“Listen,” I told him, “let’s go buy some beer, let’s buy a six-pack. We’ve already had rum and vodka, we’re high on grass. The beer will hit us just right, I think, it has to. And at most it will cost two-fifty.”
He consented. We went looking for beer. Found the beer. He was tired of walking, though he didn’t let on. Proud Alyoshka. Say what you like, a stiff leg is not conducive to the practice of long and rapid walks. I suggested that we sit down somewhere on the street and have a drink.
We located a very dark yard in the wasteland behind a parking lot – business there was slow – and sat down on some railway ties or logs to drink the beer.
It really was pretty good. Not far off was Broadway, and somewhere nearby was Alyoshka’s house; I was going to try and get my bearings, but then I ceased to care. We talked about the parking lot and its cars, I think. I don’t remember now, and perhaps did not remember even then. The half-inebriated conversation of two poets, what could be more incoherent. I remember only that my mood was tranquil. The shuffle of feet from Broadway, the relative freshness of the night, the cold beer – a blessing of American civilization – all this created an atmosphere of belonging. Even we belonged to this world.
We sat there shooting the bull. I sprawled out and felt quite at home, such being my nature. Alyoshka was happy, or at any rate seemed so.
And now a man appeared, coming toward us from the parking lot. He walked up. A black, in scuzzy clothes, something baggy. Pale green trash-can trousers in a beam of light. He asked for a cigarette.
“We don’t have any,” Alyoshka said, “we ran out. If you want I’ll give you the money, go buy some.” And he gave him a dollar. Alyoshka loves to fart around showing off. He didn’t begrudge the money, he’d give away his last dollar just to show off.
The black man took the dollar. “I’ll be right back with the cigarettes,” he said, and went off into the black gap of Broadway.
“Shithead,” I said to Alyoshka, “why’d you give him the dollar? That’s not even interesting, you should’ve given it to me instead.”
“What the hell,” Alyoshka laughed. “A psychological test.”
“I’ve got nothing to eat tomorrow, my welfare check doesn’t come for four days, but you’re doing tests, you bastard! You’re a shitty scholar, Sigmund Freud.”
“If you come see me you’ll eat,” Alyoshka said.
We were still quarreling ten minutes later when the black reappeared.
“I’ll be damned,” I said, “an honest man in the neighborhood of Forty-sixth Street and Broadway. Something bad will happen soon. An omen.”
“I told you so,” Alyoshka laughed.
The black sat down, lighted a cigarette. Alyoshka thrust a can of beer at him. He and Alyoshka talked about serious subjects.
But by now I wasn’t understanding a fucking thing. The beer had done its work. I glanced sideways at the black. A thick beard, a bum’s rags. I don’t know why, but what came back to me was the feeling of Chris. And it wasn’t even the sexual feeling. What I wanted was to be in a relationship, to go somewhere, even do something shady, anything at all, but to latch on to this guy and crawl into the world behind him. “You left Chris, shithead, now correct your mistake!” I told myself.
Fucking was no problem for me at that time. Though it was dull and lousy, I was fucking Sonya. In anticipation of this dull act my pale prick just barely got up. Sonya was the Jewish girl, the Russian one, I knew her type: I needed to be tortured, but she didn’t know how to do that, poor girl. I wanted a new world, I was sick of living an indeterminate life, being neither Russian nor anything else…
“What’s your name?” I said, moving over to sit by the black.
“He introduced himself to you when he came up, you don’t hear a fucking thing,” Alyoshka said. “He said his name was Johnny.”
Johnny smiled broadly. “You’re a nice boy, Johnny,” I said, and stroked his cheek. These were my whorish tricks. Alyoshka was not surprised. I had told him about Chris. He was merely curious, Alyoshka, he was not surprised.
We sat, talked. Alyoshka translated what I had forgotten in my drunken state or didn’t know.
“He may be a bum or he may not, how the fuck should I know,” Alyoshka said. “A shady character. Well, it’s none of our business, we don’t have to be buddies with him, let’s shoot the bull in English, it’s all practice. You should talk more yourself, Limonov, by the way. Why the hell use me as an interpreter? How long can you keep on asking your nanny?”
“It’s fine for you,” I told Alyoshka, “you studied ten years in the institutes, you didn’t get wise but at least you learned the language. I just had high-school French.”
“You don’t even know French,” Alyoshka said.
“I’ve forgotten it, you motherfucker, but in my time I did read French books, whole pages almost without a dictionary.”
“Don’t lie, don’t lie, Limonov,” Alyoshka said.
“I’m very sorry, Johnny,” I said in English.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Johnny nodded, smiling.
An infinite number of smiles. Alyoshka smiled, and Johnny, everyone was smiling in the dark and I could see it. Then something happened. It seems I laid my head on Johnny’s shoulder. Why? God knows.
His clothes even smelled of something rotten. Theoretically I shouldn’t have liked him. But there he was, sitting beside me, not planning to go away; that meant I had to do something with him. I had surprised him by touching him, or to put it plainly, feeling him up. But he had been educated, I don’t know where or by whom. Maybe he thought this was done among Russians, they might all be like this. Had he seen many Russians in his life as a Broadway bum? Or whatever the fuck he was, maybe the lowliest little beast on Broadway, a flunky who ran to get ginger ale or hot dogs for the prostitutes – oh, I don’t know if they eat hot dogs or if anyone runs to buy their hot dogs for them, I’m just guessing.
“Alyoshka, I want to fuck him,” I said.
“You dirty homosexual, Limonov, I didn’t think you were serious about all that, but you’re turning out to be a real dirty pederast,” Alyoshka said derisively.
This wasn’t insulting, it was humor. I laughed and said, “Uh-huh, I’m a dirty pederast, and I joined the Chinese Communist Party. I did away with myself, hanged myself. I have two black prostitutes supporting me; they’re standing here in the vicinity, on Broadway. Nice girls. And also, I’m a KGB agent with the rank of colonel.”
These were all pernicious rumors about me that I was enumerating to Alyoshka. Some of the rumors came from Moscow, my friends had written to me; some were being spread here. In Russian books you often find it said of some poet or writer that he has been “run to earth” – a hunting term, you know, it’s used to signify a long chase and the slaying of some wild animal. That trick won’t work with me. I think very little of the Russian emigration, I consider them the lowest of the low, pathetic, absurd, worse than this Johnny. Therefore I find the rumors funny; what’s more, I take a childish delight in them, following the dictum of contemporary Russia’s crudest poet, Igor Kholin, a scoundrel and a villain, but magnificent. “Let them talk as they will, so long as they talk.”
“I’m a dirty pederast, Alyoshka,” I said. “Listen, take us to your place, you mentioned something about both your performing artists going to Philadelphia tonight.”
“Not quite,” Alyoshka said. “What are you planning to do, fuck him at my house?”
“House! You call that dirty, stinking, steamy hole a house? Yes, I want to fuck this guy on your fiddler’s bed, and then switch over to the clown’s bed.”
“Okay, let’s go,” Alyoshka said. “Only don’t fuck me afterward.”
“We won’t,” I said. “You don’t turn me on at all. I have little interest in fucking Russian poets.”
“Or maybe he’s not a pederast at all?” Alyoshka said, glancing doubtfully at Johnny.
“We’ll check it out right now,” I said. Hitching myself
up from Johnny’s shoulder, I put my arms around him, whispered in his ear, “I vont you, Johnny!” and kissed him on the lips. His lips were big, and he responded to me, not the least bit embarrassed. He knew how to kiss, he did it much better than I did. True, that meant nothing, but if he’d gone this far, to the kiss, he was agreeable to going all the way.
“He’ll do,” I said to Alyoshka. “Let’s go.”
I told Johnny that he would come with us. He expressed not the slightest unwillingness, and I put my arm around him and walked on ahead with him. I was drawn into more and more kisses, especially since I was feeling the effects of what I had smoked and drunk more and more clearly. The incubation period was over and the disease had begun a rapid development. We walked and kissed, and Alyoshka limped behind. I got drunk and silly, switched from game-playing and humor into a state of genuine drugged relaxation. I just wanted somebody, not specifically Johnny, but he was nearby. From time to time Alyoshka commented on the pair of us, Johnny and me, with remarks like, “What a pederast you are, Limonov!”
Or, “If the guys in Moscow could only see you!”
“But Gubanov’s a pederast himself!” I said exultantly. “I once spent a whole evening smooching with him.”
Finally we arrived. It must have been one in the morning. We walked into those clouds of steam, and the first thing I saw was two pairs of eyes, frightened and puzzled as hell. The performing artists were lying on their beds, facing the door, and were stunned by the arrival of Limonov and his black lover. I decided to finish them off. I put my arms around Johnny and entered into a long, agonizing kiss. The performing artists were petrified. They were both over forty, they were not prepared for this, neither the clown nor the musician.
I told Alyoshka, “This is a bummer, the sleepin will not take place. If you’ll just give us some beer, Johnny and I will go.” Johnny and I sat down on a chair, or rather he did, and I settled on his lap within sight of the astonished spectators. Alyoshka gave us some beer.
The beer belonged to the musician, he always had a couple dozen beers in reserve, and Alyoshka asked him for the loan of a beer. He gave it, he would have given the world not to see Limonov endlessly kiss a black man. A terrible spectacle for a Russian musician or clown.
Then Johnny and I left. Alyoshka stayed, went to bed. I invited him to come with us, but he said, “You’ll be fucking, and what will I do?” He was right, and we left alone.
Then began my long night of walking with Johnny along Broadway, Eighth Avenue, and neighboring streets, from the Thirties to the Fifties. I do not know, it remains a mystery to me even now, why he didn’t get around to fucking me right away. Nor do I know what he was doing, sometimes stopping with people, talking with them, approaching prostitutes and people who worked in all sorts of night establishments. He was doing some sort of petty business of his own, he was busy with it right up to daybreak, people handed him something, maybe it was coins, I don’t know. I could see that the faces of the people he talked to were scornful and squeamish. One time a young and handsome black man, brightly dressed, evidently a pimp, even pushed him. He was the lowest man in this world, my Johnny, and I was his buddy.
I understood at once that he was the lowest of the low. Another man in my place would have left, wouldn’t have given a damn, especially since the excitement was gone, the sex drive had vanished, there was only a drugged, alcoholic state; but that was what another would have done. Not I. I felt I must walk with him everywhere in his strange dealings, wait for him, and be a friend to him, to this lowest man, this punk dressed in dirty rags. Once he even deserted me, and a huge, fat black guy, from a whorehouse on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Forty-third Street I think, tried to beat me up for something. I don’t remember – and besides I didn’t understand – what the problem was or how I had irritated him. But I patiently heard out his seething speech, indistinct and vicious, and when he came after me with his fists I realized there was no point fighting, and simply tried to push the big guy away without running afoul of his fists. I succeeded in this, but not quite. Repulsed by his bulk, I bounced back against the wall. I wasn’t hurt, didn’t fall; a shout went up around me. Only then did Johnny come over to me and furtively tell me I’d better leave. I don’t give a shit about these amusements. I left calmly, but as I say, I didn’t have a fucking thing to lose; as I say, why should I fear tight spots – I was even seeking death. Not very consciously, but I was.
Johnny deserted me for long periods that night, and more than once I developed a suspicion that he wanted to shake me off. Somewhere around four in the morning he squeezed himself into a group of black youths on Forty-second Street, between Broadway and Eighth, and tried to get something out of them. Someone chased him away.
I sat on my heels by the wall and observed the young people and Johnny. I felt sad. Even they did not accept me into their game. I would have given the world, at that moment, to have black skin and stand among them as one of their own.
I recalled my own provincial Kharkov, my hoodlum friends, our flashy dolled-up girls – not this dolled-up, of course; they didn’t have the resources – but also provocative, young, and vulgar, like these nice little black girls. There in my own city I was in my right place. Everyone knew Ed. They knew what he could do. They knew I hawked stolen countermarks, which was what we called the free passes to the outdoor dance pavilion where the orchestra played. I sold them cheap and divided the profits with the cashier, a middle-aged German woman. It was a pretty good business. In one evening I would earn a third to a half of a good worker’s monthly pay – it was a big dance pavilion. Everyone knew that I wasn’t averse to stealing anything left lying around loose, and it was I who robbed the store near the entrance to the Hammer and Sickle Factory.
The people knew my girl Svetka; they would inform me at once, that very night, if they saw her at another dance pavilion with another guy. Then I would leave someone to hawk countermarks in my place, and go to the grocery store; a friend and I would each buy a bottle of strong red, drink it right on the street. On occasion we carried out this operation two or three times, and afterward, when I had sold all the countermarks, I would go to Svetka’s apartment house and wait for her. I would sit in the courtyard, talk with some Tatar boxers, the brothers Epkin, and wait for Svetka. When she appeared I would beat her and beat the guy who was with her. The brothers Epkin, who loved both Svetka and me, would butt in, and a hue and cry would go up. Then we would make peace and go to Svetka’s. Her mother was a prostitute and a lover of literature. She valued highly the diary I kept as a seventeen-year-old, which at Svetka’s request I had given her to read. She encouraged our romance and predicted for me a future as a man of letters. Unfortunately, she proved right.
Svetka was a very sweet girl, beautiful but sneaky. She loved the starched petticoats and fluffy dresses stylish at the time. She lived in apartment 14 and was fourteen years old. She had lived with men since the age of twelve; a friend of her late alcoholic father’s had once raped her. Strange as it may seem, Svetka was proud of this circumstance; she was a romantic soul. In addition to her tallness, little doll face, long legs, and almost complete absence of breasts, Svetka possessed an amazing ability to drive me mad. My romance with her was rife with incidents – she ran to drown herself in the pond, I slashed her with a knife, fled from her to the Caucasus, wept in the entrance to her house, and so on… It was like a rehearsal of Elena.
Anyway, I felt wonderful out by our dance pavilion, in the crush of young people – mainly delinquent young people, our neighborhood being what it was. In our neighborhood there were buildings where the entire male population was in prison. The fathers went, then the older brothers, then the younger brothers, my agemates. I might be able to recall the names of about a dozen guys sentenced in their time to execution, the firing squad. And the number sentenced to ten and fifteen years was absolutely drastic.
The young blacks and nonblacks on Forty-second Street reminded me of my neighborhood, my dance pavilion, my
friends, hoodlums, gangsters, and thieves. I use these words with no nuance of condemnation, none. Besides, most of that Kharkov crowd by the dance pavilion and most of this Forty-second Street crowd consisted not of hoodlums and gangsters, of course, but of normal teenagers, boys and girls at a transitional age who wanted to fuck around showing off. In Russia they were called blatnye, toughs. They were not real criminals, but their manners, behavior, habits, and dress aped the manners, behavior, habits, and dress of real criminals. It was the same here.
A sadness, as I say, came over me. I could not be one of this crowd of busily scurrying, whispering boys and girls. Oh, this business of theirs! Whom to fuck tonight, and if there isn’t anyone, then where to get a drink if you haven’t a cent in your pocket, though you’re wearing patent leather shoes and a wide black hat. You might hit Sam for a couple of bucks – he deals in marijuana. “Hi, Bob!” “Hi, Bill!” “Hello, Lizzy!”
Such, I think, were the thoughts and expressions that floated over this crowd. The kids perhaps found Johnny disgusting; filthy thirty-five-year-old punk Johnny, my friend, for whom I was waiting. Possibly they held their noses on his account. But I, my foolish brain, was thinking about everyone and for everyone, while they were merely making gestures and uttering words. I sat on my heels at the base of the wall, in my very wide trousers and the short white – no, not dead white, the off-white jacket that Alexander had given me, with pockets; I had tailored it to my figure, it fitted me as if I had been poured into it, at the moment it was completely unbuttoned, my chest was bare, with my cross exposed. That was all I had. I waited for Johnny.
Within me was the stubbornness of an all-forgiving love. I thought, “Of course he’s a punk, a flunky. There’s no one worse or less than he, even here. Everyone chases him away, and he’s obviously begging for coins, but even he is ashamed of me, pretends that he doesn’t know me, that I’m an outsider and he, Johnny, is on his own. Nevertheless, I must be here and wait for him, the lowest filth off New York’s sidewalks, I must be with him.”
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