He does not interest me. But for Elena, it would not occur to me to notice him if I met him at a party somewhere. He belongs to a definite caste of men, who are scattered throughout the world. I knew lots of them in Russia. They feel they were born to live to the fullest and enjoy themselves. Having "lived," that is, having slept with women to their hearts' content, they grow old and die without leaving a shadow or trace on the earth. A species of philistine, that's all. Back in Kharkov they were named Bruk or Kuligin, in Moscow they were named something else; they arrived and disappeared; now and then I took an interest in them, sometimes they became my friends for a short while, but I never dreamed that Elena would leave for their world. In Russia she would not have left for these vulgarians, she had chosen Limonov. Was it because American cunt-chasers, with their much wider opportunities for a dissolute life, were of a better quality than Russian ones? Or did she not recognize them in their American aspect, did she decide that these men were different – loftier and more interesting? I don't know. The Why? would have vanished immediately had Elena left for an American Limonov. But for these men?
Jean… Jean received Elena for nothing, for free, as a gift of fate. A lucky man. In point of fact, he is far beneath her. But I had wrested her from fate, my Elena. True, he didn't get her for long… We all have pricks, they hang between our legs; and balls, these unlucky balls, whose touch to a woman's body is so glorified in cheap, sexy books; but, my sweet, we are not all alike…
I walk out of the office. Kirill is still making phone calls. I ask who he's talking to, he mutters something in my direction. He has firmly decided that what he and I lack for our complete happiness is a bottle of vodka, and he wants to get that bottle from someone. Today is Sunday, and the gambit of borrowing money and making a last-minute purchase at the liquor store is out. That means we have to go visiting. Everything is just as at my place in Moscow or his in Petersburg, except for the coffee shop sign burning outside the windows. But there's no need to look out the window. The usual situation – we haven't had enough to drink. The only difference is that we hardly know anybody here.
Tearing himself away from the telephone, Kirill requisitions a couple more cans of beer from Slava-David's supply – he is always well provided – and we polish them off immediately. There is already a whole bag of empties lying in the corner.
Meanwhile, between what I've drunk and what I've seen, I am slowly going into an ecstasy. In its physical routine this whole day has been an exact repetition of many another day after a binge, and a binge is what I had yesterday. Now at the stage of "ecstasy!" I request what is currently my favorite Beatles record, "Back in the USSR!"
The record is not in Jean-Pierre's collection. Without asking me, Kirill puts on his own records, which are lying there in the common heap. First comes Vertinsky.
The sense of rhythm characteristic of all poets awakens in me. It is in our blood. I begin to dance around. I execute rhythmic figures. Kirill, although he carries on with his phone conversations, does not forget to change the records – according to his own whim, however. The Alexandrov soldiers' chorus is succeeded by "Dark Eyes," then come revolutionary songs, and "Dark Eyes" again…
I begin to experience the feelings of my people. My dance takes me past a mirror. It is large; they may have looked at themselves in it more than once, together and naked, but the thought slips by and disappears. The music drives it out. I dance insane dances, I dance away from the mirror toward the kitchen, pass close to the telephoning Kirill, and in an intricate rhythmic pas I dance around "those" pillars. As in Eliot, I think: "Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o'clock in the morning." My erudition delights me. Then and there I repeat Eliot's lines in Ukrainian.
I leap and dance, and Kirill smiles. Oh that Eddie, that crazy Eddie! I love Kirill because he never acts surprised at me. If I do surprise him, he pretends that that's as it should be and that if he, Kirill, is not a pederast himself, he's a liberated man in any case and can understand everything. Even if he's only pretending, that's fine too.
Now he breaks off his conversation, and in the blinding light of all of Jean-Pierre's lamps we dance to "Dark Eyes." The music of our native Russia, it has made the rounds of all the taverns in the world. At one time danger-loving officers in uniform used to howl this wild piece in the taverns, weeping drunkenly, like me, Eddie. What anguish, and anguish-destroying exultation, there is in these doleful Asiatic sounds with their sudden outcries. Ah, but nothing binds me to humanity except Welfare, which I take from them. And my nationality is nagging me to death. "A machine gun, oy, give me a machine gun, my dears!" I scream hysterically, to Kirill's delight.
No doubt I am overplaying it a little. But didn't I want to embrace her fucking corpse? Didn't I write suicide notes and then try to strangle her? Or was that a fantasy? No, it happened, the "dark eyes" are not lying, and I am not lying about myself.
The pandemonium of the dance lasts a very long time. Russian records are succeeded by French ones. I dance to Brel, Piaf, and Aznavour. I dance in an ecstasy, and although I feel as if the whole world were watching, the "day after" is always like this by nighttime. In reality, even Kirill has left again, to torment the telephone receiver with his English talk, not realizing that although he's a dear boy no one fucking needs either him or me, tonight or any other night.
With a wild dance on the spot where she betrayed me, with beer and marijuana – this is how I mark the fifth anniversary of our acquaintanceship. Like a tame member of society. I don't set any fires, don't smash everything, don't howl, don't even weep.
After a while I cool off. The "depression" stage begins, I go and collapse on the bed with my nose in the blanket and lie there for a while, sniffing the bed. Maybe it smells of her? No, it smells of Kirill. I turn over on my back and lie staring at the ceiling, not moving, for maybe a whole thirty minutes. I think about her, about him, about myself. Shadows chase across the ceiling, the shade flaps, and the world enters into night, in order then to enter into day.
A natural desire to make peepee forces me to get up. I walk into the bathroom, and there I continue to think, reason, and listen to myself. I examine afresh the pathetic drawings hung over the toilet. I peer into the drawers – again, hundreds of names of objects. I am struck by the staccato pettiness of his existence, surrounded as it is by such a quantity of details, and it hurts my eyes, they begin to hurt. There is cotton here too, she may have used it, and what they stick in the peepka during menstruation, Tampax. A well-provided monsieur.
In the first years of our love we invariably fucked when she was menstruating, we couldn't wait out those four days. We would begin as if in play, rub against each other and kiss, and then we would fuck after all, trying not to go too deep. When we came, and we almost always did together, I would pull out my member all bloody. That was gratifying both to me and to her, and we'd gaze at it a long time.