On a hot sunny spring day it's good to go into a shaded bedroom and lie down for a nap. And have the vague sounds of car horns and voices waft in from the street. It's good to fall asleep with you, embracing you, slim you. We wake up and it's already dark out, the street lights are on. You'll put on your lovely, silly dress and we'll go to a circus to see the Lilliputians and the animals.
I work every day now. I return exhausted. The New York Times and glossy magazines have beautiful girls in them, yes, in all the ads. They're pretty, sleek in appearance, alluring. They're just the ones to fuck and to enjoy life with. But no, the others, the rich and idle, fuck them and feel up the pretty girls during the lazy summer afternoons, while you have to drive in the rain and clouds, siteseeing American dull spots and the rain pours down onto the car. You're a laborer, poor, oppressed, ethnic minority, fixing x-ray machines, drilling holes in the concrete, tightening bolts, painting for B B Company. And you'll never fucking be able to publish your harmful book, you won't be able rise out of the shit and mud. And you'll die just like that – a low-paid laborer in a cap, schlepping with pensive eyes to all these Long Islands in the mornings…
The clean rich – they're contemptuous of those who masturbate. Because the rich don't masturbate, you see. They always have someone to fuck. They fuck the beautiful ones – the highest quality. This is the tough truth which must be faced squarely.
And so it's all over. The American bourgeois publishing house Macmillan has refused to publish my book. And the woman Katie didn't help. After the telephone call from my agent, I went to plaster and paint a ceiling at a rich house. I stood on a ladder with my head up all day long, got exhausted by nighttime and on the way home I sadly swore in a summer's late night. It was Friday, and the buzzing swarm of slaves was sucked in by restaurants and theaters. I've wasted almost a half year on Macmillan. Forty more times like that, and I'll be a useless gizzard. It's terrifying!
So the rich boy will die of cancer and I don't fucking care.
Yes, he's beautiful and I'm sorry, but I don't fucking care!
For example, when I painted the ceiling at their place, I went to get a vacuum from the basement. There, locked in, was a dog the size of a year-old calf, and behind a screen, two puppies, one hundred pounds each. And there are two other grown dogs of the same breed walking around the house. They're huge: the stench, trash, dirt – it's worse than stables. The rich live as if in an outhouse. What's the use of all the carpets and tapestries and perfuming their necks and behind their ears? Their place is still an outhouse. And their dirty rags are everywhere. Hence the cancer – from being idle and from the stench in the house. So, he'll die, the rich boy – and that's the way it should be. Why is it that we – I – paint their ceiling and pick up trash, and the Yugoslav lugs and packs their stuff, and the Chinese is a house slave? Why is it that we work while they do nothing in their rotten nest, they don't work and feed their sponger-dogs? Is it because they're more talented than the Yugoslav and I?
No, they're not. The Yugoslav can reason intelligently, and I too am not among the least – I have a clever pair of hands, and I have brains. And the old Chinese guy can play the violin and the piano. We do everything for them, and what do they do for us?
Why are they given the money?
Maybe it's God, maybe not, but the cancer came in at the right time – it's something like retribution. Let the rich boy die. I'll be glad even. What the hell, why must I pretend that I'm moved, that I sympathize, that I'm sorry. I'm not moved, I don't sympathize, and I'm not sorry! My own life – in earnest, the only one – is knocked down by all these fuckers. Go ahead, die, the doomed boy! No amount of cobalt or money will help you. Cancer does not defer to money. If you give it a billion even, it won't retract. And that's fair. At least in that everyone is equal. Just like the forty-four-year-old Moscow plumber Tolik, the boy will die.
I always look at people's faces on the street. There are very few who could kill. These are not necessarily morose or savage looking men. Among those who could kill I often encounter women, bespectacled nerds, even a multitude of children.
«Could kill,» as I understand it, are those who could kill right now, this very moment, regardless of their strength or of anybody's strength, regardless of the fact that they could be killed. «Could kill» is a definite inborn, blood inherited, and a realized resolve to kill.
It's better not to bother such people. It's better not to demand money from them if you're a mugger. It's better not to swear at them or shove them – it's better to leave them alone. With that kind, you can't stop half way if you yourself are not determined to kill. Leave them, go away while you're still in one piece, and don't look back. If you won't kill him, he'll kill you.
It's been three years since I realized that I could kill. I'm firmly aware of that whenever I go out on the street. That's why I always carry a knife. I won't think twice about it. I won't waiver. I won't think about a possible punishment. If they touch me – I'll kill them. That's why I live with a peace of mind and am un-afraid of anything. And I go wherever I like.
In general, however, I'm quite harmless.
Classification
The poetess L. is a nice gal. She's nothing special, though. Class D. I have them all in class D right now.
Sonya – the Jewish girl from my months of loneliness – used to be in D, in America however, she's E because she's a Russian. My agent C. is definitely a B, but I haven't fucked her – we have a strictly business relationship.
I very much want to run up this ladder and make a transition into at least class C, but a total absence of money, success and, most important, connections stand in my way. The best place to meet people is at parties, of course, but again I'm invited to D parties only.
The millionaire's housekeeper stands apart – she probably belongs to the category of angels, not women. A sexless peasant angel, standing on the side of the road leading toward church. I respect her more and more. She's my only relative on this earth that's why I exclude her from classification.
Almost all the girls and women from the Italian journalist's entourage – he wrote an article about me – are class C, and some are even B.
Class A are very beautiful, very talented, and very rich, I met some them at a few parties when I had just arrived in America and still had rich acquaintances.
I believe that below D class there's still E, F and maybe I. Yes, I'm sure that's the case. So, my girls get to be right in the middle. They're medium.
I believe there exists only one creature above A class. That's the one I'm after. But I have no idea where that is.
A lousy hot summer. The dead season.
My book is at four different publishers at the same time where it's being sluggishly read. Again, I'm waiting. Days go by, and there you have the everyday murder that civilization subjects us to.
Last month, I whitewashed and plastered two apartments; now, once a week, I vacuum and scrub the millionaire's house for which they pay me medium wage. My life hardly moves, the only change in it is getting some free vegetation – sixteen green plants: the rich family has moved to San Francisco. There are two palmtrees among the plants. Watering the plants-my new chore-gives me pleasure, and while watering them, I also converse with them.
The publishers are like dark towers looming in the backdrop of my consciousness, and I peer at these dark towers with hope and hatred. The murderers!