I asked her if she needed anything, and she answered that she didn't and that I could go to bed. It was peculiar that she had come home by herself, but I could hardly interrogate the lady of the house; if she didn't want to say anything about it, I would have to be content with permission to go to bed. And so I went to bed.
I was awakened once again by an obnoxious sound, something like the domestic equivalent of a police siren — the sound of the intercom we use to call each other. I glanced at the clock. It was three in the morning. What is it this time? I wondered nervously. Another disaster, no doubt.
"Yes?" I said into the telephone in as cheerful and energetic a voice as I could muster. The tireless Russian, ready for anything at any time of day or night. Superman.
Efimenkov's drunken voice answered. "Edik," he said, "come on down! We're sitting in the kitchen and we want to have a drink with you. Steven wants to," he corrected himself. "I told him about your book, and he's very interested. Come on down."
I lost my temper. "If the 'boss' wants me to, then I will," I said, "but if it's you, Zhenya, then we can drink tomorrow or any other time, but right now it happens to be three o'clock in the morning."
"He wants you to, and I do too," said the persistent Efimenkov, calmly swallowing my resentment.
Swearing softly, I pulled on a khaki T-shirt with an eagle and "U.S. Army" on it and my black «service» pants and went downstairs. The two of them were sitting in the kitchen by themselves and talking, Efimenkov with his elbows resting on the table.
"Zhenya tells me you've written a great book," Steven addressed me as I came in.
I merely smiled in answer; what could I say? The modest Limonov. But Gatsby wasn't waiting for an answer and continued.
"I asked Zhenya if he meant you had written a 'good book, but he insisted on his knowledge of English and maintained that you had in fact written a great book."
"Steven, let's drink to his book," Efimenkov interrupted. "Let's drink some very good wine."
"I'll treat you to something special, Zhenya," Gatsby said, and went down the stairway leading from the kitchen to the basement and the wine cellar.
"I told him all about your book," Efimenkov informed me, leaning toward me in a wearily confidential way. "I wanted us all to have a drink together, and maybe you'll stop hating him and he'll understand you better."
Efimenkov's simple face glowed from all he had drunk, but he wasn't drunk, and at that moment he wasn't playing any games. I decided to trust him. Only I couldn't remember ever having told him that I hated Steven. I had of course mentioned it in my diary, which I usually left lying around the house, since nobody else knew Russian. How do I know, maybe the inquisitive Efimenkov, maybe the Soviet writer had taken a look at it.
Gatsby returned with a unique bottle of German white wine that, as the label attested, was not intended for sale but only for collectors. I got up to get the glasses. Gatsby had made an effort to get them himself, but I stopped him by saying, "Excuse me, Steven, but I'm still the housekeeper here." The joke was appreciated.
Gatsby opened the bottle, and the wine really was excellent. We sat and drank. After a few swallows, Gatsby turned happily and guilelessly to his favorite theme, himself. He spoke rapidly and fitfully about how tired he was of his countless responsibilities and obligations, about how little sleep he got and how much he traveled. Efimenkov listened attentively and even eagerly, I thought.
It turned out that Gatsby had found someone to take over for him as Chairman of the Board of one of the largest of his corporations, based in California, so that things would be easier for him and he could spend more time in New York, which he loves. That was exactly what Linda and I had been most afraid of, that he would be staying here more and more often.
And then Gatsby started talking enthusiastically about an offer he had received the week before to buy a satellite, "my own satellite," he said happily, and about how little it would cost, since it had already been written off by the government. He mentioned the sum, which I immediately forgot; it was so remote as to be unreal. He was, it turned out, undecided as to whether he should buy it. In his enthusiasm he looked just like a child. «Satellite» on his lips sounded like the name of a new toy. As it very likely was.
It was difficult to stop Gatsby. From the satellite he jumped to his war with the Japanese in the area of computers, and then just as quickly he turned to the story of «his» film, which Efimenkov obviously knew nothing about.
Gatsby continued to pontificate, and I wondered why the hell I was sitting there, if he wasn't going to let me speak. Oh, I'm so sick of these aristocratic whims. Efimenkov is a pretty brash type, and when he had something to say, he spoke loudly and persistently, not in the least concerned about his wooden accent. After all, he had spent his whole life reciting to huge auditoriums full of masses of people.
A break came when Gatsby left to take a leak.
"He really is overworked, poor guy. He doesn't look well; his face has an unhealthy flush. He obviously needs to take a rest; he's working himself to death," Efimenkov said with admiring sympathy. "And you see how he talks," Efimenkov continued, sipping some wine. "He's evidently suffering from nervous exhaustion."
It was clear he was delighted with the energetic American capitalist. In my opinion, Gatsby didn't really do all that much. For all his apparent energy, he accomplished a great deal less than Efimenkov imagined. He spent more time on traveling from Connecticut to Colorado and Texas and to New York and back, and to the West Coast and Europe, and on lunches and dinners, each of which lasted two or three hours and was always accompanied by French wine, than he did on actual work or business. The unhealthy flush on Gatsby's face could have been explained by the French wine and the lunches, and at forty Gatsby did have a paunch hanging over his belt, not a large one, but a paunch nonetheless, as for that matter did Efimenkov, although in years past he had been as thin as a rail. I couldn't explain all that to Efimenkov in the short time the capitalist was in the toilet. I couldn't explain that Gatsby was not as effective as Efimenkov thought he was, that the auto manufacturing and the other businesses he owned might in fact have managed quite well without him, without all his bustling and his lunches and his dinners, and that perhaps Gatsby was more concerned with gratifying his own ego than he was with working. I decided to explain that to Efimenkov some other time, but I didn't have a chance, and then he went back to the Soviet Union.
I had guessed it long ago, but it was only after looking at them then that it became absolutely clear that Gatsby and Efimenkov belonged to the same class, to the masters of this world, even though one was a multimillionaire and the other a Communist writer; or, if you like, that they both belonged to the same international gang, to the big brothers of this world, its elite. Not long ago there had been a note in a New York magazine about my employer with the absolutely incredible tide, "Today's Working Class," and under the title a picture of Steven in glasses with his tie slightly askew and an incisively intelligent expression on his face — the image presented by the magazine to America was the same one he had of himself. But it wasn't the way I saw him. For me, from my vantage in the kitchen, he was a spoiled, capricious nabob who, if his father and grandfather hadn't left him millions, would probably not have been able to make even one dollar on his own. I knew that when faced with the simplest tasks in life, he was as helpless as a child. I didn't believe Jenny the first time she told me that, but now I knew that a missing button could unnerve him and deprive him of his poise. He could borrow a million, or even millions — that was his specialty, obtaining money; he had friends, or a bank could lend it to him — but he didn't know how to sew on a button. Everything he knew how to do was based on his inheritance, on the thing that gave him his place in the world, but not on himself. True, sometimes he was interesting.