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

Besides, Ghupta is somehow more with it. He dresses in a much more contemporary way than Steven does. He's capable of wearing, say, the best silk jacket from Saks Fifth Avenue with cotton pants bought on sale at the Gap store on Lexington for ten dollars — I've shortened quite a few pairs of such pants for him. He's right to get out among people and make friends; after all, I proved useful to him, and not merely as a tailor, as you will see. Ghupta has taught me practicality: He once took me to a sale at Saks and showed me how to buy expensive things at half the price. I learn with pleasure, and thanks to him, I now have a small but very impressive wardrobe of designer rags which I would never in my life have allowed myself to buy at the regular price. An opportunist should be well dressed.

He always gleams, my friend the millionaire Ghupta; he's always decked out like a schoolboy on the first day of vacation — white socks, a red knit alligator shirt, loafers, and cotton pants that are always of a light color. At his office, and he has one in New York too, Ghupta wears suits and ties of course, but they aren't the same suits and ties my boss, Steven Grey, wears. Ghupta somehow gives the impression of enjoying himself, although I am in complete agreement with Linda when she says that working for Ghupta is far from a piece of cake, and that he makes his bed soft but lies hard in it and has completely worn out his secretary. Yes, I say, but with Ghupta it's more fun; he may exploit you even more than Steven does, but I prefer the even-tempered, cunning, Oriental slyness with which Ghupta squeezes the juice out of his employees to the hysterical outbursts of Gatsby. Linda is an unconscious admirer of Gatsby's, but the best thing of all is to be your own boss and not have to serve anybody. Furthermore, Ghupta, who doesn't spend all that much time in New York, has hung around the kitchen with me a lot more than Gatsby has, and he's my boss. Judging from what I know about Ghupta's affairs, he's far from being the sort of person who pisses his time away, and is an even more successful businessman than my employer is, and much better at getting results. It follows that the puritan severity of Gatsby is quite unnecessary.

However strange it may be, Ghupta is also much more liberal. For example, he wasn't at all reluctant to invite me, a servant, into the living room when he was entertaining his country's ambassador and minister of commerce at our house. We all drank Dom Perignon together, the housekeeper Edward along with the millionaires and ministers, and politely engaged in small talk. After we had drunk four bottles, Ghupta called me into the corridor and asked me if I would mind going out to the liquor store for some more or calling them to have it delivered. It was a pleasure for the housekeeper Edward to run out to the liquor store for a man like that. "May I use the limo?" I asked him. The guests had naturally arrived in a limousine that Ghupta hired for them. "Of course, Edward!" he said.

I took my seat in the black lacquered coffin and rode the three blocks to the wine shop. It turned out to be a very pleasant tiling to go for champagne in a limousine. The driver was a Russian, or rather a Jew from Russia, as I immediately deduced from his wooden accent as soon as I started talking to him, although I didn't tell him I was a Russian too. Why the hell should I? Except for the fact that we had both left Russia, we had nothing in common.

Coming back, I put the champagne in the freezer and sat down again in the living room with Ghupta and his company. Their ambassador in Washington had, as it turned out, been ambassador in Moscow before that; we had something to talk about. True, he had been in Moscow after I left. On top of that, one of the girls invited to entertain the guests, the one in fact who had been invited to entertain Ghupta himself, was a blonde model named Jacqueline who turned out to be acquainted with my ex-wife, and Jacqueline and I talked about the eccentric and from my point of view too well-known ex-Elena.

Gradually the guests and the girls wandered off to other parts of the house and garden, while I, deciding that I had participated enough in the social life of my friend Ghupta, withdrew to my room. But a little later the attentive Ghupta knocked at my door and asked me if I didn't want to join them again, for which I thanked him, but said no. Whereupon Ghupta, still standing in the doorway, confided to me that he had already fucked Jacqueline more than once and that he intended to fuck her again that night.

I couldn't even imagine Steven Grey in a situation like that. With Gatsby I always feel out of place. Once, and only once, did he even take me to a restaurant with him after noticing that I was enjoying a conversation with a friend of his, the lawyer Ellis. "Ellis! Edward! Let's go. You can continue your conversation at the restaurant!" We did continue it, but it was extremely hard to do, since Gatsby wouldn't let anybody else get a word in, so that it was no longer interesting to me and I swore at myself for agreeing to go with them. Steven Grey loves to be the center of attention and he loves to talk, and everybody else is supposed to listen to him with their mouths hanging open. Uh-uh, that's not for me!

If I or Ellis or Birnbaum, another friend of Gatsby's, said anything, I noticed that Gatsby would instantly wilt; he was obviously bored. Maybe his hysterical thoughts were way ahead of us or maybe he just wasn't interested in what we were saying to him, I don't know. In principle I agree with him: most people aren't very interesting, but I consider myself, his housekeeper, a quite unusual personality, and the fact that he's never really had the slightest curiosity about me, that he hasn't tried to find out what's behind the taciturn but apparently friendly Russian who prepares his lunches for him — that fact compels me to hold him in not very high regard. Gatsby was, for example, interested in Efimenkov, who was a Russian too, but then Efimenkov was world famous, and Gatsby is a snob, gentlemen, and what do I want from him anyway? Nothing in particular. For me he's merely an entertaining personality, even an exceptional one for the circle he moves in. Just as Jenny was an unusual personality for the circle she moved in. And I'm interested in the reasons for things in this world. I'm curious, that's all.

Ghupta sometimes laughs at Steven. A great admirer of the opposite sex, Ghupta once told me with a sly grin that he wouldn't be able to get it up for even one of Gatsby's women, that they're all so terribly domestic. "I wouldn't either, Ghupta," I seconded him with an embarrassed smile, feeling a little awkward about betraying Gatsby that way. It was as if Ghupta and I were the real men, and Steven wasn't. I was even sorry for the miserable Gatsby. Poor Gatsby, Ghupta and I had first-rate women for whom we could get it up, whereas he had women for whom we couldn't. For some reason we were confident that Gatsby could get it up for ours.

That Ghupta could get it up for my women I am reminded by one of my jackets, a jacket he gave me the day after he fucked Tatiana. More accurately, Ghupta gave me a jacket from Saks in exchange for my having «given» him a Russian woman named Tatiana, who was somebody's estranged wife and even the mother of his two children. Tatiana is dark-haired and beautiful; she doesn't look Russian at all but Spanish. She turned up soon after I succeeded in publishing my long-suffering novel in Russian, a copy of which I immediately sent to Efimenkov — let him enjoy it. Thanks to the novel, Russian girls and women started hovering about me like bees and flies and wasps around something sweet. I had no objection. Tatiana was one of them.

Tatiana speaks in a quiet voice and considers herself very unfortunate. I, Edward, don't believe that she's all that unfortunate. She has a slender, sensuous body and a small moist cunt. It's pleasant to fuck Tatiana; she's delicate and adores being fucked, and during the act she sobs a little from pleasure. It may be that part of her misfortune, including her last husband, is explained by the fact that she can't resist a prick.