Steven Grey's housekeeper hasn't been making very much progress with the writing part of it. The American publishers have one after another refused to publish my book. Maybe they've reached an agreement with my former girlfriend Sarah? Although I have long felt the itch to move on, although I have the ambition to proceed to the next rung in my life, I'm still compelled to remain here in service, and my life in the millionaire's little house, having now entered its second year, has in a way come full circle. It's all routine now and no longer interesting, and I've been looking around to see where I, the indefatigable Mr. Limonov, Edward, will turn up next. All those I started out with way back then have made their peace, some in jail and others with families, but in any case have come to a halt. Even Elena has grown tired apparently, and is married to her own European aristocrat, and only very occasionally permits herself little love adventures. But not I.
The publishers answer Liza in much the same way, with something like, "Mr. Limonov's novel is too threatening, and his hero too negative." Inside, deep in my heart, I believe they're right in refusing to publish my novel. I'm really their enemy, and books like mine destroy, if not civilization, then at least faith in it, so that it's logical not to publish them. But the struggle is the struggle, and I therefore try with all my strength to win. I haven't reacted emotionally to their rejections in a long time. My agent just methodically sends the book off to those publishers who haven't been terrorized by it yet, and if Liza gets tired of the job, I won't die of a broken heart. I'll just find myself another agent and start over from the beginning. They're greedy when it comes to money, and they'll buy me in the end. I'm persistent. But unfortunately I'm also oversensitive, as my girlfriend Jenny once observed, and sometimes it all makes me sick to my stomach, and then, like a madman, I run off to the first place I think of, and more often than not I look for relief in sex.
The last time I got sick of it all happened quite recently, after the business with Natashka and the blood in the bathroom. And I got myself to a brothel. The reason didn't have anything to do with Natashka, and in fact there wasn't any particular reason for my mental upset, or at least no explicit reason. I obviously just needed to escape from my routine and from my struggle, which wasn't giving me any satisfaction. Maybe it was a full moon. My flight ended in a brothel.
Yes, I licked the cunt of a prostitute. But does that make me any less of a man? No. The cunt, when spread wide, turned out to be pink, and before giving it to me, she washed it while standing in front of a sink and raking water into it with her palm. Actually, «cunt» sounds crude. Paula didn't have a cunt, she had an Italian… what? I don't know; there don't seem to be very many affectionate or deferential terms for the female sex organ. In Paula, that place resembled an almost scarlet butterfly with its wings spread open. The scarlet area extended high and wide between her legs. It was probably irritation caused by her work, a sort of industrial trauma.
I hadn't been looking for Paula in the beginning. What I needed was a skinny blonde. But it isn't that easy to find skinny blondes on Eighth Avenue. Paula, who had herself stopped me, did not upon learning that I needed a skinny blonde betray the slightest astonishment, but only went to the edge of the sidewalk, put her hands to her mouth and, in her attempt to be heard over the rumble and roar of the cars, shouted, "Elsa!" And from the other side of the street came Elsa, maneuvering against the traffic. Her name clearly didn't suit her, and she didn't suit me either. She was small and skinny, and yes, she was a blonde, but not even a vulgar one, which would have been just right, but of die simple country-girl type. Her thin curly hair irritated me, a head of hair like a permanent, and so I said I'd look for another girl, and walked away. Apparently offended by my lack of interest, Elsa hurled after me, "He wants a skinny blonde! I weigh eighty-seven pounds! What are you planning to do, throw your skinny blonde up in the air and catch her on your prick or what?!"
After wandering around for another half hour and still not finding a skinny blonde, I returned to Paula on the corner of Forty-fifth Street and Eighth Avenue and settled with her. We went around the corner to a hotel. I had in fact invited her to the millionaire's house, but she turned me down, as they almost always do. There are a good many creeps wandering around Eighth Avenue.
Paula was a brunette of Italian descent. She was pretty, but in comparison with the rest of her body, her ass was a little bit plump.
On the gray but clean sheets in the room lay the little circle of a condom. On the ceiling a thin fluorescent circle glowed with a meager and foolish light. We got undressed, I lay down on my back, and Paula began licking and sucking my cock, after giving it a careful preliminary examination. That alone cost me thirty dollars, in addition to the ten dollars I had already paid to get into the room. I don't know how to haggle with them.
Though poor the room was clean, and as usual reminded me more of doctor's office in a poor Soviet village than a room in a hotel-brothel. Yes, it was both a hotel and a brothel. Coming in Paula and I had met a black mother and child in the hallway. I didn't feel sorry for that child living in a brothel; rather, I envied him — an interesting experience. Besides, when he grows up he won't have all those pitiful superstitions that have cost me so much effort to get rid of. The best thing is to be abandoned in this world, knowing neither your mother nor your father, so that you can then make of yourself whatever you want — vicious, without any looking over your shoulder… In a word, it's a fine, liberating thing. And what a complex he'll have, I thought enviously. A person without a complex is like a new car they forgot to put the motor in. You can push it through life, of course, but it's incapable of propelling itself.
I stayed with Paula a long time, not having any place I needed to rush off to, and I paid her some more and we talked. I really laughed when Paula, obviously wishing to be amiable, suddenly picked up my Italian boots and said, "What beautiful boots you have, Edward!" — naturally, I'd introduced myself to her, how else? I recalled that the Marchioness Houston had once given me the same compliment. The Marchioness will, I hope, be pleased to learn that she and a prostitute have the same, the same… how shall I put it? The same grasp of the external world, or the same taste in men's footwear.
I told Paula I envied her profession. And I really did envy it. In addition to the fact that the work was interesting, and with people, Paula probably earned as much in an evening as I earned at the millionaire's house in two weeks, and maybe a lot more. I alone had given her a hundred dollars in all. Not everybody's as crazy as I am, and goes to a prostitute to soothe his mind, but even those who go to appease their flesh pay too, and so with her everything was just fine. She looked like a serious girl, neither an alcoholic nor an addict, and she was probably saving her money. I was neither a priest nor an intellectual jerk, and so I naturally didn't preach to her that her profession was sinful or even tell her that to live the way she was living was unhygienic, and I didn't try to persuade her to change her profession and stop selling her body. We simply smoked and chatted while sitting naked on the bed. Decent women also trade in their bodies; they also sell their cunts, although theirs usually go for a great deal more than a prostitute's does, especially in the first days and weeks of your acquaintance. You go to a nice restaurant, taking a taxi, and before that there are tickets for a show or you have to take the girl to a disco afterwards, and only then can you go to bed. And if you buy the girl cocaine, as Ghupta suggests, a gram alone costs one hundred to one hundred and fifty dollars, people! What's a prostitute next to a decent woman! When it comes to the art of robbery, decent women are much more professional and much better qualified than prostitutes are… I'm not judging anybody, since my own is hardly the most virtuous of lives; I'm merely looking at life and turning it in my hands, and taking an interest in it and comparing it and analyzing it. I'm not satisfied with the verities of old books that call prostitutes fallen creatures. What's so fallen about this Paula, I thought, why she's more stable than I am.