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

Helping and being ready to run errands was a lot worse than cooking breakfast for them myself would have been; personally I prefer to cook. Nancy undoubtedly knows how to do everything and she's a deservedly celebrated hostess. At home in Connecticut she sometimes bakes insanely large cakes for a hundred people in the shape of a ship or a church or City Hall, and every time, the cakes are mentioned in the cooking section of The New York Times. The cakes are devoured by Mr. and Mrs. Grey's guests in the open air in a Connecticut forest meadow to the accompaniment of a symphony orchestra. I've already said they're fond of showing off; they may not eat, that little family, but they will show off.

Mrs. Grey cooked the breakfasts, for which I thank her, but after one of her forays, my kitchen looked like a peaceful little Jewish village after a pogrom. The fact is that she used as many dishes as she deemed necessary — three times as many as I would have. In Connecticut she had six servants to clean up after her, whereas here there were only Olga and I to form a living conveyor between the sink and the dishwasher, Olga rinsing the remaining food from the dishes, and I putting them into the dishwasher. After lunch, I had to clean up everything by myself.

Once Nancy noticed I was rinsing the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher.

"You don't have to do that, Edward," she said patronizingly, obviously amazed by my stupidity or ignorance. "That's what we have the dishwasher for — to wash the dishes."

I said, "I'm sorry, Nancy, but the specialist who repaired the dishwasher about a month ago told me to, and so I'm doing it."

"Why?" Nancy said. "I have exactly the same kind of dishwasher in Connecticut and I never rinse the dishes before putting them in."

I shrugged my shoulders, while Nancy put the dirty breakfast dishes with egg yolk spread all over them into our unhappy dishwasher. Forty minutes later they all came out clean, except for the egg yolk, which was still stuck to them. She then sat down, her skirt spread out on the floor next to the dishwasher, and pushing her sleeves up, started digging around in it. She unscrewed several nuts, removed several pieces, and tinkered with the machine for a long time, repeating over and over again, "Why?" The stubborn and inquisitive Nancy. Then she was joined by a guest, one of her country neighbors, an extremely thin banker in his stockinged feet, who sat down next to the dishwasher and sank his hands into it too…

From time to time I discreetly nudged Olga, who was present for that whole scene, and smiled ironically. We people from technologically underdeveloped countries don't stick our noses into areas we don't understand. The meticulous Nancy and the banker fiddled with the machine for about an hour and a half, however, getting greasy water and food fragments all over themselves, but with zero results — 0. To this day we rinse the food off the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, having been ordered to do so by His Highness the Specialist, a red-haired guy in overalls — the god of dishwashing machines.

I would earnestly ask Nancy how to do things, pretending I really was interested in how she made mayonnaise with dill or some other culinary crap. I asked her and even wrote down what she said, gentlemen. If you want get in good with somebody, be diligent, or at least pretend to be. I pretended with a vengeance. Nancy may not actually have believed I was interested in kitchen arithmetic and mechanics, but she didn't have to — we were playing our respective roles, she the mistress and I the housekeeper, and it all worked out very well. For some reason, I know how to make a superb chicken soup that is much better than Nancy's, which not only Linda has noted but Steven too. Many people in fact have told me that my chicken soup is the best they've ever had. Could it be that I make the best chicken soup in the world? I think Nancy respected me for my chicken soup and also for the fact that I didn't show off but accepted the rules of the game: I made an effort to seem diligent. And that's why she gave up her raids in the end and came to New York only when she actually needed to. Then in March of last year, as if summing up the results of her inspection, she said to me, "Well, Edward, you're doing just fine. The house is spotless. You have my thanks."

Now we live in peace, harmony, and tranquility. Although it is in fact my feeling that the master and mistress only track dirt into the house and aren't really of much use — a housekeeper's point of view. After the raids by the wild bunch from Connecticut, now infrequent, thank God, Olga and I gradually put the house back in order. The children's rooms are particularly messy of course. During their short visits the inquisitive American children manage to accomplish a great deal: They glue together model airplanes and boats, cut up paper into small pieces, which they then spread all over the house, run on the roof, thereby making all the glass in the house vibrate, and tie ropes and wires around the banisters… It would be impossible to describe the full extent of the havoc wreaked by the children; suffice it to say that each one of their visits costs Olga and me several days of labor after they're gone. The most offensive thing is that we are in fact cleaning up after the neighbors' children, since only the youngest of the Grey children is capable by age of participating and in fact does participate in these outrages. But I'm always so happy when the mistress at last takes off for home, that the consequences of her visits are unable to dim my joy.

Sometimes Nancy leaves somebody to stay at the house for a few days. Or else her Connecticut banker neighbor has some business in the city and he stays for a couple of days, or Nancy's lover, Carl, comes and stays. According to my agreement with Steven, however, I am not obligated to these people in any way. I may give them coffee in the morning if they come down to the kitchen, or anything I happen to have in the refrigerator, but help yourselves, dear guests. It's self-service.

Carl always turns up at the house within half an hour after Nancy arrives. The first thing she does, after parking her jeep in front of the kitchen window and leaving me and the older children to unload it, is to phone Carl. Carl is a youngish, rapidly balding man obviously about my age or even younger, but unlike me he has made a career for himself in the last four years. After starting out as the bookkeeper of a provincial yacht club in some remote corner of Connecticut, he quickly climbed up the social ladder, skipping two or three rungs thanks to Nancy's good offices, and now occupies the position of president of one of the largest of the computer subsidiaries that make up Gatsby's empire.

Learn, Edward, I tell myself every time I see Carl sitting with Nancy in the kitchen and talking with her in a cultivated way about nothing at all. He's an opportunist, the genuine article — unlike you.

Nancy is forty and a very attractive woman, tall, with a good figure. The only thing you can reproach her or nature with is that, like Jenny, she is the most perfect of mothers, the sort whose affectionate lap it's good for a child injured by life to curl up in. Regardless of the things that have happened to me, even in the most difficult times in my life, I've never felt the need to have a good cry in my mother's lap or on her breast. What I need are capricious and whorish young girl-pals, haughty and painted and perfumed, and have never had dreams of myself as a timid little creature descending into a gigantic cunt — I'm not Steven and I'm not Carl, and Nancy doesn't appeal to me. Even though I did, like a true opportunist, have thoughts about the boss's wife in the beginning, after considering all the pros and cons, I realized she wasn't my cup of tea. It is, of course, another question entirely whether she would have been interested in me, although I doubt that she would have been. There wasn't even one point of contact between us, though there wasn't any antipathy either. Moreover, I think that Nancy and I are the same type of people: we're both self-assured, enterprising, and given to action, and I've always taken my women under my protection and been a papa to them, even when they were older than me. That may in fact be the reason why Jenny and I never really got on together. She wasn't a tempting girl-daughter for me, but mama Jenny, and we didn't need a mama Jenny — no. I myself am a papa Limonov; I myself like to be the one in control.