It's Me, Eddie

The new Elena

What has been happening to Elena, you will ask, while Eddie-baby has been sleeping with black guys, chasing after girl-revolutionaries, raging at Roseanne, and strolling around New York? How is she, Elena, and does Eddie encounter her, at least once in a while, in the jungles of the huge city – nose to nose, two animals who snort in recognition?

He does encounter her, yes. And oh, he remembers those encounters. They began slowly some time ago, but only in August did they become common and stick in my memory. Mild, all-smoothing August… it lay over my city in a dull, thready cloud, preparing the way for nasty autumn and harsh, leaden winter. A transition period, gentlemen. The rains kept trying to come, testing their influence over me. Nature convinced herself that I could take it, although rain does make me more gloomy and depressed – since earliest times, the Russian has been susceptible to the influence of the weather. "He can take it," Nature said, and turned on the sun again.

There had been trivial interactions between Elena and me since April. We had found it necessary to meet from time to time in order to bring each other things or books, generally it was a matter of trivial objects changing hands. The normal interactions between a divorced husband and wife.

This time it was a lousy overcast day. I picked up my check at 1515 Broadway, then went to a bank on Eighth Avenue and cashed the check, then trudged to Fourteenth Street, spent a long time pricing things and finally bought myself a pair of panties (blue and yellow, the colors of the Ukrainian national flag), wanted to buy some strawberries and eat them but begrudged the eighty-nine cents, bought an ice cream, and went to the hotel.

When I arrived Alexander called and said there was going to be a hurricane.

I replied, "Only a hurricane? Not an earthquake simultaneously with a worldwide flood and a conflagration in the six New England states as well as the state of New York?"

"No," Alexander said, "only a hurricane, alas." Alexander too wished the world safe in hell.

Later Elena called. "I'll be home," she said. "You can come get your book."

By my "book" she meant that same long-suffering National Hero, the manuscript in English, which had been translated two years before and published nowhere. Elena was perfectly familiar with this piece of mine in Russian. The reason she needed National Hero was to give it to her new lover to read, George the economist, as she calls him. The "economist" does something in the stock market, and he's a millionaire. So Elena says; I don't know whether it's true. Let's suppose it is. He has a dacha in Southampton, where other such millionaires live. As Elena tells it, they don't do a fucking thing, they just smoke, sniff cocaine, drink, give parties, and fuck, for which she, Elena, is very glad. I don't know whether that's true either. At any rate, that's what she says.

How did my National Hero fit in here? Well, I think she wanted to brag to her economist about her clever ex-husband. In the process, part of the intellect and talent would automatically accrue to her, Elena. The economist could not have cared less about Elena's ex-husband's literary works and took three weekends reading my manuscript, although it's forty minutes' worth, and I think he preferred to fuck Elena rather than read her husband's literary works. People who have things behave very cautiously in this world, for they are afraid that somebody will lop off part of what they have. They need literature like a cunt needs a door.

I went to get the book. Since returning from Italy she no longer lived at Zoli's but rented half of Sashka Zhigulin's studio – this was where I had met the little Jewish bourgeoise, if you recall – and her fucking economist had more or less promised to pay for the studio.

When I go to see her I am always nervous; I can't help myself, I'm nervous like a child before an exam. I wore a little checked shirt, a denim vest, denim jeans, white socks, two-color shoes – very lovely shoes, though I had found them on the street – and a black scarf at my neck. I arrived.

She met me looking extraordinarily fine, in a billowing floor-length white summer dress, a red cord across her brow and neck. So beautiful I could kill her, the whore. What a weakling; how could I let her be fucked by anyone else?

Such were my thoughts, and to stay out of trouble I said, "Want me to buy some wine?" – and instantly fled to the store, almost before she could say, "Go ahead, if you want to."

It seems I bought some good wine. I myself always drink just any old shit, but that's me, I've always been a sensible mutt; she is a fair lady, it does not befit her to drink shitty wine. We each took a seat at the table. We sat, drank wine. Talked. Then Zhigulin arrived with his father, who had flown in from the country, from Israel. The father took a seat too, and so did Zhigulin. We talked about mutual acquaintances. Talked about Starsky. Formerly a rich and famous Moscow artist, Starsky had been a typical representative of, and in a way the idol of, Moscow's privileged "golden youth." Elena and he had moved in the same set; Elena's ex-husband, Victor, was a friend of his. Elena was even in love with Starsky, and as she subsequently confessed, had dreamed of fucking him. But he didn't get around to it, delayed for some reason, and then I forcibly burst into her life, and stayed in her life until she just as forcibly drove me out.

Elena wondered what life was like for Starsky.

"Bad," replied Zhigulin Senior. "Sometimes I think he'll do away with himself. He has no work, there's almost no market for his paintings, he's even been forced to sell his car."

Starsky so loved cars, it was hard to imagine him without one; he had had one since childhood. "If Lyoka has sold his car, I can imagine what his life is like," Elena said. "But why is he staying there and not leaving?"

"Life in Israel isn't for him, of course," Zhigulin Senior continued. "There, everyone goes to bed by eleven, but Lyoka – you remember Lyoka – that's when his day is just beginning. He may come here; he's apparently planning on America."

"He'll be better off here," Elena said.

I thought, Now that you've broken loose from your chains, little one, you want to compensate yourself by fucking mustachioed, wrinkled Starsky, don't you? Anger flared within me. But instantly died out.

What can you do, Eddie? She's a free person, you can't do a fucking thing, she'll sleep with Starsky. You don't live by the Novodevichy Convent any more, Eddie. Times are different. Really, Eddie, are you sure she isn't fucking Zhigulin Junior? After all, they live in the same studio and their beds are ten paces apart. How could they not fuck, in a neighborly way?

My powerlessness gave me an unpleasant feeling. All I could do was observe her life, I couldn't even give her advice, she wouldn't accept advice from me. I am the ex-husband; that should not be forgotten. I am the past, the past cannot give advice to the present. Furthermore, all are free to mess up their own lives as they wish, and people like Elena and me are especially capable of messing up our own lives.

She is. I remember her first and last trip to Kharkov: Touched by the spectacle of my fat, gray, and crazy ex-wife Anna, she removed a diamond ring from her own finger and put it on Anna's. Anna, also a person given to excess in her hereditary madness (not without reason were her paintings so terrible and bright), rolled up her eyes and fell upon Elena's hand with kisses.

My thoughts flew back to Kharkov; I saw that scene vividly, and all my anger, which had been about to flare up, passed off. It may be worth living just for the sake of such scenes. Not to yourself, but from yourself – that's beautiful. That's why I so hate miserliness and do not love Roseanne. Elena Sergeevna is a little bitch, a whore, what you will, but she's capable of impulses, or was. Oh, I am proud of her now, from afar. What else do I have left?

The Zhigulins, both Senior and Junior, went up to see crazy Sasha Zelensky, who lived upstairs. Elena and I were left alone. She was in a quiet mood today and began to tell me how she had spent last weekend in Southampton.

She's ambitious, there's no help for it. "And the daughter of a certain multimillionaire was there too, you must know -," and she mentioned some name. I couldn't imagine how I, a welfare recipient, a moving man, John's helper, would know a multimillionaire's daughter's name, or the daughter herself. "Well," Elena went on, "so this girl came with a handsome guy. Later someone told me he was a gigolo, a man she had bought in order to have him make out he was her boyfriend."

Elena was swaying on Zhigulin's high stool, holding at some distance from her the very long cigarette holder that she had brought from Italy, a telescoping black lacquer tube.

"So this guy kept hovering around me, and the multimillionaire's daughter was furious. She actually came in a T-shirt, dirty jeans…"

I had the cheerless thought that the poor multimillionaire's daughter might be ugly, and… I had a shitload of thoughts, listening to her stories.

"But I'm sick of them all by now," Elena went on. "Sunday was horribly rainy, you know, I put on a raincoat and walked along the seashore alone. It was so nice."

I, Eddie-baby, by strange coincidence, having spent the night at Alexander's, on that same Sunday morning had walked in the rain along the ocean to the Coney Island subway station. Not a single living creature was there. I rolled my trousers up to the knees so that the wet white duck wouldn't lash against my legs, and walked, at times knee-deep in the water. There were seagull-pecked crabs and their parts on the sand, mussels, things of man that had fallen under the sea's jurisdiction. Rain and more rain. A confused melody trembled within me. In this melody, perhaps, lay the sad implication that the world was worth nothing, that everything in this world was nonsense and decay and the eternal comings and goings of the gray waves, and only the indwelling love in my body distinguished me in any way from the landscape…

I told Elena, sparingly and simply, that I too had walked along the seashore alone that Sunday.

"Yes," she said.

Then I went with her to buy hair coloring. She put on some gray old jeans we had bought her when she still lived with me. On the whole, as you will see later, she hadn't acquired many new things. Either her lovers weren't noted for generosity or she didn't know how to squeeze money out of them or she made love with them just for the pleasure of making love; I don't know.

She put on these little jeans and also a little black turtleneck, took an umbrella, and we set off. Like the good old days. The fucking rain was coming down in buckets, but my heart was gay. I was walking with her. Our umbrellas touched now and then.

In the shop on Madison, everyone gawked at us – a slightly rumpled pair of little kids had come to buy something. She chose hair coloring, and she then took half an hour choosing a cosmetics case, and during that time, gentlemen, I was enjoying myself. Cod had sent me pleasure. At length she finished choosing the case. Then she bought soap, some sort of cap for the bath, and something else. She asked if I had any money with me. I said, "I do, I do!"

"Give me a ten, I'll pay you back later."

I said she didn't need to pay anything back; she didn't have money now and I did. Several jobs in succession with John really had brought me some dollars.

I always loved to watch her browse in stores. She knew what was what, she knew what she needed, but always, here in America, the poor little girl had no money at all. It occurred to me, as I watched her, how nice it was that I hadn't been able to strangle her, she was alive, and I wanted her to be warm and dry in this world – that was the main thing. As for the fact that all sorts of sleazebags were poking their cocks into her little peepka, well, all right, it was what she wanted. It hurt me, but she was getting pleasure. You think I'm farting around showing off, making myself out to be an all-forgiving Christ? Fuck no, this is honest, I wouldn't lie, I'm too proud. It hurts me, it hurts, but every day I tell myself and instill in myself:

"Treat Elena, Eddie-baby, as Christ treated Mary Magdalene and all women who sinned. No, treat her better. Forgive her both today's whoredom and her adventures. All right, it's the way she is," I exhorted myself. "If you love her, this long, thin creature in faded little jeans who is browsing now among the perfumes, sniffing them with an important air and unscrewing the stoppers – if you love her, love is above personal grudge. She's unwise and evil and unhappy. But you feel that you're wise and good: love her, don't scorn her. Keep an eye on her life. She doesn't want you to, don't pry into her life, but help when you can and must. Help, and expect nothing in return – don't demand that she come back to you in return for whatever you're able to do. Love does not demand gratitude and gratification. Love itself is gratification."

That is what I taught myself in the perfumery on Madison Avenue. Oh, I haven't always succeeded, of course, but with interruptions for malice and loathing, I have disposed myself more and more in that direction, and I think I do love her that way now.

To me her wash-faded jeans are dearer than all the blessings of this earth, and I would betray any cause for those slim little legs with their complete absence of calves, I thought in the perfumery, while this interested creature bent down and straightened up over objects and scents.

We returned to the eternally dark studio. Had it been light, Zhigulin would have paid a lot more than three hundred for it. To Elena there was nothing good about living in the dirty studio. After the wonderful Zoli Agency building, Zhigulin's studio was a come-down for Elena. What it was that she and Mr. Zoli did not share, what the reason was for her eviction, I don't know. Elena attributed his displeasure to the fact that she had left Milan without waiting for a show in which she was supposed to participate. Her trip to Milan had been totally unproductive for her career, and to all appearances Zoli was no longer betting on her at all, nor predicting a brilliant future for her as a model. Elena's friends, or enemies, told me in secret that Zoli was dreaming of getting rid of the eccentric Russian girl altogether; that was why he had packed her off to Milan. When she returned from Milan the room she had lived in was allegedly occupied. I don't know, that's what they say.

At Zhigulin's she occupied the left half of the studio, in theory at least. Her bed was located in an alcove, the mattress lay right on the floor, next came the pillows, and sometimes I noticed on the bed our linens, which she had had custom-made in Moscow, and which she had brought over with her. I have to turn aside when I see these linens – after all, they were witness to numerous love sessions with her. She is not a fetishist, but I am. vile fetishist, I throw away things of the past to keep from crying over them. So I turn aside. In many ways Zhigulin's studio is a museum because both my writing desk from Lexington Avenue and my armchair are there; Elena bought these when I began working at the newspaper. And our damn cat, white and deaf, filthy dirty or freshly washed, comes creeping out from time to time. She's still just as gluttonous and just as stupid. Zhigulin's whole studio – he has somehow wormed his way unnoticed into my life, a pretty good guy, by and large – his whole studio is strung with power lines, everything in it collides, crisscrosses, squeals, sparks. Sometimes the thought occurs to me, What if it's this way only to me, and not to Elena? What if, to her, the studio is calmer and quieter? Or always a deathly silence? Then I really feel shitty. We're all automatically inclined to liken others to ourselves, and later it turns out we are far from the truth. I had already likened Elena to myself, had already been punished for it. To the end of my days the scars on my left arm, red from sunburn, will remind me of the unwisdom of likening.

We returned with several fruits of the perfumery paradise. I regretted not having much money with me. My girl, it appeared, was living on bread and water; a model's earnings, if she's not a big-time model, just rank and file, are paltry.

We got hungry. She took some fish sandwiches out of the refrigerator; she has always hated to cook. In our family I did the cooking, I was the waiter too; what's more I was secretary to her, my beloved poetess, retyped her poems; I made and remade clothes for her; I was also… in our family I had many trades. "Fool," you will say, "you spoiled the woman. Now you have only yourself to blame!"

No, I didn't spoil the woman, she was that way with Victor, the rich husband twice as old as she, whom she married at seventeen; she lived just the same way. Victor made the soup, drove a Mercedes, he was a private chauffeur – the poor artist was earning money, while Elena Sergeevna went out in an ostrich feather dress to walk her dog. And when passing by the Novodevichy Convent, she and the white poodle stopped in at a poverty-stricken, blindingly sunny little room to see the poet Eddie. It was I, gentlemen. I undressed this creature, and having drunk a bottle of champagne or even two – the poverty-stricken poet drank only champagne in the land of the Gulag Archipelago – having drunk some champagne, we gave ourselves over to such love, gentlemen, as you have never fucking dreamed of. The regal poodle – a girl, named Dvosya, who passed away prematurely in 1974 – watched us enviously from the floor and let out an occasional yelp…

Oh, I don't want to remember. Presently on our agenda is New York, as I myself used to say when I was council chairman of a Young Pioneer detachment, a Pioneer and an honest child. On our agenda is New York. And that's all.

We gulped down the fish sandwiches. They weren't enough, of course, for the former husband and wife. The thin young man and woman had healthy appetites. I said I was hungry: "Shall we go eat somewhere?" "Let's," she said, "let's go to the Italian restaurant, it's right close by, the Pronto. I'll call Carlos." Why she had to call Carlos in order to go to an Italian restaurant I didn't understand, but I didn't protest. I would have endured a hundred Carloses for the pleasure of sitting with her in a restaurant. Who knows, she may have been afraid to go alone with me to a restaurant. I had nearly killed her; she had her reasons.

The not-quite-strangled girl began dialing Carlos. He was a rather dim character, in my view. I had seen him once here at the studio, an ordinary person, nothing special, nothing interesting. He didn't do a fucking thing, but he had plenty of money, Elena said. Where from? His parents. That's the state of affairs the world revolution will be aimed against. Working men – poets and busboys, porters and electricians – must not be in an unequal position vis-a-vis shitasses like him. Hence my indignation.

She did not dress up at all, merely put on a little powder and wound the twisted red cord around her forehead and neck again, and went as she was in her little jeans and black turtleneck. He wasn't there yet, thank God. We sat on a raised floor to the right of the entrance, took a table for four, ordered red wine, and she looked around for him. She had developed this silly habit of waiting and looking around for someone. She didn't use to look around for anyone.

"I forgot to tell you," she said suddenly, a little embarrassed, as it seemed to me, "this is a very expensive restaurant. Do you have money?"

I had $150 in my pocket; if I was out with her, I knew her habits. A hundred and fifty – it would be enough.

"I have money, don't worry," I said.

Then this character appeared. I wouldn't be hostile to him if it weren't for Elena, I have no fucking need of him, a dim character with a checkbook. Those who themselves have wrung money out of this life you can at least respect for something; what could you respect him for, dependent as he was on his parents? Why the fuck had he crossed my path!

He arrived. Short hair, conservatively dressed – that's not my expression, I swiped it from Elena and the lesbian Susanna. He sat down beside her, kept squeezing my darling's little hand. I found this disagreeable, but what could I do. An expression of Chris's rose to the surface of my mind: "Take it easy, baby, take it easy!" And I grew calmer. He squeezed her little hand, kept putting his arm around her shoulders and taking it away. An open-and-shut case: she isn't letting him fuck much, or she let him just a little and isn't anymore, I thought with monstrous coolness, gazing at this woman to whom I had been married according to the royal rite in a brilliantly illumined church. I recalled the priest's farewell counsel: "Evil men will try to part you."

The evil man kept grabbing her hand. I could have shot him without a qualm. It's for men like him that the laws have been created, to preserve their property and their dubious rights, so that men like me will not achieve (without a qualm) the right to justice. I sat opposite him, even in my misfortune spirited and mean, with much more breadth and talent than he. All my misfortune lay in my virtues. I was able to love, knew how to love. But he was an indifferent cork bobbing on the waves of the sea of life, all he had was a cock, and he kept after her, touching her hand, seeking to insert his itching cock into her peepka.

They didn't talk about anything interesting. Oh, for propriety I asked him some questions, somehow participated in the conversation. My goal was to sit beside her.

Later, after we – mainly Elena and I, of course – had drunk several carafes of wine, we abandoned the rich people dining in warmth and light and went to the Playboy Club on Fifty-ninth Street. It had been there all the time, I could have walked out of the Winslow in my slippers and found myself in another world. Carlos had a Playboy card – of course he was a playboy, how could he not be. A bunny stood at the entrance, Carlos showed her his card. The bunnies wore ears and pantyhose, that was practically all they had on. Inside, in the semidarkness, other bunnies walked around serving drinks. Elena and Carlos led me through all the floors of the club, showed provincial Eddie the den of vice. Each floor had its own bar or restaurant, waiters in different uniforms, paintings and photographs, semidarkness, as I have already noted, and suchlike splendors. Amidst mild music, sipping my vodka from a huge glass, I remembered by contrast some friends of a week's standing, Brooklyn Bridge bums, and burst out laughing. Shit, and this is civilization. Why aren't they afraid of the gigantic waves that will some day rise up from the slums of Brooklyn and the Lower East Side and fucking submerge the little islets where the feast goes on in time of plague, where the sounds of hollow music flow, bunny asses flit around practically bare, and my Elena walks accessible to all? And no provincial one-story America can fucking save anybody, all shall be as New York wants, my great and flaming city…

We were sitting near the dance floor, I was sipping my vodka, when suddenly Elena invited me to dance. We were off. Oh, she dances brilliantly, my angel fucker, as Eddie-baby once called her when drunk, while still her beloved husband. She liked the nickname then. Angel fucker.

During the first dance there were other couples on the stage, and the celebrated bunnies danced alongside us. Then for some reason we danced alone – who the fuck knows how we happened to be alone – and there was a flashing light that kept suddenly fixing our poses. It was delicious. She was near, and it seemed to me that nothing had changed. There had been no blood or tears, and now we would dance awhile longer, and start home with our arms around each other, and lie down together.

Shit, no way. We weren't there long. Carlos dragged us to the home of some friends of his to watch pornographic films. Our host was about fifty, in appearance he was like Tosik, a mutual acquaintance of Elena's and mine, a sharp operator from Tbilisi; his tart was young. During the porn films, in which disgusting and vulgar women joyfully swallowed the semen of a pimply cretin, my darling sat in the same chair with Carlos for some reason, and in my opinion he spent the whole time trying to grab or embrace her. They were sitting behind me, but even from the kind of noise they were making I understood that she was ashamed before me, and that he, Carlos, held none too high an opinion of her.

He sees her as a tart, I thought, and she keeps playing the queen and starting adoration games. I had taught her, Moscow had taught her: she was Fair Helen of Troy, the best woman in Moscow, and if in Moscow, in all of Russia. A Nathalie Pushkin. But she didn't see how he looked at her. The simple little idiot Sasha Zelensky, who is secretly in love with Elena, had said – not to me, of course, but to one of our friends – that he had encountered Elena taking a man to her place: "Do you know how he looked at her? We always made such a fuss over her: 'Elena, our Helen!' But he knew her price, our Helen's price, he knew perfectly well." That may have been Carlos, how should I know – Eddie-baby doesn't know a fucking thing. I have only pain, only pain.

Elena came over to me after the porn filth and said, as if in self-justification, "Carlos wanted to see what my face would be like, how I'd react to those films. Well, how are you?" she said, and suddenly stroked my hair. Oh!

How was I? Picture a bandit at large, who is accustomed to react to everything simply and clearly: I felt like shooting everyone in the house and riding off with her into the night. But after all, this was her evil will – she and I had to live this way. And I endured it.

Then we left. He tried to get a taxi, I stood with her under the pillars of the building, and she said that I looked good, that I had found my own style in dress. I thanked her for the evening and for the Playboy Club.

"Have you been to the Infinitive? It's a discotheque," she asked. "No," I said, "I haven't."

"I'll take you, I have a membership card," she said. "Or rather, it's George's card, but that's all right"

It was pouring rain. He finally flagged a cab. We started off, she demanded to be taken home first. We took her home; getting out, she kissed me on the lips. When I glanced in the mirror at the hotel, my lips were all lipstick. I wiped it off, and then was sorry I had.

A bit later there was another encounter, when a strange intimacy occurred between us, we embraced and kissed drunkenly, she was tender and quiet. This was on a boat, where we had gone in a group: Zhigulin and some fluffy girl, and the dried herring Zelensky, and us, ex-spouses.

The boat lay in a shallow little bay- Later the man who owned or rented it – he had arranged the party too, a certain Red – guided his old tub into a broader puddle, set it there in the middle of the puddle, and we all got drunk and stoned. Why we did this nobody knew.

Did I feel good? Not very, at first. To my good fortune, there wasn't one man in the whole company who could have made advances to Elena. Two homosexuals, Mark and Paul, an old married couple, had more of a brotherly feeling for her. Still wearing the same little jeans and a wide lilac blouse, she paced among us, told bawdy anecdotes, served an ether-type drug to everyone in turn, held our nostrils herself and made us inhale. The mere pressure of he fingers on my nose was enough to put me in a faint. She was altogether the merry wench, thoroughly at ease with us, the life of our small party. My beauty paced among us a bit round-shouldered and ridiculous, and I was happy that there was no real man among us, no one was courting her in my sight. I was ready to shower kisses on Red, who was a man of indeterminate sex, and a friend of his who had no reaction to either women or men and who turned out to be an expert on the leaders of revolutionary movements. At first Elena didn't talk to me very much. In the middle of the happening, when I was standing on the bow staring into the water, she came up and said, "This boat reminds me of that jazz boat, remember? We traveled down the Moscow River, and you and I got drunk and came to blows, and then in the morning we crawled out the cabin window."

That was her first reminder of our past.

What followed happened as if in a haze and fog. No wonder I laid into the liquor and kept sniffing, with her help, though she served the drug to everyone. In the end, the moment when she and I embraced – I don't know how long it lasted – slipped away from me. I'm so vexed and angry now at my drunken self. I did not drink that moment to the last drop, did not feel it deeply, I remember only that it was tender and very quiet. I sat and she stood, I think, and I stroked her little bosom under the blouse. Then fate, in the form of Zhigulin, led us off in different cars, we went home separately, I remember my terrible anguish over this.

Well, of course I called her after that, groping to find what I had forfeited. In hopes of a meeting with her I went out and bought some shoes, dreamed of a carnation in the lapel of my white suit. She was busy, or more likely had recovered from her momentary weakness, and I, too, after suffering awhile, thought it was better this way, I mustn't hope for anything, otherwise little Eddie's life would again become hell, and this way it was only half hell.

After a time she called, though I no longer remember, maybe I called; nor do I remember whether our meetings were in the chronological sequence in which I've enumerated them or in some other order. I called, I think, and it turned out she was sick. She lay in the studio alone, Zhigulin was in Montreal at the time, and she was hungry. I bought her some groceries, I don't remember what, took some books, which she hadn't especially asked for, it was merely that the sight of these books evoked memories, and I didn't want memories, that was why I took her the books. I arrived – the door was open.

"Why don't you close it?" I said to her.

"Anh!" She merely waved a hand, sat down on the bed. She had on tight-fitting striped knit pajamas. I made her a sandwich, she snorted, was dissatisfied with the kind of bread, I had bought the wrong bread. "A baby, a fucking baby, a rubber doll," I thought, looking at her.

Having eaten, she began to boast. Some lover of hers had offered her five million to go away and live with him. "Oh, Nastasya Filipovna," I thought, "you incorrigible eccentric!"

"He was poor when he met me," Elena went on. "I told him that so long as he was poor we had nothing to discuss. He went away somewhere, and now he's back and he's offered me five million. He made it on cocaine."

The woman who had been offered five million lay in her alcove, the mattress lay right on the floor, the refrigerator was empty and not even turned on, dirt and eternal semidarkness filled the studio, and for some reason there was no one but me to bring her anything to eat. Probably a coincidence.

She went on boasting to little Eddie. "I refused!"

"Why?" Eddie asked. "You've always wanted money, haven't you?"

'To hell with him. You always have to be on drugs around him. He's strong but I'm not, I don't want to turn into an old woman in a couple of years. And besides, they could always put him in prison, confiscate his property. And I didn't want to leave New York with him, I don't like him."

He made money on cocaine the way Shurik did on oranges and anasha, I thought with melancholy. Shurik went from Kharkov to the port of Baku, and there bought oranges and anasha. Not cocaine, a narcotic. He flew to Moscow and sold it all at many times what he had paid. Took the money, returned to Kharkov, and brought the money to Vika Kuligina, a whore. Now, there was a good woman. Must be old by this time. Had some talent. Wrote poetry. Took to drink.

Here's a parallel. Elena, Vika. But she doesn't know. I was the one who saw Vika. She's scrambled my whole world. The Shuriks, the Carloses. Cocaine. All is chaos, life chaos…

My last encounter with her earned me a gruesome attack of nerves. It was my own fault; she had nothing to do with it, she behaved in her normal fashion, did nothing to bring on an attack.

She called me in the morning and said, "Ed, do you want to go to my show? It's today at three o'clock." Her little voice, thin enough as it is, always becomes tiny when she's nervous.

I said, "Of course, Elena, I'll be very happy to!"

"Write down the address," she said. "Between Twenty-sixth and Twenty-seventh Streets, on Seventh Avenue, the Fashion Institute of Technology, second floor, Editorial."

I went. I was nervous. I had specially bought new perfume, put on my best white suit and black lace shirt, pulled my cross up under my throat. The bus moved terribly slowly, and I was already jittery in advance, afraid of being late.

I wasn't late. I found the hall in the Institute's huge building. All the front seats were taken. I located an empty seat somewhere in back and settled down to wait. On the stage a little garden or park had been created, plants set out in a special way, lighting set up in a special way. Electricians and photographers bustled around near the stage creating an atmosphere of anxious expectation. I waited.

Finally the sound came on, piercing music, strange to my ear. Perhaps the music struck me as strange only because it was so very long since I had been in any similar large gathering with people, so long since I had seen any kind of performance; except for the cinema I haven't gone anywhere, I've become unsociable.

They came out, they froze in assorted poses, and then set up a din, an uproar, depicting autumnal animation. Little girls. Hobby-horses, starlets, models – they all looked alike at first glance, and only later, straining my eyes, did I learn by great effort to distinguish among them. Children of the female sex, thin, harried, trained to special tricks, they crossed the stage in time to the music, walked down the tonguelike runway, twirled at its tip, threw the spectators a smile or a grimace or a deliberately sulky look, and withdrew as they had come. For some reason I felt sorry for them, and my heart contracted every time I looked at them. I felt especially sorry for the ones with short haircuts. Perhaps because their little faces, without exaggeration, were the faces of children who had just endured a grave illness. Good Lord, and loutish men mauled these children, mauled, fucked, lay heavy, forced their cocks into them. I felt miserable, and only by an effort of will pulled myself together and looked at the stage.

Meanwhile, Elena too had appeared. She was excessively fidgety and jittery. I don't remember her first costume because I didn't make her out immediately under the hat. By the time I realized that this was my darling, her little face had already flashed past and disappeared into the wings. Her second costume was something lilac, long and draped, it might have been called a dress, but then again it might not have. Her eyes flashing under the hat, Elena drew applause from the audience.

But on the whole she performed worse than the other girls. Though I don't like to admit it, she jittered excessively; excitement made her overfamiliar and undisciplined. Among her girl friends there were several very high-class professionals. They worked precisely and mechanically, their movements were spare and honed, no unnecessary little added wrinkles appeared in their clothes, they exhibited a purity of style and purity in every movement. There was nothing extra: at the right time an abrupt movement of the face, up with the chin, all in time and precise.

But Elena pranced too much, flirted, took too much initiative, acted and overacted, bustled, her movements were impure.

If it were a question of beauty, in my view, Eddie's unobjective view, she was much more attractive as a woman than all the other models, all the rest of the corps de ballet. But her work was amateurish, that was obvious.

Judge for yourselves: She appears in a little white duck outfit with a hood, and white boots; you know, a nice kind of outfit for a young and idle woman to wear when she emerges from the door of her villa somewhere in Connecticut to gather mushrooms after the rain. So she appears in this little outfit, dances onstage to the music as if gathering mushrooms, or berries, if you don't gather mushrooms in America, and it comes off pretty well, some people applaud. But then when she has moved to the tongue, is already at the tip of it, precisely where she ought to display herself in large, Elena makes a sudden quick spin, her movements are jumbled, lose precision, so that we, the spectators, don't even have time to make out her face. Elena's smudged features flash by – hers? not hers? you can't tell – and she's gone from the tongue. She didn't fix the image of her face even for an instant, didn't know how to display it, stop it temporarily and present it. No, her performance was amateurish. The applause died out before it could begin.

At the end there were balloons, a procession, music, noise, tangled ribbons – here she was within her repertoire. Circus art is for her. She became entangled in the balloons, waved her hat and so on, she did this well. I was dissatisfied with her, I wanted her to be first in everything.

I hung around in the hall awhile and then went out to wait for her. By now many girls had walked by, they were being met by either lovers or friends, or were leaving alone – there were, it seemed, thin and brash girls like that – but there was still no Elena. Finally she came in sight. She was wearing a white hat and a light, flowery outfit of some sort, a blouse and skirt – later I saw that they were old – and brown shoes, also old; her little legs were covered in dull pantyhose. I went over and kissed her (cowardly Eddie had resolved to kiss her), congratulated her, noting that the makeup on her cheeks was somehow stale, caked. She looked tired.

"Thank you," I said, "I liked it, only you hurried excessively. It was clear they didn't give you much time."

That was what I said. I could not say I hadn't liked the way she performed; I didn't want to hurt her. Zhigulin was also standing there with his camera, absent-minded, distraught Zhigulin, who of course had just arrived and had seen nothing.

"I can't understand where George is," Elena was saying, irritably glancing around. "He was in the hall, but where is he now?"

She was very edgy, she had no fucking need of her faithful dog Eddie, who would have come crawling all covered with blood if she had called. She needed George, who was not there. Eddie was a noble knight: he did not remind Elena of her remark that she didn't love anyone, all men were the same to her. Eddie well knew, from Elena's friends, that George had not invited Elena to Southampton last weekend; that Elena had found in his house some Tampax, obviously another woman's; that George, who had earlier promised to buy Elena a fur coat, was by now planning to buy her just a cloth coat. And that to this day he had never yet paid, even once, for Zhigulin's studio, as he had promised to do. The lame-legged cynic and zhlob, he was toying with her like a mouse.

Eddie held his tongue and only said sympathetically, "Maybe he's in the lobby, shall we go look?" – and went with Elena to the lobby.

Of course, there was no George in the lobby or in prospect. She did not cry, maybe she can't cry, I don't know; the last time I saw her tears was when I strangled her, or tried to. Now she was edgy. Turning to Zhigulin, she said she would go home, perhaps George would call home; after all, they were supposed to go to the theater that evening.

I said that it would be nice to celebrate Elena's performance in the Russian manner and that I proposed going somewhere for a drink, it was my treat. Simultaneously Eddie-baby apologized for not bringing Elena flowers, I had been in such a rush to see her that I hadn't had time, and then I had wondered whether she wouldn't be angry – it might be preposterous, by local standards, to give flowers to a model who had taken part in a show. It might be provincial.

In the end the two of us went to a bar. Zhigulin didn't go. We sat, drank, and she explained to me a rather crazy idea of hers about some bolts of fabric in which she wanted to wrap herself up, thereby making a dress. She had some other wild designs for this same fabric; I was supposed to do the sewing. Although I myself am not a particularly normal guy, I understood that this too – Elena's desire to bypass money, have dresses in this way, simply and easily, and to play designer besides – was a form of the fucking craziness caused by Western life. I understood that this childish venture was crazy, not a fucking thing would come of it, but I consented. I was afraid of hurting her or provoking her anger.

"Now let's go and I'll show you the fabrics, I have them at the studio," Elena said. "You'll help me wrap myself up. I have to go to the theater with George tonight, and I'm so sick of my old dresses."

"Look, let me give you some money, and you buy yourself a dress," I said.

"Oh, no…" she said uncertainly.

"Why not, Elena," I said. "We're old friends. When you become a great model, you'll help me."

"But how much money do you have with you?" she asked with interest.

"Oh, about a hundred dollars," I said. She thought for a second.

"Finish your drink," she said. "Let's go to Bloomingdale's and see what they have."

She knocked back her drink in one motion. At that moment we were served with little sausages and some meatballs something like tefteli, on a little dish. Perhaps this is the custom. She tried one, then took another by the little stick on which it was impaled and popped it into my mouth. Attention of a special sort, a caress. I paid, gave the barman such a big tip that he grinned with pleasure, and we left.

The taxi ride took a very long time, traffic was heavy. We could almost have gotten there faster on foot. She was very edgy, tried to get out too soon, I kept soothing her.

"No, I'll buy myself some shoes," she said when we got out of the cab. "I can adapt that fabric somehow, but I still don't have any shoes." I said that it was up to her, and that I personally advised her to buy a big item, "something that will look important, be noticeable," I said.

This time, strangely enough, the shoes that she bought thirty minutes later were ones I had pointed out to her. They were black shoes on a high, thin heel with a little gold trim. She tried on these shoes, then dragged the saleswoman to another department, tried on something there, then returned, put two mismatched shoes on her feet, walked up and down, looked, and settled after all on the ones I had pointed out to her. Having completed the tedious payment procedure – at Bloomingdale's they don't hurry, the shoes cost $57 – we left and walked up and down through other departments. I don't know how we ended up in lingerie, she was already examining panties with ruches, frills, and flowers. "Do you like them?" she kept turning to ask me. "I've been terrified to look at women's underwear for some time," I told her. She let my remark pass. Why should she listen to me, she had no fucking need of my problems. I shut up again, although I so wanted to finish what I had to say.

We bought her a considerable number of panties and some other trifles, then went to the studio.

There she immediately undressed in the bathroom and came out wearing just her pantyhose, right on her naked body, without panties, as models do at shows to avoid having a panty-line on the hips. The triangle of hair at her peepka stared ironically at little Eddie. Bare-breasted and bare-pooped under the pantyhose, Elena walked out in the new shoes.

I don't think she was tormenting poor Eddie on purpose, she simply wasn't thinking about him. She was used to going around that way among photographers, among the staff, and did not intend to change her habits. Little Eddie would see her naked and be miserable? To hell with him!

"You're a nobody!" The words she had spoken to me over the telephone in February came back to me now. "No anger has my soul!" I told myself. "Like Christ with Mary Magdalene!" I went on, to calm myself. It helped.

Suddenly it dawned on me: Good Lord, she doesn't know what she's supposed to do with us all, with men, with the Victors, the Eddies, the Jeans… Use us in sex, get our money, have us take her to a restaurant. That's all she can do with us. She's innocent as a baby, for she doesn't know how else she can use us. No one ever taught her. For the rest, we get in her way. She was dreaming when she lived with Victor, she was dreaming with me, she's dreaming now. She doesn't care who's with her. She doesn't see. The discovery terrified me.

She doesn't know about love. Doesn't know that it's possible to love someone, pity him, save him, snatch him from prison, from illness, stroke his head, wrap his throat in a scarf, or, as in the gospel, wash his feet and dry them with her own hair. No one has told her about love, Cod's gift to man. Reading books, she missed it. Brute love is accessible to her, there's nothing complicated about that. She thinks it's all there is. This is why she's always so depressed in her notebooks (I've always read them), so helpless and dull in her perception of the world.

Maybe she'll be lucky yet and fall in love. It will be hard for her, and wonderful. I envy the man with whom the love of this unfortunate creature at last finds expression. He will inherit a lot. So much love must have accumulated within her. But most likely she will never experience the happiness of giving her whole self, her soul, to another creature, never experience the sweet pain of this act, so unnatural in an animal, which is what man is.

Many of you in this world, like her, are unhappy, but only by reason of your inability to love, to love another creature. Poor, poor you! When Eddie fell apart he was nevertheless happy; though sick, he has within him Love. Envy him, gentlemen!

Such were my reflections while she twirled her poopka, and at that moment Zhigulin arrived.

"Eddie bought me some shoes," she said.

"Would you buy some for me?" Zhigulin asked with interest.

"Elena, you're supposed to go out, and you also promised to go to the bar with me," I said, not answering Zhigulin.

"We'll make it," she said. "I'll shower now and we'll go to the bar."

She showered and we began the wrap job. It was horribly silly: she with nothing on, as before, and I with trembling hands wrapping her in transparent fabrics, first lilac, then black and yellow. This was crap, she realized it, but she said we didn't know how to wrap, neither I nor she. Of course not, how could we, we weren't Indians.

She decided to wear the lilac dress. I was put to work hemming up the dress for her. I hemmed it, what else! I can do everything, it's really lousy. Finally, after ordering Zhigulin to send the lame "economist" downstairs to the bar, she went down with me. My white suit jacket was unbuttoned, she wore the weird lilac dress and the shoes I had bought her, with the long cigarette holder in her hand – beautiful, seductive. You might have thought we were rich people, a husband and wife, or lovers, prosperous Eddie and the beauty Elena whom prosperous Eddie had bought, going down to the bar.

She ordered cognac, I whiskey, J B. We drank. Striking people. I had already begun to enter into the role, but she kept distracting me, the whole time she kept looking out the window at the street, and suddenly she broke loose. She walked out – walked out, hell, she ran out – and returned with someone wrinkled and mustachioed, I briefly saw something yellow. She introduced us and they left at once, my lilac vision withdrew. "His name is George." We know he's George.

The Japanese barman saw, the barman understood. They had stabbed me in the heart, and at that moment everything burst into flames, everything!

And how would you have felt in that bar on East Fifty-fourth, Fifty-eighth Street, if a rich man had stolen your love merely because he was rich, and you were left on the stool to drink your J B and pose as a visiting foreigner? Fucking shit! All my hatred for this world – the personal hatred of talented brave Eddie, musky little wild beast – a bitter and miserable hatred, unable to vent itself, was instantly in my eyes.

Do not forget the milieu in which I grew up and was formed. A milieu where love and blood stood side by side, betrayal was barely a step ahead of the word knife. I sat on the stool and reflected that the boys back home, my friends rotting in prison camps for their crimes, the gangsters and thieves of Kharkov, now scorned me as a pathetic rag. "They stole her, you shitass, and you didn't even put a knife in the chump's ribs. Everyone who feels like it fucks her, she sucks them all off, you shitass, and you let them mess on your soul. Asshole, coward, lousy fucking intellectual!"

So said the boys, they spoke terrifyingly and frankly. From their own parochial viewpoint they were right, yes, they were definitely right, by their code and mine I should have knifed her if I loved her. And I did love her.

Little Eddie was silent. What could he say to the boys? That this was her own evil will, that lame George had nothing to do with it, or Jean…

When Kirill walked into the bar – this was half an hour later, Zhigulin had told him I was sitting here with Elena – he told me afterward, "From the look in your eyes, you'd just seen someone run a red-hot poker through the head of your beloved child." Kirill loves to express himself ornately, but evidently it was true.

When he came in I was on my sixth or seventh J B, I ordered the same for him, it may have been White Label, I don't know, but we drank it and went from there to another place, and I remember almost nothing further. Kirill said afterward that we were in several bars, that we got thrown out of one, that I undressed and swam in a fountain, that I climbed up on some sort of sculpture and jumped down, that I posed as a mobster, a godfather. Of course this was all my subconscious.

He spent the night at the hotel, and in the morning he and I had a row. When I tried to take my contact lenses out of my eyes, I discovered they weren't in my eyes. "Fuck the lenses, fuck the two hundred and twenty dollars, so much is already lost that this isn't even a loss," I told Kirill. He evidently caught my inner hysteria because he began to torture me with stories about how I had behaved.

"You were repulsive," Kirill said in a sort of malicious ecstasy. "You hurled yourself under cars, you took off your shoes and went barefoot, your face was vile."

Kirill said all this standing over, me as I lay on the bed with my face to the wall. A pleasure, when they get to you at fucking eight in the morning. Your world's a filthy garbage pit as it is, and now they have to denounce you too.

"Leave me alone," I said wearily. "What do you want from a sick old man, why are you telling me all this?"

He screamed, "I'll smash that prostitute's face! Why does she take money from you? Let her get money from the guys she sucks off! You bought her panties, you fool, you shitass! George, Jean, some other photographer, and Zhigulin are all wiping their dicks on your panties, she's fucking all of them now! Jean called me, boasted he'd fucked Elena again, twice!"

He kept yelling like that and I drove him out. He went away, and I plunged into a terrible idiotic state, now floating up from the gloom, now plunging back in. When I floated up, I got a drink of water, lay down again, thought interminably about Elena, about the fact that I, Eddie-baby, had no fucking reason to live in the world the way I was.

I lay there until twelve o'clock and then went to the shower, thinking I would go out to Eighth Avenue and get a prostitute. That ought to calm me. You can't die – you have to live. I had already collected myself completely, I even knew exactly who I would get on Eighth Avenue, which girl, when suddenly the phone rang. This happened when I had just put a ten in one pocket and another ten in the other – that's my way. After love I planned to take the prostitute to a bar, I needed to have a drink with someone.

The phone rang, and from the receiver poured forth the voice of my beloved. My beloved ordered me to report to her without delay for implementation of her crazy designs. Since she demanded it, I had to go. Eddie's cock would have to wait. I could put off the prostitute. Suicide too. I had to cut out little Elena's transparent fabrics for her. Picking up a hardly touched bottle of whiskey of unknown provenance, I set out to see my ladylove.

My ladylove, before cutting the fabric, was planning an expedition to Bloomingdale's to purchase thread, belts, pins, zippers, and other frippery. I went with her. I bought her some fur slippers she liked; panties were purchased again, and other items. When we left I didn't have a cent, and she had nothing left of her $20 either, we had pooled our dimes and quarters for the last panties. The panties were red. I thought with anguish about the prostitute; I had no more money. You think I regretted anything? Far from it. I always act on my whims, the little girl was glad for the panties. I enjoyed it.

Zhigulin and his guest, who met us in the studio, did not appreciate the panties. Lowbrows, what did they know about red panties. Only with me could Elena talk about them, only with me. We also drank, shot the bull about this and that. After several good slugs of whiskey I completely lost any desire to cut or sew. But, fucked out and drenched in sweat, I got busy with it anyway.

I cleared their things off the table, spread out the fabric, and began to puzzle over it. I was very tempted to lie down and take a nap. She was walking around here, Zhigulin was here, the cat was here, I would have fallen asleep calmly and without nightmares in her bed, for example. But I didn't have the guts to ask. Quite possibly she would have consented. I would have asked to sleep without her, not with her.

I was busy over by the fabric, she was bullshitting on the phone in Zhigulin's sector, and gradually that began to irritate me. She might at least have the decency to sit with me while I work, I thought. Sit with me, hell – she soon donned a red hat and took off completely. "I'm going to work," she said. All her work, what was it worth? She didn't have a cent.

She left, Zhigulin fiddled with his lights, and little Eddie, rejoicing that there was no supervision, immediately abandoned the cutting and quickly reoriented himself, found something to do. He pinched from her bookshelf a suspicious black notebook, opened it, and saw Elena's notes. Eddie knew these notebooks of hers, he himself had once given her such notebooks. This one was hardly filled in, almost clean. Eddie thrust the notebook under his jacket and walked past Zhigulin into the bathroom, then closed the door behind him, settled down on the edge of the tub, and with sinking heart began to read.

What was in it was murk. That's a good word, I love it – it expresses her notes well. Isolated expressions apparently pertaining to me: "Why do you love me?" "What forces drive me?" There were grass, trees. George was mentioned. "George came, George went," and did some other things.

Murk, murk, and more murk. Breakfasts with a king. Everything much worse than it used to be, not poetry but a hash of semicoherent sentences, the theme of which was primarily self-adoration. Something about the hotel in Milan, where she had had no money; thoughts of death in this connection; and again murk, turbidity, the heavy vapors of a loveless soul.

But suddenly I stumbled upon this note: "…and Eddie, I am guilty before you. My poor, poor baby! And God will punish me; when I was a child I read a story that had the words, 'You are responsible in life for all whom you have tamed…'"

I read this and felt so sorry for my girl that I could have cried. When had she written this, evidently in Milan? Poor creature, you feel bad because you don't know that love exists. My unhappy girl who made me unhappy, how can I blame you! The loathsome loveless world is to blame, not you.

Zhigulin asked to come into the bathroom. I summoned my strength, walked out of the bathroom, talked with Zhigulin, drank more whiskey, and thought about her. She understood almost everything, it turned out. But what had made her kill her poor baby? Nature's blind imperative to have many males? I did not know. All the same, I cut out some slacks from her crazy fabric for her, then took what I had cut and went to my hotel…

One of my most recent encounters with Elena was poetic and sad. I called, she said in a strange dark voice, "Come, but hurry." We had made prior arrangements to meet; I was supposed to get the rest of the crazy fabric from her. I arrived, she was tearstained, barely restraining fresh tears. She was sitting on the bed studying a heap of old photographs of her childhood; her father had just sent them to her from Moscow. She was sobbing, tightly buttoned into black slacks and a red blouse, this was the same red blouse in which she had brazenly and self-assuredly, in February – she had spent the night away from home – when she showed up in the morning she had proddingly told me that I didn't know how to enjoy myself. Me, a man out of his mind with grief. Now, six months later, she was bawling in front of me in this same blouse. "Not yet has she worn out the blouse" – the poetic image flashed through my mind. She doesn't notice these details, of course. Only I – close observer, attentive scholar, self-mocking subtle Eddie – remember all these rags, blouses, bagatelles, and photographs.

"Do you want to look?" she said through her tears.

"Yes," I said, "only don't cry. Why are you crying, is there some reason?"

"What's new?" she sobbed. "Everything's fucking lousy – work, work, work. If I'd been born here, it would be easier for me. But I'm a woman, not a man," she moaned. "I'm tired!"

I reflected that in terms of sexual characteristics I was a man, but fucking shit, I was sure that no woman had ever experienced such torment as mine. As you know, my considerable scorn for women had by now spread to Elena too. I pitied her, however; I did not see her as an unsuccessful model, a woman embroiled in difficulties, as she was in reality. I saw the little girl from the wooden house in Tomilino, a sly, mysterious little girl. And of this little girl only I in all the world – no one else, gentlemen, I am sure of it – was worthy.

Of the Russian model Elena, George was fully worthy. Jean was a bit lower, yet he too was worthy of her. But of this little girl, with her braid, in her little white stockings, standing in her garden, and behind her, like scenery in a pastoral opera, birches, shrubs, a segment of a wooden house – only I was worthy. The little girl had dreamed of a prince, as does many a little girl in Russia and probably here too. But when Prince Eddie arrives, evil intervenes. Chaos hates love, it whispers to the little girl that this is not a prince: "Princes do not live in Lexington Avenue apartments, nor go to work in the morning at emigre newspapers," whispers Chaos. "This is not he!" whispers Chaos.

Eddie is driven out, and they go debase themselves before the Georges and the gentlemen who follow in their turn. Such were my reflections as I studied her photographs. This too was a painful pastime, gentlemen, no good at all,

"Only don't steal the photos," she said through her tears, holding the next packet out to me.

"Why not?" I said. "You'll lose them anyway, or you'll get ripped off. Don't be afraid, though, I'm not about to steal them."

She had stood up, meanwhile, and set about looking for something. Suddenly she let out a loud wail. "Fucking shit," she said, "why do I live in this abominable dirty place, where's my little book? Some motherfucker's already pinched it, everyone here steals and swipes things. Why am I so unhappy?"

Weeping, she undertook to wash the dishes. I went and tried to touch her shoulder. "Take it easy!" I said. She shook off my hand. She's afraid of intimacy. Fool! I had wanted to soothe her. She thinks I enjoy watching her weep! Unhappy beast! Lonely beast, thinking to build happiness for herself out of casual caresses. But why wail now? After all, she had wanted to be a lonely beast.

"Quit crying," I told her distractedly. "Everything's going to be all right."

"You always say everything's going to be all right!" she said spitefully through her tears.

Oh, once I had known how to soothe her. Both her anger and her tears. Nowadays I couldn't use those means. I merely said, "If you want we can go down to the bar and have a drink. It'll relax you, make you feel better."

"I can't," she said, "I have to go out. George is picking me up, we have to go see a famous designer." She mentioned a name. "Zhigulin didn't want to go, the bastard. He said, 'I don't have anybody to fuck there. You'll be fucking George, but there's no woman there for me.' We aren't going there to fuck, I have to work, we're going there to shoot."

It was quite absurd, but she was sobbing. She was sobbing.

The phone rang. It was her economist calling. I heard her keep repeating to him through her tears: "It's horrible, it's horrible!"

I thought, What kind of a bastard is he, that he can't do it, even seeing how she suffers without an apartment, living in this passageway? What kind of a bastard is he? A millionaire, and he can't rent her an apartment so that she can live there awhile, rest, have a normal good sleep. That, for him, would be like me throwing away a penny on the sidewalk- "He's cynical and clever," Zhigulin had said of him; others said so too. Cynical and clever man, where's your kindness? What the fuck is anything worth in this world without kindness?

To me he was an intolerable shit because he didn't help her live, he used her. She was alone in this city – what did I count for, to her I didn't exist, therefore I couldn't help in any way – she was alone, she was cold, she felt lousy, and she didn't even have a coat, but he limped on his lame leg and said nothing.

Brute, I thought, petty animal! If she made me a sign, my lady did, I'd slit his throat in a matter of seconds. I was, after all, a sound, spare, thirty-year-old man who had never had any sickness, my muscles were rock-hard from lugging other people's furniture, and in my boot I always had my Solingen friend. He wouldn't have had time to let out a peep. But she had wanted all this herself, and to me her will was law. By habit.

On the other hand, if he'd taken care of her I would have respected him and thought well of him. This proposition was tested on Victor, Elena's previous husband. He loved her, fussed over her as if she were a baby; it always disarmed me. As you see, little Eddie is just.

He crawled into the studio about ten minutes later, he had been somewhere nearby. We greeted each other wanly. Elena put on a little black hat and left with her tears undried, asking me to stay awhile at the studio, wait for some girl friend of hers. I sat, smoked, waited for a slender girl friend who looked like an aging page boy, shot the bull a while with Zhigulin when he came in. Then, taking the lilac and the red fabrics – through the semitransparent wrapper they shimmered with all the colors of the rainbow – I went to my hotel, discoursing to myself on the injustice of a world in which one who loves is not fucking needed, but one who does not love is needed and impatiently awaited.

Downstairs at the hotel a phone message was waiting for me, a square of paper on which was written, in the switchboard girl's uncouth handwriting, "Call Carol," and a phone number. Going up in the elevator, I smiled. We'll talk again sometime with these Georges. Under other circumstances.