I gave the black his money and he saw me off with a knowing smile. And another.
We trudged along Eighth Avenue. They were already delivering newspapers. People with early jobs were walking to work, several coffee shops had opened, the prostitutes were no longer around. The night girls had gone to bed, and it was still too early for the day girls.
"Let's hurry," she said suddenly. "I have to go to the bathroom."
If you can help it, never see unloved women in moments like this. There is nothing more disgusting and pathetic, especially the inhibited, uptight ones. And all is flooded with pitiless morning light. It's like an execution scene, pursuit and murder on deserted streets. We could make a film like that, where a woman is running and she defecates as she runs, it streams out of her, we record with the movie camera the excrement falling from her body. Anguish and horror. Worse than murder.
We ran down Forty-second Street at a pretty good trot all the way from Eighth to Broadway. But then she tore along blundering into every doorway, her face distorted. There was suffering, too much to bear, written all over her short though well-proportioned figure. She can't do a fucking thing, even piss or shit, I thought spitefully. How would I know which she had to do? She wouldn't tell.
I could no longer guide or control her. She didn't want to squat in the dark empty subway corridor that I pushed her into, she became demoniacal, gnawed her lips, looked like a cornered animal, she all but turned and bit me.
Finally, and this was where my darling Elena had worked, her first American agency, 1457 Broadway – don't be surprised, do you think I could forget that address? Those addresses are etched in my mind – it was near there, two, maybe three doors away, that I spotted an open door. She struggled, but I went and dragged her in. It was a mess, they were making repairs.
"Go here," I said. "I'll stand and wait by the door." I went out.
Whew! Outside it seemed to be a fresh spring morning, the kind of morning when it's nice to think about the future, calculate your chances of success, you're young and healthy; or you look at your sleeping wife and children. There was a fountain nearby, the water was flowing. I wetted my hands, neck, and face…
I waited quite some time for her and still she didn't come. I began to think something had happened to her. I began to understand what sort of person she was, and it occurred to me that misfortunes always cling to people like her. By now I had made the march from the falling waters to this ill-fated door several times, but she hadn't shown herself. Lost in conjecture – a woman like that might do anything – I opened the door. She was standing on the stairs with her hands over her eyes. I walked over and said, though not spitefully, "Let's go. Why the hell are you standing here?"
"I'm ashamed!" she said, keeping her hands over her eyes.
"You fool, let's go," I said. "Hey, how can something natural be shameful? Only you didn't need to make a fuss, you could have gone in the subway."
She didn't move. I pulled her by the hand. She resisted. I began to swear. At this slight racket a man emerged from the depths of the repair equipment or from behind some door. An ordinary American man, perhaps fifty years old. In plaid pants, naturally.
"Do you know him?" he said to Sonya, in English, of course.
"Everything's okay," I told him. "Sorry."
I told her in Russian, "Don't raise a ruckus, you fool, half of Broadway will come running. Let's go to my place."
We left, thank God. We walked down the street and turned abruptly east, down Forty-second again. We could perfectly well have passed for a pimp and a Spanish prostitute who had had a little row and then made peace. We walked, and from time to time I hugged her around the waist and thought how unfortunate we all were in this world, how stupidly and disgustingly the world was arranged, how much excess there was in it. I thought that I ought not to get angry, it wasn't good, I ought to be kind to people, though I forgot all the time. You ought to pity them all, you ought to bring them your love, bring repose, and not think of Sonya as a homely Jewish woman playing at being a girl; there's no reason to scorn her… You disgusting squeamish aesthete! I cursed myself. To top it all off, I extravagantly called myself a horse's ass and a punk, then stopped Sonya and kissed her as tenderly as I could on the forehead – nonetheless noticing the wrinkles on it. Well, I can't help myself. Meanwhile, we had turned on Madison and were rapidly nearing the hotel.
Nothing special happened, except that I fucked her, of course. This was not my most gigantic sexual feat. An easy triumph over a person beneath me, nothing to be proud of. Besides, even considering my current aversion to women, I was still dissatisfied with myself, I didn't get a good hard-on with her. And I was dissatisfied with her in particular – nothing about her suited me.
It irritated me that she washed and did laundry for a long time in my shower – after all that, she evidently hadn't gotten her excrement to its destination because she laundered both her slacks and her pantyhose and her underpants.
Everything happening was kind of pathetic, which I can't stand. For the first time in my life I felt sorry for myself. She puttered in the bath, or rather the shower; I lay on my bed and felt irritated through my drowsiness. Fuck you, ordinary people! I thought. You do everything assbackwards. My Elena would have squatted easily and simply where she had to, she would have laughed till she dropped, and many's the time she would have aroused me by flashing her poopka and peepka, and maybe, out of mischief, I'd have amused myself by holding my hands under her stream. Next I recalled with pleasure how in springtime, when I was a kid, I used to exhibit my red member to my future wife Anna from the bushes in the cemetery, and how she would go off to one side and piss, and then we'd fuck on a warm gravestone, and the light would slowly fade in the sky.
Whereas this woman… But I recalled again that I must love, even Sonya, and forgive. I forgave her everything, even her fussing with her clothes, but when she came to bed I was even more disenchanted, more and more disenchanted. She had too much hair on her. It was appropriate on her head – beautiful Jewish hair. But it was the same in her armpits, and the same barbed wire on her pubis, and several coarse hairs had found their way to her very large breasts, to her nipples. That's nothing, I thought, as I tried to get myself and her warmed up. On top of everything else, Eddie-baby, you seem to be anti-Semitic.
I penetrated rather quickly, although it was not the moist and burning place I had expected. Not to the degree I wanted. When I rolled over and lay between her legs in the usual position, she promptly hoisted her legs up on me, which hindered me no matter how I moved. Moreover, she acted the way she thought a woman burning with passion was supposed to act – she tried to clasp me to her as tight as possible, which did not send me into raptures, because it kept me from making love. It was the first time I had come up against such a clumsy person…
"Sonya, open up, don't clench, I'll hit you!" I hissed at her.
She didn't smell of perfume or even soap. Her natural smell was not unpleasant, but I so love perfume, and her smell for some reason reminded me of the smell of Jewish rooms hung with rugs, in the summertime in Kharkov, rooms I had happened to visit. All that was lacking was the dusty ray of light and the crawling flies. Anyway, I somehow got her unclinched from me and began to fuck her more freely. But when my cock stood up properly erect, and I began to thrust my tool into her vigorously, she suddenly writhed in pain. I'm no bawdy Russian epic hero, no Luka Mudishchev, I worship love, but I also know a lot about love – she was not writhing from the size of my member, it's average. The little idiot had some sort of disease inside.