Alexander and I were sitting in the second row. We were serene because we knew that at the crucial moment all these girls, old men and women, philosophizes and orators, Oriental poets, and playboys from Amnesty International would scatter in all directions, and people like Martin Sostre, Carol, and ourselves would remain. So we thought, and we were hardly mistaken.
Carol calls me often now.
"Hello, Edward," Carol says on the phone. "It's me – Carol."
"Hi, Carol! Glad to hear from you," I reply.
"We're having a meeting today," Carol says. "Do you want to come?"
"Of course, Carol," I reply. "You know how I'm interested in everything."
"Then let's meet at six o'clock by the subway at Lexington and Fifty-first Street," she says.
"Yes, Carol – six o'clock," I say.
We meet at six, we kiss, I take one bag from her, that's all she allows, and we go down into the subway.
Once in a while, at lunchtime, you may find us on Fifty-third Street between Madison Avenue and Fifth, sitting by the waterfall.
Sonya
I rarely get invited anywhere, but I so love company. Once I went to a party given by the only person who still receives me – Sashka Zhigulin, photographer and troublemaker. I've already mentioned him, a real horse's ass, little kid and visionary, all his dreams and the dreams of his friends are focused on getting rich without especially working. There may be more to him, but this characterization also applies.
He lives in a big, semidark studio on East Fifty-eighth Street and goes to great lengths to pay his $300 a month and hold on to it, because he can invite guests here and pose as a grown-up.
In keeping with my silly habit, a habit very odd in a Russian, I arrived precisely at eight. No other guests were there yet, of course, and I stood around foolishly in my lace shirt, white slacks, lilac velvet blazer, and splendid white vest, while Sashka's friends worked. They were moving furniture, opening jars and bottles, putting up posters, and I didn't want to do anything. From boredom and apathy, I left – went for cigarettes, observed the sky growing dark over the streets, inhaled the scent of green leaves; it was May, Central Park was nearby and it reeked of spring weather and excitement. I came back, and the helpers had left to change their clothes. The only ones there were Sashka, who shortly disappeared too, into the bathroom, and this girl, Cod knows what she was doing there, a short girl with bushy, typically Jewish hair and a strangely affected way of speaking, drawling out her sentences or, vice versa, saying them too rapidly, like a bad actress taking pains to enunciate her lines clearly. As it later turned out, she had indeed attended a theatrical group in her native Odessa and was considered very talented. I have always been attracted to malformed specimens. Thus did Sonya enter my life.
We spent the whole evening together. One by one, as they showed up, I introduced her to my friends and acquaintances. Among the latter were both Jean-Pierre – an artist who lives in SoHo, my wife's first lover – and Susanna, also her lover. The fleet-winged Elena herself, with a wave of her hat, had flown off to Milan. All three of us had seen her off. She was still in Milan, flashing her brilliant plumage and driving the Italians out of their minds, I suppose, men and women alike. It doesn't take much to drive poor simple working folk – businessmen or artists – out of their minds.
I was still in a state of confusion, and Sonya was the first woman, if such she can be called, the term is hardly correct in respect to her, as you will see – more exactly, she was the first individual of feminine gender with whom I wanted, God knows why, to become intimate. The first after Elena.
Before this there had been lunatic encounters in an alcoholic haze, incomprehensible evening gatherings, infrequent parties. Women from Australia and women from Italy would come looming up, swivel their faces, say something about kangaroos or contemporary art, step back, disappear, and finally melt into the background, from which they had stepped forward for an instant with a swish of their skirts only to slip back again deep into chaos. I was almost always drunk, openly hostile toward them, and at the same time overflirtatious, lest I appear to be a homosexual. Body and soul together – unanimous for this once, having been cruelly insulted by Elena – I rejected the women, pushed them away, and I invariably woke up alone. I doubt I could have fucked a woman then or had any intimate relationship with her at all. Did I want to? Or did I feel I "had to"? I don't know. Sonya did not scare me. She was afraid of everything herself.
This first evening, the young lady from Odessa (she's very shy about that, of course) is shocked by the thoroughly proper introductions with which she is honored. "This is Jean-Pierre, my wife's ex-lover." "This is Susanna, her lover." The drunken but sweet-smelling Susanna kisses me almost with family feeling. I am not past caring, but I pity Susanna and scorn Jean; that gives me the strength to relate to them calmly. And besides, I know how to play my hand, add fuel to the fire. Introducing my "family" to this little Jewish philistine, I know that essentially they differ very little from her. Nevertheless, I am inflicting a blow, I'm giving her a lesson in depravity, Moscow-style, and eccentricity, also big-city-style. I'm giving her a lesson in relationships among people of far more exalted rank than the relationships she has known up to now. "This is how perverted we were in our native Moscow, and still are, here in New York," I am saying.
Well, what of it. I am playing a primitive game, of course, but since she rather interests me, this provincial little Jewish girl, I utilize the second-rate resources of ordinary Moscow-style seduction.
Jean-Pierre and Susanna – I'm a depraved man, then, if I can be friends with them. Unobtrusively, as if by the way, I mention my publications, being translated in several countries around the world. I'm an important man, then. And third – I tell her about my liaisons with men. It's a shock, of course, a blow. But never mind, she will absorb it. I have yet to encounter the person who will give up what is interesting, even though it is "bad." Because so much has hit her tonight, Sonya leaves very early, at eleven o'clock (which will never happen with her again). She has to think; let her go and think. I see her to the bus, and I say that I like her very much, at the same time observing that her upper lip is very homely.
This evening I still have ahead of me a half-hearted attempt at intimacy – my first and last – with my "relative," Susanna. I make the attempt partly out of mischief and partly out of an awareness of a certain moral right to her. All evening, drunken Susanna is after blue-eyed Jannetta, who is also Russian. My chances are small, but I'll try. Miss Garcia cherishes a fondness for Russian girls. Garcia is as common a name as Ivanova is in Russia. And Susanna corresponds, in commonness, to Ludka. Ludka Ivanova.
Cherishes a fondness. She embraces Jannetta, gets a hand up under her skirt. Kirill and I – you remember, he's Jannetta's lover – clown around doing a homosexual dance, although neither of us has that kind of feeling for the other. I want to help Kirill and somehow dispel the awkwardness that has developed around the pair of "girls." Kirill is nothing but an overgrown kid. I see that he is distraught over Susanna's public attempts on his Jannetta and doesn't know what to do. He does not succeed in laughing it off. He may even cry. Jannetta is older than he; it seems to me she's experiencing pleasure at the touch of the drunken but adamant Miss Garcia – Ludka Ivanova.
Then comes a lapse of an hour, hour and a half. By now everyone is gone and I am in Susanna's apartment, sitting on the very bed where the photograph was taken: naked Susanna and Elena, lying in one another's arms making love, or just having finished. It was taken, I suspect, by the naked Jean. He and Susanna are forever slouching around with cameras. I sit on this bed, I wait, I think, and in the bathroom Miss Garcia pukes uncontrollably. Good Lord, what bad luck! Why did she get so stinking drunk! I had thought it would be symbolic to fuck Susanna on this ill-fated bed. Later she comes in, still pale and contorted with pain from the spasmodic heavings of her stomach. It is hard to look at her – aging face, make-up streaked and runny, lashes and eyelids all messed up. All is futility: the night is over, the fires have burned out, Jannetta has escaped her. I feel very sorry for her. I, at least, have art, the desire to make a monument of myself, but what does she have? Even if she is a lesbian, her brief summer of pleasure is passing by.