We returned to the eternally dark studio. Had it been light, Zhigulin would have paid a lot more than three hundred for it. To Elena there was nothing good about living in the dirty studio. After the wonderful Zoli Agency building, Zhigulin's studio was a come-down for Elena. What it was that she and Mr. Zoli did not share, what the reason was for her eviction, I don't know. Elena attributed his displeasure to the fact that she had left Milan without waiting for a show in which she was supposed to participate. Her trip to Milan had been totally unproductive for her career, and to all appearances Zoli was no longer betting on her at all, nor predicting a brilliant future for her as a model. Elena's friends, or enemies, told me in secret that Zoli was dreaming of getting rid of the eccentric Russian girl altogether; that was why he had packed her off to Milan. When she returned from Milan the room she had lived in was allegedly occupied. I don't know, that's what they say.
At Zhigulin's she occupied the left half of the studio, in theory at least. Her bed was located in an alcove, the mattress lay right on the floor, next came the pillows, and sometimes I noticed on the bed our linens, which she had had custom-made in Moscow, and which she had brought over with her. I have to turn aside when I see these linens – after all, they were witness to numerous love sessions with her. She is not a fetishist, but I am. vile fetishist, I throw away things of the past to keep from crying over them. So I turn aside. In many ways Zhigulin's studio is a museum because both my writing desk from Lexington Avenue and my armchair are there; Elena bought these when I began working at the newspaper. And our damn cat, white and deaf, filthy dirty or freshly washed, comes creeping out from time to time. She's still just as gluttonous and just as stupid. Zhigulin's whole studio – he has somehow wormed his way unnoticed into my life, a pretty good guy, by and large – his whole studio is strung with power lines, everything in it collides, crisscrosses, squeals, sparks. Sometimes the thought occurs to me, What if it's this way only to me, and not to Elena? What if, to her, the studio is calmer and quieter? Or always a deathly silence? Then I really feel shitty. We're all automatically inclined to liken others to ourselves, and later it turns out we are far from the truth. I had already likened Elena to myself, had already been punished for it. To the end of my days the scars on my left arm, red from sunburn, will remind me of the unwisdom of likening.
We returned with several fruits of the perfumery paradise. I regretted not having much money with me. My girl, it appeared, was living on bread and water; a model's earnings, if she's not a big-time model, just rank and file, are paltry.
We got hungry. She took some fish sandwiches out of the refrigerator; she has always hated to cook. In our family I did the cooking, I was the waiter too; what's more I was secretary to her, my beloved poetess, retyped her poems; I made and remade clothes for her; I was also… in our family I had many trades. "Fool," you will say, "you spoiled the woman. Now you have only yourself to blame!"
No, I didn't spoil the woman, she was that way with Victor, the rich husband twice as old as she, whom she married at seventeen; she lived just the same way. Victor made the soup, drove a Mercedes, he was a private chauffeur – the poor artist was earning money, while Elena Sergeevna went out in an ostrich feather dress to walk her dog. And when passing by the Novodevichy Convent, she and the white poodle stopped in at a poverty-stricken, blindingly sunny little room to see the poet Eddie. It was I, gentlemen. I undressed this creature, and having drunk a bottle of champagne or even two – the poverty-stricken poet drank only champagne in the land of the Gulag Archipelago – having drunk some champagne, we gave ourselves over to such love, gentlemen, as you have never fucking dreamed of. The regal poodle – a girl, named Dvosya, who passed away prematurely in 1974 – watched us enviously from the floor and let out an occasional yelp…
Oh, I don't want to remember. Presently on our agenda is New York, as I myself used to say when I was council chairman of a Young Pioneer detachment, a Pioneer and an honest child. On our agenda is New York. And that's all.
We gulped down the fish sandwiches. They weren't enough, of course, for the former husband and wife. The thin young man and woman had healthy appetites. I said I was hungry: "Shall we go eat somewhere?" "Let's," she said, "let's go to the Italian restaurant, it's right close by, the Pronto. I'll call Carlos." Why she had to call Carlos in order to go to an Italian restaurant I didn't understand, but I didn't protest. I would have endured a hundred Carloses for the pleasure of sitting with her in a restaurant. Who knows, she may have been afraid to go alone with me to a restaurant. I had nearly killed her; she had her reasons.
The not-quite-strangled girl began dialing Carlos. He was a rather dim character, in my view. I had seen him once here at the studio, an ordinary person, nothing special, nothing interesting. He didn't do a fucking thing, but he had plenty of money, Elena said. Where from? His parents. That's the state of affairs the world revolution will be aimed against. Working men – poets and busboys, porters and electricians – must not be in an unequal position vis-a-vis shitasses like him. Hence my indignation.
She did not dress up at all, merely put on a little powder and wound the twisted red cord around her forehead and neck again, and went as she was in her little jeans and black turtleneck. He wasn't there yet, thank God. We sat on a raised floor to the right of the entrance, took a table for four, ordered red wine, and she looked around for him. She had developed this silly habit of waiting and looking around for someone. She didn't use to look around for anyone.
"I forgot to tell you," she said suddenly, a little embarrassed, as it seemed to me, "this is a very expensive restaurant. Do you have money?"
I had $150 in my pocket; if I was out with her, I knew her habits. A hundred and fifty – it would be enough.
"I have money, don't worry," I said.
Then this character appeared. I wouldn't be hostile to him if it weren't for Elena, I have no fucking need of him, a dim character with a checkbook. Those who themselves have wrung money out of this life you can at least respect for something; what could you respect him for, dependent as he was on his parents? Why the fuck had he crossed my path!
He arrived. Short hair, conservatively dressed – that's not my expression, I swiped it from Elena and the lesbian Susanna. He sat down beside her, kept squeezing my darling's little hand. I found this disagreeable, but what could I do. An expression of Chris's rose to the surface of my mind: "Take it easy, baby, take it easy!" And I grew calmer. He squeezed her little hand, kept putting his arm around her shoulders and taking it away. An open-and-shut case: she isn't letting him fuck much, or she let him just a little and isn't anymore, I thought with monstrous coolness, gazing at this woman to whom I had been married according to the royal rite in a brilliantly illumined church. I recalled the priest's farewell counseclass="underline" "Evil men will try to part you."
The evil man kept grabbing her hand. I could have shot him without a qualm. It's for men like him that the laws have been created, to preserve their property and their dubious rights, so that men like me will not achieve (without a qualm) the right to justice. I sat opposite him, even in my misfortune spirited and mean, with much more breadth and talent than he. All my misfortune lay in my virtues. I was able to love, knew how to love. But he was an indifferent cork bobbing on the waves of the sea of life, all he had was a cock, and he kept after her, touching her hand, seeking to insert his itching cock into her peepka.
They didn't talk about anything interesting. Oh, for propriety I asked him some questions, somehow participated in the conversation. My goal was to sit beside her.