I would be carrying out the dirty dishes, walking down the aisle between the tables with a tray of soiled plates held out in front of me, and these visions of Elena betraying me would appear. I would break out in hot and cold sweat, cast glances full of hatred at our customers. I was not a waiter, I did not spit in their food, I was a poet pretending to be a waiter: I would have blasted them all to hell, but I could not play dirty little tricks on them, was not capable of it.
I'll blow up your world! I thought. I clear away your leavings while my wife fucks and you amuse yourselves with her, for the sole reason that there's an inequality: she has a cunt, for which there are buyers – you – and I don't have a cunt. I'll blow up your world, and these lads will do it with me – the underlings of this world! I thought passionately, my glance resting on one of my fellow busboys – the Chinaman Wong, or the dark-browed, criminal Patricio, or the Argentinian Carlos.
What else was I supposed to feel for this world, for those men? I was no idiot, comparisons with the USSR held no comfort for me. I did not live in the world of statistics and living standards and purchasing power. My pain forced me to hate our customers and to love the kitchen staff and my friends in misfortune. A normal position, you must agree. Strictly normal, unobjective but strictly normal. To my credit it should be said that I was consistent: I had likewise hated the masters of life in the USSR, the party apparatus and the numerous ruling elite. In my hatred for the strong of this world I did not want to be reasonable, did not want to consider assorted explanatory causes, or responses such as these:
"But you've just arrived in America -"
"You have to understand, poetry-writing isn't a profession here -"
And so on.
Fuck your world where there's no place for me, I thought in despair. If I can't destroy it, at least I'll die a fine death in the attempt, along with others like me. I had no concrete image of how this would come about, but from past experience I knew that he who seeks fate is always provided an opportunity; I would not remain without one.
Wong, a young Chinese who came from Hong Kong, had a special appeal for me. He always smiled at me, and although I had trouble understanding him, we managed to communicate somehow. He was my first teacher in the sphere of my uncomplicated profession – he spent a lot of time with me the first week, since I didn't know anything: I didn't know where to get the butter, I didn't know where I was supposed to go for linen. He helped me patiently. On our short break we would go down to the basement cafeteria for the hotel workers and eat lunch together, I would ask him about his life. He was a typical Chinese – lived in Chinatown, of course, and was mad about karate, took a class from a master twice a week.
Once we had some time left after eating, and went up to the coat-room. He laughingly showed me a pornographic magazine with Chinese girls in it, although he claimed they were Japanese: Chinese women were decent and wouldn't have their pictures in such magazines. I made some coarse jokes about the magazine and Chinese women; Wong had a good laugh. I liked this magazine better than similar ones with Western women, this one did not cause me the pain that I felt when I happened to see magazines with obscenely sprawling blondes. Blondes were associated with Elena, and I would shake with agitation over the inside-out peepkas, the show of internal organs and labial epidermis. The Chinese magazine was comforting. It held no pain for me.
The waiters were dressed differently from us busboys, much more impressively, I envied their uniform. The short red coat with epaulettes and the high-waisted black trousers made them look like toreadors. Tall, handsome Nicholas the Greek, with, his broad shoulders; thick-lipped, wisecracking Johnny, almost as tall as Nicholas, but big and heavy; Luciano the Italian, who looked like a pimp, with his narrow forehead and agile narrow frame – I worked with them all, received my 15 percent of the tips from them at the end of breakfast and lunch. Every day I took home $10 to $20 in tips.
The waiters were all different. Al, for example, a tall, jolly black guy who was always late – he arrived after all the other waiters, and I often helped him set the tables – gave me more tips than anyone else. A certain Tommy, a guy in glasses and tight short pants, gave me less than anyone.
Two old Chinese waiters – they always worked together, I don't remember their names – were stingy and not at all like Wong, who was a Chinaman of another generation. The gloomy Spaniard Luis did his job with a totally estranged expression, but the Chinese worried a lot about their work and kept trying to teach me things, although it was ten days before I happened to work with them, and by that time I had fully mastered my simple-minded profession. I liked working with Al and Nicholas best; they were jolly and talked to me more than anyone else. Nicholas often encouraged me with exclamations like "Good boy! Good boy!" I was in love with Nicholas. He was a hot-tempered man, though, and was capable of shouting at me sometimes. What with the rush and the everlasting flying from kitchen to dining room and back, I had lapses like everyone else, and I never took offense at him. Once I saw Nicholas crossly hurl away a heap of pennies that had been given him as a tip; as I say, he was a hot-tempered fellow. In my ignorance of the language I missed a lot in his conversation, but once, sitting in the cafeteria with Nicholas, Johnny, and Tommy, I heard him say hotly, "Public opinion holds that people who become waiters are looking for easy money and therefore shove their dollar…" I didn't understand the rest, but it was clear that Nicholas was offended by public opinion. Our work, both theirs and mine, was really very tense, tedious, and nerve-racking.
I am not a slave by nature, waiting on people is hard for me. This came out when our manager, Fred, and headwaiters Bob and Ricardo had lunch on the side balcony, as they liked to do. I got very irritated whenever I happened to be serving the side tables nearest the balcony – they never failed to send me on some errand, although this was not part of my duties. When I served a glass of milk to plump young Bob, my insides would get all knotted up: I did not like to be, could not be, a servant. Sometimes a woman or a girl would lunch with our bosses. Who would ever notice me – a servant is just a servant – yet it would seem to me that she was looking at me and scorning me. And I could not tell her that only a year ago I had been friends with the ambassadors of several countries, I had had good times with them at private parties. I remember one party where there were twelve ambassadors, not secretaries but genuine ambassadors, among them the ambassadors of Sweden and Mexico, Iran and Laos, and the host himself was my friend the Venezuelan ambassador Burelli, a poet and a very fine man. His embassy on Yermolova Street was like home to Elena and me. Nor could I explain to her that in my country I had been one of the best poets. Everyone would have laughed had I said so. When I came to work at the hotel I put down all sorts of foolishness about my past on the application, said I had always worked as a waiter in Kharkov and Moscow restaurants. That was bullshit.
Actually I was leading a double life. The manager was pleased with me, the waiters too. Sometimes Bob the headwaiter taught me something; I would summon up all my acting talent and listen, assiduously wide-eyed, as he advised me to fill the glasses as well as the pitchers with water and ice before work, so that I could serve the water right in the glasses without delay when there was a great influx of customers. I would look Bob in the eye and say "Yes, sir!" every couple of minutes. He did not know what was in my heart and mind. "Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!" Bob was pleased. But I was leading a double life. And hating the customers more and more. Not merely because of Elena, but mainly because of her. When we happened to have a few minutes' respite I would fold and stack napkins – to have them ready at hand – and I would recall involuntarily, with pain, I could not help recalling, the events of the last months…