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

I didn't say any of this to Steven, although I would have enjoyed talking to him. Except for Linda, I really didn't have many people to talk to in the millionaire's house either then or now, which is why I spend so much time in internal monologues. Gatsby remained in the kitchen no more than a couple of minutes to drink a glass of milk, and then he went off to bed. He never has time, or if he does, he prefers to talk instead of listen, as a result of which he misses a great deal, I think. If I should ever notice that I've gotten fond of chattering and that other people are actually listening to my words, I'll make an effort to look around and see if among my listeners there aren't at least a couple of quietly skeptical Limonovs.

When I came downstairs to the kitchen at 6:50 the next morning, it was still empty. I sat there by myself until 8:30, looking out the window and listening to every sound in the house, before I realized that the Flying WASP had already split.

I've since learned how to tell quite easily whether or not Gatsby's in the house on the basis of some very simple signs — every servant knows what they are. For example, if I don't find The New York Times by the front door when I get up, that means that my employer has risen before me, or that he hasn't spent the night in the house but has been off fucking somewhere else, and picked up the newspaper on his way in after taking a taxi home. He also has the habit of drinking white wine, the Italian Corvo, with his women before going off to bed with them, so that, as I've already mentioned, I always keep two or three bottles of it in the refrigerator for him and a case of it in the cellar. So, if there's a bottle of Corvo missing from the refrigerator, that almost certainly means that Gatsby has a lady with him. Around eleven o'clock in die morning, Olga brings the empty bottle and two glasses down to the kitchen with a regularity that I find touching.

Now I try to get up before Steven does, so that I'm already sitting and finishing The New York Times when he comes into the kitchen with his hair uncombed and his strong legs and bare feet sticking out from under his short robe. I always have his coffee ready or at least some boiling water so that I can make it at once. As His Majesty is sitting down to read the paper, I'm already serving him his coffee in one of the huge mugs we have in two colors, red and blue. If Gatsby has a woman upstairs, he doesn't stay in the kitchen very long, but takes his coffee, paper, and another cup of coffee back upstairs after asking me to make breakfast or not, as his mood or that of his lady dictates. If Gatsby takes the coffee back upstairs, it's almost certain the lady is Polly, a cultivated but slightly inhibited woman. But if in the morning Gatsby asks for a pot of tea, that means he's spent the night with the Tea Lady, as Linda and I call her. The Tea Lady is another of Steven's more or less regular girlfriends and of Asian origin, I think.

If Gatsby orders breakfast, I usually fix him a tray with something simple. He eats a lot at lunch and dinner, and so for breakfast he usually has just English muffins lightly browned in the toaster, butter, cheese if there is any, and jam. Only very occasionally will he ask me to make him an omelet. He drinks orange juice too, of course, as almost all Americans do, and it would be a strange thing if you too didn't want orange juice in the morning after getting sloshed every night, and I suspect Gatsby is in a pretty good state every night, since His Highness drinks all day, beginning with lunch, continuing with dinner and after dinner, and ending late at night with a bottle or two of Corvo. What amazes me is that he never takes the hair of the dog to relieve his hangover — just orange juice and cold soda water. We always have ten or twelve cylinders of seltzer on hand which are brought to us every Thursday by a funny little man from Brooklyn named Mr. Schuman, who looks like a mosquito. I always keep a couple or three of them in our gigantic refrigerator — so large in fact that you could easily fit a couple of bodies into it.

Gatsby almost always comes down to get the breakfast tray himself. He could make me bring it up to him, but he's too liberal to do that. Demanding that their servants bring the tray to their bedroom is the hallmark of bad bosses — our neighbors, for example, whose servants have told me what they're forced to put up with. But my boss is a good one, the best of all. If he doesn't want to come and get the tray, we simply use the dumb waiter. But that happens pretty rarely.

Whenever Steven's in New York, Linda arrives at the house at nine o'clock sharp, and sometimes even earlier. She always knocks on the kitchen door in precisely the same way. Not long ago I begged her to change the way she knocks for the sake of variety. She did for a little while, but now she does it the old way again. Linda's first question is, "Where is he?" If «he» is in the bathroom, she relaxes and sits down in the kitchen with me for a bit.

Gatsby takes a bath every morning, a bath being one of his principal pleasures in life, as his oldest son, Henry, told me. His bathtub is a very special one, large and deep, and custom made. I don't deny myself the pleasure of using his bathtub either, and from time to time luxuriate in it with a girl, or even two. And I always think, whenever I'm sitting in his bathroom, what would happen if he suddenly came in and saw me and my naked girls. But that never happens — we're too well organized. We have an extremely detailed schedule of Gatsby's activities, so that I always know ahead of time when to expect him. He surprised me only once when there were naked people running around the house, although fortunately I wasn't one of them.

Linda's second question is even more succinct: "Alone?" In our private language that means something like, "Did Gatsby spend the night alone?" If I say that he didn't, Linda's asks, "Who?" She wants to know who's with him, naturally. She and I are, in this, much like real servants: We love to spy on our employer and rummage in his dirty laundry.

I, as his butler, am required to sort out his dirty laundry in the most literal sense of the word, to take it out of the suitcases he brings home after his trips around the globe, to fish it out of the extraordinary mixture of papers, new books, medicines, notebooks, cameras, cassettes, pants, jackets, and phone messages on stationery from hotels from all over the world, and foreign currency in every conceivable form, size, and color with which his suitcases are crammed.

Now I take the lion's share of whatever currency I find for myself. It wasn't that I was afraid to before, but simply that I didn't know how he would feel about that kind of expropriation. Convinced by all the evidence that he had no recollection of those paltry francs and pounds (my God, he spent hundreds of thousands a year, didn't he?), I started helping myself. No, no, I'm not talking about hundreds of dollars, just small amounts — five dollars here, twenty dollars there. After all, a butler has to do a little stealing, or what kind of servant is he? Employers are right to believe that all servants steal, but the good servants are the ones who do so within acceptable limits, whereas the bad ones do so impudently. I wouldn't let anybody plunder Gatsby's things, nor would I myself take even one object. When not long ago two little silver vases from a sterling service disappeared, I was overcome with self-pity and despair, lest Gatsby think I'd stolen his silver when I hadn't, but the forgotten bank notes justly belong to me, gentlemen, and no argument. After all, I only make a hundred and sixty-five dollars a week.

In answer to the question "Who?" I reply to Linda, "The Tea Lady," or, "Polly," or, "I think it's a new one." Linda is also interested in what kind of mood Steven is in that day. «Average» happens rarely; most often the answer is either «excellent» or "very bad." Armed with this knowledge and clutching an ashtray, Linda invariably goes upstairs to her room after pouring herself a cup of coffee and adding milk to it. She's been spilling milk on the kitchen table every day now for two years, just as I have been giving her reproachful looks for two years while she gets mad.