Diary of a Loser

Arithmetic

Spring. I'm hungry.

The millionaire's housekeeper has lots of food and a variety of it, too. But I want my own food. That's why having stolen 950 from her piggy bank, I leave.

My remaining money is $1.50.

I buy a chicken at the store. It weighs 2.66 pounds, priced at 690 per pound, I pay $1.84. I have 610 left.

For 600, I get a pack of Kents at a cigarette booth, and I go home happy.

I have one penny in my pocket.

In the bathroom at night, I smile in the mirror at myself – the comedy of life.

«That's right, buddy, isn't it a comedy?» It is, for sure. Yes, a comedy. Honest to God, it's funny to find yourself suddenly in America, in the bathroom at night, living alone, and you smile. You even laugh, in fact.

And the light? I didn't turn it on – it comes through the kitchen.

I'm waiting for a decision from this Macmillan place, I'm waiting… and before that, I was waiting to hear from other places.

«Be patient, be patient and see what you'll get. Once on a beautiful day, you'll wake up old as a rag, hurting all over, and by then your hand couldn't hold a gun.»

Ah, how often I've dreamt and still am dreaming about beautiful, terribly beautiful girls. But I don't have them, and when I finally get them, when I have money to buy them and mount them to fuck them, I think my only desire will be to kill them and nothing else.

To kill them because they didn't come to me, they neglected me when I was young and gifted like a flower, when I believed in the blinding love – the sun. But come they will – when I become a vile old rat.

Yesterday they brought in old and elegant furniture – proper chairs upholstered with cherry-colored velvet, a huge table on carved legs, a stained-glass dresser, and a bar.

For a month now, the entire three-room apartment has belonged to me. My room-mate, the Jewish kid, left. Now the millionaire's housekeeper pays a third of the rent and still lives at her place of work. It's possible that with the help of this furniture and money she wants to capture me gradually. She has her objectives. My job is not to give in.

Meanwhile, life is gradually returning to normal. And though I have no money to get bread, and I totally depend on the millionaire's housekeeper, I feel bourgeois.

And what of it, that's the way it ought to be – think I – admiring the twenty bottles of alcohol that I've already put in the bar. It's impossible for life to stand still, it must go somewhere. Let it be going according to my efforts and under my supervision – after all, it's me trying to rebuild my own harmony destroyed by Elena. It's true to be sure – this harmony will also collapse. Such is man's lot. And I drink a tumbler of sweet alcohol, a full tumbler, like a child: «To good fortune!»

In order to raise his spirits, he went on early-morning walks. Today, he set an objective – to cover thirty blocks to Macmillan Press, to check «how are things,» and then walk back.

The wind blew, the press was where it was supposed to be; he tried to penetrate its recesses with his inner eye, he strained himself but very quickly understood that it was useless, and he turned to go.

Exactly at that moment, two postal workers exerting themselves – rolled out past him a huge tub of mail. There were no letters, just parcels, thick, same-size parcels. «Manuscripts,» he understood, horrified. A tub of manuscripts! Two or more – three cubic meters of manuscripts have vanished in the recesses of the press. The vastness of human activity made him noxious.

He pulled on his cap and took off. With the press at his back, he was still searching in the bowels of this building for the captive of two months – his nervous book.

On a hot sunny spring day it's good to go into a shaded bedroom and lie down for a nap. And have the vague sounds of car horns and voices waft in from the street. It's good to fall asleep with you, embracing you, slim you. We wake up and it's already dark out, the street lights are on. You'll put on your lovely, silly dress and we'll go to a circus to see the Lilliputians and the animals.

I work every day now. I return exhausted. The New York Times and glossy magazines have beautiful girls in them, yes, in all the ads. They're pretty, sleek in appearance, alluring. They're just the ones to fuck and to enjoy life with. But no, the others, the rich and idle, fuck them and feel up the pretty girls during the lazy summer afternoons, while you have to drive in the rain and clouds, siteseeing American dull spots and the rain pours down onto the car. You're a laborer, poor, oppressed, ethnic minority, fixing x-ray machines, drilling holes in the concrete, tightening bolts, painting for B B Company. And you'll never fucking be able to publish your harmful book, you won't be able rise out of the shit and mud. And you'll die just like that – a low-paid laborer in a cap, schlepping with pensive eyes to all these Long Islands in the mornings…

The clean rich – they're contemptuous of those who masturbate. Because the rich don't masturbate, you see. They always have someone to fuck. They fuck the beautiful ones – the highest quality. This is the tough truth which must be faced squarely.

And so it's all over. The American bourgeois publishing house Macmillan has refused to publish my book. And the woman Katie didn't help. After the telephone call from my agent, I went to plaster and paint a ceiling at a rich house. I stood on a ladder with my head up all day long, got exhausted by nighttime and on the way home I sadly swore in a summer's late night. It was Friday, and the buzzing swarm of slaves was sucked in by restaurants and theaters. I've wasted almost a half year on Macmillan. Forty more times like that, and I'll be a useless gizzard. It's terrifying!

So the rich boy will die of cancer and I don't fucking care.

Yes, he's beautiful and I'm sorry, but I don't fucking care!

For example, when I painted the ceiling at their place, I went to get a vacuum from the basement. There, locked in, was a dog the size of a year-old calf, and behind a screen, two puppies, one hundred pounds each. And there are two other grown dogs of the same breed walking around the house. They're huge: the stench, trash, dirt – it's worse than stables. The rich live as if in an outhouse. What's the use of all the carpets and tapestries and perfuming their necks and behind their ears? Their place is still an outhouse. And their dirty rags are everywhere. Hence the cancer – from being idle and from the stench in the house. So, he'll die, the rich boy – and that's the way it should be. Why is it that we – I – paint their ceiling and pick up trash, and the Yugoslav lugs and packs their stuff, and the Chinese is a house slave? Why is it that we work while they do nothing in their rotten nest, they don't work and feed their sponger-dogs? Is it because they're more talented than the Yugoslav and I?

No, they're not. The Yugoslav can reason intelligently, and I too am not among the least – I have a clever pair of hands, and I have brains. And the old Chinese guy can play the violin and the piano. We do everything for them, and what do they do for us?

Why are they given the money?

Maybe it's God, maybe not, but the cancer came in at the right time – it's something like retribution. Let the rich boy die. I'll be glad even. What the hell, why must I pretend that I'm moved, that I sympathize, that I'm sorry. I'm not moved, I don't sympathize, and I'm not sorry! My own life – in earnest, the only one – is knocked down by all these fuckers. Go ahead, die, the doomed boy! No amount of cobalt or money will help you. Cancer does not defer to money. If you give it a billion even, it won't retract. And that's fair. At least in that everyone is equal. Just like the forty-four-year-old Moscow plumber Tolik, the boy will die.

I always look at people's faces on the street. There are very few who could kill. These are not necessarily morose or savage looking men. Among those who could kill I often encounter women, bespectacled nerds, even a multitude of children.

«Could kill,» as I understand it, are those who could kill right now, this very moment, regardless of their strength or of anybody's strength, regardless of the fact that they could be killed. «Could kill» is a definite inborn, blood inherited, and a realized resolve to kill.

It's better not to bother such people. It's better not to demand money from them if you're a mugger. It's better not to swear at them or shove them – it's better to leave them alone. With that kind, you can't stop half way if you yourself are not determined to kill. Leave them, go away while you're still in one piece, and don't look back. If you won't kill him, he'll kill you.

It's been three years since I realized that I could kill. I'm firmly aware of that whenever I go out on the street. That's why I always carry a knife. I won't think twice about it. I won't waiver. I won't think about a possible punishment. If they touch me – I'll kill them. That's why I live with a peace of mind and am un-afraid of anything. And I go wherever I like.

In general, however, I'm quite harmless.