Efimenkov has always maintained in his books that he is a working-class blue blood, a man of simple Siberian stock, in a way even flaunting his simplicity and sincerity. It's a naive lie that he himself believes. He left Siberia when he was still a boy, and he hasn't worked as a laborer more than six months in his whole life, since the magazines and newspapers started publishing him when he was sixteen, and by the time he was eighteen he was already a famous writer. From that day on he never again had anything in common with ordinary people and has lived the rest of his life as a writer, a very famous writer and a member of the elite. He was given pictures by Dali, Picasso, and Chagall, and the only working-class thing about him is his musical comedy working-class cap and his fine leather coat which cost money — Comrade Mr. Efimenkov, although in general he's not a bad guy. It's all the same kind of phoniness as Mao Tsetung's, who wore a blue cotton working-class tunic his whole life, or Deng Tsao-ping's, with their banquets and their residence in the former Imperial Palace.
Gatsby and Efimenkov understood each other perfectly and needed each other, while I sat thinking unhappily about how I'd like to be with them, but unfortunately could not. I'm thirty-five years old and have earned my living by physical labor ever since I was seventeen, so that their pseudo-working-class slogans are just crap to me. True, we all work, but the kind of work Mr. Gatsby does is very different from the black woman Olga's or mine. Well, so maybe Olga doesn't measure up to Gatsby, the wrong education, let's say, but if you compare Gatsby and me, then who's better, who's more talented, who's more needed by the world? For me, that's the fateful question, the one I ask myself every day as I struggle and contend with my employer and rival, even if he's a beast and a devil, albeit a charming devil, a product of contemporary civilization, a brilliant devil in a gorgeous car. Edward Limonov and Gatsby. Which one will triumph?
Chapter Two
I often wonder, while sitting in a lawn chair on the roof of our house on weekends, getting tan in the sunshine, reading the newspaper, and sipping a cup of coffee, what would have happened to me, what direction my life would have taken, if I hadn't met Jenny and grabbed on to her with all my might. What would have happened, if, on that rainy spring evening of April 24th, 1977, I hadn't gone with the Russian drunk Tolya to the poetry reading at Queens College where I met Jenny — Jenny, who didn't understand a word of what the Russian poetess Stella Makhmudova was saying, but who was there thanks to a happy conjunction of circumstances. What would have happened? Would I have survived or not?
I don't know. Probably I would have survived without Jenny, although sometimes it seems to me I wouldn't have. Many thanks to Tolya the drunk for coming by the hotel and literally dragging me out of my room. I really didn't want to go way the hell out to Queens College, as I remember, and I complained about it the whole trip.
Finally, after interminable bus and subway changes, we reached that seat of culture, purchased our tickets, and went into the auditorium. As we were looking for empty seats a little closer to the stage, I suddenly heard someone calling to me, "Edik! Edik!"
Looking around, I saw Vadimov, who, according to all my calculations, should have been in Russia. I walked over. With Vadimov were the ballet superstar Lodyzhnikov and a girl. The girl was sitting on Lodyzhnikov's right. A girl in a knitted sweater. A large girl. That's about all I noticed. Also that she had rather full lips, commonly called sensual, and a large, ridiculous gap between her teeth. There was something funny about her. Probably Irish, I thought for some reason. I spoke with Vadimov and Lodyzhnikov, and listened as she asked Lodyzhnikov about something. I decided she was the latest of Lodyzhnikov's girlfriends. He had a lot, none of them lasting very long.
It turned out that Vadimov was Makhmudova's husband. Vadimov had been the husband of a number of famous or beautiful women in the Soviet Union. That was his second profession, or perhaps his first, if you like. He was also a stage designer — by birth, I think. And now they were visiting America. A degree was supposed to be conferred on the poetess in recognition of the fact that the American Academy of Arts and Letters had made her an honorary member. She was forty years old, and she started out every morning with a headache and a hangover. In her past were a great many amorous adventures, just like Vadimov; she had been married to or the mistress of many of Russia's most famous men — poets and writers. And now she was married to an artist.
The auditorium noisily hummed and rustled as it waited for Makhmudova's entrance. Whatever you may say about her, she was considered to be Russia's number one woman poet. Old Russian ladies, Russian clods and nincompoops, and losers like Tolya and me had all come to hear her. Also represented in great numbers was the Russian-Jewish cultural aristocracy, a sort of international elite which had not forgotten the Russian language, or so it thought. They sat in the front rows, of course. I spotted people from two or three influential New York magazines, several wealthy widows, and a man from Odessa whom the great poet Volodya Mayakovsky had once called "Little Entente," a name that "Little Entente" was very proud of. A cunning and pushy little fat man with red hair, the energetic "Little Entente" had made a fortune during the NEP period in Russia and gotten even richer here. He could, it was said, make money out of thin air. Just how much he understood about poetry remained an open question, however, especially in view of the fact that his hearing was bad. Actually, those people had all come there not out of any real love for poetry but rather to demonstrate their affiliation with culture. It didn't matter if it was Russian culture or even something as remote from them as Chinese culture, as long as it was Culture. It's the fashion in the United States now to be cultured, to go to classical music concerts or to the opera or ballet, and they all go; they're all cultured. If some fanatical practice, say scourging rituals, were suddenly to become the rage, I have no doubt they would all abandon themselves to the practice along with all the other members of bourgeois society.
It's only thanks to those big and little ententes that, for example, someone like Lodyzhnikov can even exist, I thought to myself, looking at him out of the corner of my eye. His art is ballet, which is in fashion among the bourgeoisie now, among the fat cats, so he's a superstar and rakes it in hand over fist. As little as twenty years ago he would barely have been able to make a living dancing in America. Twenty years ago it wasn't fashionable to go to the ballet. How the bourgeoisie spent its evenings then, I couldn't say. Probably they went to Broadway musicals. I don't know. I don't like ballet. It's contemporary life I'm crazy about, and all those sleeping beauties so dear to the hearts of the ruling classes both here in the US of A and there in the U of SSR (and, really, why is that?) irritate me with their sugariness. Just look at the dancers' thighs. If ballet does have a place today, then in my opinion it's the same one the stereograph has — in the wing of a history museum.
The poetess finally made her entrance. Dressed entirely in black. Although not in a black dress, but in black velvet pants, black boots, and a black jacket that failed to conceal her rather ample bosom. Her style of reading has always seemed vulgar and saccharine to me. She belonged to the generation of stern and staunch young Soviet men and women (as they saw them-selves), the generation that had dared to enter the fray against falsehood at the beginning of the sixties. These youths — her friends, husbands, and lovers — thought it was possible to play the role of poet "in between" — in between trips to Paris and sprees at the House of Litterateurs and writing prose and verse that gave the finger to the authorities, but on the sly. Their great example, the one they chose themselves, was Pasternak, a talented poet but a timid man, confused and servile, a country philosopher, a lover of fresh air, old books, and the easy life. I, who feel like vomiting whenever I see a library, despise Pasternak. Yes.