You think I never yearn for slavery? I too yearn sometimes. For a white house under the trees, for a large family, for a grandmother, grandfather, father, and mother, for a wife and children. For work, which would buy all of me, including my mind, but in return I would have a fabulous house with a lawn, with flowers, with a wealth of household appliances, a clean little smiling American wife, a freckled, jam-smeared son in football cleats…
But why dream – it's futile. Fate is fate, I've already gone too far. I'll never have any of that. The family will not sit down around the evening table; nor will I, a lawyer or doctor, tell what a complex case I had today, or what a difficult but interesting operation.
I'm a punk. I'm on welfare. I have to cook for myself now, eat shchi. I'm alone, I have to think of myself. Who else will take care of me? The wind of chaos, harsh and terrible, has destroyed my family. I also have parents, far away, halfway round the globe from here, on a green little street in the Ukraine. Papa and Mama. Mama's always writing me about nature: when the cherries bloomed under the window, and what good jam she's made from the apricots that she and Papa once planted under the windows, good jam, your favorite, Son, but there's nobody to eat it. I, little Eddie, have no other relatives. My uncle and grandfathers died in the war. At the Leningrads and Pskovs. For the interests of the people. For Russia. Shit.
From my wives and girl friends I have picked up certain habits to live with. In the morning I drink coffee and smoke a cigarette at the same time. A plebeian boy in essence, a mongrel, I picked up this bohemian habit from Elena. I live.
Life in itself is a meaningless process. This is why I have always sought a lofty occupation in life. I wanted to love selflessly, I was always bored alone with myself. I loved, as I now see, extraordinarily, powerfully, and terribly, but it turned out that I wanted an answering love. It's not good when you want something in return.
A man who has lost all but has not surrendered a fucking thing, I sit on the balcony and look down. Today is Saturday, the streets are deserted. I look at the streets and am not in a hurry. I have lots of time ahead of me.
What, specifically, will happen to me? Tomorrow, the day after, a year from now?
Who knows! Great is New York, long are its streets, homes and apartments has New York of every sort. Whom I shall meet, what lies ahead, none can guess. I may happen upon a group of armed extremists, renegades like myself, and perish in an airplane hijacking or a bank robbery. I may not, and I'll go away somewhere, to the Palestinians, if they survive, or to Colonel Qaddafi in Libya, or someplace else – to lay down Eddie-baby's life for a people, for a nation.
I'm a man who is ready for anything, you know. I will try to give them some gift. My heroic deed. My senseless death. But why say try! I have tried for thirty years. I'll do it.
Tears of agitation well up in my eyes, as always when I am agitated, and I no longer see Madison Avenue below. It dissolves and runs.
"Fuck you, cocksucking bastards," I say, and wipe away tears with my fist. Perhaps I'm addressing these words to the buildings around me. I don't know.
"Fuck you, cocksucking bastards! You can all go straight to hell!" I whisper.
About the Author
Edward Limonov was born on February 22, 1941, in Gorky, USSR. His father was a member of the secret police. Eddie spent his childhood and adolescence in Harkov, that Detroit of contemporary Russia. He attended high school, mastering the art of the petty crook. Between 1967 and 1974 Limonov published eight volumes of samizdat poetry in the USSR. His poems have appeared in translation in Spain, Austria, Italy and Switzerland. In 1974 Eddie emigrated to the West and in 1975 he settled in New York City.
Edward Limonov has been a construction worker, a waiter, a tailor, a painter, a steelworker, a mover and a caretaker of an elegant New York town house. Among his other works are Diary of a Loser.
Edward Limonov currently resides in Paris, that is Paris, France.