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

"No. Why do you say that?" I ask. "Go on with what you were saying."

It's clear I'm not interested. It's always the same story, and how many have I heard in my dismal bedroom by the glow of cigarettes and to the background music of wine gurgling down my throat? Their stories are all alike, and even if I wanted to sympathize with what they're saying, I still wouldn't be able to, since it's all so trivial. Almost every one of them carries the burden of an unhappy love affair and some kind of grudge against the world. A grudge against her parents or, more often, against her husband or her lover. «He» is either mean-spirited or callous, and as a rule doesn't understand anything about «her» life.

They've devised the same kind of unhappy lives for themselves that I devised for myself with Jenny — we're all the same, only besides my prick I have will and talent, while they have their cunts and sometimes talent, but no will. Their lives are probably more tranquil in reality than they seem from my bed.

I don't treat them badly; oh no, I share everything I have with them — the house, wine, marijuana, money. I take them all to P. J. Clark's on Third Avenue, a former Irish bar turned restaurant.

There's nothing particularly special there, but the checkered table cloths, the old gravures, and the jerk-off waiters all create a sense of human comfort. Besides, they have very good steak tar-tare — not the slush they serve you at other New York restaurants.

I sit in P. J. Clark's with my girls and drink Beaujolais Villages.

We look at each other with friendly grins and touch each other's hands from time to time. Having just emerged from bed, we feel for each other the tenderness of animals who have been fucking each other, the affection of little dogs who have just fucked each other well. I always share with my girls my misfortunes, my ideas, and my little stories. I don't pretend my life is cloudless. "My agent called yesterday," I complain, "and told me another publisher has rejected my novel, a very progressive publisher that's published some good books in the past, but now that they've made some money, they've gotten lazy and are very careless about reading manuscripts. Liza doesn't want to drop me, she wants to continue working on it, but she admitted to me, 'To be honest, Edward, I don't know where to send the book anymore. Maybe you have some ideas? "

Together my girls are like a wife to me — one woman with many faces and bodies. I can share with them my anger about my most recent setbacks, and I don't get depressed anymore. I can tell them about my feverish plans for the future, and they understand; they aren't all that normal themselves. For some reason they come to me almost immediately after their attempts to kill themselves, or from deep depressions, or even from psychiatric clinics. It's obvious I don't attract healthy girls, or maybe healthy ones don't interest me, or maybe, gentlemen, there just aren't any healthy girls in the world?

Love? I love them in my own way, only I allocate my love among them. Would it really be fair for only one to have it? I feel the same tenderness for them that I felt for Jenny when I looked at her for the first time in our garden — a tenderness for those creatures who are alive at the same time I am, the tenderness of a male dog for his bitches. I service them and protect them from enemies. I would live with them all in one house, but they rebel, almost every one of them wanting all of me and not satisfied with merely a part. Then it's necessary to get rid of the rebels, to replace them with fresh young girls.

They often get drunk, my girls, because it's hard for them to have a normal relationship with me; they get drunk and take drugs for courage, and that's when they decide to rebel.

Even the little pianist Natasha rebelled against me in a way. I was sitting with her in a dark barn-like bar on the Lower East Side and drinking J & B, of course (their company should send me a case of whiskey once a month for the publicity I give them: "Edward Limonov drinks only J & B"). Natasha, as I've already mentioned, looks about twelve, an exaggeration of course, although she's almost young enough to be my daughter, and that isn't an exaggeration.

We were on a spree, although where we drank before that I don't remember. My girl, drunkenly puckering her little face, berated me for my indifference to life, for my lack of curiosity. The accusation of a lack of curiosity was unjust, but I didn't say anything: She wanted to fight. The fact is that all her grievances came in the end to something like, "You're special, you're unique, you can be, so why aren't you what I need?" Translating it all into normal language meant, "Why don't you love me?"

The bar was huge and cold and dated back to hippie days, and a gigantic bartender of about forty with hair as long now as it had been back then served punk boys and girls in leather jackets and multicolored tufts of hair. There were a few older types in the bar too, unshaven and with dark circles under their eyes. I said nothing, smoking one cigarette after another and drinking my J & B. As I get older I feel less and less the need to explain myself, especially since I know from long experience that you can't explain; everybody understands the words differently, and it's useless.

Natasha covered her face with her hands and then uncovered it and said I was empty and cynical and would never write anything interesting and would only repeat myself. She was angry and wanted to hurt me. I wasn't fucking her as much and was getting tired of her. I didn't object: probably I was empty and bad, and maybe I didn't have any future, either literary or human.

I went to the toilet. Its door was crudely fashioned from boards. Over the urinal somebody had written the words "Fuck you!" in bold letters. But a little below them somebody else's kind hand had written, "That's not nice." Exactly, it wasn't nice to write "Fuck you." When I came out, an affectionate ginger-haired dog was running around the bar.

My companion was already behaving a little better and started telling me very insistently that I should get myself roller skates and/or a car. There wasn't, she thought, enough speed in my life. While listening to her I drank another J & B, but I didn't get any drunker. But at least sitting with Natasha was better than drinking alone. After that we left, I first with my hands in my pockets, and she a little behind with her purse. For some reason I'd gotten interested in the purse phenomenon, and I thought to myself, a woman without a purse is always defenseless. That's why they all carry them. They have everything they need in them to make themselves up in the morning. Girls in jeans, however, have only their keys and a couple of dollars but no purse. As soon as they become women, the purse appears. Natasha has become a woman, since she's carrying a purse now.

She had become one, and with a vengeance. We went back to my place. Stanislaw was still there, I think, but I didn't want to see him, and so we went quietly up to my room and added to what we'd already had — we smoked a joint and had some more to drink. Then I think we flicked, although I don't remember. The next morning Natasha wasn't in bed with me. Well if she wasn't there, then she wasn't — she'd obviously left while I was still asleep. I shrugged and went into the bathroom to wash under the skylight. I opened the door, and…

The whole bathroom was spattered with blood. Lying on the floor were my knife and two pairs of manicure scissors covered with blood, and there was blood on some pieces of a razor blade that had come from who knows where. There was also blood on the floor and on the fluffy yellow rug and the tiled walls. My sandy-haired little girl, my little pianist, had obviously tried to kill herself or, more likely, had wanted to show me how serious our relationship was.