A certain K.Mondrianov asks M.Polshtoff to send his address. Why the fuck – I'd like to ask – why the fuck do you need his address? To get dead bored together. It'd be better for them not to be together, or to befriend Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones-these are healthy, jolly fellows. Instead they want to exchange the addresses, pathetic nobodies.
There are late lieutenants and eternal cornets. «By the grace of God, lieutenant B. quietly passed away in a nursing home.» This is followed by a long list of relatives and uncle Misha (why was he marked off?) who mourn. In reality, they're probably delighted, got drunk celebrating the departure of the eighty-nine-year-old (!) vegetable who had tormented all these relatives and who emptied their savings.
«At the age of 80, an untimely death of Kolchak's accountant.» Admiral Kolchak-the shaving of his cheeks is even mentioned in Mandelshtam's poetry sixty years ago. «Untimely,» at the age of 80?! When would it be «timely» then? At 120, maybe?!
An ad: «I make small electrical installations.» My friend, why make them small? Make them as big as the whole world makes them, as Americans, French, and other people. Someone asks «a lady in a fur coat to return an envelope with stamps which she mistakenly took on March 11.» Madam, don't return these stamps. Instead, buy envelopes, as many as you can-be generous-put a sheet of paper with my cry only: ah-a-a-ah-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! And send this to all the countries in the world – as many as you have stamps for.
It's good to kill a strong, tanned man-your enemy. And it's good to kill him on a hot summer day, near the sea water, on warm rocks, so that the blood streaks the shallow waters by the shore. And in the act you also get stabbed in the hip, and limping you disappear into the coastal mountains. And you walk on, breathing the wind, smelling of the fight's sweat, blood, and gun powder, then you scramble deep into the wormwood thicket and fall asleep. You wake up – it's night, the stars, the black sky, and below are the town lights where you descend and find both wine and meat and couples dancing to an accordion… You descend slowly. «Adios, adios, San-Juan,» a hoarse voice reaches you.
«We're alive, Eduardo,» you think as you stumble over the rocks. «Alive,» you tell yourself ecstatically, «yes, alive!»
Evening. Prostitutes lick their lips. I lick mine looking at them on the sly, pretending that I'm not interested. All I have is 60 cents in my pocket – and that's it. And, for some reason, I fancy that I'm an ancient Egyptian. And I'm drawn by the blue night's abyss, mesmerized, my inflamed eyes glued to the prostitutes – I feel them over with my eyes, feel their legs, follow their blue tongues. It follows then that I love rot and decay. Yes, that's what follows.
Back home, I'm excited. I'm going to get rid of my old pants, the ones I brought with me from Russia – fuck 'em. At least I'm busy with something.
Incredible! The city of Muchachu was captured by pigmies!
«Four feet tall,» the radio says laconically.
I was overjoyed. It's delightful when the city of Muchachu is captured by pigmies.
Did it occur to them to rape all the big women there and set the city on fire?
Our writer frequently goes out with the clear intention of selling himself to somebody, or simply to sleep with a first passer-by, be it a woman or a man. From under his French cap, his curious eyes stick out. He's elegant, his face is dark, he's dressed in purple.
«Go ahead, feel me up, touch me. I'll go with you wherever you wish. When you touch me, I'm all languor, I want to die.
I have no morals, no nothing. I want some affection. Fuck me, or I will fuck you. You, the gray-haired one, take me with you. I'm good. I'm just like a boy. I'm a Russian writer. Or you, lady. My eyes are green – I'll give a lot of pleasure».
An unbelievable thunderstorm. He turned off the light. Tanned, naked, he lay down on the bed, crawled all the way into a corner and lay there, happy. The windows were open, the smell of fresh greenery and rain wafted in from New York. And for the first time, he felt acute pleasure at the fact that he's lonely, that the hotel where he lives is cheap and dirty and that its inhabited by alcoholics, drug-addicts, and prostitutes, and that he's unemployed and lives off a beggarly and embarrassing dole, which, in any event, allows him to walk about for days on end.
The thunderstorm was compelling proof that even in this state he's happy. And he lay smiling in the darkness, listening to the rain and getting up from time to time and looking out onto the storm.
I've always been poor. I like being poor, there's something artistic and creative about it, it's pretty. You know that I'm an aesthete. And there's more than enough aestheticism in being poor.
Sometimes I fancy that I'm eating a Dutch still-life painting.
Not all of them, of course, but those that are modest I eat. A boiled, unpeeled, cold potato is languishing alone on a pale oval platter in the neighborhood of a piece of gray bread and-suddenly, outrageously, a bright green onion and glistening salt. A non-poet would gobble this up from the paper, in a hurry, using his grubby fingers.
And a non-aesthete would do the same.
I, using a fork and a knife, take my time – that's why my meal appears like a remarkably beautiful surgical incision. It's pretty and precise – the only difference is that surgery is executed in other hues. Mine are softer and more misty.
I really love being poor. Spend half a day deciding whether to go to the Playboy Cinema – two movies for a dollar – or whether the movies are worth that much money. Or should I walk hungry around the Village, where I get hit by a peculiar aroma coming from behind every door?
I really love being poor, being an exacting, clean, neat, poor thirty-four-year-old man – in truth, completely lonely. And I love my quiet sadness on account of this. And I love my white handkerchief in my pocket.
I want to write about velvet and its hues.
About the marijuana smoke, and about the other smoke. About the purple morning grass, it was noticed by the driver who brought the corpse to the «Medical Purposes» building.
I want to feel what Elena felt after she became unfaithful to her husband, Eduard Limonov, and was walking home through New York, when the sun was setting.
I want to break in on a premiere of a new ballet at the Met and mow down the diamond-clad audience with a pretty new army machine-gun And what can be done about it, if that is what I want?
I do try to suppress these desires but it doesn't work too well.
to be whispered with an orchestral accompaniment
I kiss my Russian Revolution
On her sweaty boyish fair locks
Sticking out from under her navy or army cap.
I kiss her scratched Russian white hands,
I cry and I say:
White, you're my white one! Red, you're my red one!
Gay and beautiful, forgive me!
I mistook you for the general's hat of a Georgian,
And of all these military and civilian types
Who grew up on your grave -
All these disgusting fat grave worms.
Those whom I oppose, and who oppose me and my poems.
I cry about you in New York, in the city of damp Atlantic winds, where pestilence flourishes endlessly, where people-slaves serve people-masters who in turn are also slaves.