Maybe she’ll be lucky yet and fall in love. It will be hard for her, and wonderful. I envy the man with whom the love of this unfortunate creature at last finds expression. He will inherit a lot. So much love must have accumulated within her. But most likely she will never experience the happiness of giving her whole self, her soul, to another creature, never experience the sweet pain of this act, so unnatural in an animal, which is what man is.
Many of you in this world, like her, are unhappy, but only by reason of your inability to love, to love another creature. Poor, poor you! When Eddie fell apart he was nevertheless happy; though sick, he has within him Love. Envy him, gentlemen!
Such were my reflections while she twirled her poopka, and at that moment Zhigulin arrived.
“Eddie bought me some shoes,” she said.
“Would you buy some for me?” Zhigulin asked with interest.
“Elena, you’re supposed to go out, and you also promised to go to the bar with me,” I said, not answering Zhigulin.
“We’ll make it,” she said. “I’ll shower now and we’ll go to the bar.”
She showered and we began the wrap job. It was horribly silly: she with nothing on, as before, and I with trembling hands wrapping her in transparent fabrics, first lilac, then black and yellow. This was crap, she realized it, but she said we didn’t know how to wrap, neither I nor she. Of course not, how could we, we weren’t Indians.
She decided to wear the lilac dress. I was put to work hemming up the dress for her. I hemmed it, what else! I can do everything, it’s really lousy. Finally, after ordering Zhigulin to send the lame “economist” downstairs to the bar, she went down with me. My white suit jacket was unbuttoned, she wore the weird lilac dress and the shoes I had bought her, with the long cigarette holder in her hand – beautiful, seductive. You might have thought we were rich people, a husband and wife, or lovers, prosperous Eddie and the beauty Elena whom prosperous Eddie had bought, going down to the bar.
She ordered cognac, I whiskey, J B. We drank. Striking people. I had already begun to enter into the role, but she kept distracting me, the whole time she kept looking out the window at the street, and suddenly she broke loose. She walked out – walked out, hell, she ran out – and returned with someone wrinkled and mustachioed, I briefly saw something yellow. She introduced us and they left at once, my lilac vision withdrew. “His name is George.” We know he’s George.
The Japanese barman saw, the barman understood. They had stabbed me in the heart, and at that moment everything burst into flames, everything!
And how would you have felt in that bar on East Fifty-fourth, Fifty-eighth Street, if a rich man had stolen your love merely because he was rich, and you were left on the stool to drink your J B and pose as a visiting foreigner? Fucking shit! All my hatred for this world – the personal hatred of talented brave Eddie, musky little wild beast – a bitter and miserable hatred, unable to vent itself, was instantly in my eyes.
Do not forget the milieu in which I grew up and was formed. A milieu where love and blood stood side by side, betrayal was barely a step ahead of the word knife. I sat on the stool and reflected that the boys back home, my friends rotting in prison camps for their crimes, the gangsters and thieves of Kharkov, now scorned me as a pathetic rag. “They stole her, you shitass, and you didn’t even put a knife in the chump’s ribs. Everyone who feels like it fucks her, she sucks them all off, you shitass, and you let them mess on your soul. Asshole, coward, lousy fucking intellectual!”
So said the boys, they spoke terrifyingly and frankly. From their own parochial viewpoint they were right, yes, they were definitely right, by their code and mine I should have knifed her if I loved her. And I did love her.
Little Eddie was silent. What could he say to the boys? That this was her own evil will, that lame George had nothing to do with it, or Jean…
When Kirill walked into the bar – this was half an hour later, Zhigulin had told him I was sitting here with Elena – he told me afterward, “From the look in your eyes, you’d just seen someone run a red-hot poker through the head of your beloved child.” Kirill loves to express himself ornately, but evidently it was true.
When he came in I was on my sixth or seventh J B, I ordered the same for him, it may have been White Label, I don’t know, but we drank it and went from there to another place, and I remember almost nothing further. Kirill said afterward that we were in several bars, that we got thrown out of one, that I undressed and swam in a fountain, that I climbed up on some sort of sculpture and jumped down, that I posed as a mobster, a godfather. Of course this was all my subconscious.
He spent the night at the hotel, and in the morning he and I had a row. When I tried to take my contact lenses out of my eyes, I discovered they weren’t in my eyes. “Fuck the lenses, fuck the two hundred and twenty dollars, so much is already lost that this isn’t even a loss,” I told Kirill. He evidently caught my inner hysteria because he began to torture me with stories about how I had behaved.
“You were repulsive,” Kirill said in a sort of malicious ecstasy. “You hurled yourself under cars, you took off your shoes and went barefoot, your face was vile.”
Kirill said all this standing over, me as I lay on the bed with my face to the wall. A pleasure, when they get to you at fucking eight in the morning. Your world’s a filthy garbage pit as it is, and now they have to denounce you too.
“Leave me alone,” I said wearily. “What do you want from a sick old man, why are you telling me all this?”
He screamed, “I’ll smash that prostitute’s face! Why does she take money from you? Let her get money from the guys she sucks off! You bought her panties, you fool, you shitass! George, Jean, some other photographer, and Zhigulin are all wiping their dicks on your panties, she’s fucking all of them now! Jean called me, boasted he’d fucked Elena again, twice!”
He kept yelling like that and I drove him out. He went away, and I plunged into a terrible idiotic state, now floating up from the gloom, now plunging back in. When I floated up, I got a drink of water, lay down again, thought interminably about Elena, about the fact that I, Eddie-baby, had no fucking reason to live in the world the way I was.
I lay there until twelve o’clock and then went to the shower, thinking I would go out to Eighth Avenue and get a prostitute. That ought to calm me. You can’t die – you have to live. I had already collected myself completely, I even knew exactly who I would get on Eighth Avenue, which girl, when suddenly the phone rang. This happened when I had just put a ten in one pocket and another ten in the other – that’s my way. After love I planned to take the prostitute to a bar, I needed to have a drink with someone.
The phone rang, and from the receiver poured forth the voice of my beloved. My beloved ordered me to report to her without delay for implementation of her crazy designs. Since she demanded it, I had to go. Eddie’s cock would have to wait. I could put off the prostitute. Suicide too. I had to cut out little Elena’s transparent fabrics for her. Picking up a hardly touched bottle of whiskey of unknown provenance, I set out to see my ladylove.
My ladylove, before cutting the fabric, was planning an expedition to Bloomingdale’s to purchase thread, belts, pins, zippers, and other frippery. I went with her. I bought her some fur slippers she liked; panties were purchased again, and other items. When we left I didn’t have a cent, and she had nothing left of her $20 either, we had pooled our dimes and quarters for the last panties. The panties were red. I thought with anguish about the prostitute; I had no more money. You think I regretted anything? Far from it. I always act on my whims, the little girl was glad for the panties. I enjoyed it.
Zhigulin and his guest, who met us in the studio, did not appreciate the panties. Lowbrows, what did they know about red panties. Only with me could Elena talk about them, only with me. We also drank, shot the bull about this and that. After several good slugs of whiskey I completely lost any desire to cut or sew. But, fucked out and drenched in sweat, I got busy with it anyway.
I cleared their things off the table, spread out the fabric, and began to puzzle over it. I was very tempted to lie down and take a nap. She was walking around here, Zhigulin was here, the cat was here, I would have fallen asleep calmly and without nightmares in her bed, for example. But I didn’t have the guts to ask. Quite possibly she would have consented. I would have asked to sleep without her, not with her.
I was busy over by the fabric, she was bullshitting on the phone in Zhigulin’s sector, and gradually that began to irritate me. She might at least have the decency to sit with me while I work, I thought. Sit with me, hell – she soon donned a red hat and took off completely. “I’m going to work,” she said. All her work, what was it worth? She didn’t have a cent.
She left, Zhigulin fiddled with his lights, and little Eddie, rejoicing that there was no supervision, immediately abandoned the cutting and quickly reoriented himself, found something to do. He pinched from her bookshelf a suspicious black notebook, opened it, and saw Elena’s notes. Eddie knew these notebooks of hers, he himself had once given her such notebooks. This one was hardly filled in, almost clean. Eddie thrust the notebook under his jacket and walked past Zhigulin into the bathroom, then closed the door behind him, settled down on the edge of the tub, and with sinking heart began to read.
What was in it was murk. That’s a good word, I love it – it expresses her notes well. Isolated expressions apparently pertaining to me: “Why do you love me?” “What forces drive me?” There were grass, trees. George was mentioned. “George came, George went,” and did some other things.
Murk, murk, and more murk. Breakfasts with a king. Everything much worse than it used to be, not poetry but a hash of semicoherent sentences, the theme of which was primarily self-adoration. Something about the hotel in Milan, where she had had no money; thoughts of death in this connection; and again murk, turbidity, the heavy vapors of a loveless soul.
But suddenly I stumbled upon this note: “…and Eddie, I am guilty before you. My poor, poor baby! And God will punish me; when I was a child I read a story that had the words, ‘You are responsible in life for all whom you have tamed…’”
I read this and felt so sorry for my girl that I could have cried. When had she written this, evidently in Milan? Poor creature, you feel bad because you don’t know that love exists. My unhappy girl who made me unhappy, how can I blame you! The loathsome loveless world is to blame, not you.
Zhigulin asked to come into the bathroom. I summoned my strength, walked out of the bathroom, talked with Zhigulin, drank more whiskey, and thought about her. She understood almost everything, it turned out. But what had made her kill her poor baby? Nature’s blind imperative to have many males? I did not know. All the same, I cut out some slacks from her crazy fabric for her, then took what I had cut and went to my hotel…
One of my most recent encounters with Elena was poetic and sad. I called, she said in a strange dark voice, “Come, but hurry.” We had made prior arrangements to meet; I was supposed to get the rest of the crazy fabric from her. I arrived, she was tearstained, barely restraining fresh tears. She was sitting on the bed studying a heap of old photographs of her childhood; her father had just sent them to her from Moscow. She was sobbing, tightly buttoned into black slacks and a red blouse, this was the same red blouse in which she had brazenly and self-assuredly, in February – she had spent the night away from home – when she showed up in the morning she had proddingly told me that I didn’t know how to enjoy myself. Me, a man out of his mind with grief. Now, six months later, she was bawling in front of me in this same blouse. “Not yet has she worn out the blouse” – the poetic image flashed through my mind. She doesn’t notice these details, of course. Only I – close observer, attentive scholar, self-mocking subtle Eddie – remember all these rags, blouses, bagatelles, and photographs.
“Do you want to look?” she said through her tears.
“Yes,” I said, “only don’t cry. Why are you crying, is there some reason?”
“What’s new?” she sobbed. “Everything’s fucking lousy – work, work, work. If I’d been born here, it would be easier for me. But I’m a woman, not a man,” she moaned. “I’m tired!”
I reflected that in terms of sexual characteristics I was a man, but fucking shit, I was sure that no woman had ever experienced such torment as mine. As you know, my considerable scorn for women had by now spread to Elena too. I pitied her, however; I did not see her as an unsuccessful model, a woman embroiled in difficulties, as she was in reality. I saw the little girl from the wooden house in Tomilino, a sly, mysterious little girl. And of this little girl only I in all the world – no one else, gentlemen, I am sure of it – was worthy.
Of the Russian model Elena, George was fully worthy. Jean was a bit lower, yet he too was worthy of her. But of this little girl, with her braid, in her little white stockings, standing in her garden, and behind her, like scenery in a pastoral opera, birches, shrubs, a segment of a wooden house – only I was worthy. The little girl had dreamed of a prince, as does many a little girl in Russia and probably here too. But when Prince Eddie arrives, evil intervenes. Chaos hates love, it whispers to the little girl that this is not a prince: “Princes do not live in Lexington Avenue apartments, nor go to work in the morning at emigre newspapers,” whispers Chaos. “This is not he!” whispers Chaos.
Eddie is driven out, and they go debase themselves before the Georges and the gentlemen who follow in their turn. Such were my reflections as I studied her photographs. This too was a painful pastime, gentlemen, no good at all,
“Only don’t steal the photos,” she said through her tears, holding the next packet out to me.
“Why not?” I said. “You’ll lose them anyway, or you’ll get ripped off. Don’t be afraid, though, I’m not about to steal them.”
She had stood up, meanwhile, and set about looking for something. Suddenly she let out a loud wail. “Fucking shit,” she said, “why do I live in this abominable dirty place, where’s my little book? Some motherfucker’s already pinched it, everyone here steals and swipes things. Why am I so unhappy?”
Weeping, she undertook to wash the dishes. I went and tried to touch her shoulder. “Take it easy!” I said. She shook off my hand. She’s afraid of intimacy. Fool! I had wanted to soothe her. She thinks I enjoy watching her weep! Unhappy beast! Lonely beast, thinking to build happiness for herself out of casual caresses. But why wail now? After all, she had wanted to be a lonely beast.
“Quit crying,” I told her distractedly. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
“You always say everything’s going to be all right!” she said spitefully through her tears.
Oh, once I had known how to soothe her. Both her anger and her tears. Nowadays I couldn’t use those means. I merely said, “If you want we can go down to the bar and have a drink. It’ll relax you, make you feel better.”
“I can’t,” she said, “I have to go out. George is picking me up, we have to go see a famous designer.” She mentioned a name. “Zhigulin didn’t want to go, the bastard. He said, ‘I don’t have anybody to fuck there. You’ll be fucking George, but there’s no woman there for me.’ We aren’t going there to fuck, I have to work, we’re going there to shoot.”
It was quite absurd, but she was sobbing. She was sobbing.
The phone rang. It was her economist calling. I heard her keep repeating to him through her tears: “It’s horrible, it’s horrible!”
I thought, What kind of a bastard is he, that he can’t do it, even seeing how she suffers without an apartment, living in this passageway? What kind of a bastard is he? A millionaire, and he can’t rent her an apartment so that she can live there awhile, rest, have a normal good sleep. That, for him, would be like me throwing away a penny on the sidewalk- “He’s cynical and clever,” Zhigulin had said of him; others said so too. Cynical and clever man, where’s your kindness? What the fuck is anything worth in this world without kindness?
To me he was an into
lerable shit because he didn’t help her live, he used her. She was alone in this city – what did I count for, to her I didn’t exist, therefore I couldn’t help in any way – she was alone, she was cold, she felt lousy, and she didn’t even have a coat, but he limped on his lame leg and said nothing.
Brute, I thought, petty animal! If she made me a sign, my lady did, I’d slit his throat in a matter of seconds. I was, after all, a sound, spare, thirty-year-old man who had never had any sickness, my muscles were rock-hard from lugging other people’s furniture, and in my boot I always had my Solingen friend. He wouldn’t have had time to let out a peep. But she had wanted all this herself, and to me her will was law. By habit.
On the other hand, if he’d taken care of her I would have respected him and thought well of him. This proposition was tested on Victor, Elena’s previous husband. He loved her, fussed over her as if she were a baby; it always disarmed me. As you see, little Eddie is just.
He crawled into the studio about ten minutes later, he had been somewhere nearby. We greeted each other wanly. Elena put on a little black hat and left with her tears undried, asking me to stay awhile at the studio, wait for some girl friend of hers. I sat, smoked, waited for a slender girl friend who looked like an aging page boy, shot the bull a while with Zhigulin when he came in. Then, taking the lilac and the red fabrics – through the semitransparent wrapper they shimmered with all the colors of the rainbow – I went to my hotel, discoursing to myself on the injustice of a world in which one who loves is not fucking needed, but one who does not love is needed and impatiently awaited.
Downstairs at the hotel a phone message was waiting for me, a square of paper on which was written, in the switchboard girl’s uncouth handwriting, “Call Carol,” and a phone number. Going up in the elevator, I smiled. We’ll talk again sometime with these Georges. Under other circumstances.
It's Me, Eddie Page 32