Edward Limonov - His Butler’s Story (1980-1981)

Not likely. It was the marchioness I wanted! The marchioness, wife of a lord, the marchioness who lived in a castle with three hundred servants, a castle where tourists were admitted several days a week from ten until three and where there were pictures by Goya and Velazquez and Titian. What was I put on earth for, if I couldn't fuck the marchioness!

I think the Marchioness Houston liked me. Well of course she liked me; she had mentioned my beautiful hands and my beautiful shoes several times. Obviously it was clear from my face that I wasn't born to be the lover of a servant. Maybe I was born to be the lover of a marchioness? Houston even pitied me for living in a foreign country and outside my natural surroundings. It's unlikely the marchioness was thinking it would be nice to fuck Edward, but running into her on the stairway and in the kitchen, I desired her passionately. But not so much sexually, I think, as socially. I had a social inferiority complex; that's all. If fate had presented me with an opportunity to fuck her then, it would no doubt have been very therapeutic for me. How proud I would have been. But there wasn't any such opportunity. Whenever important guests like the marchioness and her husband stayed at the house, I spent relatively little time there, because then Steven Grey was home a lot. During such periods Steven and his guests relegated Jenny and me to the kitchen, to the servants' quarters, so to speak. I was intimidated.

After the departure of the Marchioness Houston and the young Lord Jesse, Jenny's parents came up from Virginia for several days — her tall, lean, sharp-nosed, dependable, tolerant father, and her thin mother, dark as a grackle. Jenny gave a dinner party for her parents, inviting another couple — a former FBI colleague of her father's, now a New York police official, and his wife — and me. Inspection of the groom.

I arrived a little late for dinner in order to give myself a certain weight in the eyes of Jenny's parents, coming as if from work, although I had no job then of course. I had simply gone to the movies to kill time.

Tall like an awkward tower, the warm, tipsy Jenny met me at the door and immediately started hugging and kissing me and telling me how much she loved me, and then she dragged me into the dining room. She was wearing a flowered crêpe de Chine dress and new black shoes from Charles Jourdain, and her hair was curled, although it was virtually the only time that she ever did anything with her hair.

They had already finished eating and were drinking champagne. Jenny entertained her parents no worse than Steven did his lords and businessmen. Champagne and candles.

After eating the lamb and artichokes left for me, I partook of the champagne and the conversation. The champagne with a vengeance; the conversation with caution.

The three of us — the men — had a lot to drink, and I've forgotten many of the details of our conversation, but I formed one unshakable opinion that evening, which later acquaintance with Jenny's father only confirmed. Both retired FBI men were terribly like my own retired father, an ex-Soviet army officer and employee of the NKVD, MVD, and so on. The same memories of the past and of colleagues and opinions about their subsequent fates, and the same view of life as something that had been entrusted exclusively to them to preserve and protect.

"Where's John now?" father Henry asked.

"Which John, little or big?" the New York policeman asked, seeking clarification.

"Big — you remember, he worked in the diamond department."

"Oh, big John's a wheel now; he's director of security for IVTA."

"Jiminy, he's really up there!" father Henry exclaimed in delight. "That's a giant multinational…"

The wife of one unfortunate had cancer and was slowly dying at home, while the daughter of a certain Nick, nicknamed The Kid, had given him a grandchild — a constant stream of such information came from both rivers.

Just ordinary people, I thought in amazement. I had some more champagne with them, and then started drinking whiskey. The New York cop was an Irishman and a heavy drinker, and when they were finally filled with respect for my manly drinking skill, I told them, for my part, that they reminded me of my Communist and ex-secret police agent father and his friends. I thought it would astonish them, that they would be shocked.

"Probably so," father Henry answered calmly and reflectively. "People who share a profession resemble each other in a certain way. It's easier for you to see, Edward; you've lived both here and there."

"My father was and is a good person, despite all the ill fame of the organizations he worked for," I said.

"And why not?" the New York cop said. "You're a good fellow, as I can see, and Jenny loves you, so why should your father be a bad person?"

Later on the New York cop started asking me about the kind of books I write, and how much writers are paid before they become famous. The policeman and I continued drinking for quite a while after papa Henry had stopped, and I started complaining to the New York cop about how hard it is to make a name for yourself in literature.

"You stick to it," the policeman told me. "Jenny says you're very talented. It's difficult for you now, but be patient, persevere. The beginning is always hard in any profession, but later on your books may become best sellers, and you'll be famous like Peter Benchley, and they'll make a movie in Hollywood…"

A journey of thousands of miles across the white hot desert of the literary business separated me then from a film, as it separates me now, and anyhow I wouldn't want to be a Peter Benchley. I'd like to have his literary agent, the famous Scott Meredith. His agent's a treasure, but Peter Benchley is a shark and marine horror specialist — no, spare me that.

I would have enjoyed talking to the New York policeman some more, but remembering my promise to Jenny not to stay late, I hastened to leave. It was already around one o'clock in the morning.

Jenny walked me to the doorway, where she sighed with relief. "I was afraid you would get drunk," she said. "It's a good thing you didn't; you were very cute tonight. I love you very much," and she kissed me. "Tomorrow I'll tell you what my parents said about you."

Her mama said I was «cute» too, and when I met her Polish grandmother later on, she wanted to know what kind of Russian I could be — Russians are always big, even huge, and have beards, but that even so Jenny should watch out for me; you should never trust Russians. And furthermore they beat their wives.

Jenny wanted a husband. As you've seen for yourself, fucking was a less important need for her than having a man in her life. She was always raving about how strong my body was. I think that despite my strong body I wasn't an ideal object for her purposes. I had neither the money nor, what is more to the point, the desire to build a happy future in the form of that family of ten she was very likely planning after her parents' example, but she liked me, and she indulged her heart in my case, even going against her maternal instincts. Thank you, Jenny.

I fucked her whenever I felt like it, fucked her brutally, without tenderness, preferring the dog position so I wouldn't have to look at her face. I didn't bother about her pleasure at all, leaving it to her to satisfy herself by masturbating if she wanted to have an orgasm. Sometimes I fucked her as many as five times, if I was inspired, but not finding any response to my prick in her body, I grew less and less interested in that activity, so that after I had fucked her a little while, my prick would tire of that meager pleasure and withdraw. Whenever that happened Jenny would start bawling, "Edward, I love you! You're not well. How unhappy we are!"

Edward was in fact as strong as an ox and giving the onceover to the scrawniest whores on the street, but then something strange started happening to Jenny, and once when I tried to stroke her cunt with my hand, to give her at least some kind of pleasure, she suddenly jerked away in pain. That happened at the beginning of August, and after that she complained about discomfort for a couple of weeks, but quietly, and then during one of her regular belly dancing performances, she suddenly doubled over and rushed with a yell to the elevator. When Bridget and I got to her room, she was lying curled up on the bed and groaning, "My vagina! My vagina!"