My employer himself, invariably dressed in plain English woolens and very simple but impeccably tailored Astor shirts and low-heeled conservative shoes, bearded, and wearing glasses, a towering, energetic, loudly laughing, constant source of delight to all those who hovered about him, whether friends, women, or business partners, was for me a symbol, a kind of film hero — the young millionaire, the soul and hope of America. I could see only the facade then, and it was dazzling.
Even the fact that he had hired me, that he trusted me despite my being a poet and a writer and not a housekeeper at all, stood in his favor. Giving me the job meant sacrificing some of his own comforts. After all, I obviously had no experience whatsoever as a housekeeper, and I thought my service to him would therefore have to have its deficiencies and shortcomings. But he went ahead and hired me anyway, so that in the end it seemed to me that Steven Grey was, in a sense, patronizing the arts. And he had done so before. He was the producer of a film with excellent European actors, a very high-class film — "a piece of real art." Real art doesn't earn any money, of course, and as a consequence Steven Grey had lost "one point eight" million on that venture. I was extremely impressed by the loss of that "one point eight" million.
Just how much I liked him can also be seen in the fact that in that period of my life I sometimes excepted him from the theory of class struggle I had so thoroughly mastered during my first years in America. No, he's not a capitalist pig, I thought. A man who has thrown away almost two million dollars on an intellectual film and who laughs about it now obviously cannot be included in that crowd of faceless pigs. He deserves to be excepted.
I found a great number of attractive qualities in Gatsby then. He looked his brilliant best, for example, in the story of how he saved, saved in the most literal sense, the life of his friend Anthony by sending a special plane for him to Kenya, where Anthony had had an accident. Because of an improperly prescribed dosage of a new, untested medicine, Anthony had suddenly lost control of himself and in that condition had thrown himself through the plate glass window of a modern hotel. He was critically injured and unconscious — in a coma, in fact — when the plane sent by Gatsby picked him up and brought him back to the United States and one of the country's best hospitals, where several operations were performed. Anthony survived, although he remained a cripple. He had lost the use of one of his arms and both of his legs, and was no longer able to work, and had to give up the beloved architecture that took him to Kenya in the first place. But he was still alive. Thanks to Steven Grey. Steven had, moreover, for many years been paying the rent for the studio where Anthony lived, as well as paying for his food and a servant-companion, since Anthony was incapable of fixing his own meals or looking after his apartment himself. I, who still see so many unhappy events in my future, thought enviously of how fine it would be to have a friend like Steven Grey. I, who have looked so hard and long for friends and have so rarely found them, was deeply touched by that story. Even later, when my image of the captivating Gatsby had been filled in with certain less attractive details, the story of Anthony continued to have an effect on me.
Incidentally, Steven financed the film I just mentioned out of friendship too. Once, in one of those rare instances of real intimacy between us, while we were sitting in the kitchen for a half-hour's chat — and for Gatsby to waste a half an hour was like anyone else's wasting a month — he, the employer, told me, the unusual servant, how he had come to finance it.
"For three years, Edward, I played chess with a film director, and he played well. He was a good opponent. But during that time he continually complained to me about how he wanted to make that film, but that no one would finance it for him because it was too serious, so the poor fellow was forced to make commercial trash, which was not at all what he wanted to do. After three years I finally got so sick of those conversations that I told him I would give him the money myself, if he would just quit whining about it."
Mr. Grey smiled complacently. I'm not sure his version of how the film got made had much basis in fact. More likely, it was a legendary account of what had happened, but one that Mr. Grey himself believed. Yet the film did exist; that fact was indisputable. Gatsby then went into a complicated discussion of the financial reasons behind the loss of the "one point eight" million. According to him, the main problem had been a lack of control over ticket sales in most of the theaters.
"In those theaters where we had guards to keep track of how many people went in, and then compared that number with the amount of money we got back, we didn't lose anything," he said.
I don't know whether my employer was right; I don't know enough about it to say. Everything I know about economics comes down to the conviction that the best investment in the world is putting your money into revolution. It may be a very risky investment, but if you win, you win it all. I was therefore dying to say to him, "Why not put all those millions of yours into a revolution, sir?"
Thus we live. After that episode in February, there were still a number of other times when I found him delightful, but the shadow of that incident remained, until, supplemented by other shadows, it finally altered beyond all recognition the image of my employer as the superman, intellectual liberal, and best friend of servants, animals, and children that he very likely considered himself to be. My girlfriend Jenny used to call Steven Grey a limousine liberal, a name I grew to like very much. Here I am living in the most expensive neighborhood in Manhattan on the banks of the East River in a house worth one and a half million dollars, and in the service of a limousine liberal. I, a spoiled servant of the international bourgeoisie, as I jokingly, and sometimes not so jokingly, think of myself.
And it's true that I am spoiled. Or better, I'm spoiled for the time being. It could be — and I'm always ready for this, just in case — that I'll have to leave the millionaire's house and set off on my own again into a world full of poverty and the struggle for survival. But right now I live in a way that few people can in this city or this world.
In the first place, I am, as I've already said, the only one who lives at the millionaire's house continuously. Mr. Grey and his family live in Connecticut, in the «country» in the large manorial house on their estate. Mr. Grey's wife, the blonde Nancy, his four children, their staff of Connecticut servants, and his four automobiles are all there. As are their vegetables, their horses, their flowers, their swimming pool, and die several tenant farmers that Gatsby leases his land to.
Hanging everywhere in the little Manhattan house are landscapes of Connecticut and the land owned by Gatsby lightly sketched in oils by the absolutely photographic artist Harris — Jacob Harris, I think. The frames are made of old, blackened, unfinished wood. Those landscapes remind me of the Russia I left five years ago — the same shallow brooks, country roads, spruce trees, and snow-covered meadows. The artist Harris painted countless picket fences, hedges, autumn trees, and red brick farm walls on commission from Gatsby.
Nancy and the flying Gatsby on weekends, when he isn't in his Asias and Europes, live there in very wholesome surroundings, with good milk (there are cows here and there in Harris's landscapes). It is assumed that their children will grow up there to become healthy, energetic, and authentic Americans too.
But I, Edward Limonov, live in the townhouse. My bedroom is on the fourth floor and looks out onto the garden and the river. Birds sing in the garden in the morning, and at any time of the day or night you can see ships, barges, and tugboats sailing by. The light of day enters my bathroom through a skylight cut in the ceiling. Every Monday Linda gives me money to buy food for the house, since one of my duties is to see that the refrigerator is always full, just in case, and on Thursdays she pays me my wages for the week. Going through the basement of the multimillionaire's house you come to the wine cellar — an object of real pride to my employer with its thousands of bottles of old French wine and stronger beverages too. All five floors of our house are filled with comforts, luxuries, soft beds, couches, books, and records. And it would all be good, a heaven surrounded by ivy and suffused with light — it would all be good, if its master, its real master, didn't visit it from time to time.