At times we get tired. The hairdresser suffers the most. He's fat. And to keep pace with the others, he energetically flaps his arms and legs, rowing – his strokes wide and awkward. Poor guy sweats – after all, he's married.
At my age – always observing – I know everything about people. They're very funny. Some dance, others sing. Many get drunk or blow smoke. A man, staid and quiet throughout the evening, suddenly leaps up and performs a savage, unconscious dance.
I know it all. It's boring. This guy is old, this one's getting old. That one's getting ready to get old.
It's as though the purpose of life is for A to land a good job, for В to publish a book, for C to find a good husband, for D to buy a brownstone in New York.
I'm a Mongol. My mother is from Kazan. We Mongols are cunning and wise. I walk among the crowd with my long bangs; I smile politely and I hide my primitive Mongol boredom – it was born in the blackened steppes, in the towns' ruins when all the men were hacked to pieces, all the meet eaten, and all the captive women fucked – what else is there on the earth? Fullness of life. O brother, what a bore!
And there's no one my heart is reaching out to – observing…
Coming out of a store (and it's warm out), crossing the street with a bag of groceries, waiting for the light to turn green (and on the other side facing me are school kids, the youngest, with their teacher-this is Second Avenue), I see HER.
She's about six, her princess-like hair is down, her sheepskin coat (trimmed with fur and embroidered) is open. Shamelessly, she pulls up with her little hand her checked skirt and scratches her slit. Bare legs (just socks) loom all the way up to where they join in the slit.
And it's horribly exciting, these bare, plump legs, this enchanting, serious little face with full lips. God, I ached all over, and she just calmly scratched her slit. The light turned and they proceeded along. I turned: galloping, her backpack on her shoulders, she leaned on the arms of two boys…
A TV Ad:
Before boarding a plane, people walk through customs – the automatic doors keep hissing – everyone has a Specialist calculator in their pocket or a purse. Young women, men, the old, blacks, whites – everyone has it.
«Fuck your calculator – ain't nothin' I'm gonna count! Fuck your calculator – aint nothin' I'm gonna count!» I suddenly sang loud and pretty and jumped in response to this ad. Though I wasn't the audience they counted on.
«Hey, boatman, take me across to the other bank of Broadway. I'm going to buy a little salt for my family. There are twenty-eight of us, three don't eat sait,» and he steps onto the ferry's wet, rough boards. The families from the left and the right banks somehow managed to get the ferry going. «Matches, Sait» – you can already see it; it's hidden in the rocks and ruins. The sun shines on it.
«On your way here bring me a bouquet, Rosalie.
I'll pay you back right away. Buy me the blue Irisis because my right lung hurts me something terrible today».
«In the wind, freezing, icy,
A Chinese beauty's yellow, shaved slit is cold.
«Corne, crawl onto my blue cock, you maggoty meat…»
How lovely you were by the three pine trees,
When the wind starts.
I'm sad. You already died.
And took away with you your cannon ball breasts.
Calmly across the yellow land. Our wind rolls on.
You're not on my cock. My cock is empty. And only an outburst of a landscape. And a piece of an eye.»
I wrote this looking at a Chinese painting.
It's great in May, in the wonderful wet May, to be a head of All Russian Emergency Committee, to be in Odessa, and, wearing a leather jacket, to stand on a balcony facing the sea, to adjust the pince-nez and breathe in the intoxicating aromas.
And then to return to the interior of the room and, coughing, lighting up a cigarette, begin the interrogation of a princess N who is deeply implicated m the counterrevolutionary plot and who is famous for her remarkable beauty – the twenty-two-year-old princess.
I used to get on the bike and cry. Gloomy sky, an April noon. It's sad too when in March-April there's no money and it's snowing.
Like now. In the window are Broadway's chipped buildings, and you've moved – this is the fourth day in a dirty hotel, alone, and already a second year without love. And a quarter for a phone call. It's even sadder when the subtle scent of hot iron starts wafting in from the radiator. How I start sobbing then…
The iron is clicking, it's snowing for a long time. What poison these spring days are! And you can't even press your cheek against your submachine gun. Yes, it'd help.
I'll take a big fish, I'll put it on a rock, and having wiped the rock with my sleeve, I'll eat the fish, sinking my hands in it. It's good – the smoked fish. And a jug of white wine is next to me. And the sun is busy beating down on my head. And the birds are singing. And my heart is rejoicing at something, though why should it rejoice? Yes, even this pittance is enough – the wine, the fish, the birds singing. It's a good thing I'm not a viscount or a marquis, otherwise it would be too much to bear.
Let's go for a swim. The water is warm. We'll dip our bodies into a lake. In a lake, there's no anxiety as there is in a sea and in an ocean. We'll stretch out in this thin water, though it'll be harder to swim. We'll lie on our backs, we'll see a copper sunset and heavy clouds. We'll remember the past and we'll start crying in the water. And along the shore, a man carrying a bag will walk by, or maybe he'll be carrying a sack.
Let's go for a swim but not together and on different days. After all, it's been a long time since we were man and wife. It's just that we were young together.
My poor baby, sweetheart, my dear sleepyhead. Recall how we stormed the botanical garden when the bullets knocked the branches off the fan palms. The greasy aloe dripped its sap right onto the faces of the wounded, the blue pines cast shadow on the perished, and in the midst of this blazing hell the demented countess Eva Gonzales kept appearing in her white hat and in her white dress, all in tatters. Recall how we chased her away and how a peacock farm squalled when it was accidentally riddled with a burst of machine-gun fire. And the wind smelled of soot and flowers. And we knew that we'd all be slaughtered for sure, and that the new 1933rd year will grow old without us. And they'll again rebuild the border patrol house…
Like I said, the wind in the botanical garden smelled of flowers, of tropical flowers and tombs. And some of our guys peeled away their mustaches, running for their lives, hiding – in vain – deep in the trees, or in the bony bamboo.
And I recall a certain Carlos Akun: his lips in blue lipstick, he kept laughing hysterically at his torn-away arm. Oh, the smells of the botanical garden!
Our wounds were rotting like the fruits. Like the fruits were rotting our wounds.
The mug our Limonov has – it's pretty big. He's well built, like a soldier. But on the old pictures he looks pathetic like Jesus. A weakling, you know. An intellectual, a poet. «A poet with glass wings,» as one old asshole characterized him, contemptuously.
Nowadays Eduardo guffaws at these pictures.
If on a warm humid evening you carefully put on some make-up by the mirror, pull a purple hat down over your eyes, put on long black stockings, a see-through black garter belt, lace panties, and a dress fluttering and hanging strangely on you and then go for a walk, swinging your purse – this will evoke in your body and soul feminine sensations. And even more if you meet a sad, red-necked sailor from a lonely ship. Oh, how blue his eyes are!