Mother dear, there's an incredible agitation in this spring of cold and metal, it's as though a whole culture – the Black German oaks and the Roman statues have crowded around Edka Limonov…
My fate has always been decided by some fellows, fuckers in the mysterious, unknown offices. That's why I'm still a loser because they – the mysterious bitches I've never met, the deciders of my fate – have never accepted me into the tribe of winners. It's been that way in Russia-a country at one end of the world, and now it's that way in America-a country at the opposite end.
Now, in the recesses of the massive Macmillan press, certain American misters and mistresses are deciding the fate of my novel It's Me, Eddie. They rub their foreheads, or they laugh. They put on or take off their neckties. They scratch their feet or their asses. They adjust their glasses. They doodle in their pads. They smoke and drink coffee. What will be the result of their secret meeting that I know nothing about?
And what does their future fucking decision has in common with my present talent, my value in the world? One female among them, Katie, is rooting for me – she has been to this day, as far as I know. She wants to accept me into the tribe of winners. It's a boring tribe, to be honest.
I have made an awesome oath to myself though: even if they accept me, I'll always remain a secret loser, and secretly I'll observe our customs and rituals. I'll share in our thrills and terrors.
Parents
All the same, having parents is disgusting, isn't it?
Mother's letter is all sheer nonsense, useless in life; there's a stifling atmosphere, nagging, pathetic information about maladies and depressions; miserably boring emotions, dissatisfaction and the sense of life wasted – these stare at you from every line, naked, like a face without skin. There's fear, the old age that came too soon (they've thought themselves old since their thirties!), the absence of one's own occupation in life – I don't mean something general, like father's military service – I mean one's own work which absorbs you entirely, and you belong to it from head to toe. And so now I've become the focus of it all – they think that had I stayed there, in that country with them, their life would be different.
No, it wouldn't be, I wouldn't have saved them.
Who's to blame? Father was terribly weak – he loved music but stayed in the military, he didn't have enough guts to take that step and leave. He was also gifted in mechanics – but he never developed that talent. He ended up being what his fate pushed him into.
Mother spent her entire life staying home when she loved being with people, loved theater.
This is how day by day their boring lives have wound down and left them, one on one, on some rocky island as it were, and the wind is blowing, and it's cold, and they nestle up to one another to get warm, and they cry out to me – who's far, far away – to save them.
But I don't feel sorry for them. And I'm happy that God took me away from them, from their old age (which I wouldn't comfort anyway), from their desperation, which can't be helped.
A bad son? No. Intelligent and therefore ruthless, strong and sad, I look at them from afar and I make a helpless gesture in dismay. What can I do when every one in this life has to fight the almighty Fate alone. And woe unto him who is weak.
Having written all this, I happened to look at the last letter they sent me, and oh horror and confirmation of my thoughts and feelings about them – the stamp on the envelope turned out to be a reproduction of Fedotov's painting, a hunchback kneeling down before his bride. Precisely. The letter arrived from the hunchbacked life.
Pumpkin. Vegetable. Wow, such yellow! Oh, so big and spekled. A mandarin (tangerine) is no worse – it's smooth, small, and smells wonderful. Especially when you peel its skin, which becomes wooden and stringy from the inside. I love these natural creations, and so yesterday a woman came over to my place. She had huge breasts and small red nipples. The woman was Mexican. She probably had a lot of Indian and Aztec blood too. I caressed the woman, and she admired my hands and allowed to penetrate her c. with my finger only, so I don't know much about her c, what it's like in a Mexican woman.
I wasn't upset, though – this was our first date. I'll have time to find out.
She had one other characteristic-very narrow fingernails, tiny, especially on her pinkies. This is very strange, you have to agree, when you consider her height (she's two inches taller than I), chest and wide hips. And strangely similar to her tiny nails was her narrow Aztec nose. That's how I keep myself entertained with nature. Otherwise, my life would be lonely and unprofitable.
When you're completely broke and hungry, your fury at the world increases; when you have a little money, the fury decreases. Out of pride and stubbornness (I didn't feel like begging the millionaire's housekeeper for money and food), I sustained myself for a week by alternating between the disgusting chicken soup and onions with potatoes. I slept a lot that week; I was chilled in the March air when taking walks, though before going out I gulped some gin from a bottle that I had stowed away for a rainy day.
In such a state of mind, the burning night lights and the male slaves behind the glass-windows of the small restaurants along First and Second Avenues where I went walking (free of charge, thanks goodness) spent their hard-earned dollars on the young female slaves – all this caused sharp pangs of envy in me.
Once running into a company of friends who just poured out squealing from a restaurant, I, animal-like, twisted and tensed my face and headed directly toward them, at their best girl and forced between them like a knife in my leather coat, squeezing my knife in my pocket, being ready for a bloody fight if the mustached ones start protesting. Nothing happened, though once I passed them, they hurled curses at me.
During one of these evenings – Saturday – it was pretty warm by that time, I, unconsciously, a new torture devised for myself – I found two clean but old armchairs by the Martel restaurant and decided to bring them to my place. For me, sustained by a watery broth that I kept diluting, the chairs turned out to be damn heavy. Carrying each one to my 1st Avenue apartment was a job from hell – I understood this when I carried the first chair. Some tipsy couples and companies were in my way, they were just spilling out onto the streets from the restaurants and discotheques – I looked absurd, lugging these torn chairs; girls, dressed-up for Saturday night, laughed at me; yellow dust kept pouring down on me from the chairs; everybody I saw on the street was taller than I. I was drenched in sweat. This is probably how a small, dark-eyed Jewish slave felt lugging some heavy load behind his master on a Saturnalia celebration in Rome; I, however, clenched my teeth and brought my chair to the stairwell where I hid, relieved. It wasn't much work to get the chair to the fifth floor – no one was looking at me there. Being stubborn, I went through the torture for a second time. I survived.
I gave up by the end of the week and took some money from the millionaire's housekeeper – I bought a piece of meat and some other food. Having eaten, I immediately became nicer.
I keep pacing – back and forth, back and forth – from one corner of the room to another. No work for two months. Now I look out the window, now I nap for a half or a full hour, now I light up a cigarette, now I sip some tea or some cheap broth, now I skim through a book – and the book is vulgar, stupid, and I push it away with a grimace, now I skim through another book, now I go down the stairs to check my mail box – no letters; now I look expectedly at my telephone – it's silent; now I go to the bathroom and stick my face in the mirror, I stroke my mug, I smooth the hair that stick out or curl up, I take a leak, now on a whim I draw a bathtub, I crawl in, I sit in the warm water, I get out, get dry and the window pulls me back again.