This grudge of mine. It is the melancholy grudge of one animal against another.
So, she did right. But what can Eddie do, Eddie-baby who loved her, Eddie with his very delicate sensibilities, his morbid reaction to the world, he who slashed his own veins three times in his rapture over that world, he who, mad and passionate, was wedded to her in church, who snatched her from the world, who had sought her so many years and is convinced to this day that she is the one, yes, she, the only woman for him – what happens to him, little Eddie? The Eddie who wrote lyrics and poem-cycles about her, who has never been understood by her, what about him? Where has he disappeared to in this story?
What happened to Elena is clear enough, she escaped from the Lexington Avenue tragedy, fled, took off without a backward glance, but what about Eddie? She's a free woman, but weren't you always at one with each other?
"Both the woman and the man have the right to murder," proclaims Chapter One of the never-written code of man-woman relationships.
Eventually she tired of Jean-Pierre too, although she did not immediately leave him. The three of them went on living together – he, she, and Susanna. America had a bad influence on her. She filled up on Flossy, The Story of O, The Story of Joanna, and vulgar films of that ilk. Those syrupy sex concoctions with handsome gray rich men who don't know where to put their pricks, those castles and bedrooms, that cinematic beauty and bullshit – that was what drove her mad. She took the films seriously. And she tried hard to be like the sexy heroines. The young model in The Story of O served as her example, I think, she raved about that film many times.
Elena went to sex parties where you fucked whomever you pleased. In the photographers' and models' milieu where she found herself, partners for any sort of experiment were easy to come by. She had women lovers, and one who fucked her for a long time was Susanna, a frigid woman who derives satisfaction only from someone else's orgasm.
Elena… My Elena… Where is the tearstained Elena with the white poodle black with the mud of Moscow's February thaw, the Elena who came to live with me upon leaving Victor, her forty-seven-year-old husband. Came to me, who had nowhere to live, nothing to live on, but whom she apparently loved. How did it happen, the transition from that Elena, from the wedding candles to the dildo with which she fucked Jean, and with which, evidently, he more than once fucked her.
The spiral candles of the Orthodox wedding… I gave them back to her. Tossed them into her suitcase. I gave back the icons that had been our wedding gift. I don't want to look at the silly old mockeries. I gave back her dog collar, which I had stolen. What was I trying to prevent by taking her dog collar? The mask, I confess, I had long since torn up. Along with his pictures.
I love her very much. I understand her provinciality, I see that here in America she had accepted the very worst – marijuana, underworld jargon, cocaine, the constant "fuckin' mother" after every word, the bars, the sex accessories. Even so, I love her very much – she is typically Russian, throwing herself headlong into the very thick of life without reflection; I'm the same way myself, I love her daring, but I don't love her stupidity. I forgave her betrayal of Eddie, but I will not forgive her betrayal of the hero. "As whores, prostitutes, adventurers, but we could have been together," I whisper.
I am thinking all this as I move through Jean-Pierre's studio, peering into his drawers and shelves. What else can I do? I realize this is bad, but since when have I done nothing but good? My curiosity is all from that sinister Why.
The kitchen. Hundreds of little boxes: spices of every variety and hue, tea, herbs, pepper, this and that. Every necessary kitchen appliance. Everything… They're people… and what am I… down and out. At thirty I don't have a thing, and never will. But that's not what I was seeking. How many years has he lived on this street? Ten years? Twelve? The only place I've lived for more than a year is one apartment in Moscow.
My God! The past is so disgusting, and there's so much of it. I have more of it than most – yet I haven't amassed any things. And I do not foresee having things in the future. Shall I ever have all these little boxes, labels, tags… Never, I'm sure. I amass the immaterial…
The fact is, here in America she found me uninteresting. She meant what she told me that time, February 13; I have a revolting memory: I lay there wanting to starve myself, I wanted so badly to die, and she spoke the ghastly word to me over the telephone. "You're a nobody."
Sadly I swing a coffee can back and forth in my hand. A "nobody" – and I had thought I was a hero. Why a "nobody"? Because I had not become the lascivious, rich, gray owner of a castle, exactly like the men in sexy films. I was supposed to do it in six months – she was in a hurry – and I didn't. I smile sadly.
Alas! I couldn't. Unfortunately, my profession is to be a hero. I always thought of myself as a hero, and I never hid it from her. I even wrote a book by that name back in Moscow: We Are the National Hero.
But I'm a nobody because I don't even have a studio like Jean-Pierre's, all these little jars and boxes; I don't paint bookkeeperlike pictures. Logic did not interest her, it did not occur to her that Jean-Pierre had lived here all his life, while I had arrived yesterday. She didn't trouble herself with logic.
What was I here? Only a journalist who now had a scandalous reputation among the Russian emigres of Europe and America as a leftist and a Red. Who gives a fuck about that! Who needs these Russian scandals here in America, where you have live Warhols and Dalis walking around. And who cares that I am one of Russia's greatest living poets, that I am writhing in agony as I live out my heroic fate. You have herds of rich men here, you have bars on every corner, and literature is reduced to the level of a professorial game. Shit if I'd go to your fucking Arlington or Bennington or whatever it is, to teach your zhlobby children Russian literature. I did not refuse to be bought in the USSR merely in order to sell myself cheap here. And please note – membership in the Soviet Writers' Union is a much better honor than a professorship, even at a university of yours.
The "nobody" walks slowly from object to object. He has already drunk many cans of beer, smoked a couple of joints with Kirill, and everything is therefore turning black in his world, turning dark, becoming harsh and extreme. Kirill has gone off to make phone calls. His world is much brighter and purer than mine. Like a child he wants a Rolls-Royce and money, but he cannot do anything to get them. A baby. In his case it's not even tragic. Suppose his dream does get smashed to smithereens? He's young, he'll think up a new one, there's no harm in that. When the conversation turns to my "leftist" views, Kirill yaps like a puppy and defends the system. He feels obliged to do that because he thinks he belongs with the people in this world who fuck the world and everyone in it, not with those who get fucked.
In some ways Kirill is like Elena. The same desire to jump, run, participate in the games of this world, go to parties, sleep till three in the afternoon, and not work. He is very lovable, although he has no character whatsoever. For all our dissimilarities he's a cultured young man, not a plebeian, I enjoy him more than any of the other Russians. Sometimes he and I go out for a stroll, or take a bottle of cheap California champagne and go to Central Park…
I slip into Jean-Pierre's office. Two desks placed back to back, as in a business office or a Soviet institute. Some of the drawers are locked, others not. If Kirill weren't here, and if it were two or three hours from now, I would open the locked ones, the most interesting things are sure to be in those. Alas, I have to be satisfied with the open ones.
Unhurriedly I go through his things – unhurriedly, but not calmly. How could I be calm… Letters from Paris, from a girl or woman with a Czech or Polish surname, these letters I find in quantity in various desk drawers… but here's something more interesting – a little envelope of hair, little blond hairs obviously from the pubis, and these hairs have got to be my Elena's. The envelope of hair makes me break out in a cold sweat all over, a symptom of utmost agitation. Perhaps I should find comfort in the fact that she isn't living with him. He's the one who doesn't want it, however. So they tell me; I don't know.