The fact remains that in America, just as in Russia, we were unable to publish our articles, that is, to express our views. Here we were forbidden another thing: to write critically about the Western world.
So Alexander and I got together at 330 West Forty-fifth Street and tried to decide what to do. Man is weak; the effort was often accompanied by beer and vodka. But, although a stuffed-shirt statesman may be afraid to admit he has formulated one or another state decision in the interval between two glasses of vodka or whiskey or while sitting on the toilet, I have always been delighted by the apparent incongruity, the inopportuneness, of manifestations of human talent and genius. And I do not intend to hide it. To hide it would be to distort, or facilitate the distortion of, human nature.
In short, Alexander and I drank and worked and discussed. We drank vodka, and along with the vodka we drank ale – for some reason I had taken a liking to it – and everything else we could get our hands on. Then we would set out to cruise the streets. As we walked to Eighth Avenue the girls said hello to us, and not merely in the line of duty – we were a familiar sight, they knew us. The two men in glasses were also known to the people who handed out flyers advertising the bordello, and to the kinky-haired man who issued them their flyers and paid them their money. After passing number 300, where the steep lighted staircase led to the cheapest bordello in New York, one of the cheapest, at least, we turned on Eighth Avenue, down or up, according to our own whim. The cruise began…
Everything had been as usual that April day. Attacks of anguish were coming over me several times a week then, or perhaps even oftener. I don't remember how the day began – no, wait, I wrote the scene where Elena is executed in "The New York Radio Broadcast," and was very weary from always returning to the same painful theme, Elena's betrayal of me. There were swarms of people in the corridor outside my door. They were filming Marat Bagrov in his room, filming him on assignment for Israeli propaganda: Look how hard life is for those who leave Israel. Actually, at least three countries have an interest in our emigre souls – they harass us constantly, swear by us, use us, all three of them. So at that moment Marat Bagrov, former Moscow TV journalist, was being exploited by a man from Israel – former Soviet writer Ephraim Vesyoly – and his American friends. Cables, accessories, lenses, and cameras crowded my door. I went out into New York, wandered, as if aimlessly, to Lexington Avenue, and twice found myself at her place, that is, the Zoli agency, where Elena was living then. I felt sad and disgusted. Suddenly I caught myself on the point of passing out. I had to save myself. I went back to the hotel.
The fucking exploitation scene was still going on. The Moscow TV figure, long unaccustomed to attention, was carried away with the sound of his own voice. The villain Vesyoly was serene. I knocked at Edik Brutt's door and asked for a $5 loan. Edik, kind soul, even consented to go and get the wine with me because I was afraid of passing out from anguish.
We went. Edik, mustachioed and somnolent, and I. I bought a gallon of California red for $3.49 and we started back. We encountered a strange man with a Russian face, who glanced at me, then grinned and said suddenly, "Faggot," and turned on Park Avenue. "An odd encounter," I said to Edik. "I don't think he's staying at our hotel."
We returned to the hotel, and the sacrament was still going on. Another denizen of our dormitory, Mr. Levin, was now angrily gritting out something about the Soviet regime and anti-Semitism in Russia. We shut ourselves in my room, and I prevailed on Edik to have a symbolic drink with me, at least one. And I set myself to soaking up my gallon…
Gradually I recovered and brightened up. Somebody summoned Edik, perhaps His Majesty the Interviewer, I don't remember who, but somebody. Then they summoned me, I went – they gave me a table. I took it, and a bookshelf as well. Marat Bagrov had timed the interview for the day he was to move out of the hotel. An ex-furrier named Borya, one of the most worthwhile people in the hotel, helped me move the table into my room. I treated him to a glass. I drank two or three myself. Marat Bagrov was invited too. Ephraim Vesyoly and the crew would have been invited, but they had decamped with their fiendish gear.
When Marat Bagrov and I had knocked back our glasses, the telephone rang. "What are you doing?" asked Alexander's animated voice.
"Drinking a gallon of wine. I've hardly drunk a third of it," I said, "but I want to drink it all." A gallon of California burgundy usually calms me right down.
"Listen, come on over," Alexander said. "Come and bring the jug with you. We'll both drink; I have ale and vodka too. I feel like getting drunk," he added. With that, he probably straightened his glasses. He's a very quiet fellow, but capable of recklessness.
"Okay," I said, "I'll stick the jug in a bag and be right over."
I was wearing a nice tight denim jacket, and jeans tucked in – no, rolled way high, to reveal my very beautiful high-heeled boots of tricolor leather. For my own pleasure I thrust an excellent German knife from Solingen into my boot, then put the jug in a bag and went out.
Downstairs, from the pickup truck containing the migrant Bagrov's things, I was hailed by Bagrov himself, Edik Brutt, and some other extra. "Where are you going?" they said. "To Forty-fifth Street," I said, "between Eighth and Ninth avenues." "Get in," Bagrov said, "that's practically on the way, I'm moving to Fiftieth and Tenth Avenue."
I got in, we started off. Past columns of pedestrians, past gilded Broadway reeking of urine, past a solid wall of strolling people. My glance lovingly picked out of the crowd the long-limbed figures of whimsically dressed young black men and women. I have a weakness for eccentric circus clothes. Although I cannot afford much of anything because of my extreme poverty, still, all my shirts are lace, one of my blazers is lilac velvet, and the white suit is a beauty, my pride and joy. My shoes always have very high heels, I even own some pink ones, and I buy them where all the blacks buy theirs, in the two best stores on Broadway, at the corner of Forty-fifth and the corner of Forty-sixth, lovely little far-out shops where it's all high heels and all provocative and preposterous to squares. I want even my shoes to be a festival. Why not?
The truck moved west along Forty-fifth, past theaters and mounted policemen. In front of one building we had the honor of beholding with our own eyes our Lilliputian mayor. All the emigres recognized him joyfully. He got out of a car with some other puffy-faced characters, and several reporters took pictures of the mayor with professional adeptness but no special enthusiasm. There was no great security force in evidence. Everyone in the truck went on and on about how there was no point shooting at the mayor in such a crush, and we had trouble making progress, moving barely a meter or two at each change of the light. The driver, Bagrov, and I applied ourselves to my gallon jug a few times. I got out my knife and started toying with it.