"Interesting. If it's not a secret, what is it about?" he asked, taking his pipe out of his mouth. He was smoking a pipe.
"No, it's not a secret. Basically, it's an account, novelized obviously, of my own social and sexual experience in the United States," I said, trying to sound serious and literary and yet still be brief. I didn't have any idea who he was. Just a man between fifty and sixty, apparently. In a tweed jacket with a pipe. He could have been anybody; I didn't even care who he was. His face was simple enough. A businessman, perhaps.
"And have you sent your book to my publishing house?" he asked.
"Which one is that?" I asked in my turn. "Forgive me, but we haven't been introduced."
"Gerard and Atlas," he said. "Heard of it?"
"Yes, certainly," I said. "My agent sent the manuscript to Gerard and Atlas. That is, she sent an outline and three chapters in English. At the time only three chapters had been translated. The whole manuscript is in English now," I said.
"And what answer did your agent receive?" he asked, smiling.
"I don't remember exactly," said the writer Limonov, "but whatever it was, they didn't take the book." «They» had a very diplomatic sound to it.
"You say you have the whole manuscript in English?" he asked, filling his pipe.
"Oh yes," I assured him. "I got it back from the typist a week ago."
"I'll tell you what," he said, "send the manuscript to me personally. I'll take a look at your book myself."
"Who are you?" I asked in bewilderment and added, "Excuse me."
"I'm Atlas. Richard Atlas — file publisher," he said. "Send it to me, by all means send it — we publish Russian writers sometimes. Just today, by the way, I had a meeting with Joseph Khomsky. We're bringing out a volume of his poetry next fall. A magnificent poet, Khomsky, and an extraordinarily interesting man. Do you know him?"
"Oh yes," I answered hastily, "I know him."
"You can send your manuscript to my home address," Atlas added, and then he disappeared. Either somebody else came up to him, or somebody came up to me, but we parted.
It would have been odd if Volodya hadn't been there, and of course he was, and even introduced me to the wife of a Greek billionaire, a still very beautiful woman of about fifty, although she looked much younger. I drank for a while longer, stimulated by the billionaire's wife and my talk with the publisher Atlas, but still left around nine. The Garrissons weren't nineteen, after all, and couldn't put away cocktails until morning. Andy Warhol was still gleaming white in a corner of the living room. Next to him, the pretender to the Russian throne was trying to prove something to a Soviet poet. I went over and listened. The pretender was talking enthusiastically about his trip to Russia and defending the Soviet regime, while the overfed Soviet poet was running it down. What won't you find? I thought, shrugging my shoulders. And then I left.
I sent the manuscript to Atlas at once; I am in such matters exceptionally quick and exacting. I sent it and waited. I'm always waiting for other people. Everything that is required of me personally in this world, I do quickly and conscientiously. I'll sit up nights, but I'll finish the manuscript when I planned and promised to. I've been waiting for other people my whole life. Even as a snot-nosed fifteen-year-old kid I would be the first to show up at the agreed place at the cemetery where our gang used to meet before going off on a robbery, and I would have to sit and wait a long time for the others. As I see it, other people are fuck-offs and bunglers, careless, unreliable people who obstruct my life and my tempo, who get in the way of my energy, and who ultimately use me up. As you see, this view is similar to Gatsby's own view of "other people," and thus it turns out that master and servant have the same screwed-up temperament, and the world tries to slow them down. Gatsby is undoubtedly much luckier than I am: he can take the Concorde or a car or use his private plane. He has the illusion of speed, of movement and energy, whereas I'm left only with mindless waiting. To remain stuck in the syrup of a fucking daily routine devoid of odor or flavor, to remain locked in humdrum reality, while the months and years pass by, is truly heroic. To rush with a shout and the bullets flying and mount an attack (excuse me) in the teeth of popular opinion is a lot easier. It's a deed requiring only a momentary effort of will. I'm certain I could stand smiling with a cigar between my teeth and my hands in my pockets up against a brick wall before a firing squad. I'm not kidding, I could do it. I've got what it takes for the smile and the hands in the pockets and the cigar and the eyes wide open. But sometimes I think I haven't got quite what it takes for the ordinary, everyday crap; I become unhinged and do stupid things.
Occasionally it seems to me that nature has stuck me with die wrong destiny by mistake. I have myself interfered in my own fate more than once, and obviously not altogether intelligently, and because I have indulged certain features of my nature, I have completely neglected others, to such an extent in fact, that I have sometimes been quite different from what I actually am. At times it seems to me that my true calling — what I really am — is a colonel in command of an airborne division. Having seen the military bearing that suddenly came to life in me from God knows where when I recently put on a close-fitting dress uniform at a friend's house, I suddenly thought, my God! this is what I really am, a decisive military man in full-dress uniform, and not the feeble, poetical soul I've always aspired to be. And in fact I did want to go to military school once, so why didn't I? With my head and ambition, I could have been an airborne colonel by now. Then they would have seen something…
Maybe there was in fact a little mistake? It doesn't matter, since the best reader I could wish for my books, both those that have been written and those I still have to write, is a young colonel, although majors and lieutenants won't be turned away. The national origin of my military reader is of no importance either, nor is the color of his skin.
But let us return to the rigors of my struggle. A few days later I received a saccharine letter from Atlas noting that my manuscript had been received and that I would be contacted without delay as soon as he read it. "I hope you were able to enjoy, and enjoy to the fullest, Mr. Limonov, the delightful atmosphere of the Garrissons' cocktail party after my departure." Signed, "Richard Atlas."
I did enjoy it, I thought, and since I didn't know whether I should answer that I had his letter confirming the receipt of my manuscript, I asked Linda about it. She said no, I didn't have to; all I had to do was wait.
I sat down and waited. Or rather, I lay down — on an ever renewed succession of bodies. Although my lechery had begun as a simple inferiority complex in consequence of my being left by a woman I loved, it had long since exceeded the limits of that complex to become a way of life. I took pains to drag rarities of every sort into my housekeeper's bed: a Brazilian singer, a Polish actress, a punk star (although admittedly not of the very first magnitude), an Amsterdam designer, a German model appropriated from the photographer Eric, and a young French writer sent to me from Paris by a friend… More a cabinet of curiosities than a bed. That bed was sometimes even adorned by the mothers of children. I let one bring them with her to the millionaire's house, and while they frolicked about the bed, I reclined beside their mama and pleasurably fucked her, in full awareness, it's true, that I was inflicting irreparable psychic trauma on the kids, but I still couldn't help it. The devil triumphed, and installing himself in Edward, he forced gentle Eddie out.
I fucked away the interval before Atlas's reply in the same way, probably, that other people spend such times in drink — to pass the time more quickly.