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

Henry-Mephistopheles was playing his papa. He of course didn't have Papa's brutality — Papa humiliated people right and left. He used his wife's lover, the meek opportunist Carl, virtually as a chauffeur, and once in the kitchen in Linda's and my presence had irritably refused to drop Carl, who was sick with a cold, off at his house, although it was on his way. Carl, even though he didn't feel well, had just raced over with a car at Gatsby's request — had driven over one hundred miles with a temperature in order to bring an automobile to his employer and benefactor. The twenty-dollar bill dropped on the floor by Henry completely corresponded in the children's world to the adult situation that had also taken place in the kitchen.

The children gradually spilled into all the crevices and rooms in the house. On the door of my room the farsighted Henry had hung a sign with the words, "Edward's room! Do not Enter!" I circulated among the youths dressed in white sailor's jeans, a black shirt, and boots, and anxiously looked around. I wanted to pick out a girl ahead of time, or even better, several objectives, however tentative, so that after having had something to drink and smoke (in the living room several enthusiasts were delightedly adjusting the hookah which hangs on the wall there), I would then know which target, or targets if there were several, to aim for. I finished my preliminary survey in half an hour, visiting all the rooms and standing for a while among various groups of our merry and lively American youth, but with depressing results, I'm sorry to say.

No, I can't take that one, I thought to myself while looking over a rather pretty girl dressed as a nineteenth-century American lady and even carrying a lace parasol in her hands. A tow-haired guy in a musketeer's outfit kept putting his arm around her waist possessively… And not that one either, I thought, transferring my gaze to another objective, a ridiculously skinny girl-cameraman, who looked like Jenny's sister Debby and had come with the boy who was to be their director. They had slept together the night before, I think, and came into the kitchen in the morning in their pajamas, blushing and ridiculous — sixteen-year-old lovers. That one? A perfect woman of the highest class, well-bred, mysterious, with her dark hair piled up above a beautiful clear face whose features resembled those of the young In-grid Bergman, was looking directly into my eyes with a brazen and provocative gaze. How did this miracle turn up at an adolescent ball? I thought. Is she really only fifteen to seventeen like all the others? That can't be. She not only looks more grown up; she is — a young woman and not a stump, not a pimply American female teenager swollen on doughnuts and sweet rolls or a big-chested, big-assed, and leggy cheerleader, the class beauty, but a young woman in fact, the kind they show in films about the English aristocracy. The stubborn, mad, and willful youngest daughter of the family, the one who reads philosophy books and wildly races around in fast cars. You see, reader, what vulgar stereotypes I think in, what banal myths nourish my servant's imagination.

I was intimidated by the stranger. Cold sweat even broke out on my servant's brow — she seemed so terribly unattainable to me — and the most frightening thing was that I realized she belonged to the same breed as the girl in chinchilla! Around the stranger, who had only just arrived, swarmed all the best of their boys. Even Henry himself came downstairs in a tuxedo and bow tie, and opening his arms wide like his daddy, greeted her and enclosed her in an embrace — behavior and gestures copied to the last detail from Gatsby the elder. I'd like to be in Henry's place and cover her in embraces myself, I thought enviously. Henry greeted her in French, if you can believe it, and the stranger answered him in French too in a voice that was strangely deep for someone so young. Fucking aristocrats.

My spirits sank. Just as they had when I was the same age they were now — a loss of strength and resolve in the face of beauty. Most often those attacks of uncertainty and stupefaction had happened at school dances. I always wanted the very best girl at the dance, naturally, and of course I always stood in the darkest corner of the hall, leaning against the wall and tormenting myself over my cowardice. No, I knew my value, I knew I was "good looking" — the girls had told me. But beauty plunged me into a condition of stupor and numbness. When I finally overcame it, it was already too late — some insolent clod with a budding moustache had already taken my girl by the hand and was telling her inspired lies. Neither then nor now did I doubt for a moment that I was far more interesting and alive than the young or adult clods who make up at least ninety-five percent of the masculine society of any dance, but what difference did that make? It's true that now, aware of the shameful sin of cowardice in myself, I have devised certain measures to overcome it. Thus, I'm fully aware that beautiful women plunge not only me into terror and stupor, but many others, and that they fall to only the boldest, usually the first of the boldest, and I therefore try to be the first. I usually cross the hall or living room with my eyes closed and in a state of utter terror, the main thing being to approach, to overcome the distance between you, and then as soon as I open my mouth, everything falls into place. It doesn't make any difference what you talk about in such a situation — the main thing is simply to emit friendly noises, since in essence we're just highly organized animals. Dogs sniff each other in situations like that or wag their tails.

The swine Henry didn't even introduce me. He had introduced me to a mass of completely useless girl-goblins, but he led that treasure upstairs to the living room without even a glance in my direction to get her some sangria. Walking past, the stranger continued looking at me in the same brazen way — no, no, it didn't just seem to me that she was looking at me; she actually was, which isn't surprising really, I being an adult man and she, despite her age, an adult woman, and the two of us face to face in that crowd of children. As she climbed the stairs, her young ass flexed under her black dress like the prancing rear of a fine young horse — forgive me for this cavalryman's comparison, gentlemen, but that's the way it really was.

After hanging around on the first floor a while for decency's sake, I made my way upstairs after Henry and the stranger. I was sure nobody was watching my behavior, so why the silliness? It was my natural cowardice before beauty that made me linger; when I'm afraid, you see, I immediately remember the proprieties. God knows what was going on upstairs. The children were sitting on the floor around the hookah and on the couches in a Frankensteinian blue and green light cast by the blue and green light bulbs they had screwed into Papa Gatsby's numerous lamps. Despite the fact that the living room in Gatsby's house is exceptionally large, it was covered end to end with a layer of adolescent flesh. They looked very happy, with contented faces all around, and why not — there weren't any adults at the party.

"Edward! Edward! Come on over here!" the children sitting around the hookah called out to me. Among them were several youths who had come down by car with Henry from Connecticut, and they already knew me, especially the boy-director and his ridiculous girlfriend. The general attention of the group fell on me for a moment when they called out. Stepping over torsos and bodies and across the legs and arms of the youths, the housekeeper made his way to the hookah where the children moved closer together to make a place for him on the floor. Someone stuck the flexible tube with a pipe stem at its tip into my hand. The smoking master was the same boy in the wig and dress and black stockings.