It's Me, Eddie Page 6

  The letter to the editors of Novy Mir was written out of mischief and my love of scandal. Although I was almost positive they would not print my poems, I did not deny myself the pleasure of having some fun at the expense of both camps. My conscience was clear. Solzhenitsyn, while living in the USSR, had published his books here in the West; his conscience hadn’t bothered him, in point of fact he had thought only of his own career as a writer, not of the consequences or influence of his books. So why couldn’t I, while living here, publish my poems over there in the USSR? Both governments had made good use of me, at last I could use them too. I had some chance of getting published. After all, a whole page had been devoted to me and my article “Disillusionment” (which, as I have already mentioned, got me fired from Russkoe Delo) in the Moscow weekly Nedelya for the week of February 23. By divine coincidence, those were the very days when I was out of my fucking mind. Wrapped in a filthy overcoat I had found in the trash, my arm oozing pus, I was roaming through the New York February, picking scraps out of garbage cans and drinking the last drops from wine and liquor bottles. I wandered a good deal in Chinatown during those days, spent the nights with bums. I endured six days of that life, on the seventh I returned warily to the apartment on Lexington and saw again my gruesome exhibit of Elena’s things, which I had hung on the walls, with a label under each item, such as:

  Elena’s wee little stocking – white

  Whereabouts of the other, unknown

  She bought little white stockings when she had come

  to know her lover, and at the same time bought

  two slender belts… she and her lover wore them

  to fuck… for Eddie Limonov, sorrow and

  a martyr’s torment.

  Or:

  Tampax

  Elena Sergeevna’s

  unused,

  my girl-child could insert it

  in her peepka – comically

  it used to stick out, hang out of

  her peepka, the string.

  The objects were hung on nails and coat hangers, or taped to the walls. Jolly little exhibit, wasn’t it? How would you like to be invited to such an exhibit? But I had invited people, on February twenty-first. About ten people saw the exhibit, and Sashka Zhigulin came and got it down on film, so that I have it on three rolls.

  I was out of my mind, I confess; the exhibit was called “Diary of Saint Elena.” When I returned from being a bum, I tore all those things down from the walls, with my eyes narrowed and face averted, and began a new life, which is what led me to the Hilton and welfare and the Hotel Winslow. Fuck it – so many events rolled over me in that period, and I seem to be getting slowly stronger day by day, I can tell.

  When I forsook the Hilton, when I shagassed out of there the last day, I laughed like a silly baby: I had shed one more burden, one more stage. I was sorry only about Wong, but I hoped to find him when I needed him. I could not be useful to him yet.

  Others and Raymond

  I really got over my tragedy very fast, all things considered. Granted, I’m not quite over it even yet, but all the same the pace has been startling. I’ve known of other such tragedies, and people have recovered slowly, if at all. It was March when I made my first attempts at intimacy with men, and by April I had my first lover.

  One day in March, Kirill, the young aristocrat from Leningrad, mentioned that he was acquainted with a fellow a little over fifty, and that he was a homosexual.

  For some reason this stuck in my mind. “Kirill, old buddy,” I said finally, “women rouse me to disgust, my wife has made intercourse with women impossible for me, I can’t deal with them. They’re always having to be serviced, undressed, fucked. They’re panhandlers and parasites by nature, in everything from intimate relations to the economics of the normal joint household in society. I can’t live with them anymore. The main thing is, I can’t service them – take the initiative, make the first move. What I need now is someone to service me – caress, kiss, want me – rather than wanting and being ingratiating myself. Only from men can I get all this. You’d never guess I’m thirty fucking years old, I’m nice and trim, my figure is faultless, more like a boy’s than a man’s, even. Introduce me to this fellow,” I begged. “Please, Kirill, I’ll be eternally grateful!”

  “Limonov, are you serious?” Kirill asked.

  “You think I’m joking?” I replied. “Look at me, I’m alone now, I’m at the very bottom of this society – the bottom of it, hell, I’m simply outside it, outside of life. Sexually I’m totally freaked out, women don’t arouse me, my dick is faint with incomprehension, it just dangles because it doesn’t know what to want and its master is sick. If things go on like this, I’ll end up impotent. I need a friend. There’s no question in my mind, men have always liked me, always, they’ve liked me since I was thirteen. I need a solicitous friend to help me return to the world, a man to love me. I’m weary, no one has worried about me for a long time, I want attention, I want to be loved and fussed over. Introduce me, and I’ll take care of the rest, really, he’ll like me.”

  I wasn’t lying to Kirill; it was a fact. I had even had some long-term admirers, I had snickered at their advances, but somehow I had enjoyed their attention. Now and then I had even allowed myself to go to a restaurant with them; once in a while, for the fun of it or maybe the stimulation, I had allowed them to kiss me, but we never fucked. Among ordinary people same-sex love was considered impure, dirty. In my country pederasts are very unfortunate. At the whim of the authorities they can be entrapped and put in prison for what in the opinion of Soviet law is an unnatural love. I knew a pianist who did two years for pederasty; the film director Paradzhanov is doing time now. But that is the attitude of ordinary people, the authorities, the law. I was a poet, and I had been intoxicated by Mikhail Kuzmin’s “Alexandrian Songs” and other poems, where he sings the praises of his male lover and tells about love between men.

  My most persistent admirer was a red-haired singer named Avdeev from the Teatralny Restaurant. The restaurant was directly across from my apartment windows. Every evening, if I was home, I could hear his voice belting out “Mama’s Poor Heart” and other semiunderworld songs. The restaurant was small and on the dirty side; every night they had almost exclusively the same crowd. Among the habitues were thieves, gypsies from the outskirts of Kharkov, and other shady characters. In summer I heard my singer’s voice loudly, at its natural volume; in winter, muffled by the closed windows.

  I had just moved in with Anna, a beautiful gray-haired Jewish woman. We lived together as man and wife, it was a happy time for me, my poetry went well, life was gay, I drank a lot, I had a good coffee-colored English suit (which I hadn’t come by quite honestly), I spent a lot of time hanging out on the main street of our city with my dear friend Gennady, handsome Gena, son of the manager of the largest restaurant in town.

  Gena was a sheer joy. An idler, he saw his calling in drinking sprees and parties, but sumptuous ones. Strange as it may seem, his attitude toward women was almost indifferent. Even though he appeared to love Nona, who came on the scene later, he could give up a date with her for an excursion with me to a little out-of-town restaurant that we called the Monte Carlo, where they made sumptuous chicken tabaka. My friendship with Gena lasted several years, until I went away to Moscow. Gena and I were rakehells, like Fellini’s provincial city boys.

  The relationship with Gena, I think, was one facet of my innate homosexuality. For the sake of a date with him I used to escape my wife and mother-in-law by jumping from a second-story window. I loved him very much, although we didn’t even embrace. As I now see, I was all entangled in homosexual liaisons, only I didn’t understand that. When I said good-bye to Gena at the corner – I lived on Sumskaya Street, our main street, where the Teatralny Restaurant also was – Avdeev would come out of the restaurant, he had dark circles under his eyes, his lightly made-up lips glistened, he would walk over and say in a hollow, languid voice, “Good evening!” Sometimes he had to cross the
street to do it. I believe he even interrupted his songs for the sake of this “Good evening”; I mean, he rushed right off the stage. He had a clear view of the street through the big windows. Often I was very drunk, and my friends recall that Avdeev sometimes helped me to my house, walked me into the entrance, and started me up the stairs.

  Back before Gena and the nightly scene of Avdeev’s figure bowed in greeting, back when I was in school, I had a butcher friend, Sanya the Red, a huge man of German descent with a florid complexion, which was why he was nicknamed “the Red.” He was six or eight years older than I. I showed up at the butcher shop first thing in the morning, I went everywhere with him, I even accompanied him on dates with girls, and besides we had a more solid tie – we worked together. We stole. I played the role of a cherubic poet, usually this was at the dance pavilion or out in the park, I recited poems to the astonished, open-mouthed girls, and meanwhile Sanya the Red, with his stubby, clumsy-looking fingers, would lightly and unnoticeably – he was a great artist at this business – remove the girls’ watches and pick their purses. It was all beautifully thought out, we never once got caught. As you see, my art then went side by side with crime. Afterward we either headed for a restaurant or bought a couple of bottles of wine, drank them right from the bottle in the park or in a doorway, and went for a walk.

  I very much enjoyed appearing with him on the streets and in crowded places. He dressed brightly, wore gold rings – one had a skull, I remember, that captured my fancy. He had the taste of a gangster, as they are depicted in the movies. On a summer evening, for example, he liked to wear white pants, a black shirt, and rakish white suspenders; he had a predilection for suspenders. A huge man – he even had a paunch, which got bigger and bigger with the years – he in no way resembled the ordinary, in those years rather drab inhabitants of our city, which is a provincial industrial center with the most numerous proletariat in the Ukraine.

  He got sent up without me – went to prison for attempting to rape a woman with whom he had had sex many times before. In prison he worked in the kitchen and… wrote poetry. When he got out, someone gave him a good deep dig with a knife. “Even my fat didn’t help!” he complained, when I visited him in the hospital.

  He was kind to me, he encouraged me in writing poetry and very much enjoyed listening to poetry. Several summers in a row, at his request, I read to an astonished crowd at the city beach lines that went something like this.

  My girl they will snatch

  From the car by the nape

  And I will then watch

  The men commit rape

  Men with pates jutting

  With cigarettes vile

  Will run like dogs rutting

  Round the scam of your thighs…

  It is funny and sad to read these lines, written by a sixteen-year-old, but I am forced to confess to myself that they strike an unpleasantly prophetic note. The world has fucked my love, and the men with jutting pates – the businessmen and merchants – are the ones who now fuck her, my little Elena…

  I was devoted to Sanya, body and soul. Had he wished it, I probably would have slept with him. But evidently he didn’t know he could use me in this way, or had no inclination to, or wasn’t sophisticated enough. Russia’s mass culture didn’t serve this to him on a platter the way American culture does.

  Such is my history. A love for strong men. I confess, and I see it now. Sanya the Red was so strong that he used to break the bars in the fence around the outdoor dance pavilion, the bars were as thick as a big man’s arm. True, he did this only when we didn’t have the fifty kopecks for admission.

  Gena was tall, well built, and looked like a young Nazi. Dark blue eyes. I never met a more handsome man.

  My friendships are intelligible to me now. Those were but two, the most memorable; there were others, but for many years I lived as if in a fog, and only when my tragedy opened my eyes did I suddenly see my life from a new perspective.

  Well, I somehow convinced Kirill, who was listening with awe, that my desire was sincere. He listens that way to the stories of all his companions, not just to mine, with a great show of interest, as if this were his main business in life; but it’s only show. He’s a young man who promises much but does little. In this case, thank God, I knew he wasn’t stretching the truth to make himself look good, he really was living temporarily in the apartment of some homosexual who was out of town. I had visited him there and seen the special magazines for men, and all the rest of it. What the hell, maybe Kirill really would introduce me. I was forced to grasp at anything, I had nothing, we were alien to this world. Ignorance of the language, especially conversation; prostration after my tragedy; prolonged isolation from society – for all these reasons I was unutterably lonely. All I was doing was bumming around New York on foot, sometimes walking two hundred and fifty blocks a day, bumming around in neighborhoods both dangerous and safe, sitting, lying, smoking, drinking from a bottle in a paper bag, sleeping in the street. I would go two or three weeks without talking to anyone.

  Time passed. I called Kirill once or twice and asked how were things, when would he keep his promise and introduce me to this fellow. He muttered something incomprehensible, justifying himself and obviously inventing excuses. I had completely given up hope in him, when suddenly he called me and said in an unnaturally theatrical voice, “Listen, remember our conversation? I’m here with a friend, he’s French, his name is Raymond, he’d like to see you. Come on over, we’ll have a drink and talk awhile – it’s next door to your hotel.”

  I said, “Kirill, is it that fellow, the pederast?”

  “Yes,” he said, “but not that one.”

  I said, “All right, I’ll be there in an hour.”

  “Make it quick,” he said.

  I am not going to lie and say that I rushed over there with flaming eyes and fire in my loins. No. I vacillated and was somewhat scared. For perhaps a minute or two I didn’t even want to go. Then I spent a long time wondering what to wear. In the end I dressed very strangely, in torn French blue jeans and a fine new Italian denim blazer; I put on a yellow Italian shirt, a vest, multicolored Italian boots, wrapped my neck in a black scarf, and started off, nervous – of course I was nervous. Live all those years with women, and then try and switch to men. You’ll be nervous.

  He lived at – but I don’t want to hurt the man. On the whole he’s a nice old fellow. An apartment “done in antique-shop,” as we used to say in Russia. On the wall, a Chagall with a dedicatory inscription; knickknacks; paintings depicting, as I later learned, our host himself in a tutu; photographs and portraits of male and female dancers, including Nureyev and Baryshnikov. An elegant, well-regulated bachelor life. Three, perhaps four rooms, with a nice smell, something that always distinguishes the apartments of society people and bohemians from the quarters of philistines and bourgeois families. The latter always stink of either food or cigarette smoke or something moldy. I am very sensitive to smells. Good perfume is a joy to me, a fact that my plebeian schoolmates used to laugh at. I liked the apartment for its smell.

  Now our host wrenched himself from his armchair to meet me. Fairly long red hair; heavyset, not very tall; a little bit free-and-easy, like an artist; well-dressed even around the house. On his neck, a dense mass of beads and nice little chains. On his fingers, diamond rings. How old he was I didn’t know, he looked to be more than fifty. In fact, he must have been over sixty.

  Kirill and he were on friendly footing. They were squabbling in a friendly way. The conversation began. About this, about that, or, as Kuzmin wrote, “Now Heinrich Mann, now Thomas Mann, and into your pocket with his hand.” Not really, no hands in the pocket for the time being, it was all very proper, three artistic individuals conversing, an ex-dancer, a poet, and an aristocratic young rakehell. The conversation was interrupted by the proposal that we have some cold vodka with caviar and cucumbers. Our host went to the kitchen, took Kirill with him. “I’ll use him to cut the cucumbers.” He wouldn’t let me hel
p. “You’re a guest.”

  Lord in heaven, what bliss! The last time I had eaten caviar must have been in Vienna – I had brought several cans out of Russia. Elena was still with me…

  How nice that he didn’t start in by flinging himself on me…, I thought. After I’ve had some vodka I’ll feel a little bolder, and while it’s taking effect I’ll be getting my bearings.

  How very nice, vodka and caviar. I was so out of the habit of normal life that it all seemed a marvelous dream. We drank from elegant silver-rimmed crystal, not from crappy plastic, and although we were only having hors d’oeuvres, a delicate nice plate lay before each of us. This place was so spacious after my hotel prison cell, I could stand up, walk around, examine things. The bread was spread with real butter, on top was real caviar, the vodka was ice-cold, and the cucumbers were cut in strips, I noticed, glancing over the table again.

  He still hadn’t fallen upon me. In a peaceful and sympathetic way he inquired about my relationship with my wife, not to reopen my wounds, he just asked, as if in passing. He said that he too had had a wife, before he knew that women were so horrible. She had fled to Mexico ages ago with a policeman, or a fireman, I don’t remember exactly; she was very rich, and she had two children by him. One son had died tragically.

  When we finished the bottle, and we did so rather quickly – we all drank easily and were experts, men who drank constantly, every day and heavily – he shook himself off, went into the bathroom, and started getting ready for the ballet.

  He put on very elegant clothes, a black velvet jacket from Yves Saint Laurent with a chic handkerchief in the pocket. When he came out he asked if we liked what he was wearing, and was very pleased to receive an affirmative from me and “Raymond, you’re a charmer” from Kirill.