A Young Scoundrel Read online

  A Young Scoundrel

  Edward Limonov

  Edward Limonov

  A Young Scoundrel

  © Эдуард Лимонов

  © translated from Russian by John Dolan

  Inhalt

  § A Note on the Author

  § On the Translator

  § 1-8…

  A Note on the Author

  Eduard Limonov (real name: Eduard Savenko) was born and raised in Kharkov, an industrial city near the Russian-Ukrainian border. He attained success as an avant-garde poet in Moscow during the 1970's, and was expelled from the Soviet Union. Living as a penniless refugee in New York, he wrote his first memoir-novel, It's Me, Eddie (Eto Ya, Edichka), which described the Russian-exile experience as a degrading, frustrating struggle with the 'Literary mafia' of the bourgeois United States which led the hero to seek solace in various bizarre sexual escapades. The Russian emigres, usually depicted as noble victims, were scandalized by this version of themselves as decadent, hapless strivers, and Limonov gained a level of fame he had never enjoyed as poet. He has since produced many memoirs, of which the best is perhaps Memoir of A Russian Punk (Podrostok Savenko), which describes his adolescence as a small-time hood in Kharkov. A Young Scoundrel (Molodoi Niigodyaii) follows from that memoir, recounting the transformation of the young Limonov from proletarian tough-guy to avant-garde literary contender.

  On the Translator

  John Dolan teaches in the Department of English at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. He has published two books of poetry, the more recent of which, Stuck Up, is available from the University of Auckland Press.

  Chapter 1

  "Fyu-fyu… fyu!" A bird whistles three times. The youth Limonov sighs and grudgingly opens his eyes. Sunlight pours into the narrow room from Tevelev Square, through the big window, yellow as margarine. The walls, decorated by painter friends, always delight the just-awakened young man. Tranquil again, the young man closes his eyes.

  "Fyu-fyu… fyu!" again calls the bird, then adds, in an angry whisper, "Ed!" The young man throws off the covers, gets up, opens the window and looks down. Beneath the window, by the low wall of the green square, stands his friend Genochka the Magnificent, wearing a bright blue suit, and smiling, head tilted upward, at him.

  "You asleep, you son of a bitch? Get down here!" Behind the magnificent Genochka, on the emerald grass, camps a company of gypsies, breakfasting on watermelon and bread, laid out on shawls as on tablecloths.

  "Rise and shine, the day is fine!" says a young Gypsy woman near Genochka, and actually beckons with her hand to the young man at the window.

  The youth, placing a finger to his lips, indicates the neighboring window and, nodding his head in agreement, whispers, "Right!" – shuts the window and, carefully going to the sliding door which leads to the next room, listens. Rustling and some breathing can be heard from within, and the smell of tobacco seeps from under the door. His mother-in-law is undoubtedly sitting in her classic morning pose, with her tangled grey hair over her shoulders, before her mirror, smoking a cigarette. It seems that she, Celia Yakovlyevna, didn't hear her son-in-law's brief conversation with Genochka the Magnificent, her most fearsome enemy. Now, the young man realizes, it is time to act quickly and decisively.

  Taking from the bookcase, the lower part of which has been made into a cabinet, his pride and joy, a cocoa-colored suit with gold highlights shining through the cloth, the young man quickly pulls on his pants, a pink shirt and a coat. At the head of the bed stands a card-table, and scattered over it are pencils, pens, paper, a half-drunk bottle of wine, and an opened notebook. Glancing with pleasure at some half-written poems, the young man closes his homemade notebook and, raising the lid of the table, takes from the drawer several five-ruble notes. He places the notebook in the drawer and closes the lid. The poems will have to wait for tomorrow. Holding his shoes in his hands, he carefully opens the door to the dark hallway. Fumblingly, without turning on the light, he goes past the Amimov's door and carefully places the key in the lock of the door leading out, out of the apartment, to freedom…

  "Eduard, where are you going?" Somehow, Celia Yakovlyevna, having heard the metallic sound of the key in the lock, or simply intuitively sensed that her son-in-law was escaping, has come out of her room and is now standing, having turned on the light in the entrance-hall, in her classical pose Number Two. One hand rests on her hip, the other – complete with the diminishing cigarette – by her mouth, her gray, slightly longer than waist-length hair loose, her well-bred face angrily turned toward her escaping son-in-law. The Russian son-in-law of her younger daughter.

  "Are you going out to see Gena again, Eduard? Don't deny it – I know it. Don't forget that you promised that today you'd finish the pants for Tsintsipyer. If you get together with that Gena, you'll just… wander around…"

  Celia Yakovlyevna Rubinshtein is an educated woman. It is awkward for her to say to a Russian young man, who is living with her daughter, that if he meets up with Gena, he will once again get drunk as a pig, and perhaps, like they did last time, his friends will have to carry him home.

  "Look, Celia Yakovlyevna… I'm just going down for some thread… then straight back," lies the shorthaired, somewhat puffy-looking poet, embarrassedly putting his shoes on the floor. He slips into his shoes and makes for the door, into the long corridor, bordered on both sides by dining tables, electric ranges and kerosene stoves. The fenced-off compartment with the kitchen and toilet – the priority for all the families who still live in this old building, number nineteen, Tevelyev Square – the corridor serves as a kitchen and the toilet is a communal one. Having passed through the entire row of tables, and inhaled, one after another, the smells of dozens of future lunches, the poet reaches the far end of the and heads down the stairs, taking them three at at a time. "Don't forget about Tsintsiper!" The pointless reminder from Celia Yakovlyevna reaches him. The poet smiles. What a name God gave this man! Tsin-tsi-per! The Devil knows what it is, but it isn't a name. Those two whole "ts"es, plus the completely obscene sound, "iiper"!

  Genochka is waiting for the poet by the exit at the path to the Seminary District. There's a suitcase in Genochka's hand. "How much money have you got?" asks the Magnificent One, in place of a greeting. "Fifteen rubles."

  "Let's go, quick, or I'll have to wait in line." Gennadii and the Poet walk hurriedly down through the Seminary Quarter, and, reaching the first corner, turn left toward the pawnshop.

  The shadows on the street are heavy, dark blue. The sun is yellow as a rich, concentrated film of dyed butter. Without even taking your eyes from the asphalt, you can tell that it's August in Kharkov.

  Even while they're several dozen meters away from the massive, fortress-like old brick building, the sharp, strong smell of mothballs reaches the two friends. For a hundred years, mothballs have been the foundation of this district, and it seems that even the old white acacias in this part of the street smell of mothballs. Hurrying along, the two friends go up the steps into a hall. The hall is high, roomy and cold, like the interior of a temple. Squeezing in among the old men and women, they get on one of the lines leading to the pawnbroker's window. The old men and women stare in surprise at the youngsters. It's unusual to see youngsters at a pawnshop in Kharkov. The poet, however, has already been to a pawnshop dozens of times. With Genochka.

  "What have you got?" the poet asks his friend.

  "My mother and father's plastic raincoats, a suit of my father's, and a couple of gold watches." lists Genochka, smiling. His is a unique smile: malicious and precise.

  "You're for it, Gennadii Sergeevich!"

  "It's not your problem, Eduard Venyaminovich!" parries Genochka. But, obviously determined that his friend be subjected t
o a commentary, he adds, "They went off on vacation. For a month. And left me with just 200 rubles. I told them that wasn't going to be enough. And now look what happens; they must pay for wronging their only son."

  Genochka goes to the pawnbroker often, with his things and his parents'. He discovered this method of getting money before he met the poet Eduard. He pawns all of his father's things. His papa, Sergei Sergeevich, loves his handsome, stocky, blue-eyed son. Though Papa worries about his son's complete indifference to all human affairs except the quest for adventures and going to restaurants, and worries above all that now that Genadii is 21, worse things than pawnbrokers will befall him. A bad marriage, for example. It's Papa, not Genochka, who pays alimony to Genadii's former wife, and their son – his grandson. Papa Sergei Sergeevich is the director of the "Crystal," the finest restaurant in Kharkov, and of the restaurant trust of the same name, handling many other "trading points."

  Genochka, not troubling himself about the things in the suitcase, pushes it through the welcoming slot in the window-cage and impatiently pounds on the patterned ceramic tiles of the floor with the heel of his shoe. They know young Ocharenko quite well in this pawnshop, and the transaction takes very little time. Ten minutes later the friends are already heading down the street, which smells of acacia and mothballs. Genochka has already contentedly placed notes worth sixty rubles in his black leather wallet. And, in another compartment, the pawn ticket. With revulsion.

  "Well, where shall we go?"

  Chapter 2

  They're climbing over the stone wall which separates Taras Grigoryevich Shevchenko Park from the Kharkov Zoo. Naturally, they could simply buy tickets – for just one ruble twenty kopeks apiece – but the youths consider it a point of honor not to pay to enter "their" territory. The Zoo is a traditional playground for Ed and Genka, as for all the other members of the "SS": the painter, Vagrich Bakhchanyan; "The Frenchman," Paul Shemmetov; "Fritz" Viktorushka; and Fima, nicknamed "Dog." Every member of the "SS" is in some way out of the ordinary. You couldn't call the "SS" a typical group of young people…

  In Kharkov the August sun is pitiless. Nonetheless the two young men are wearing suits of the "dandy" style, introduced by Genadii and formerly championed by members of the foundry-workers' guild, and nowadays by the poet, Ed. Usually, once they've made it through the broken glass atop the stone wall, the kids jump to earth among the jungles of the Zoo, weaving through gigantic tussocks of steppe-grass and burdock, nut-trees and other August exuberances, then descending into the ravine by a little path which only they know, passing by an old oak which grows at the bottom of the ravine, and coming up out of the ravine right next to the "Tavern." Its ancient sides, having once been covered with paint which started out as a reddish yellow, lean against each other. The young men's shoes are covered with the pollens exuberantly packed in several years'-worth of Ukrainian grasses – the heavily fertilized, crude, mighty Ukrainian grasses of the field across the way. Genadii is holding a package of bottles. Vodka. In the "Tavern," they don't officially sell spirits.

  Climbing up the path after his friend, Ed wipes his face with a handkerchief. From time to time they overtake a thick cloud of midges, which try to draw as many milligrams of blood as they can from their quickly-moving prey. Gena and Ed constantly wave their arms, or the cigarettes they're smoking, to repel the raids. Dripping sweat but unperturbed, they take the path to the summit and go on, along a narrow path between carefully-planted flowers, to the front of the "Tavern." As if greeting their arrival, from the depths of the Zoo sounds the roar of a tiger.

  "Zhul'bars," states the poet.

  "Sultan." disagrees Gena.

  On the open veranda of the "Tavern," all by herself, doing something with the chairs, is "Auntie" Dusya. A big, strong woman in her thirties, with a red Bulgarian face, but still "Auntie." "Hey, look vat showed up! Genochka showed up!" she exclaims joyfully. And why wouldn't she be glad? The dandy, Genochka, gives her more in tips than she gets in a week of serving eggs, sausage with peas, or chicken to visitors to the Zoo.

  "If you please, Dusya, put this in the freezer!" says Genka, imitating his father, a former Colonel in the KGB and the Director of a Trust. Like his father, Genka addresses everyone with the formal pronoun. This is his own idea of chic. And Genka doesn't swear, which distinguishes him from Ed's many other friends, who curse non-stop.

  "I am certain you have met Eduard Limonov, Dusya…?" Genka stares, with a certain patronizing irony, at Ed.

  "Sure, you've had your friend here with you, Genochka…"

  "Certainly, Dusya. But since then he's changed his name. Please take note: 'Eduard Limonov.'"

  Eduard didn't change his last name, Savyenko. It's just that the "SS" and some other friends – Lyonka Ivanov, the poet Motrich, Tolya Melekhov, were sitting with Ed and Ann in their room, playing, out of sheer boredom, a sort of literary game, and they decided they would live in turn-of-the-century Kharkov and be poets and symbolist painters. And Vagrich Bakhchanyan made a rule that they all had to think up appropriate last names for themselves. Lyonka Ivanov decided to call himself Blanket. Melekhov became Breadman. And Bakhchanyan decided that Ed would be called Limonov. The game ended, they all went home, but the next day, while introducing Ed to a painter-friend from the newspaper "Leninist ____________________," at the Automatic, Bakhchanyan referred to him as "Limonov." And has called him that ever since. And it turned out that Genka really liked the nickname. All the young "Decadents" in the Automatic now call him Ed Limonov. The nickname stuck, and now even Ed himself doesn't call himself Eduard Savyenko much anymore. He has remained "Limonov." Nobody calls Lyonka Ivanov "Blanket" anymore; nobody calls Melekhov"Breadman" any more; but Ed remains "Limonov." Besides, for reasons even he doesn't understand, Ed himself likes "Limonov." His real name, the very common, ordinary Ukrainian family-name, "Savyenko," always depressed him. So let it stay "Limonov."

  The two young men are sitting at a table on the veranda, so that they can look out at the pond, and the swans and ducks swimming around on it. The "Tavern" is definitely the most picturesque restaurant in Kharkov, which is why Genka chose it as his headquarters. From the pond wafts the smell of muddy water. Two workers are lazily pulling a hose and just as lazily starting to sprinkle the heavy flowers.

  "Well, what shall we have to go with our vodka, Comrade Limonov?" Genka takes off his jacket and drapes it over the back of the chair. He rolls up the sleeves of his immaculate white shirt and loosens the knot of his tie.

  "Maybe some chicken?" Uncertainty can be heard in the poet's voice. He's gotten used to deferring to the more elegant, experienced and self-assured Genka on this sort of question.

  "Dusya, what's good today?" Genka turns to "Auntie" Dusya, who has once again come up on the veranda.

  "Oh, Genochka… it's still so early; how…" Dusya twists her frace into a pitiful frown. "The cook still isn't here; we only open at noon. I could get you a little snack, and, if you want, I could make eggs with sausage. When the cook gets here, he can make you Chicken Kiev…" Suddenly, a peacock cries out, long and loudly. As if at this signal, the whole Zoo begins to cry, roar and howl.

  "Well, what do you think, Ed? Should we have some eggs with sausage?"

  "Let's."

  "Dusya, make us some fried eggs with sausage. Six eggs each. With salt, but without lard – the way I like them. Bring them in the frying pan. And more vegetables, please – tomatoes, cucumbers…"

  "Do you want your cucumbers pickled, boys?"

  "Of course, Dusya, pickled. And a couple of bottles of cold lemonade. To wash them down with."

  "I'll pour you a little decanter of vodka, shall I?" Dusya glances at Genadii's face.

  "No thank you. It would be warm. Bring us two wineglasses and put a bottle on ice, please, Dusya."

  The waitress leaves the veranda.

  "Wonderful – eh, Ed?" Gena's fond gaze is directed toward the pond. Directly across the pond is the peacocks' aviary. Far away, among the cages, looms the hu
ge bulk of an elephant. A draft suddenly wafts to the veranda the smell of dung and the nauseous smell of some musky beast. "Magnificent!" – And Gennadii's handsome face beams with tranquil delight. This is what he wants from life: a beautiful view, cold vodka, chatting with a friend. Even women are second-rate to Genadii. It's been a year since the beautiful Nonna, whom everybody thought he loved, appeared in his life, but even Nonna couldn't drag him away from his drinking sprees in the company of the "SS," from his trips to a restaurant called the Monte-Carlo, from strolling down Sumskii Street with Ed, from the pleasures of wasting time. Ed Limonov looks with pleasure at his strange friend. Genka seems to have absolutely no ambition. He himself has admitted more than once that he doesn't want to be a poet, like Motrich and Ed, or a painter, like Bakhchanyan. "You'll paint and write poems; I'll bask in your success!"laughs Genka. Celia Yakovlyevna and Anna consider Genadii to be Ed's evil genius – they think he makes Ed squander money on drink, and takes him away from Anna. But this view of theirs is explained, actually, by jealousy. It's true, of course, that now and then Ed spends, with Genka, the money they've made sewing pants. Not often. But he doesn't go out drinking with Genka all the time. In any case, the miserly sums – ten, twenty rubles – he spends with Genka don't compare to the amounts squandered by Genka. And that phrase, "squandered on drink" somehow doesn't capture the Magnificent Genadii Sergeevich's style. The last time they went carousing at the Monte-Carlo – an out-of-town restaurant in Pesochin, watering hole for the high officials and KGB elite of Kharkov – Genka went first in one taxi, showing the way, and Ed followed in another taxi, and behind him came another taxi, empty, which Genka hired solely for the style of it, to make up a a cavalcade. In his youth, Sergei Sergeevich had been a regular at the Monte-Carlo – until his stomach ulcer. Gennadii inherited the place from his father. The staff knows Genadii Sergeevich well, and always gives him the best table. Until he met Genka, Ed had only read of "best tables" in books. At the Monte-Carlo, the chickens wander around right outside the window of the best table, and you can pick the one you want and they'll make chicken tabak from it. The paradox of the Monte-Carlo consists of the fact that the truck drivers eat in the big room, right next to a big highway. But at the best tables, it's the good life…