I don’t know. Probably I would have survived without Jenny, although sometimes it seems to me I wouldn’t have. Many thanks to Tolya the drunk for coming by the hotel and literally dragging me out of my room. I really didn’t want to go way the hell out to Queens College, as I remember, and I complained about it the whole trip.
Finally, after interminable bus and subway changes, we reached that seat of culture, purchased our tickets, and went into the auditorium. As we were looking for empty seats a little closer to the stage, I suddenly heard someone calling to me, “Edik! Edik!”
Looking around, I saw Vadimov, who, according to all my calculations, should have been in Russia. I walked over. With Vadimov were the ballet superstar Lodyzhnikov and a girl. The girl was sitting on Lodyzhnikov’s right. A girl in a knitted sweater. A large girl. That’s about all I noticed. Also that she had rather full lips, commonly called sensual, and a large, ridiculous gap between her teeth. There was something funny about her. Probably Irish, I thought for some reason. I spoke with Vadimov and Lodyzhnikov, and listened as she asked Lodyzhnikov about something. I decided she was the latest of Lodyzhnikov’s girlfriends. He had a lot, none of them lasting very long.
It turned out that Vadimov was Makhmudova’s husband. Vadimov had been the husband of a number of famous or beautiful women in the Soviet Union. That was his second profession, or perhaps his first, if you like. He was also a stage designer — by birth, I think. And now they were visiting America. A degree was supposed to be conferred on the poetess in recognition of the fact that the American Academy of Arts and Letters had made her an honorary member. She was forty years old, and she started out every morning with a headache and a hangover. In her past were a great many amorous adventures, just like Vadimov; she had been married to or the mistress of many of Russia’s most famous men — poets and writers. And now she was married to an artist.
The auditorium noisily hummed and rustled as it waited for Makhmudova’s entrance. Whatever you may say about her, she was considered to be Russia’s number one woman poet. Old Russian ladies, Russian clods and nincompoops, and losers like Tolya and me had all come to hear her. Also represented in great numbers was the Russian-Jewish cultural aristocracy, a sort of international elite which had not forgotten the Russian language, or so it thought. They sat in the front rows, of course. I spotted people from two or three influential New York magazines, several wealthy widows, and a man from Odessa whom the great poet Volodya Mayakovsky had once called “Little Entente,” a name that “Little Entente” was very proud of. A cunning and pushy little fat man with red hair, the energetic “Little Entente” had made a fortune during the NEP period in Russia and gotten even richer here. He could, it was said, make money out of thin air. Just how much he understood about poetry remained an open question, however, especially in view of the fact that his hearing was bad. Actually, those people had all come there not out of any real love for poetry but rather to demonstrate their affiliation with culture. It didn’t matter if it was Russian culture or even something as remote from them as Chinese culture, as long as it was Culture. It’s the fashion in the United States now to be cultured, to go to classical music concerts or to the opera or ballet, and they all go; they’re all cultured. If some fanatical practice, say scourging rituals, were suddenly to become the rage, I have no doubt they would all abandon themselves to the practice along with all the other members of bourgeois society.
It’s only thanks to those big and little ententes that, for example, someone like Lodyzhnikov can even exist, I thought to myself, looking at him out of the corner of my eye. His art is ballet, which is in fashion among the bourgeoisie now, among the fat cats, so he’s a superstar and rakes it in hand over fist. As little as twenty years ago he would barely have been able to make a living dancing in America. Twenty years ago it wasn’t fashionable to go to the ballet. How the bourgeoisie spent its evenings then, I couldn’t say. Probably they went to Broadway musicals. I don’t know. I don’t like ballet. It’s contemporary life I’m crazy about, and all those sleeping beauties so dear to the hearts of the ruling classes both here in the US of A and there in the U of SSR (and, really, why is that?) irritate me with their sugariness. Just look at the dancers’ thighs. If ballet does have a place today, then in my opinion it’s the same one the stereograph has — in the wing of a history museum.
The poetess finally made her entrance. Dressed entirely in black. Although not in a black dress, but in black velvet pants, black boots, and a black jacket that failed to conceal her rather ample bosom. Her style of reading has always seemed vulgar and saccharine to me. She belonged to the generation of stern and staunch young Soviet men and women (as they saw themselves), the generation that had dared to enter the fray against falsehood at the beginning of the sixties. These youths — her friends, husbands, and lovers — thought it was possible to play the role of poet “in between” — in between trips to Paris and sprees at the House of Litterateurs and writing prose and verse that gave the finger to the authorities, but on the sly. Their great example, the one they chose themselves, was Pasternak, a talented poet but a timid man, confused and servile, a country philosopher, a lover of fresh air, old books, and the easy life. I, who feel like vomiting whenever I see a library, despise Pasternak. Yes.
But let’s return to the poetess and the stern youths. The stern, uncompromising youths, reading their stern poems about the evils of making a career, or suddenly kicking in print the long-dead bloodthirsty tyrant Stalin, or full of indignation that somebody is beating a woman, were greeted with cheers by readers no different from themselves. Brusquely adjusting their sport coats or nylon jackets and carelessly pushing back their hair with manly gestures, the poets hurled their cant at university auditoriums overflowing with nincompoops, and the auditoriums burst into applause. The poets of that generation had tremendous followings. And then they suddenly lost permission for a long time to make their customary trips to Paris, or their books were published in editions of only a hundred thousand copies, instead of five hundred thousand or a million. And when those awful things happened, the world community at once stood up for them.
The years had passed, but there she was, a stern young girl of that generation. She was reading a poem about the poetess Tsvetaeva, who had killed herself in the provincial town of Elabuga, who had hanged herself. Well, such are the current idols of the Russian intelligentsia — the timid coward Pasternak, and Mandelstam, who died next to a prison camp garbage can where he had been foraging for leftovers, Mandelstam driven mad with fear, and the hanged Tsvetaeva. If only one of them had been a wolf and had died shooting back, had died with a bullet in his brain, but at least after taking a couple of the bastards with him. I’m ashamed for Russian literature.
Makhmudova had come. She was reading poems that had been written fifteen years before. She had come. They had elected her to the Academy. But why, if she hadn’t hanged herself? You can’t elect a hanged poetess to the Academy. It isn’t nice. But why didn’t you hang yourself? I wondered. Something, I don’t know what, but something should have happened to you. Why didn’t it?
The rebellious stern youth, the “bad boys” of Russian literature as they are still called by others just as “rebellious,” the liberal American critics, those rebellious youth were punished for their virtues by the Soviet authorities — punished with dachas, apartments, money, and large editions of their books. Accept your Academy election, stern girl. The stern boys, approaching fifty now, have worn out their pricks with rubbing, from sticking them in the eager twats of their countless young admirers. Even when I was a kid, I used to think lustful thoughts about Stella Makhmudova, Russia’s number one poetical cunt.
God, the stuff she was reading! Long-dead verses that reeked of insincerity and posing. And of course there was something about Pasternak, too. Pasternak, that obliging fellow who had translated from every conceivable language a whole book of “Songs about Stalin,” had obviously once made a very considerable impression on the yo
ung Makhmudova. That coward whose only slip-up had been a decision that it wasn’t necessary to cower anymore, and who had therefore written and published abroad his sentimental masterpiece Dr.Zhivago, that hymn to the cowardice of the Russian intelligentsia. But he was deceived; it was still necessary to cower. And it scared him to death.
Vadimov was whispering something to me in an apologetic tone about how only the older poetry of his wife had been translated. “She’s writing some very good things now, unusual poems,” he told me, leaning in my direction, although I hadn’t said anything either about new poems or about old ones. Maybe my face betrayed my thoughts.
“Sure,” I said, “poets always like the new things better.”
It was just a meaningless phrase. Obviously I couldn’t tell Vadimov what I really thought of his wife and her poetry. When it comes down to it, I always feel sorry for people, and I couldn’t tell the stern young girl that she hasn’t been a stern young girl for quite a while now, but is just a sad middle-aged broad with big tits. And a fat belly. I’m sure if you took off her skin-tight pants, you’d find red marks where they cut into her belly. That whole generation went terribly wrong somewhere, and none of them has left behind a bloody track from his wounds. Everything was superficial, not really serious, done merely for “points.”
The girl sitting on Lodyzhnikov’s right kept asking him about something from time to time. He answered her, but I couldn’t hear what it was. Only later did Jenny tell me what they had been talking about. It turned out she had asked Lodyzhnikov after I turned up who “that person” was (“You seemed funny to me, Edward”), and Lodyzhnikov had answered, “Oh, just another Russian!” The bastard! He knew I was a long way from being just another Russian. He’d read my first novel in manuscript and hadn’t been able to put it down, had even taken it with him to rehearsal to read during breaks. My novel had shocked and impressed him, just as it later impressed Efimenkov. But Efimenkov was more honest. Another Russian! Don’t be ridiculous!
Lodyzhnikov is a snob. Money made him one. He mainly associates with rich old ladies from Park and Fifth Avenues and with celebrities like himself. He fled Russia a penniless youth, the same as we all were then, but now he has millions. I haven’t counted his money, but I think for just going on stage he gets from four to seven thousand dollars. Imagine, for one appearance alone! There’s something grotesquely unfair about that. Even if he dances better than anybody else in the world, why should he get so much? Isn’t the fame enough? Isn’t it enough that his picture’s in all the world’s newspapers and magazines? Seven thousand dollars for one evening! There are families that can’t even earn that kind of money after a whole year of hard work.
I know many dancers who do a completely different kind of dancing, not classical but contemporary ballet. Since that art is vital, the bourgeoisie doesn’t support it; it only likes what’s moribund and innocuous, and those dancers therefore haven’t got a penny. To see them, you have to go not to the Metropolitan Opera, but to dark little theaters with slanting ceilings and peeling walls somewhere way the hell off-off-Off-Broadway or on the Lower East Side, or some place like that.
No doubt Lodyzhnikov is a decent fellow. I don’t believe he’s a mean or bad person. But he doesn’t give a shit about the rest of the world and its poverty. Lodyzhnikov takes an animal pleasure in his fame and money, every day becoming, in the company of his rich old ladies, more and more of a snob. He’s acquiring their habits too. For example, he has three dogs and two cats. What does he, a man in his “early thirties” living by himself, need with a litter of dogs and cats?
Give the money to the poor, you bastard! I thought ironically as I watched him.
I know I’m jealous of him. And I’m not ashamed of it, because I have a right to be. I’m more talented than he is; I know that too, although it has been enormously difficult for me. He’s lying to himself when he says I’m just another Russian. He has always singled me out from the others. That I’m sure of. He’s even afraid to associate with me, as mutual friends have told me. “He’ll put me in his next book,” Lodyzhnikov said to them. Actually, I wouldn’t “put him in,” since he’s not right for the hero of a book; he’s an ordinary creature, even though a superstar. It’s television and the newspapers that make all these celebrities so important, whereas in real life they’re usually shy and uninteresting little nothings. It’s rare to find a real human being among them.
After the poetess had finished reading, there was a party given in her honor by Queens College at which I drank a lot and out of boredom shared several joints with Vadimov, who desperately wanted to be contemporary and American. I wasted quite a few joints on Vadimov and some other bumpkins, in fact, and the poetess smoked a couple too, but Lodyzhnikov turned them down; he was looking out for his body. Some crazy old couple took me for Lodyzhnikov and asked for my autograph. I thought it was hilarious, but Lodyzhnikov didn’t, for some reason.
I knew from experience that if I wanted to continue the evening’s entertainment, and it was still pretty early, I’d have to be pushy about it. And that meant I’d have to invite myself along with the rest of the company to supper or wherever else they were going. And so, like an experienced outsider, I attached myself to Vadimov and resolved not to let him out of my sight. I followed him everywhere until I was sure he wasn’t trying to get rid of me and would take me wherever he was going. It turned out that the girl (Jenny) who had been sitting with Lodyzhnikov and Vadimov had already left, had gone home to the house where Makhmudova and her husband, Vadimov, were staying, and where they were all going to have supper. I wanted to have supper too, and so I took the bull by the horns and said I would go in the same car with them, justifying my persistence with a few mumbled words about my feeling for Vadimov and the poetess. It was a lie. I just didn’t want to go back to my hotel on Broadway and the filth and the stench and the loneliness.
Finally, after we had succeeded in wresting the poetess from her crowd of Russian and non-Russian admirers, we squeezed ourselves into Professor Barth’s car, the same Jon Barth who would later escort Efimenkov and who in such situations was always on the very best of terms with Soviet writers — their guide and friend. «We» in this case meant Lodyzhnikov, Makhmudova, Vadimov, and I. The car set off down the road, while Makhmudova’s admirers gaped and waved.
The professor’s car happily chewed up the miles, and then, after about a half hour’s drive, we came to a halt, emerging into the darkness and entering an open door, and thus began what was to be perhaps one of the most important events of my life. I found myself in the multimillionaire’s little house, as I would call it later. Entering, of course, I didn’t have the least suspicion that my subsequent fate would be tied up for several years with that house and its inhabitants or that I would live there. No, I didn’t sense anything of the sort. It was dark, and I was stoned and drunk; after all, you’ve got to cheer yourself up a bit in this world to keep from drifting away out of depression and boredom.
I brutally abandoned Tolya the drunk that evening, although it was in fact he who had gotten me started on that journey in the first place. There was only one place left in the car — for me. “Bolivar can’t carry two.” Having played his part as an instrument of fate, he vanishes from the stage. Forgive me, Tolya.
The first thing I saw was the kitchen. Wide, like a dance hall. With a huge gas stove, as in a restaurant. With a thousand components, appliances, jars, boxes, counters, and shelves. It’s difficult now to say whether I noticed all that abundance then, or whether it was simply the kitchen’s sheer scale that impressed me; after all, I was stoned. And then I saw the dining room where the young girl Jenny, getting tangled in her long skirt, was preparing an American-style supper — putting out plates and knives and forks and numerous other things whose function was beyond me.
The poetess, out of Russian generosity (something that has always seemed suspect to me, even though I’m a Russian myself; it’s more a lack of character than generosity), had invited some
thirty people to dinner, which naturally shocked Jenny, although she had the good manners not to say anything about it. Several people helped her add a leaf to the table, which though large, still wasn’t big enough for all that fraternity.
Above the table hung a spiral chandelier made of dark copper and no doubt very old, an elaborate structure of tubes and lamps that looked like the coiffure of a seventeenth century lady of fashion or a hat from a picture by Picasso. On one wall stood a high, open buffet with plates and dishes standing on end and painted with fishes, the various fishes of freshwater America, obviously. Depicted on the largest of them was an enormous pike. On another wall of the dining room stood a small old cupboard, and above it hung a painting, old too, with its surface even cracked in places, depicting a plenitude of different foods, from meat to fruit. A third wall was covered from end to end with the wooden lattices of windows and a doorway opening out onto the garden of the millionaire’s house. Imagine, a garden!
It was all the more impressive for me, since at the time I was residing at a dirt-cheap hotel on Broadway in the nineties, a place where fires burned. That same April several rooms near mine on the tenth floor had been completely gutted, and I remember running down the hall with a suitcase containing my manuscripts under one arm and my white suit dangling from the other. Just think — after a hotel where the drunks urinated in the elevator and where they vomited too, where the stench of urine and excrement was never aired out of the filthy rugs, where it seemed that the inhabitants never slept and where at four o’clock in the morning they were still swearing at each other from window to window across the squalid courtyard, where trash and empty bottles were simply chucked out of the windows, and where the police visited every day; after a hotel like that, you suddenly find yourself in a house with a garden. And a garden, as you later discover, that faces the river. That faces the river directly, and what could be more natural than that? And in the garden are trees and birds — as if you weren’t in New York at all. And among the other houses facing the garden stands one that a couple of years before had belonged to Onassis, and next door is another that belongs, you are told, to a woman everybody calls “Mrs. Five Hundred Million.” And among all those houses, Jenny’s is by no means the worst, but one of the best.
His Butler’s Story (1980-1981) Page 5