devours her own children. Her best, the flower of the nation, its hope. There’s blood on Germany’s lips; her fingers are bloody. The three were murdered in the jail. Friends, my dear ones, farewell, comrades! We’ll lower our black flags. We’ll take vengeance on the executioners.
On a horrible gray German morning, they entered the cell, shot them twice, and hanged them. «Don’t kill, don’t kill, don’t kill the unarmed souls in the cell!»
*
I’m sitting in the window overgrown with wild grapes. I’m sitting and looking at the river some twenty meters away from me.
Sun. These are the last days of October. The millionaire’s garden.
The big tree at t
he center of the garden has hardly shed any leaves. The birds and wasps keep circling around me, relishing the wild grapes. Now and then the tugboats cross the East River. It’s a weekend. The river shimmers serenely, and the leaves hardly quiver – the air is serene; serene too is the flowing of the rock music out of speakers covered with household cloth; the music alternates with fulsome commercials and news.
It’s as though everything’s all right. It’s even surprising and great. Nobody’s bothering me and I don’t even need any alcohol, of which there’s plenty – the best stuff – in the cellar of the millionaire’s house. But I don’t want to dim this autumnal radiance.
The world, life – everything – has stopped. The sun on my face, reconciliation in my heart.
It’s all a lie, though. Tomorrow or the day after, the world will explode again… The clean hair will get dirty again, the wind will soil it, the rain will soak it, a woman will betray, and I will kiss the red leaf which fell on this page. Hello, nature!
People, kill me beautifully, please!
*
I’ve fucked a girl. 21. A good American Jewish girl with fair skin and luxuriant hair. The breasts are big and soft. The orifice overflows with mucous.
It happened in Soho, at a loft under construction – metal, cement, wood, plaster, bricks and plywood were scattered everywhere. A ruffled floor and a shattered ceiling. Her room – more or less clear of all the debris – yellow with all five (!) doors opening onto the construction chaos, and a huge window shining terribly with the lights of the World Trade Center – two sinister boxes bled their light into the window.
Even in the darkness, just by touch, I knew that I was dealing with a Jewish body. There was something special that can’t be defined by words. We fucked, having smoked pot. The time passed. And her socks had been knitted and were of different colors – in the rush, we didn’t even take them off (neither did we my clothes). We fucked sweet, so sweet.
Her Jewish grandfather and grandmother came over here some time in the past from Russia. The great migration took place so that the granddaughter would meet a Russian guy here and so that they would fuck.
*
In the morning, I’m in a supermarket, standing in an «8 Items or Less» line where there are usually old men and women. They get up before others – they can’t sleep – their wasted lives keep them awake, tormenting them. Some buy three potatoes, others drop their plastic and paper bags, then try with their gnarled hands to pick them up, while I notice that a hunched monster has the hands of a young damsel – the same fresh, bright fingernails, fingers and palms almost untouched by time.
This discovery, for some reason, fills me with disgust and makes me sick.
And though on the way out of the supermarket I hold the door and help to bring out the old lady’s shopping cart, I’m not looking at her. I feel like annihilating her without having to touch her: I would douse her with some solution, zip her with a machinegun and let the ambulance immediately rush her off the street. Her presence defiles the air; the old woman is monstrously indecent and pathological. Lord, how can you bear this?
*
Eddie is boisterous; Eddie is quiet. Like a boy, sad, he sits at one corner of his bed. He’s tired. Two hours later he frolics like a child. He’s naughty. He drinks wine and recites poetry. He shows off his wit over the telephone.
But suddenly the weather changes, it rains, and it’s boring and gray… And now Eddie starts sobbing. Falling face dawn on his bed, he even remembers his mom and dad. He laments too about his wife: «Lenka, my beloved!» he whispers. «My silly one, weak, tender, my traitress, my girl. The last time we met I wanted to kiss your hands and feet! Lenka, my weakling, the world is so empty and small!»
Then Eddie calms down and takes a book, he reads Che Guevara’s letters. He reached Che’s last letter to his parents, the line about «the small soldier of the 20th century’s fortune» – suddenly he felt a burst of tears simultaneously with the pricking at the roots of the hair all over his body.
«My proud, magnificent, and modest – Spanish – Che…»
*
This other time a guest at the millionaire’s house – rich, either a Hindu or an Iranian – pops in with a stunningly beautiful, tall and pretentious girl. The housekeeper’s girlfriend made a pretentious drink as ordered by the Iranian, while in the millionaire’s leather study, the beauty enunciated some words over the phone in agitated tones.
As they were leaving, our eyes met, and we found something in one another, discovered it suddenly because we lowered our gazes and smiled. She’s funny and so am I. I knew this kind of smile, just as I knew what it led to. But I also knew that this could never be. I’m a servant’s friend, and so there’s a class wall between us. She left with this visiting businessman. Forever.
The gleam of her violet eyes, the surge of her skirt, the curve of her youthful, slender figure – naturally, nobody introduced us – whoever introduces servant’s friends? «This is Edward, he’s from Russia, just a month ago he was on welfare as an impoverished and incapable member of society, and now he’s waiting for opening as a cook.» This fucking life!
She stepped into the night, the young beauty sped away in a car. And you get nothing, Edward, nothing! Edward, the fucking treasure. Only nobody wants this Edward-treasure.
And I bet they set off to the Hotel Regina, yes, to Regina…
*
I slept poorly because at 1 a.m. a bitch next door started to howl and cry. The dog stopped-whipped by her drunken owner – only at 3:00 a.m.
The wretched dwellers of skid row for some reason bring in animals who are just as wretched. There’s an unbearable stench and puddles of dog piss in the elevator. Perhaps this is because our residents want to resemble the rich, or maybe they’re not as lonely with dogs…
Generally, the interior of the Embassy Hotel resembles the ruins of war. Two rooms and part of a hallway burned down back in April. So they stay boarded up, and nobody bothers to fix either the sooty hall or the ill-fated rooms. A whole fifth floor burned down a week ago.
In the elevator and in the hall you’re offered all kinds of drugs, and if you’re riding with a pimp, he’ll offer you women: «Corne on over, buddy, whenever you have an extra $20 to spend.»
The dog’s piss – diluted by rain at the hotel’s entrance – has a sad smell. In the lobby, a young, well-dressed crazy black woman reasons monstrously aloud about the difference between the words «God» and «dog.»
*
The rain beats the shit out of this November day. Now I have a new social face – no more a welfare recipient but a cafe cook. I got up late and am sitting at the same residence – the hotel – looking through the window at the rain and waiting until I have to leave for work.
Pelmeni, borsht, Russian turnovers, pies and other delicacies are awaiting me at work. Boredom and nonsense are awaiting me at work: young A., a totally vacuous man who unfortunately speaks Russian. Waiting there are two middle-aged Latino dishwashers, who unfortunately speak no Russian, not even English, who nonetheless are a lot more likable than the inane and dim-sighted A., and another colleague of mine, G., an overeducated snob and a homosexual in high boots.
Arab guys and two black fellows from the West Indies await me. The refrigerator, the passageways, the corners and cupboards, the short vicious quarrels on political topics await me. The dullness of life awaits me, while I love a different outlook on life.
A very different outlook on life.
«We’ll get over this too,» I think listlessly.
I also think that the last time I cut the beets into pieces that were too big – it doesn’t look good in a spoon…
*
Once – all covered by flour – I stayed alone in the kitchen making pelmeni until midnight. The two Latinos, the dishwashers, washed the pans right after I used them. Not a word in English.
«Here, Eduardo, are your future friends, the soldiers. Talk to them,» I told myself. «You’re standing face to face w
ith them.» They treated me to their strong coffee. And I poured them some wine that I had stolen. And I let them go early. I left late. Comrade Limonov, the commander.
*
He’s moved, yes, he’s moved! Got rid of Hotel Embassy and skid row. Now he’s living in an apartment on the East Side, sharing it with a twenty-three-year-old Jewish kid. Our Eduardo has two small rooms. One is his bedroom, the other his study. And though he earns money with occasional dirty work, he has still made a step up the social ladder. He couldn’t care a shit for this step, still he made it. It’s accomplished.
Though the millionaire’s housekeeper helps him, and though his income hardly exceeds $200 a month, still he became a full member of the capitalist society. He acquired a hat, put installed a mirror, spread the housekeeper’s rug on the floor, and took her sheets and towels. Some folks gave him a bed, a table; pictures hang on the wall, a lamp shines on the desk. Life stirs again for the umpteenth time.
And on the wall there’s an article about Eduardo in an Italian paper, with his picture. «This is just the beginning,» thinks the stubborn fellow, sitting under the article. And he stares out the window onto the cold December.
*
I met a girl at a party. She never took off her wig and kept adjusting it even when we made love and later when we showered together. Apparently, there was something serious about her hair, or maybe there was no hair at all under the wig. A Bald Diva, so to speak.
She didn’t realize that this kind of nonsense hasn’t bothered me for a long a time. The important thing is that her body pulled and tugged me towards her. I fucked her for two nights and one day in a row; I even scratched my prick against her until it bled. She had sheafs of pricks dancing in her eyes – she did, this Jewish girl.
During the short intermissions between our love-making we had only enough time to visit her friend at 25th Street – a black photographer, a tired fellow of about forty, a specialist in sado-masochism.
The girl was also a photographer. In her pictures, the nude models are clustered in fuzzy groups, their breasts and pubes bursting with sparks or radiating light.
Diary of a Loser Page 6
