Children of eleven, twelve, and thirteen are exceptionally different in size and form. On the same team were giants and dwarves, men and babies. All of them took their turn at bat and struck at the ball thrown by the opposing team's best pitcher, and when they swung and missed, the crowd roared and whistled indignantly, but when a lucky batter swung and hit it and threw down his bat and took off round the bases, the crowd roared and whistled in delight. I was afraid for the catcher the whole time, since I was sure one of the kids would hit him between the eyes with the bat or knock his brains out — the bat was a serious weapon — and spoil the whole game, but the kids were up to it and didn't hurt him.
A fat blonde, her tanned shoulders bared and the straps of her bra and pink undershirt cutting into her ample flesh, shouted to her son, a small blond boy with his hair cut in bangs just like Prince Valiant's, "Bobby, be aggressive! Be aggressive!" And Bobby was, insofar as his size and strength permitted, and he hit the ball well, and took off around the field, while his mama grabbed hold of the fence in raptures and screamed, "Bobby-y-y-y!"
I looked at the Jackson clan. Papa Henry at the far end of the bench was yelling something and slapping his hands on his knees, Debby had stuck two fingers in her mouth and was whistling, and even the usually morose Betsy was yelling too, although in the general uproar it was impossible to tell what she was saying. But when Kevin came up to bat, we all started wildly applauding and yelling, "Kev-in!" as if shouting encouragement to our own champion in single combat — me too, as I suddenly realized to my own astonishment. Our man did no worse than Bobby had — he was even better, thanks to the fact that Robert had coached him for several hours before lunch by throwing a ball to him. He was in good form, our champion, and he hit the ball brilliantly, and we all started shouting again, I don't remember what, and whistling, and in my enthusiasm I struck Jenny on the shoulder with my hand and screamed something else along with all the others, and then we applauded our Kevin while he circled the bases.
When I finally recovered from that collective paroxysm, I heard Jenny choking with laughter and pointing at me and shouting, "Look at Edward! Look at how Edward's screaming and waving his hands! Ha, ha, ha!"
Jenny was obviously very happy about my sudden manifestation of normal human feelings. Maybe she was thinking that Edward, like all normal men, like our American men, likes baseball too and gets carried away and starts yelling, and despite his eccentricity and aloofness, he'll be a good husband for me. And we'll have children, and we'll get in the car just like Mom and Dad do and take our whole family to baseball games, and Edward will write his books and make money with them, and it doesn't matter if it isn't very much at first, as long as he's doing what he likes. And he'll soon stop raving about the destruction of civilization and forget about all that, and I'll be a good wife to him, and on weekends I'll bake bread and the children will play in the yard, and we'll have lots of flowers — Edward likes flowers.
Probably that was what she was thinking, and I could understand her. I didn't hate her there in that American town; she suited me much better there where there weren't any Marchioness Houstons or sweet-smelling and fancily dressed and painted whores to compare her to. There Jenny had the advantage of being on her own ground, where the electric lights they had turned on at the baseball field worked to her benefit, as did the fragrance of the nearby grass and trees and even the smell of the pipe of the portly gentleman sitting next to me and of Debby's and Robert's cigarettes.
And it was then, on that field, that I suddenly realized that I didn't hate Jenny, but rather something much bigger, maybe the very arrangement of the world, or maybe nature itself for what it had given me at birth, for that enormous and eternally dissatisfied ambition that was in my blood and that wouldn't let me stop and catch my breath — wouldn't let me stop and live with Jenny on a farm and be happy and perhaps mow hay and maybe even write books, but different books, books full of tranquility and happiness rather than anxiety and the need to escape. Jenny was someone I could have been happy with, and maybe it was just that which made me hate her?
I had looked for love for so long, had wandered in chaos trying to find it, to find Jenny. And now that I had found her, and with all that was genuine and false in me had made her fall in love with me and had won her, I was going to reject her and turn away and tell her I didn't want her or need her. Or even more monstrously, that I hated her. And hated her because she was an ideal, the girl I had in fact dreamed of for two years while lying alone in my filthy hotels and choking on my own hysterical sobbing or fucking with prostitutes or other men… It was she I had been seeking in all those bodies, thinking that this is the one, that here she is, or even that here he is. And now I had found her.
The Yellow Socks lost to the Tigers that evening six to eight, but what difference did that make? Jenny had lost to me on her own ground, but then I was somebody who didn't play by the rules.
Chapter Five
They still hadn't caught Son of Sam then, and sometime around the beginning of August at three o'clock in the morning he again wounded two victims, the girl later dying in the hospital, the guy surviving. The city was overcome with terror, not so much in Manhattan as in the Bronx or Queens, where the Son of Sam "worked," but the streets of Manhattan too emptied earlier than usual, and it would happen that coming from or going to Jenny's at night, I would suddenly find myself completely alone. Even the number of ordinary crimes diminished, die thieves and robbers probably afraid that the insane murderer might shoot them down too "by mistake," after silently appearing out of the darkness as he always did, so that you wouldn't even have time to defend yourself or shout that you were a robber, although it was unknown whether he had a sense of solidarity.
I walked in those legendary times through the sticky, spectral city, at first a little frightened myself, but then seeing that nothing had happened to me, I got bolder and even took my usual route through Central Park. The air was fresh there, not as hot and much nicer for walking than the foul West Side, but the main thing is that it was more direct. I didn't even walk into the park, but jumped over a fence into its green darkness and strode through the trees toward the East Side. I came out of the park in the neighborhood of the Metropolitan Museum, and I often brought Jenny fragrant branches or flowers as evidence of my bravery. True, I still took off my glasses, so I wouldn't look like an intellectual in case I encountered some lowlife, and I also carried a knife with me, and sometimes even two — one in my boot and the other in my pocket.
We lived quietly then. Jenny sucked my cock and tried to cure her vagina. The story of the curing of her vagina (it really is an awful word, isn't it?) is interesting and instructive, and I shall therefore permit myself to dwell on it.
You have to pay for everything, gentlemen, one way or another you have to pay. It's an undeniable truth. I didn't want to be merely an idle boyfriend for Jenny, and so the honorable and hard-working Limonov himself volunteered to sew her some rags and alter a few things from her vast wardrobe of skirts, blouses, dresses, and pants.