Memoir of a Russian Punk

by Edward Limonov

  Tuzik suddenly smiles in a friendly way. “Scared?” he asks the man.

  “I’m not scared, not of you jackals!” the man snarls. “Why should I be?”

  “What are you talking about?” Tuzik says, playfully surprised. “What’s wrong with you, my dear fellow?” he adds in a still friendlier tone, and even puts his arm around the man’s shoulders.

  Eddie-baby knows this dirty Asian Tyurenkan trick – pretend to be friendly, get the victim on your side, and when he’s completely convinced of your good intentions, hit him all of a sudden with a knife, or a crowbar to the head, or a chain. Kolya the Gypsy, for example, wears a chain on his pants instead of a belt…

  The man tries to break free, but Tuzik’s no weakling, even when he’s drunk. He pulls the man close and, leading him slightly away from the girls, whispers, “My friend! Let’s be friends! Why should we fight, eh?…”

  The man doesn’t trust Tuzik, but he’s alone in a crowd of drunken punks and he doesn’t have much of a chance. The only possibility would be if five militia cars immediately came rushing in (just one wouldn’t be enough), but that’s pretty much out of the question. And so the man goes with Tuzik, who has his arm around him and is continuing to whisper something to him affectionately – Eddie can’t hear what anymore, since they’re now twenty or more meters away.

  “Guys, let the girls go!” Tuzik’s calm voice suddenly rings out.

  It’s a signal. Dymok whistles deafeningly and hurls himself under the legs of the blonde.

  “Don’t,” she screams. “Boys! Don’t!”

  Kolya the Gypsy flings open her coat and grabs at her breasts. Tearing off the buttons, he rips open her blouse and with one movement pulls off her bra…

  “O-o-oh!” the mob roars in delight at her now exposed breasts. Lower down, Dymok is at work under her skirt. You can hear material being ripped as the blonde wails, “Boys, dear boys, don’t! Oh!…” She falls onto Dymok. Dymok always grabs girls by the twat, so that it’s pointless for them to struggle. Kolya the Gypsy and Dymok are professionals.

  The other girl is also being attacked, and the first thing they tear off is her watch. “Gold,” rings out a satisfied voice. Dozens of hands grab at the two girls and rip off their clothes. Within a few minutes several minors are hanging on the fat ugly girl all at once. They removed her coat long ago, and tore the sleeves and the whole front of her blouse, so that her large breasts with their dark brown nipples are helplessly swinging from side to side. The girl is using her hands to defend the most important thing – her twat. She’s forgotten about her breasts. Everything that’s taken place so far is a lot like the “feeling up” that Eddie and his friends used to engage in at school (Eddie has outgrown that now, and the boys in his year have even become a little shy around the girls), although it’s much more serious and rough.

  To one side, closer to the trolley line, you can hear thuds and screams. Obviously Tuzik and the other kids are beating the man up.

  “A-a-a-ah!” A piercing howl of pain suddenly rings out. And once more blows and swearing. “Take that, you whore! Take that! You wanted it?! Now you’re going to get it! You wanted it?! How about this!”

  “Are they using a knife on him, or what?” Eddie wonders, not understanding. All the older punks have disappeared somewhere. The only kids around Eddie now are younger punks. “Where did the others go?” Eddie wonders.

  One of the younger punks suddenly hits the fat girl in the mouth with all his strength. “You bitch!” he screams. “She bit me!”

  Blood is flowing from the fat girl’s smashed lips and nose, and it gradually spatters her huge, ugly cabbagelike breasts.

  The young kids have completely stripped the fat one. Only a few shreds of her dress are still hanging from her waist. Looking at her big belly, which she is still trying to hide with her hands, Eddie suddenly wants very much to grab it. He has seen that kind of belly, soft and protruding, so many times in his sleep. Right now is the most appropriate time to find out just what kind of belly they have anyway. “When if not now?” Eddie thinks. “Anyway, no one will ever find out. There are so many kids, they can’t possibly arrest them all,” Eddie convinces himself, still wavering. “No one will ever find out,” he repeats cravenly to himself, and then finally making up his mind, he leaps at the girl.

  The girl’s belly turns out to be warm. The girl is no longer resisting. She has closed her eyes and is slowly sinking down. If it weren’t for Timur holding her from behind, the girl would have tumbled onto the cold November asphalt long ago. The other members of the gang are grabbing her thighs, laughing as they squeeze and pinch them like pieces of meat and, stick their hands in her twat from time to time. Breathing heavily, Eddie too drops to his knees and, still holding the girl’s belly with one hand, puts the other into her pubic hair, which is stiff like wire, and when one of the gang members takes his hand out of her twat, pinching her with all his might as he does so, which makes her moan in pain – “O-o-o-oh!” – Eddie sticks his own hand into that female orifice concealed by hair. It’s wet and cold in the girl even though it’s supposed to be warm. Eddie pulls back his hand and looks at it. There’s mucus and blood on it.

  The blood from the girl’s twat for some reason sobers Eddie up, and he suddenly hears everything around him. Groans are coming from somewhere nearby. “Oh-ah-oh,” the other girl is rhythmically groaning. “Oh-ah-oh…”

  At the moment when Eddie was investigating the fat girl, he was deaf, so to speak, but now all the sounds have returned. Laughing and baring their teeth, the younger kids push the fat girl under the fence. Eddie walks away from them in the direction of the groans…

  It turns out that they’re fucking the blonde on her coat in the alley. Now Eddie understands where all the older kids have gone. They’re all here. Somebody still has a bottle, and they’re joking and taking swigs from it while waiting their turn in line.

  The girl’s legs are pushed up and out. One of the older punks is lying on top of her, supporting himself on his arms, with his pants pulled down around his ankles so that his ass is exposed. He first moves toward the girl and then ever so slightly moves away from her again. The girl hasn’t been resisting for a long time, obviously, and her groans are calm now. “Oh-ah-oh,” she moans weakly. And again, “Oh-ah-oh…”

  The girl has clasped the guy’s back with her arms, which look very white in the dark of the alley, and the movements of the two are accompanied by a smacking sound, as if someone were eating sloppily. “Veniamin Ivanovich doesn’t like it when people eat sloppily,” Eddie thinks for some reason.

  Suddenly the guy starts to move really fast on the girl, and finally, writhing, he hisses, “A-a-a-ah!” and climbs off of her. He’s done.

  Very white in the dark and almost naked, except for her stockings, which have fallen down around her ankles and are wadded up there in awkward rolls, the girl lies in the November air and waves her legs, probably in hysterics. “Well?” she asks hoarsely. “Well, then?”

  “She finally likes it now,” one of the older punks says. “She’s stopped making out she’s a virgin.”

  “Would you like a new prick, you bitch?” another kid asks her spitefully, kneeling in front of her and sticking his penis into her.

  “O-o-o-oh!” the girl bleats as if in pain.

  “Do you like a big prick, you whore?” the punk asks again, angrily grabbing the girl by her hips and moving her on his cock.

  “O-o-o-oh, yes!” the girl answers, breathing with difficulty.

  “Now he’s going to split her with his log,” the other kids laugh drunkenly. “He’ll clean out her oven. Mishka has a prick like an elephant’s.”

  Leaning against the fence, Eddie thinks, “So that’s what they call fucking. And that’s what all of the men and women in Saltovka and Kharkov and the whole world do when they sleep together. And that’s what Svetka is probably doing with Shurik.”

  Under the new punk, the girl’s breathing is even louder and more labored. �
��U-u-u-uh!” she howls. “U-u-u-uh!” The girl emits another trilled groan and then suddenly farts. The kids laugh maliciously…

  “Is that what Svetka’s doing?” Eddie wonders in horror. “With Shurik? She ought to do it with me,” Eddie thinks distractedly. He’s starting to get scared. He suddenly understands why Svetka likes Shurik. He remembers Shurik’s still sparse but real moustache, the coarse, chapped skin of his cheeks, his big, rough, clumsy seventeen-year-old hands. Svetka, like this girl and the other girl, or any girl when you get right down to it, likes it when her warm soft belly and her warm body are held by rude, rough hands. “It’s the contrast,” Eddie thinks. “Mushka likes it too.”

  For the first time in his life Eddie suddenly sees clearly that in the struggle for survival of animals of the male gender, his inborn characteristics are too pisspoor for him to stand much chance of winning. The fingers of his hands are too long, the skin on his face is too tender, and thanks to his half-Mongol mama – Eddie thinks of his mother with hostility – he hardly has any moustache or beard at all. How could Svetka, the most tender, long-legged, and defenseless creature in the world, love somebody like him? Shurik, however, can set her on his tall, hairy knees, grab her with his rough, oarlike hands, rub his razor-shaved stubble against her tender cheek, and Svetka probably feels safe…

  Carefully, as if afraid that somebody will stop him, Eddie moves toward the ‘source of his pain, moves in the direction of Saltovka, maneuvering among the laughing and drunkenly swearing punks. He’s moving toward Svetka. He doesn’t understand why, but he’s drawn to Svetka.

  Several kids are standing near the trolley line looking at something. Lying in the beams of their flashlights (all the Tyurenka kids carry pocket flashlights with them so they can get into their parents’ wooden houses at night without turning on the light) is the beaten man. Eddie stops for a moment to look. The man is lying on his stomach with one of his arms unnaturally twisted under him and the other one out of sight. His coat is no longer beige but a dark, dirty color, from the blood it has apparently absorbed. You can’t see his face, but in place of his ear and cheek there’s a dirty, clotted mass. The man isn’t moving.

  “I think,” Sashka Tishchenko whispers to Eddie, glancing around and looking absurd in this situation with his guitar on his back, “that Tuzik went ahead and hit him in the stomach with his bayonet. He decided to take him out, probably…”

  After a brief pause Sashka goes on. “They beat him a long time… Because of the knife. He had a knife. He cut Valka Fitilya’s hand, and the kids went crazy. They beat him with chains and a fence board. Each one took a turn. It doesn’t take much…”

  After another pause, Sashka sighs and says to no one in particular, or maybe to himself, “Got to get out of here… Before the trashes come. He’s dead for sure, since he isn’t moving.” And then he turns off his flashlight. “The guy had bad luck…”

  28

  It’s already very late when Eddie finally reaches Svetka’s building. Only after he has entered her yard does he realize that he has no idea at all what to do next. He has no definite plan. He has come here by following his instincts. But once he’s in Svetka’s yard, his instincts abandon him.

  Svetka’s windows don’t look out onto the yard but onto the street. Stealthily, like a criminal, although he really has nothing to be afraid of, Eddie goes around Svetka’s building, steps a little away from it, and looks up at her windows on the second floor. They’re dark. Either nobody’s home, or else they’re asleep.

  Remembering that Svetka has two other windows, the ones in her own room, which are on the other side of the building. Eddie slips around to that side and checks those windows too. The blinds are drawn, but even so, if a light was on, you’d be able to see it.

  Precisely because rumor has it that Svetka’s mother is a prostitute, she and Svetka have a separate two-room apartment all to themselves. “Only somebody like Veniamin Ivanovich could manage not to get a separate apartment, even though he’s a trash,” Eddie angrily thinks about his father. Eddie’s furious with everybody tonight.

  “Should I go up and ring her bell?” Eddie wonders to himself. “But if her mother’s home, she’ll get really mad, since it must already be after two, must be between two and three. And what if her mother isn’t there and Svetka’s with Shurik?” Eddie thinks. “What happens then?” When he grabbed his notebook of poems to go to the Victory, he forgot to take his razor too. “It was that goddamn dude Kadik!” Eddie thinks angrily. What can he do to Shurik now without his razor? Eddie has no idea – he’s half drunk and can’t concentrate. He stands there and looks up at Svetka’s windows.

  By the end of the second day of the October festivities, the majority of Saltovka’s residents have grown weary of celebrating and have gone to bed early – many windows are dark, drenched in black. Certain restless groups, however, are still marking the holiday, and from their partly open windows music can be heard. Eddie catches a few notes of the ever popular “My Black Sea… My Black Sea…”

  Returning to Svetka’s yard, Eddie sits down at the domino table and remains there for a while with his elbows resting on it and his hands covering his face. The branches of a large tree nearby tremble in the wind, and in the light of the streetlamp their blurred shadows, tremendously exaggerated, move across the surface of the table and over Eddie-baby, creating the impression that he and the table are in constant motion.

  Remembering that his “first prize,” the box of dominoes, is still in his pocket, Eddie takes it out and mechanically lays the dominoes out on the table. “Kill Svetka?” he thinks. “Kill Shurik? Kill them both? Not kill anybody?” Eddie isn’t afraid to kill them, but he’s held back by a small technical detail – the lack of a murder weapon, his razor. As he lays the dominoes out on the table, he suddenly realizes that he won’t kill anybody today. There’s nothing to kill them with. And he also realizes that tomorrow he’ll no longer be able to find the strength to kill Svetka or Shurik or both of them together. Because tomorrow it will be daytime. And before it’s daytime, he will have to sleep. And while he’s sleeping, the most decisive part of his pain will leave him, and all that will be left will be the pain he’ll have to live with.

  “It was stupid,” Eddie thinks. “It was stupid not to bring the razor.” Obviously it was as a result of taking the notebook with his poems in it that he left his razor behind. “Fool!” Eddie thinks bitterly, since he wants to act the way he’s supposed to according to the unwritten laws of Tyurenka and Saltovka. Eddie wants to kill. The kids and punks – public opinion, in other words – will forgive him for the murder, and he’ll be a hero for a long time, since he will have acted “the way he should have.” They won’t execute him for the murder since he’s only a minor. The very worst he’ll get is fifteen years, which after a bullet in the head is the most severe punishment in the penal code. “Asshole!” Eddie whispers to himself. “You’ve always been an asshole, and you always will be.”

  Eddie thinks there’s something wrong with him. Probably he isn’t the same as the other kids; probably he really is different. Although it’s actually a very hard thing to say whether you’re the same as or different from other people, since you can’t really get inside another person’s skin. The other kids don’t write poems, of course – they don’t know how to – but the fact that Eddie does write them doesn’t at all prove that he isn’t the same as they are. Still, if he were the same, he would have fucked Svetka. And he hasn’t.

  Eddie hears footsteps in one of the entrances to Svetka’s building – not hers, though, a different one. Somebody is coming down the stairs. When the person coming downstairs finally emerges, whistling to himself, Eddie recognizes him at once – it’s Garik. There’s nothing remarkable, of course, about Garik’s being here at three o’clock in the morning. After all, his Ritka lives in the same building Svetka does.

  “Hello, poet,” Garik greets Eddie ceremoniously as soon as he recognizes him. And then, noticing the dominoes on the t
able in front of Eddie, he shakes his head and, lifting his finger to his temple, rotates it significantly…

  “Have you gone crazy, or what? Playing dominoes with yourself in the middle of the night?”

  “I’m waiting for Svetka,” Eddie answers.

  “Isn’t she home, then?” Garik asks in surprise. “I saw her in the yard on her way home when Ritka and I got back.”

  “By herself?” Eddie asks, his heart skipping a beat. He so wants Garik to say yes.

  “No,” Garik answers reluctantly. “She wasn’t by herself. She was with your friend Shurik… What’s his last name… Ivan… Ivan something… Ivankovsky?” Garik asks uncertainly.

  “Ivanchenko,” Eddie sternly corrects him. “Only he isn’t my friend. He’s Svetka’s. Was it very long ago that you saw her?”

  “I don’t know… A half-hour ago? An hour, maybe?” Garik says, shrugging his shoulders. “Did you have a fight or something? And you didn’t come to Plotnikov’s either. Everybody was waiting for you,” Garik says.

  “Well, how was it?” Eddie asks for the sake of decency. He doesn’t really care “how it was”; he’s anxious for Garik to leave so he can go upstairs to Svetka’s and… Exactly what, Eddie doesn’t know. Burst into Svetka’s apartment and knock her down? Strangle Shurik and put an end to him for good?

  It’s pretty hard to get rid of Garik, however. The Morphine Addict likes to wander around late at night, and he likes to gab.

  “It was fun,” Garik says. “And your friend Asya was there… She didn’t look very good,” he announces.