Elena wondered what life was like for Starsky.
"Bad," replied Zhigulin Senior. "Sometimes I think he'll do away with himself. He has no work, there's almost no market for his paintings, he's even been forced to sell his car."
Starsky so loved cars, it was hard to imagine him without one; he had had one since childhood. "If Lyoka has sold his car, I can imagine what his life is like," Elena said. "But why is he staying there and not leaving?"
"Life in Israel isn't for him, of course," Zhigulin Senior continued. "There, everyone goes to bed by eleven, but Lyoka – you remember Lyoka – that's when his day is just beginning. He may come here; he's apparently planning on America."
"He'll be better off here," Elena said.
I thought, Now that you've broken loose from your chains, little one, you want to compensate yourself by fucking mustachioed, wrinkled Starsky, don't you? Anger flared within me. But instantly died out.
What can you do, Eddie? She's a free person, you can't do a fucking thing, she'll sleep with Starsky. You don't live by the Novodevichy Convent any more, Eddie. Times are different. Really, Eddie, are you sure she isn't fucking Zhigulin Junior? After all, they live in the same studio and their beds are ten paces apart. How could they not fuck, in a neighborly way?
My powerlessness gave me an unpleasant feeling. All I could do was observe her life, I couldn't even give her advice, she wouldn't accept advice from me. I am the ex-husband; that should not be forgotten. I am the past, the past cannot give advice to the present. Furthermore, all are free to mess up their own lives as they wish, and people like Elena and me are especially capable of messing up our own lives.
She is. I remember her first and last trip to Kharkov: Touched by the spectacle of my fat, gray, and crazy ex-wife Anna, she removed a diamond ring from her own finger and put it on Anna's. Anna, also a person given to excess in her hereditary madness (not without reason were her paintings so terrible and bright), rolled up her eyes and fell upon Elena's hand with kisses.
My thoughts flew back to Kharkov; I saw that scene vividly, and all my anger, which had been about to flare up, passed off. It may be worth living just for the sake of such scenes. Not to yourself, but from yourself – that's beautiful. That's why I so hate miserliness and do not love Roseanne. Elena Sergeevna is a little bitch, a whore, what you will, but she's capable of impulses, or was. Oh, I am proud of her now, from afar. What else do I have left?
The Zhigulins, both Senior and Junior, went up to see crazy Sasha Zelensky, who lived upstairs. Elena and I were left alone. She was in a quiet mood today and began to tell me how she had spent last weekend in Southampton.
She's ambitious, there's no help for it. "And the daughter of a certain multimillionaire was there too, you must know -," and she mentioned some name. I couldn't imagine how I, a welfare recipient, a moving man, John's helper, would know a multimillionaire's daughter's name, or the daughter herself. "Well," Elena went on, "so this girl came with a handsome guy. Later someone told me he was a gigolo, a man she had bought in order to have him make out he was her boyfriend."
Elena was swaying on Zhigulin's high stool, holding at some distance from her the very long cigarette holder that she had brought from Italy, a telescoping black lacquer tube.
"So this guy kept hovering around me, and the multimillionaire's daughter was furious. She actually came in a T-shirt, dirty jeans…"
I had the cheerless thought that the poor multimillionaire's daughter might be ugly, and… I had a shitload of thoughts, listening to her stories.
"But I'm sick of them all by now," Elena went on. "Sunday was horribly rainy, you know, I put on a raincoat and walked along the seashore alone. It was so nice."
I, Eddie-baby, by strange coincidence, having spent the night at Alexander's, on that same Sunday morning had walked in the rain along the ocean to the Coney Island subway station. Not a single living creature was there. I rolled my trousers up to the knees so that the wet white duck wouldn't lash against my legs, and walked, at times knee-deep in the water. There were seagull-pecked crabs and their parts on the sand, mussels, things of man that had fallen under the sea's jurisdiction. Rain and more rain. A confused melody trembled within me. In this melody, perhaps, lay the sad implication that the world was worth nothing, that everything in this world was nonsense and decay and the eternal comings and goings of the gray waves, and only the indwelling love in my body distinguished me in any way from the landscape…
I told Elena, sparingly and simply, that I too had walked along the seashore alone that Sunday.
"Yes," she said.
Then I went with her to buy hair coloring. She put on some gray old jeans we had bought her when she still lived with me. On the whole, as you will see later, she hadn't acquired many new things. Either her lovers weren't noted for generosity or she didn't know how to squeeze money out of them or she made love with them just for the pleasure of making love; I don't know.
She put on these little jeans and also a little black turtleneck, took an umbrella, and we set off. Like the good old days. The fucking rain was coming down in buckets, but my heart was gay. I was walking with her. Our umbrellas touched now and then.
In the shop on Madison, everyone gawked at us – a slightly rumpled pair of little kids had come to buy something. She chose hair coloring, and she then took half an hour choosing a cosmetics case, and during that time, gentlemen, I was enjoying myself. Cod had sent me pleasure. At length she finished choosing the case. Then she bought soap, some sort of cap for the bath, and something else. She asked if I had any money with me. I said, "I do, I do!"
"Give me a ten, I'll pay you back later."
I said she didn't need to pay anything back; she didn't have money now and I did. Several jobs in succession with John really had brought me some dollars.
I always loved to watch her browse in stores. She knew what was what, she knew what she needed, but always, here in America, the poor little girl had no money at all. It occurred to me, as I watched her, how nice it was that I hadn't been able to strangle her, she was alive, and I wanted her to be warm and dry in this world – that was the main thing. As for the fact that all sorts of sleazebags were poking their cocks into her little peepka, well, all right, it was what she wanted. It hurt me, but she was getting pleasure. You think I'm farting around showing off, making myself out to be an all-forgiving Christ? Fuck no, this is honest, I wouldn't lie, I'm too proud. It hurts me, it hurts, but every day I tell myself and instill in myself:
"Treat Elena, Eddie-baby, as Christ treated Mary Magdalene and all women who sinned. No, treat her better. Forgive her both today's whoredom and her adventures. All right, it's the way she is," I exhorted myself. "If you love her, this long, thin creature in faded little jeans who is browsing now among the perfumes, sniffing them with an important air and unscrewing the stoppers – if you love her, love is above personal grudge. She's unwise and evil and unhappy. But you feel that you're wise and good: love her, don't scorn her. Keep an eye on her life. She doesn't want you to, don't pry into her life, but help when you can and must. Help, and expect nothing in return – don't demand that she come back to you in return for whatever you're able to do. Love does not demand gratitude and gratification. Love itself is gratification."
That is what I taught myself in the perfumery on Madison Avenue. Oh, I haven't always succeeded, of course, but with interruptions for malice and loathing, I have disposed myself more and more in that direction, and I think I do love her that way now.
To me her wash-faded jeans are dearer than all the blessings of this earth, and I would betray any cause for those slim little legs with their complete absence of calves, I thought in the perfumery, while this interested creature bent down and straightened up over objects and scents.