"This is Ed." He presented me to a guy with gray temples. "His name is John, like mine," John said, rudely pointing at the man.
"Yes, some people call me John," the man said gently, "and some Vanya."
The apartment was wretchedly small, the host's small daughter was asleep in the small neighboring bedroom, and I was horribly bored and even depressed, until she woke up and came in. You will shortly understand why.
John had brought a Magnetophon with him, a crude popular model with a tinny sound; he switched it on, some American girl sang. This Vanya – mentally I called him "Vanechka," sweet Vanya, because he was suffused with gentleness, both what he said and his whole figure, I definitely liked this fellow who worked at a plastics factory – this Vanya laughed at John's Magnetophon. John explained that he had bought the Magnetophon to practice his English. But they called the magnetophon a tape recorder, I forgot.
The girl on the tape sang words to the effect that what had been yesterday would never return and that this was terrible, and many other sad words besides. After the girl, John had recorded an old Russian man, a Kuzmich or Petrovich. "Whatever you want, Kuzmich. Talk or sing," said John on the tape recorder. John in the chair flinched. And when Kuzmich, getting the words wrong, started to sing the Russian folk song "When I Was a Coachman," I am sorry to say I got up and quietly went outdoors.
I had no fucking use for these tear-jerking Russian songs about loved ones found dead under the snow. They were too close to home. At that time even an English-Russian dictionary filled me with terror. The words "lover," "passionate," "intercourse," and others like them tormented me with the torments of hell. I writhed when I read them. Russian songs were all I needed.
I went outdoors; the trees were rustling, the grass showed green, night was falling, a Bulgarian youth from the family next door was sitting on the porch tapping his high heel on the threshold. I went over to the van in which we had arrived, leaned my forehead against its high yellow chassis, and quieted down. From the house I could hear the doleful song. Why all this? I thought. Was it really impossible to live our whole lives in love and happiness? Life' is so short, so small. What is she seeking, Elena, what force drives her forward or back? Why must I suffer terrible moments like these, and much worse? We could have spent our whole lives together – as adventurers, whores, prostitutes, but together. The last phrase is my favorite: sex is sex, fuck whom you wish, but why betray my heart?
This passed quickly. After all, by now it was the end of summer, not March or April. I didn't settle down into a wonderful mood, but when I went into the house the old man had finished singing "The Peddlers" and little Katenka had appeared, a small sleepy creature about two years old, or even a little younger. The Bulgarian father dressed the creature, and she began moving around among us, mostly in my vicinity, uttering sounds and smiling at me. I caught myself watching only Katenka; the conversation between John and sweet Vanya held no interest for me. They were saying something about the secondhand cars that stood along the road to the barracks. The cars were for sale, it seemed, and cheap. A white Pontiac cost only $260. At the price of the Pontiac I turned off, because I had made up my mind: I picked up this Katenka and set her on my lap.
Good Lord, what did I know about children, poor unhappy frightened creature that I was? Not a fucking thing. The little plant had to be entertained. On my head was an old straw hat of John's; I kept taking it off and putting it on, trying to summon up a smile on the baby's face. Although at her age the little girl was closer to nature, to leaves and grass, than to people, she understood me. She didn't cry, she didn't want to frighten me in any way, she put her little wee hand on my chest – my shirt was unbuttoned – and stroked me. Her hand was hot, and from it there spread into my body a sense of animal comfort such as I had not felt since I slept with my arms around Elena.
Suddenly it occurred to me that once upon a time I had greatly disliked children, and how happy I was now with this creature on my lap. She would grow up, she'd be beautiful – sweet Vanya wasn't bad; I hadn't seen his wife. God grant you happiness, little animal, I thought. But if He does, let it be for your whole life. God forbid you should know happiness and then live all the rest of your life in unhappiness. The most terrible torment.
The little wild animal sat on my lap, and fool that I was, I didn't know what to do with it. All I did was carefully support its little back and make funny faces at it. I was awkward. I have never had children. How strong I would be now if I had such a Katenka, I would have an incentive to live. I wouldn't send the child to school, the hell with your schools. I would dress her in wonderful clothes, the most expensive; I'd buy her a big wise dog…
Such were my futile dreams as I gazed on someone else's child. Why futile, you say? Of course they were futile. I could no longer have a child by the woman I loved; I would not have loved a child by an unloved woman. I did not need an unloved child.
I shouldn't hold her so long on my lap. They might notice, I wouldn't want that. To John I was unprincipled, desperate Ed, a pretty good helper, for whom he intended a future as manager of his business. He's that way, John is, he'll have everything. Not for nothing does he live like a Spartan: doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, and perhaps doesn't sleep with women, considers them to be too ruinous a pastime for him at present. He'll have everything he wants, John will. Only not for long, because this whole era is coming to an end.
John made a tape of sweet Vanya singing a few excerpts from some Bulgarian songs and the famous "Moscow Nights." He sang them gently and touchingly. I let baby Katenka go, set her carefully on the floor, and thought with bitterness that I had no right to relax, I must keep a tight hold oh myself. If you don't, you die, and I had learned from a conversation among Roseanne's guests – they were discussing the book Life after Life – that suicide changes nothing, the suffering remains, a dead man experiences the same feelings as the living. I wouldn't want to plunge into eternity in the state I'm in now. They had convinced me. That meant I must overcome. Therefore I took leave of my host with exaggerated distinctness, then gave Katenka, who sat in her papa's arms, a light touch on the shoulder and said, "Good-bye, baby!" I jumped up to my seat, and we drove off in the darkness, from time to time conversing, from time to time falling silent. Traffic was heavy, it was Sunday, people were driving from vacation areas, and therefore it took us a while to get to Manhattan.
"Look at that car ahead of us," John said as we crawled along the George Washington Bridge. "It costs eighteen thousand. My vehicle is for making money, his is for wasting money. I bet the guy driving it's a cheat, he got rich off fraud and drugs. How are you worse than him? But here you sit in my van, and you've got nothing."
John said it viciously, and I thought that he was far from being as simple as he seemed. And not very contented. He worked like a horse and got tired, his face was lined. Maybe I was wrong about the barricades. Maybe, God willing, we'd be on the same side? Something resembling class hatred had glinted in his words.
"What's the name of that car?" I asked.
"Mercedes-Benz!" he replied. Staring at the car, he added, "Fuckin' shit!"
My friend New York
I am a man of the street. I have to my credit very few people-friends and many friend-streets. They, the streets, see me at all hours of the day and night; I often sit on them, press my buns to their sidewalks, cast my shadow on their walls, prop my elbow or my back against their lampposts. I think they love me because I love them and pay attention to them like nobody else in New York. As a matter of fact, Manhattan ought to put up a monument to me, or a memorial plaque with the following inscription: "To Edward Limonov, New York's number one pedestrian, with love from Manhattan!"