I came out of my room onto the third-floor landing.
"Well, your book knocked me out," Efimenkov said, noisily gasping for breath. "I stayed up all night reading it. It's a scream of anger. The whole book's written in the genre of a scream."
"The only thing Zhenya would talk about the whole trip was your book, Edward," said Jon Barth, who had come rushing up the stairs after Efimenkov — our poor little stairway; Barth is as big as the Soviet writer. The two of them looked like sturdy airborne colonels come up through the ranks who had put on civilian clothes. The hands of both men stuck out of their sleeves as if their clothing belonged to somebody else. Sometimes, watching them reading together on the stage (Jon was Efimenkov's interpreter, for besides being a professor and a CIA informer, he also did interpreting), it seemed strange to me that they didn't suddenly throw off their jackets and start wrestling up there on the platform in front of the whole house — all those specialists in the Russian question, the Harrison Salisburys, the Updikes, the Ginsbergs, the Vonneguts, and the old Russian lady patriots of Russia without the Communists. They didn't take off their jackets and wrestle even once, which greatly saddened me. If Steven had joined them, that would indeed have been an impressive spectacle: The boss was just as powerfully built as they were, a real hulk, as we used to say on the outskirts of Kharkov.
Nancy had a supper party for Efimenkov that same evening, having made a special trip in from the country to meet him — you see what an important guest he was. Naturally I served. I placed the smoked salmon, herring, vodka, and various other delicacies from Zabar's on sterling silver trays and set them out on the dining room table. Several other people were invited, some of whom I already knew. They were all supposed to go to the ballet to see another Russian superstar, Rudolph Nureyev, so they were fortifying themselves beforehand. After the ballet they were planning to go to a restaurant where Linda, I knew, had already reserved a table for them, having herself been invited by Gatsby to make a «couple» with Jon Barth in order to neutralize him. Mr. Steven Grey couldn't stand Barth. He told Linda as much with his characteristic baronial candor: "You'll sit next to that ass Barth and keep him distracted so he won't disrupt the general conversation with his inanities."
Nancy, who I think was afraid she would be bored, invited another young married couple I wasn't acquainted with, and also present was a friend of Efimenkov's, an ugly scarecrow named Lydia, who, like Jon Barth, was for some reason an inevitable participant in the visits of all Soviet literary dignitaries to the United States. She was of Russian descent, but had been born in America and spoke Russian with an accent. Jenny and I used to laugh at Lydia and call her the lieutenant assigned to Major Barth. Maybe that's the way it really was, or maybe it wasn't, who knows, but the story of how I first met Jenny is also connected with the visit of another Soviet literary star to America — Stella Makhmudova. That was the first time I saw not only Jenny, but also the horse Lydia and the wrestler Barth.
But more about that in its place. On the evening in question they were all sitting in the dining room and chattering of one thing and another, with neither direction nor point — you know, polite conversation — which I in the kitchen found offensive to listen to. Efimenkov was saying something about internal Soviet literary affairs, and Gatsby was talking about his business deals, and from time to time the hosts would ask me to bring them something, Gatsby in an exceptionally gentle tone of voice intended for Efimenkov, and Nancy in her usual one. Nancy has to be given her due; she was always fairly straightforward in her behavior.
You're probably thinking I was sitting indignantly in my kitchen and suffering from wounded pride, given the fact that here I was serving Gatsby and my compatriot Efimenkov even though I myself was a writer, and what a writer, since the literary superstar Efimenkov had just expressed his enthusiasm with my work in the most glowing terms. No, nothing of the sort. On the contrary, I was afraid that they would invite me to join them in the dining room and I would have to listen to all their horseshit, to Eflmenkov's wooden accent and his naive attempts to explain to my employer things he wasn't the least interested in hearing about. All the names of Soviet figures mentioned by Efimenkov were boring even to me — local celebrities; who the fuck cared. But of course Efimenkov didn't know that. Or if you think I was suffering from wounded pride and ashamed of the fact that I was serving them and that Efimenkov was there to see it, then that's wrong too. I had very healthy ideas about work and about being paid for it, and what Gatsby was paying me, in addition to my room and board and all the other privileges I enjoyed while living in his house, suited me just fine.
If I objected to Gatsby's exploitation of me, it was because of his unconscious desire to force my mind to take part in his business and his hysterics, and that wasn't a present I could give him. But to the exploitation of a part of my time and physical strength I was ready to give my consent, and had in fact requested that exploitation myself in exchange for his money. I needed his money in order to live and to write other books and to pay for the translation of those I had already written and to arrange for their sale and then to leave Gatsby and exploit my own labor.
I almost sighed with relief when they finally left for the ballet and I could start clearing the table. And although they had eaten all the smoked and pickled delicacies from Zabar's, including even the tiniest red morsels of the smoked salmon from Scotland on the silver dish, I still cleared away the dirty dishes enthusiastically. The last operation of the day. The end.
After putting the dishes in the dishwasher and making sure that the children had had enough television and gone to bed (Nancy had brought her two youngest children with her from Connecticut), I went off to bed myself.
I was awakened by bells. That is, I heard ringing in my sleep, but when I woke up, I realized with horror that it was the front doorbell. I got dressed as quickly as I could, but it wasn't easy. I didn't have a robe, and so by the time I got my pants and shirt on and had taken the elevator downstairs, whoever had been at the door was gone. I had almost decided that the ringing had in fact been a dream and had gone into the kitchen to get myself a drink of cold seltzer water before going back upstairs to my room and to bed for good, when the telephone suddenly rang. I looked at the kitchen clock. It was midnight. On the phone an old woman's trembling voice said, "There's a young lady at your front door. She can't get inside. I'm very concerned about her; it's cold outside and she has only a dress on."
My heart sank. It was Nancy of course. She and Gatsby both have the same idiotic habit of the rich of going outside without their coats on, sometimes even in winter. What do they care; they always catch the first taxi that comes along before they have a chance to feel the cold. And that fall evening too, Nancy had gone out with nothing but her dress on. Just as I was hanging up, there was another irritable ring at the front door. I rushed to open it.
"Everybody's sound asleep. I've been ringing for half an hour," she said angrily, but clearly restraining herself. «Everybody» meant me and her children, obviously.
"I'm sorry, Nancy," I said. "The children had already gone to bed and so had I. I thought you had a key."
"I didn't take it with me," she said, a bit apologetically, evidently beginning to recover from the cold and her vexation.
Gatsby and Efimenkov both had house keys, and I couldn't have stayed up all night waiting for them anyway, since they were coming back separately. Gatsby could have given her his own key.