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

Returning to my refuge in the millionaire's little house, I realize that for many years I've wanted somebody to be waiting for me at my door. And I carefully glance ahead, seeking the doorway of our house in the darkness to see if perhaps somebody might be sitting there and waiting for me. But there's no one there. And that is yet one more small proof of the fact that in this world nobody cares about the servant. But then I don't have to care about them either, the servant thinks.

Tatiana turned up again several days later under the pretext of needing to talk to me. Her usual story. I immediately stuck a large gin and tonic in her hand, since she's much easier to deal with after she's had something to drink.

"You're the one who did this to me, Limonov," Tatiana said. "You did it on purpose so I'd get pregnant."

Such a declaration came as a surprise even from her. "Wait a second, how old are you, girl? You're thirty-one and you've fucked a lot of men, or at least you say you have, and you enjoy it, don't you?" I said. Tatiana was silent. I continued. "How can you screw around without taking birth-control pills or any other precautions, hm? It's dumb. It's idiotic. And doesn't it seem a little abnormal to you to blame me because you're pregnant by another man? Would I blame you if I got some girl pregnant, the village idiot, say?"

Tatiana looked at me with her Spanish eyes and said stubbornly, "It's still your fault. I didn't want to go out with him, so why did you give him the phone?"

"In the first place, you always said you wanted me to introduce you to a rich man. Didn't you? Why did you ask then? And in the second place, if you didn't really want to go out with him, all you had to do was say 'no, " I said.

"But he was so sneaky about it, the animal," Tatiana continued, sipping her gin and tonic. "I had no idea he would attack me. We came back from a movie and he told me he wanted to take a shower and change and we would go to a restaurant, and then he took advantage of the moment and jumped on me. And he came inside me, the Burmese animal."

Thus did Tatiana lament, and I laughed uncontrollably. In the first place, I wasn't at all convinced she was pregnant. And I was also beginning to realize that getting into scrapes, both big and small, was for Tatiana a way of life.

"Tell me, where does he live?" she started asking me.

"Of course," I said, "I'll tell you right now; come on," and I took her by the hand up to my room on the elevator, and in spite of all her «noes» took her clothes off and started fucking her. At the height of that process, the phone rang, of course. Another time I wouldn't have picked it up for anything, but I was expecting a guest at the house, a Polish artist-friend of the boss's, and it could have been him calling from the airport. It wasn't. It was my boss, Steven, calling from God knows where to ask me to record a film about Vietnam on video tape for an elderly woman neighbor of his in Connecticut whose son had died in Vietnam. "It already started five minutes ago," the boss said in an apologetic tone.

Fuck the mother and her dead son! Why reopen old wounds? I thought, pulling my prick out of the warm Tatiana, putting on my pants and black shirt, and running downstairs to turn on the tape machine. They won't even let you fuck in this house! I inserted a sixty-minute cassette, pressed the record button, rode back upstairs on the elevator to fuck some more, and once again plunged my prick into the only slightly cooled cunt of Tatiana, who was almost in tears and kicking and howling something about the CIA and the KGB.

"And the CIA and KGB are all the same as you; they just sit there, the scum, and won't let me live either!" she screamed, although thanks to the action of my prick she soon quieted down and merely moaned, while I laughed and softly and derisively said to her, "What's that, you pregnant whore, what did you say?"

When Tatiana's fucking she has an enchanting look about her, and her body, though slender, is very soft and what's called well-fucked in Russian. An hour later, after coming on her eyes and forehead, and in her mouth, I ran downstairs again to change the cassette. I got there just in time — it was down to the last few feet. I put on a new one, pressed the record button again, and then went down to the kitchen for a drink. Sitting in the kitchen was Gatsby's step-brother Mr. Richardson with a couple of guests, I don't remember who. I drank a glass of vodka, and after asking Mr. Richardson to turn the television off in an hour — the film about Vietnam was exactly two hours long, and I could hear explosions and machinegun fire coming from it — I took the elevator back upstairs and grabbed Tatiana again. The pregnant whore lazily told me that she had just that minute come again after masturbating while I was downstairs. "You didn't think I was going to wait for you, did you?" she asked insolently.

"All right," I said, "that means you're still hot," and pulling her bottom to me — she was lying on her side — I stuck my prick into her crack, which was already beginning to dry. When after a little while we were both starting to enjoy it again, the abominable intercom buzzer sounded, the same one that Efimenkov had used to wake me up in the middle of the night. What the fuck is it now? I thought without climbing off of Tatiana. The buzzer didn't go off again, but there was soon a knock at the door.

"Edward, somebody's ringing die front doorbell," Richardson's voice said.

"Well, could you see who it is?" I yelled angrily.

So they wouldn't even let me fuck. I went downstairs a few minutes later — they'd upset my rhythm anyway and dragged me away from the excellent fountain inside that crazy woman — I went downstairs and met the new guest, Steven's artist-friend Stanislaw, gave him an extra key to the millionaire's house, and told him he would be staying in one of the children's rooms, the other rooms already being occupied. I even had some vodka with him, and then went back to my room, where I rolled and lit myself a joint — the crazy Tatiana didn't smoke — and then grabbed her again in earnest. I remember almost crushing her large soft breasts, which she was usually ashamed of, and angrily thrusting my prick into her. We didn't stop till five o'clock the next morning. And she didn't say anything more about being pregnant or about Ghupta and the CIA.

The first time I heard about Stanislaw was from Gatsby, and I remembered that unusual evening very well. Gatsby was sick and had decided to stay home — probably the only time in his whole life that the stubborn Gatsby actually gave in and stayed home. He'd been sick for a long time before that, three weeks maybe, and was coughing so badly that I had no doubt that he was in the final stages of tuberculosis and that very soon I'd be without an employer. He was dying but stubbornly holding on to his insane mode of life — drinking Scotch with five ice cubes, running outside without a coat on even though it was winter, and so forth. By that evening he was at the end of his rope. The antibiotics he'd been taking weren't doing any good, and he had stayed home and was sitting red-nosed and miserable in the kitchen clad in his warmest robe and in warm pajamas under the robe and eating some of my chicken soup — Nancy had called from Connecticut with the special request to eat soup without fail — and panting for breath he told me one thing and another. I was sitting across from him; for the first time he hadn't sent for anybody, since he was obviously embarrassed about his illness, but he still needed somebody to talk to. A peaceful kitchen scene.

Why did we start talking about Stanislaw? I had asked the boss what I should do with the picture that had been standing in the TV room since Jenny's time. Should I hang it there in the kitchen? Gatsby objected to that, to hanging the picture in the kitchen, since Stanislaw, the author of that, in my opinion, ugly work, or at least one that overwhelmed me with boredom whenever I looked at it (a moon over mountains — abstract, a mere howl), might suddenly turn up, and it would be awkward for him, for Steven, that is, if the author found his gift hanging in the kitchen. Okay. I didn't say any more about moving the picture, but Mr. Grey didn't want to drop the subject, and he told me about Stanislaw. Mr. Grey was amazed by him.