I too was delicate as a child, for which my dogheaded friends always teased me. How could they understand that I was of a different breed? The boy by Alice is also of a different breed. Through his brashness, of course, he is trying to atone for his guilt before these little lowbrows. I too was desperately bold. On a bet I once went up to a woman hawking pastries at an outdoor festival and took one of her trays. Calmly bearing it over my head, I carried it off into the crowd and then into the bushes in the park. I was atoning for my girlish exterior. I was thirteen.
I smile. There's one good thing about my life. Measuring it against my childhood, I see that I haven't fucking betrayed it, my dear and fabulously distant childhood. All children are extremists. I have remained an extremist, have not become a grown-up. To this day I am a pilgrim, I have not sold myself, have not betrayed my soul, that's why I suffer such torments. These thoughts hearten me. And the princess I dreamed of encountering in life and always sought – I did encounter her, and it all came to pass, and now, thank God, I am behaving worthily, I have not betrayed my love. "Once, only once," I sigh…
I forsake Alice, and the smile of the Cheshire Cat melts in the air. Semipederast Red brat Eddie marches uphill in step to a gallant song from the Russian Civil War:
Army White and Baron Black,
They're fixing to bring the old Czar back,
But from the taiga to the British seas
The Red Army scatters its enemies…
So be it the Red, with bayonet
In calloused hand gripped fast.
None can halt us! Into the battle!
March and fight to the last!
And all I want, gentlemen, at this moment, is a bullet in the head because I'm tired of holding on, to tell the truth, and scared I will not die a hero.
Beyond the park fence, New York picks me up in its arms. I sink into its warmth and summer – a summer coming to an end, gentlemen – and my New York carries me past the doors of its shops, past the subway stations, past the buses and the liquor store windows. "None can halt us! Into the battle! March and fight to the last!" resounds within me.
The new Elena
What has been happening to Elena, you will ask, while Eddie-baby has been sleeping with black guys, chasing after girl-revolutionaries, raging at Roseanne, and strolling around New York? How is she, Elena, and does Eddie encounter her, at least once in a while, in the jungles of the huge city – nose to nose, two animals who snort in recognition?
He does encounter her, yes. And oh, he remembers those encounters. They began slowly some time ago, but only in August did they become common and stick in my memory. Mild, all-smoothing August… it lay over my city in a dull, thready cloud, preparing the way for nasty autumn and harsh, leaden winter. A transition period, gentlemen. The rains kept trying to come, testing their influence over me. Nature convinced herself that I could take it, although rain does make me more gloomy and depressed – since earliest times, the Russian has been susceptible to the influence of the weather. "He can take it," Nature said, and turned on the sun again.
There had been trivial interactions between Elena and me since April. We had found it necessary to meet from time to time in order to bring each other things or books, generally it was a matter of trivial objects changing hands. The normal interactions between a divorced husband and wife.
This time it was a lousy overcast day. I picked up my check at 1515 Broadway, then went to a bank on Eighth Avenue and cashed the check, then trudged to Fourteenth Street, spent a long time pricing things and finally bought myself a pair of panties (blue and yellow, the colors of the Ukrainian national flag), wanted to buy some strawberries and eat them but begrudged the eighty-nine cents, bought an ice cream, and went to the hotel.
When I arrived Alexander called and said there was going to be a hurricane.
I replied, "Only a hurricane? Not an earthquake simultaneously with a worldwide flood and a conflagration in the six New England states as well as the state of New York?"
"No," Alexander said, "only a hurricane, alas." Alexander too wished the world safe in hell.
Later Elena called. "I'll be home," she said. "You can come get your book."
By my "book" she meant that same long-suffering National Hero, the manuscript in English, which had been translated two years before and published nowhere. Elena was perfectly familiar with this piece of mine in Russian. The reason she needed National Hero was to give it to her new lover to read, George the economist, as she calls him. The "economist" does something in the stock market, and he's a millionaire. So Elena says; I don't know whether it's true. Let's suppose it is. He has a dacha in Southampton, where other such millionaires live. As Elena tells it, they don't do a fucking thing, they just smoke, sniff cocaine, drink, give parties, and fuck, for which she, Elena, is very glad. I don't know whether that's true either. At any rate, that's what she says.
How did my National Hero fit in here? Well, I think she wanted to brag to her economist about her clever ex-husband. In the process, part of the intellect and talent would automatically accrue to her, Elena. The economist could not have cared less about Elena's ex-husband's literary works and took three weekends reading my manuscript, although it's forty minutes' worth, and I think he preferred to fuck Elena rather than read her husband's literary works. People who have things behave very cautiously in this world, for they are afraid that somebody will lop off part of what they have. They need literature like a cunt needs a door.
I went to get the book. Since returning from Italy she no longer lived at Zoli's but rented half of Sashka Zhigulin's studio – this was where I had met the little Jewish bourgeoise, if you recall – and her fucking economist had more or less promised to pay for the studio.
When I go to see her I am always nervous; I can't help myself, I'm nervous like a child before an exam. I wore a little checked shirt, a denim vest, denim jeans, white socks, two-color shoes – very lovely shoes, though I had found them on the street – and a black scarf at my neck. I arrived.
She met me looking extraordinarily fine, in a billowing floor-length white summer dress, a red cord across her brow and neck. So beautiful I could kill her, the whore. What a weakling; how could I let her be fucked by anyone else?
Such were my thoughts, and to stay out of trouble I said, "Want me to buy some wine?" – and instantly fled to the store, almost before she could say, "Go ahead, if you want to."
It seems I bought some good wine. I myself always drink just any old shit, but that's me, I've always been a sensible mutt; she is a fair lady, it does not befit her to drink shitty wine. We each took a seat at the table. We sat, drank wine. Talked. Then Zhigulin arrived with his father, who had flown in from the country, from Israel. The father took a seat too, and so did Zhigulin. We talked about mutual acquaintances. Talked about Starsky. Formerly a rich and famous Moscow artist, Starsky had been a typical representative of, and in a way the idol of, Moscow's privileged "golden youth." Elena and he had moved in the same set; Elena's ex-husband, Victor, was a friend of his. Elena was even in love with Starsky, and as she subsequently confessed, had dreamed of fucking him. But he didn't get around to it, delayed for some reason, and then I forcibly burst into her life, and stayed in her life until she just as forcibly drove me out.