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

I wander idly around the house or sit by the kitchen window, my favorite spot, and look out at the street and think, while nervously waiting for Steven to make his appearance. I already know from the schedule, say, that there will be three people for lunch at 12:30. I've already set the table in the dining room and put out the silver bread-and-butter plates too. I haven't forgotten: Everything's ready, all our magnificence is on display, and there are new candles in the candlesticks, although I still don't know what Gatsby wants for lunch. I wait for him to escort his lady from the house and seat her in a taxi — for them to pass by the window, the lady in a fur coat and Steven without any jacket as usual — and then, as soon as he has returned to the house and before he has a chance to sit down in his office and make his first call, I deftly intercept him and ask, "Excuse me, sir [or Steven], what would you like for lunch today?"

And Gatsby will say, "Lamb chops. I haven't had lamb chops in a long time." But if he's had meat in the last few days, then he'll say, "Make something light, Edward. Let's have fish, salmon steaks, maybe, or Long Island Sound scallops." Or perhaps he will say in an irritable voice, "I don't know, Edward, make whatever you want. I'm sick of always having to decide and worry about everything." In the latter case, I always decide in favor of meat.

Having received my orders, I trot around to the stores as fast as I can, first calling the Ottomanelli Brothers butcher shop, if Gatsby has decided to stick with meat:

"Good morning! How's it going? This is Edward, Mr. Steven Grey's housekeeper."

And one of the butcher brothers, wiping his hand on his white apron, will say, "Great, Edward, what do you hear from Jenny? Has she had her baby yet?"

I'll say no, she hasn't, or later that yes, she has.

"What would you like today?" the Ottomanelli brother will ask me then, since they don't have time for long phone conversations — there are very probably about a dozen rich old twats standing in the shop who've come to pick out the best meat, and just as many maids who've come for the same purpose.

"Send me a dozen lamb chops for lunch, please," I'll say, "only hurry up this time. The last time your delivery boy was slow in getting here, and I had to serve lunch ten minutes later than planned."

"Of course, Edward. Don't worry, he'll be on time today," the butcher will say. "Bye!"

At first this ritual amused me. Now I'm sick of the regulated order of my life and the huge annual schedule on the cork wall in Linda's office and the monthly schedule that hangs in front of her nose and that's tacked to the lamp on the desk in Steven's office. The fact that I know what Steven will be doing in six months, and therefore what I'll be doing, is repellent to me. I live for the present, for those moments when Steven isn't in the house, and knowing beforehand that he'll be here, say, for five days next week, I already begin to anticipate how tired I'll be. I plunge into his visits with trepidation, with my eyes closed, and I reemerge from them with joy. Maybe that's only because I'm not a real housekeeper but a sham one, or maybe every servant feels that way. Or maybe I really am a housekeeper, and the writing business is just something I've made up for myself, it occurs to me sometimes. The only part of my life that has anything to do with writing are the few lines I scribble down in cheap notebooks from Woolworth's and the phone calls I make from time to time to my agent, Liza, to find out which publisher she's received a rejection from this time. There are already more than a dozen of them now — a dozen rejections. That's my whole connection to writing, whereas I'm connected to the world of service all the time. Probably I am a servant. I'm a servant, a servant, and writing is merely something I play at, I think bitterly.

After buying groceries, I drag myself home loaded down with packages and bags, trusting Olga to put everything away for me while I methodically set about preparing lunch. I've learned to be precise — I know when to put the Brussels sprouts on and when to begin cleaning the broccoli, and the only thing that might possibly put me off schedule is the inordinate activity of Steven and his businessmen. From time to time one of them will come in and ask me to bring him a cup of coffee. I then have to take the sterling tray with coffee pot, cups, and milk and sugar to Steven in the office. I take it in, although it makes me angry. Steven thanks me, and I go back downstairs to my spacious kitchen, where I sometimes open the door and stand in it, cleaning the vegetables and thinking how nice it would be if all of them — Steven, and his businessmen, and Linda — would just leave me in peace.

Linda always claims part of the lunch for herself: "Edward, always order for yourself and me whatever you order for Steven," she reminds me.

"If they'd only hurry up and finish stuffing their faces," I mutter to myself, "and get back into their papers and arguments and so on, I can take my time clearing the table and worry about myself and my own thoughts."

I cook the meat over a grill for five minutes on one side and three or four on the other. The Italian brothers without a doubt have the finest meat in the world; it melts in your mouth like butter. "Steven likes everything around him to be very classy," Linda never tires of repeating, and I try to make it all as «classy» as I can: The vegetables and the meat are served on sterling too. The table looks impressive and beautiful, and if Gatsby is in a good mood, he may express his appreciation by saying, "Thank you, Edward!" But if he's in a bad mood, you won't get a fucking thing out of him, not even if you cooked him angel's meat for lunch. Actually, his words of praise don't mean that much to me. The best thing he can do for me is to eat his lunch in forty minutes and get the hell out of the dining room. But Steven sits at the table with his very important guests for an hour to an hour and a half on the average, and sometimes for three. And I nurse my antipathy in the kitchen.

After his guests finally leave and Gatsby returns to his office, I happily clear the table and then go upstairs to my room and flop down on the bed, sometimes even allowing myself to doze off with my clothes on for fifteen or twenty minutes or so. Frequently the doorbell rouses me, and then I race downstairs on the elevator. Gatsby won't open the door — why should he? — and Linda is more often than not on the telephone at any time of day, and however many businessmen there may be in the house, they won't make any effort even to open the door — that's my responsibility, or Olga's, but Olga leaves at one o'clock. I don't react to telephone calls during my brief afternoon nap; I just continue to doze and nothing more. Man is a highly organized form of life, and I endure the two hundred and fifty to three hundred calls that come into our house each day without going out of my mind as the rats of Professor Pavlov or whomever would undoubtedly do.

Linda leaves at six or seven. Sometimes Steven is still having a Scotch with his businessmen, but if he doesn't happen to see anybody around, he's capable of fixing it himself. At eight or nine Gatsby is already dining out somewhere. Either at the Four Seasons or some other «classy» restaurant. He very rarely stays in unless he's sick or the summer or winter Olympic games are on, since he loves sports. In my view he has too many interests in life. If he had fewer, I as his servant would have less work to do. If Steven were, say, to give up photography and making underwater movies, I wouldn't have to run over to Forty-seventh Street to get his cameras repaired or go to the Modern Age framing shop.

Actually, Linda is more to blame for my trips around New York. Steven often yells at her for spending his money like water — she issues the checks and takes care of Gatsby's bank accounts. So now the trusty Linda cuts corners in little things. She's started using me as a messenger, not all the time, but she still does it. Delivery service charges have jumped back up, and she's decided it's cheaper for her to pay my taxi fare than to pay somebody sent by a delivery agency. At the same time that Steven bought Nancy a necklace for twenty-two thousand dollars as a gift. At the same time that it cost His Highness more than ten thousand dollars just to ship his racing car from England to California so he could take part in a race. It's called economizing.