Sometimes I have dreams about the housekeeper and her peasant making love, and though I tell myself that she's frigid, I hurt all the same.
In the old plays by Chekhov and O'Neill, I'm of one of those indicated by the stage directions: «A servant enters carrying a cup of tea,» or, «The factory workers sing.»
I'm also a cleaning man. I can also be referred as a «vacuum man,» since I work with a vacuum cleaner. I'm also a floor polisher because after vacuum-cleaning all five storeys of the millionaire's house, I spread the yellow polish (the stinky one) on the floors and then I polish it with a special brushing machine. I do this on Saturdays and for that purpose I take the train to New York.
The other five days of the week I'm a laborer, a mason, and a carpenter in a village one hundred miles from New York City, in the deep waters of the Hudson River Valley where I fled from the millionaire's housekeeper.
I (we) usually appear at the «side door,» from the «back stairs.» Our place is in the servants' room or in a basement where we stoke the stove, do laundry, iron, and more. And if we get old, we lie on the stove and exude an unpleasant odor.
During the day, I dig the ground and lay bricks. In the evenings, I usually pig out on food.
I get wild whenever I manage to discover something special in the refrigerator at the house of a lady I work for.
For example today I discovered up a very good salami. I was eating it through the entire evening. At first, I was hesitant: «I'll have just one more little piece.» Then, having found more meat at the other end of the house, I went on eating with energy and resolve.
«After all, she still has other meat,» I told myself.
Suddenly a loud blue October fly, a fucking bomber, landed on the salami. Her disgusting and rude – heavy – buzzing had been bothering me for a long time, and now he landed on my sausage! Enraged, I killed (one sharp, swift hit) the fly with the first chapter of a book I'm too lazy to write. And I returned to eating this superior, garlic flavored salami. This is how, more or less, I spend my evenings after work. Wearing two pairs of pants and five sweaters (the heat is off), I sit by a big dirty table under a desk lamp, and I keep pigging out.
Whenever I dig deep in the ground, I always find some dead animals – mice, frogs, even ground squirrels and moles.
And so it is now – we've dug a deep pit, and keep discovering dead animals there almost every day. The frozen frog (it's late fall), the ground squirrel – dead – with his little tail between his legs; the mouse lying with his little white helpless belly to the side – the belly is swollen. Perhaps, he overate.
The pit we dug is very big. We cleaned it out, we swept it out, we've prepared it like a bride. «Our pit is a bride!» I declared to our gang. The homosexual Carl thought it a brilliant metaphor.
I'm standing inside the pit and am drinking coffee that Carl had handed to me. The pit is like a pregnant bride. And inside the pit there's a white rock like a belly. It's white and it's brown like a stomach.
On May Day (and other holidays in Capitalist countries) women always get tipsy. They blush, they become merry and soft to the touch. They start smelling of perfume, they become mysterious. And by late night, after dancing, you better give them your cock. Not one of them wants to leave without getting it. Then a moment of silence and expectation follows.
Some, the very ugly ones, do leave without getting the cock.
You have to meet your death with resolve and panache – posing, defiant, acting up, celebrating, and best of all – smiling.
Like it or not, able or not – you have to.
If your knees are shaking, make it stop. Move around to conceal it. If your eyes are running, laugh – they'll think it's because of your laughing.
Dying is the most important business there is. You have to prepare yourself for it.
A bad death can spoil the most distinguished life.
Our birth does not depend on us, but our death does.
Hysteria and haste are just as bad.
You need to be measured. All the same – you have to go, though you never feel like it.
You should go either in a grand, reserved and staid manner, or even better, go hooligan-like, whistling, cheering: «You, motherfuckers!»
It feels good – to be a little tipsy, in white pants, digging with a short shovel – to plant asters with two girls, sisters, in October. I'm wearing a black sweater, a velvet mauve close-fitting jacket, solid boots, white pants soiled with mud, and a light cap. And an aster in my breast pocket.
And one of the sisters just survived a serious surgery, her lips and cheeks are pale, her gaze is meek and reserved.
Coming to this empty country house at the very edge of a township – beyond that hills and fields stretch out – I sit on the terrace for a long time, swaying in a wooden chair and looking at the tree crowns while leaves fall on me. It was such an abundant red leaf season.
Through the bushes and trees, I went up a hill. I sat on the logs that someone had dumped by a fence a long time ago, and I waited for twilight. Or I drank tea or lay on my back in the grass and was quiet.
Whenever I swung on the swing, it kept singing the same tune to me: «You-are-good-Eddie… You-are-good-Eddie… You-are-good-Eddie…»
The leaves were telling me about the pointlessness of any structures, and tea – the tea was for reminiscing. The cigarettes are also good for reminiscing, but I ran out two days ago.
This is how I visited this old country house, checking its empty rooms, peeking into its closets, sitting lackadaisically on a wooden bed that was painted like an icon. I had a feeling that my life was over, that I was a retired old man, that this was my estate. But my melancholy had no personal pain. One more week and my work here will be over, and I'll leave this township – it was just a pause in my breathless race.
I felt good at the old house yesterday where on one side there was only an open sky.
I keep lugging in sand for making mortar, or I level off the ground at the country house, as the owner asked. And there are so many worms! They squirm under the shovel.
Nice simple worms.
I love worms. They're my favorite animal.
If they happen to get into the cement, I carefully take them out.
It's just that they're cold at the end of October.
And in the morning the soil freezes.
Working here in the cold and in mud, without hot water or any kind of entertainment, I've come to the conclusion that there's nothing terrible with keeping people in concentration camps. Yes, it's work, it's cold, and the fact that they're deprived of their personal little initiatives (love, restaurants, etc.), why, that's actually good. After all, the majority of people has no idea what to do with their lives, or where they ought to take them. As to whether Jack gets to go to a restaurant today – the earth won't split into halves if he doesn't. All the same, people's lives are useless – the majority consumes everything it produces, so why not collect them into groups and engage them with some work. This will save them from all their worries. Otherwise, try and support your children, your wife, pay taxes…