When I started at the restaurant, I am ashamed to say I had the fleeting thought that I would be in society here and could make some contacts. Oh, how stupid I was! The waiter – never mind the waiter, even the headwaiter himself – is separated from the customers as if by an iron wall. No intimacy occurred. The first few days I tried to use my face and figure to attract the attention of the customers, of all the beautiful women and the men I found appealing. I thought they would have to notice me. Only later did I realize that they had no fucking need of me. The notion of intimacy, contacts, was sheer nonsense, gentlemen, and it had occurred to me only because I was not yet quite well from my tragedy.
My fellow workers didn't treat me badly. The Latin-Americans called me "Russia." Why they conferred on me the name of the country I had fled I don't know. Perhaps they found that name more pleasing than my own, which I had brought from Russia but which was quite common in America – Edvard, or Edward. My Chinese friend Wong generally doted on me, especially after I helped him with the linen. Each of the busboys had linen duty every third day. we would bring up from the basement, from the laundry, a huge box of clean linen and unload it in the storeroom, where we kept all sorts of things in addition to linen – candles, sugar, pepper, and other necessaries. I loved the storeroom, loved its smell of clean linen and spices. Sometimes I ran in there in the middle of work, to change a towel or quickly finish chewing a piece of meat left on the plate of some surfeited customer, and then ran on. Well, so once I helped Wong unload the linen after work and put it away on the storeroom shelves – this goes much faster with two people, but for some reason they didn't do it that way there. Wong thanked me so profusely that I felt uncomfortable.
Another day he took my little Collins dictionary and looked up the word "good," then showed it to me and said with a broad smile, "That's you." I am much prouder of this lad's praise than of all the compliments paid to me and my poetry at various times in my life. "I'm good!" Wong had acknowledged it, probably I really wasn't too bad. I would have liked to be friends with Wong, but unfortunately it didn't work out, gentlemen, I had to forsake the Old Bourbon.
On my way home from work I sometimes dropped in to see the other Russians who worked at the Hilton. After going out through a passageway and punching my time card, I could come up from the basement, turn left, and see the guard, Mr. Andrianov, a former Soviet navy captain. Tall and solid, he writes down the numbers of the trucks that arrive at the loading ramp to load and unload, and keeps order. He's easy to talk to, an enthusiastic conversationalist. Sometimes Andrianov stands in the vestibule by the main entrance to the hotel, and he's so solid and impressive, gray temples under his cap, that rich women passing by sometimes start conversations with him.
An interesting thing happened to Andrianov, which I took a malicious delight in because it confirmed some theories of mine. Andrianov lives in a suburb in a pretty good neighborhood, the people are quite well-to-do. One time he received a letter from the local police department, which said: "Knowing that you have great experience in police work [in the USSR Andrianov had served as a paratroop officer, then a navy captain, and so on], we invite you to take part in our voluntary neighborhood security program." They made no distinction between the USSR and the U.S.A., these gentlemen from the police. Theirs is the most sober world view I have ever encountered. To them, a KGB agent arriving in America would be a much more desirable gentleman than people like me. Someone who has service experience is naturally preferable to someone who does not have such experience and moreover does not wish to serve. Andrianov refused to take part in their program. A pity.
In addition to Andrianov, I used to stop and chat with Gaydar, if there was no urgent call for him to lug someone's suitcases upstairs. I would gawk at the lanky red-coated doorman, who was well known to the whole hotel as Fidel Castro's schoolmate; he opened the doors of the automobiles that drove up to the hotel. Because of Fidel he had lost his lands and family wealth and now served the Hilton. His wages were small, but he made a lot in tips. "A lot," said Gaydar, who also made quite a bit in tips. It's very hard to land the profitable job of doorman.
Deep in the hotel, near its linens, food, garbage, furniture, electricity, water, and all that, there are quite a few other Russians to be found. Lenya Kosogor, a tall, stooped man, over fifty, who was mentioned in Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, works here as an electrician – they go around in baggy light green work clothes – sometimes I dropped by to see Lenya, too. So far, this flight to an alien land has done me no good: if in the USSR I associated with poets, artists, academicians, ambassadors, and the enchanting Russian women, then here, as you see, my friends are porters, busboys, electricians, guards, and dishwashers. My fucking past no longer bugs me, though. I'm trying so hard to forget it that I think I eventually will. You have to forget, otherwise you'll always be warped.
Sometimes I brought something home from the hotel. Some little trifle. I stole. What the hell. My bare prison cell at the Winslow became just a shade more cheerful when I brought home a red-and-white checked cloth and put it on the table. Several days later a second tablecloth appeared, then a red napkin. That was all I needed to set up housekeeping. I stole a few knives, forks, and spoons from the restaurant as well, and that was it, I needed no more things. You must agree this was reasonable. The Hilton shared a tiny bit with the Winslow.
When I returned from work I studied English, at least that was my schedule. Or I went to a movie theater, most often the Playboy, which was cheap and close, on Fifty-seventh Street, and saw two films for a dollar. Coming home through the New York night, I raged and dreamed, I thought about the world, about sex, about women and men, about rich and poor, why one child is born into a rich family and has everything he desires from childhood on, while others… Those others in my imagination were people like me, those to whom the world was unjust.
When I came home, I lay down on the bed and, I confess, gentlemen (after all, the living debauched Elena still roamed within me), I confess I lay there sighing and sighing, pitying my body that no one needed though it was young and beautiful (I had already been out getting a tan, shivering with cold on the splendid roof of the unsplendid Winslow), truly young and beautiful, boys, and the fact that Elena did not need me hurt so much, it was so terrifying, that instead of running away from my fears, memories, and imaginings I tried to gain pleasure from them. I used them, the memories and fears, as I languorously kneaded my member. Not on purpose, it happened automatically, as in wild animals; when I lay down on the bed I invariably thought of Elena, felt agitated because she was not beside me, after all she had lain with me for years, why wasn't she here now? In short, I ended by copulating with her shade. Ordinarily these were group copulations, that is, she fucked someone while I watched, and then I fucked her. I imagined all this with my eyes shut, and at times constructed very elaborate scenes. During these seances my eyes were full of tears, I sobbed, but what else could I do, I sobbed and I came, and semen spilled on my already tan belly. Ah, what a nice belly I have, you should see it – lovely. Eddie-baby's poor little body, what has it been driven to by that lousy Russian tart? "My sister, little sister!" My little fool!
Long before, she had forced me out into the world of masturbation to her themes – back in the fall, when she took a lover and began to do it less often with me. I sensed something wrong and asked, "Elena, confess, you have a lover, don't you?" She didn't really deny it, but she didn't say yes or no, languidly she whispered something passionate and exciting, and I wanted her endlessly. The recollection of that passionate whisper makes me want her to this day, gives me a shameful hard-on.