In short, he walked over to Linda and blurted out something that must have come as a surprise even to him: "I called Nancy, and she has the portfolio with her in Connecticut."
Good God, how unhappy he looked! He was so disappointed, or rather not disappointed, but crushed! Why? Because it turned out we were innocent! He had already decided, decided as he always did, that it was we who were guilty. That it was us, us… To put it more simply, he wanted us, the other ones, the ones he could say it to, to be bad, guilty, and worse than him — stupid or undisciplined, but worse than him. Obviously, I'm only trying here to understand what his feelings were. Maybe they weren't quite what I'm describing, but his expression was unhappy.
After throwing open several cabinets with his trembling hands (and obviously blaming me that he had to do so, that he hadn't immediately seen the glasses and the bottle in the first one and had to open several), he found the gin and poured himself a drink, his hands trembling so much that the neck of the bottle rattled against the glass. And then he started jabbering about something. No, not justifying himself, but just trying to find something to talk about with us — a sentence about his car which stood gleaming outside the kitchen window. Then, glancing at the kitchen clock, he remarked the time out loud and happily muttered something else about the traffic on the roads he would have to take to Connecticut. In his barbarian code, all this was supposed to symbolize something like an apology, a retreat, but it's more likely that it was really the result of his own chagrin at the fact that he, the bastard, had been in the wrong.
It was so repulsive for me to look at him that I made a frankly contemptuous face and went upstairs to the second floor, passed through Linda's little anteroom, went into the TV room, and started looking out the window and thinking about what a son of a bitch he really was. Linda had already given in to him out of kindness, as she always does, and like him was drinking some kind of junk to calm her nerves, either whiskey or gin, who knows what. I heard only the ice tinkling in their glasses and their muted chitchat — a classic pair, the sadist and the rnas-ochist, the boss and his secretary.
Out of the window in the TV room I could see a girl of about ten dressed in shorts, with long skinny legs, a round ass, and little breasts under her training bra. She was learning how to ride a bike. Her frayed mama, worn out probably by the many thousands of love sessions she had had in her life, stood nearby and watched. The mama was my age, and her face, tensed with so many thousands of orgasms, was covered with little muscle lines and wrinkles. The wrinkles have developed on her face in consequence of her orgasms, I thought a bit mechanically, in the tone of an instructor of anatomy, and then turned my attention to the girl, whose skin and little body were still smooth and even and whose red mouth was stuck out capriciously in the pronunciation of inaudible words. I was so moved by the spectacle of that innocent child that I unconsciously started fondling my black «service» trousers in the vicinity of my crotch.
By virtue of a powerful imagination, my organ, the humiliated organ of a servant, found itself in the mouth of that child from a «good» and well-to-do family. Obviously, they were well-to-do and «good»; they lived next door. There are no poor people in our area. The poor come here only to work. Every morning around nine I see lines of them through the kitchen window, black women like our Olga for the most part, on their way to the houses and apartments of the neighboring rich. Around five or later, they make their way back to their outlying ghettos.
I got ten minutes' worth of pleasure from that wiggling girl on the bicycle. The only reason I didn't come was that Gatsby and Linda were still babbling downstairs, and either of those unbalanced personalities could have walked in at any moment.
Watching little girls is by no means my only hobby, the sort of hobby that lonely old gentlemen of a certain age tend to have and the sort that sometimes lands them in jail or even in die electric chair. No, I would never go after a child, but watching one out of the window is another matter, and of course I'd avail myself of the opportunity, if I lived somewhere in the country or in some provincial American town and found myself an arm's length away from some familiar and none too innocent-looking girl of that age.
But I would never under any circumstances take advantage of a child; grossness of that kind is for idiots who can't restrain themselves, whereas I, despite everything, am a person of culture and taste. A servant can be a person of culture and taste too, can't he? If the girl were to object, I wouldn't insist. Pleasure of that kind is merely a facet of my sexuality — a sexuality I understand very well — and nothing more. I long ago realized how society fucks everything up, depriving us of life's most interesting sensations and pleasures, fencing them off with prohibitions and taboos.
"Don't you dare!" But I do.
Then, taking the place of the little girl, who had glided off to the left on her bicycle out of the frame of my vision and into the wings, so to speak, Steven appeared in the window, opened the door of his car, sat down in its polished box, which since it was spring had its top down and gleamed luxuriously with the yellow of its new leather, pushed the seat back with his powerful ass, and turned the key. At that moment the girl came back out of the wings and glided past the boss's car, squinting at him with interest and then glancing back at him as she passed. I could see Gatsby smile complacently.
The bastard! Even there he got the better of me. The girl couldn't see the pale face of the servant high up in the second-floor window, but with a sweet and happy smile she took the hook of Gatsby's car. Women and girls and children, all females in fact, love whatever is brilliant or gleams or is shining with lights — Christmas trees, cars, diamonds, gold — and never trouble themselves with what is real or genuine, with the treasures of the mind, say. The girl on the bicycle proved herself a worthy representative of her sex, and spitting my prick out of her mouth, she rode over to Gatsby in his shining box, her eyes open wide with delight.
As you see, Gatsby still had his moments of hysteria, but they weren't directed at me personally, or if they were, then that was something he managed to keep to himself. And there was a reason for that, as I've already mentioned.
Once in March, after one of his typically long telephone conversations, Gatsby came skipping into the kitchen in a particularly good mood.
"Edward," he said, "we're going to have a very unusual guest this week. Can you guess who it is?"
"The Shah of Iran," I said, taking a stab. I didn't say that because I have such a wonderful sense of humor. The exiled Shah actually could have been our guest, since Mr. Grey really did know him and had at one time invested large sums of money in the development of Iranian agriculture, chicken or rabbit farms, I think, although I'm not sure. I'll add that Gatsby was pretty canny and got his money out of Iran long before «that» began — the revolution, I mean.
We have links with Iran. In our house there are a great many books on Iranian history and culture, as well as Persian-English dictionaries, and in the living room on the third floor is a table from Iran with a circular top made of tiny mirrors that was obviously cut out of a wall somewhere. The whimsical pattern produced by the mirrors is complemented by strange birds circling the table's marble edge. It is a very beautiful table. Mr. Grey probably vandalized a mosque or some other architectural monument to get it. There are also Persian miniatures hanging on the walls in the stairways of our house, and tasseled Persian pillows and cushions on the couches. And hanging on the wall in the third-floor living room is an immense hookah, which Mr. Grey's oldest child, Henry, on his last visit filled countless times with hashish and smoked with his college friends. We also have a Persian bronze brazier and Persian silverware and even Persian silver ashtrays with a crowned lion holding a saber in its hand. Or maybe they aren't ashtrays, since on their bottoms, on the reverse side, that is, there is a relief depicting a mustached man in a plumed helmet. I suspect this is the Shah's father, but maybe not. There's something written on them in Persian, but I don't understand Persian.