"How much do you need?" she finally asked me in a suspicious tone.
"Give me a hundred and fifty," the housekeeper said.
"What do you need a hundred and fifty for? That seems like a lot. Steven's leaving tomorrow. You're not going to spend a hundred and fifty dollars on one lunch, are you? After all, you won't have to pay cash for the meat, Edward. Take a hundred," Linda said.
"And you, my dear, aren't you going to eat anything tomorrow or the next day? Aren't you going to have lunch too?" I asked her snidely.
She gave me a hundred and fifty. She's the boss's own Cerberus, that Linda.
I stuck the check in my pocket and leisurely set off for the bank. When you're around money, when you find yourself rubbing up against it all the time, you tend to have a certain unhurried confidence in yourself. Until I started working for Steven, I used to be afraid of banks and always felt like a timid pauper in them. I'm much bolder now. I even lost my temper once when a new teller asked me to endorse the back of a check for Steven made out, I think, for $1,500 — cash for one of his trips. As I signed my name, I disgustedly told the bank slave, "Listen, you, I come here, at a minimum, twice a week, and sometimes more often, and nobody has ever asked me to endorse one of our checks before." For on its face the check carries the proud name of Mr. Grey. But I didn't say that to the slave. I thought it.
The produce markets in our excellent city of the devil are for some reason run by Koreans, just as in Moscow all the bootblacks are Assyrians. A Korean girl with a flat intellectual face always greets me with a smile whenever I enter her store; I'm a regular customer. I picked out my invariable romaine, some asparagus, and whatever else I felt like, and with one hand in my pocket set off for home in the same unhurried manner. On the way I dropped in on the chubby Michael at the little shop Mad for Cheese to pick up some cheese and bread, the bread so fresh that Linda has been expressing her amazement with it every day for the past year and gobbling it up as if she were mad for bread. I walked back to the house very slowly, since it was still early, and the day was the kind I like. In general I like the fall. In the fall I listen to myself with particular attention; in the fall everything's clearer and makes more sense to me and is less confining.
That day it became clear to me for the first time that I would soon be moving out of the millionaire's little house. I still didn't know how, and it still wasn't even clear when, but the first signal had already reached me from somewhere. I didn't make any decisions about it then; I just continued my leisurely way back to the house in my old Chinese jacket. I picked up that jacket after Henry had left it, or perhaps it was left by one of his friends, and the host never mentioned it. I wasn't ready to make any decisions then, but I know myself well. I've moved around in my life so often and have completely changed the scene of action and the cast of players so many times, that I've learned that if I once start thinking about leaving, it means I will. Even the millionaire's house has outlived its usefulness. It will be three years next spring since I entered it, and that's enough. Other lands and countries and women, and other adventures, beckon to me. If I stay here I'll turn out like Linda, but I don't have the right to do that, to stay in the same place for eight years. I don't have eight years. I need to get my ass out of here, I thought with a happy smile, as I opened the door with my key. Nearby they were shooting a commercial, and a beautiful model — they just won't leave me alone — smiled at me as she straightened her hair while the photographer fiddled with his camera. Maybe she thought the house was mine.
The president of Rolls-Royce came in a Rolls-Royce. But not the elegant white-lacquered and chrome-plated kind that black pimps drive around Central Park with their white girls by their sides or that high-class drug dealers use. He came in an unpretentious silver-gray Rolls of medium size, the sort that doesn't require a chauffeur with a cap. The Rolls was driven by his business associate, and they both looked quite unpretentious. Steven even came out to meet them, something that doesn't happen very often. He sees his guests to the door, but I open it for them, or, less often, Olga does. I think Gatsby secretly despises the Rolls-Royce company for the slightly vulgar nature of its product, maybe for precisely the fact that pimps and drug dealers drive around in their cars. Drug dealers and pimps don't drive around in Steven's cars, even though they're produced in far fewer numbers than Rolls-Royces are (and cost almost as much). «Our» cars are as staid as an old English conservative tweed suit and don't look like much at first sight, but the expert will note their restrained severity of form and color and will appreciate it.
Upstairs in Steven's office I served the group coffee on a silver tray and, for the president, specially brewed tea in a silver teapot, or rather, I left it with them, letting them serve it themselves since they had already spread their papers out and didn't need my interference, and went back downstairs to the kitchen.
After a while Steven came into the kitchen and asked, "How's it coming, Edward?"
I said that if they were ready, I could have lunch on the table in five minutes.
"Excellent!" Steven exclaimed, and dove into the cellar to select a wine to go with the meal. You can always tell unerringly by the quality of the wine just how much value Steven places in his guests. He wanted these, as I guessed, to share a distribution network with him, that is, to undertake to sell his cars too. No doubt they have a very good network; indeed, as a powerful firm, why shouldn't they? It turned out I was right. Steven came back with two bottles of Chateau Haut-Brion, 1961. Oho, I thought, he's treating them first-class! Even the fact that Linda had warned me the day before to be sure to wear my black serving pants, white shirt, and a jacket ("Steven asked me to tell you," Linda diplomatically put it), even that fact underscored the importance of what was taking place.
I've gotten spoiled as the servant of the world bourgeoisie, and have even permitted myself to serve lunch to Steven and his people dressed in a T-shirt with the legend "Cocaine Is Hazardous to Your Health!" printed on it. Or else, East Side patriot that I am, I prance around in another shirt given to me by Bridget in her day with the words "IRT Lines" on it — the New York IRT subway line, that is, the main East Side line hidden under Lexington Avenue. That T-shirt had once belonged to Richard Hell himself, to our number one New York punk rock star. Bridget's boyfriend Douglas had once been Richard Hell's drummer. In that T-shirt, slashed here and there with a razor blade — intentionally slashed — Richard Hell had given newspaper interviews. And I, after sewing up just a couple of holes in that punk rock relic, wear it around Gatsby. My «fall» didn't happen all at once, but gradually. In the beginning, I dressed every day in black pants and a white shirt.
Gatsby and the Rolls-Royceans sat down at the table and I served them lamb and steamed vegetables, which I can't stand myself, and then whistled upstairs, by that whistle inviting Linda to assume her place at the kitchen table with me. Mr. Richardson was supposed to have lunch with Linda and me too, since he was at the house every day now, working on Gatsby's latest fantastical project. This one concerned the allocation of the Southeast Asian labor force. Gatsby, along with some big international corporations, wanted to put to work the unfortunate boat people who had been hacked to pieces by Malay pirates or by Thai fishermen. As you see, Gatsby thinks in global terms and strives to extend his power over mankind; he's a typical Big Brother. Usually Mr. Richardson has lunch with Steven when the latter's at the house, but that day was a special case. Mr. Richardson doesn't have any part in the automobile business, so he was having lunch in the kitchen with the secretary and the housekeeper.
Linda and Richardson came downstairs and took their places at the kitchen table. I sat down with them, chewing a piece of meat. I poured myself a bottle of Guinness and started listening to what they were saying.
"Perf!" said Linda, after trying a lamb chop. "Perf! You've really learned how to cook lamb, Edward."
"Perf means «perfect» in Linda's private slang. She also uses the term "delish," short for «delicious» and no less important to her vocabulary.
Linda was telling Mr. Richardson with a serious expression that she had the day before reheated some spaghetti and that it was better reheated than fresh. I grinned ironically. I didn't actually believe that it was only the first time in her life that she had reheated spaghetti. She's probably lying, I thought, pretending she lives better than she really does. But I refrained from making any comment. Let Linda tell Richardson whatever she likes and play at the high life; what difference did it make to me? If she'd started lying about politics, I'd have gotten into it, but lying about food was harmless enough.
Linda then started describing to Richardson how she and her black belt in karate, David, had been invited for dinner the previous weekend at the house of some friends on Long Island. The dinner was a candlelight affair with classical music — Vivaldi had been playing in the living room the whole time. Right,
I thought ironically. Vivaldi is good for the digestion. Linda and her friends can't invite a symphony orchestra to assist with their digestion the way Gatsby does, so they eat to records.
I left to clear away the empty dishes for the boss and the Rolls-Royceans. "Tank yu verri mach!" Gatsby said to me with a Russian accent. The Rolls-Royceans thanked me too. Since the boss was fucking around, it meant he was in a good mood. The business had therefore gone well and they would be selling his cars. I served Steven and his comrades salad and after coming back to the kitchen gossiped to Linda and Richardson about how things stood. This gave them an excuse to shift the conversation to the boss, our usual topic, although from time to time Linda and I pledge not to talk about him, at least not while we are having lunch.
"Oh, Steven's in a very good mood," Richardson said. "I've noticed in general that he's become more human. Perhaps because he's getting older? He's much less irritable than he was a couple of years ago."
And Linda agreed that it seemed to her too that he was getting better. We all happily started talking at once. Why not, our savage was turning into more of a human being. Excellent! Marvelous! Fantastic! And then in the midst of our enthusiasm it suddenly occurred to me, Does that mean he won't get pissed off? And I went to see what the gentlemen at the table were doing. The gentlemen were still confabulating over the remaining salad and cheese. I asked them if they wanted coffee, and they happily consented. After clearing away their dirty dishes once again, I served coffee and returned to the kitchen. It turned out Polly had just called, and the conversation therefore passed naturally to a discussion of Gatsby's sexual capacities.
I announced: "I don't believe that Steven's sexual indices are that high. In my view, he's probably crude and primitive in bed. Even though he's a strong guy, it still seems to me that all he's capable of is very simple sex of the in and out type, and not even that for very long."
Linda seconded me and even generalized my thesis, saying that in her opinion all WASPS are uninteresting in bed, their puritan upbringing having deprived them of sensuality. For Linda this last remark had a particular point, since her boyfriend David was a Jew.
I didn't want to offend Linda, and so I didn't tell her that I didn't have that high an opinion of Jewish men either. And so we took up the case of Gatsby again, whom his relative Mr. Richardson defended. And of course not merely because he was Gatsby's relative, since he often referred to Gatsby ironically, but also because Mr. Richardson was a WASP himself; he was offended on behalf of all WASPs. Which is quite understandable. After all, who wants the reputation of being worthless as a man, especially if you acquire that reputation only because the nation you belong to is regarded as undersexed? The battle began in earnest.
I didn't really want to insult WASPs, but I did have my own stake in the quarrel. I would like to have told them that in my opinion artistic people were much more interesting in bed than businessmen. No question about it. But I couldn't. Mr. Richardson would probably be as offended on behalf of businessmen as he already is on behalf of WASPs, I thought. I had already tried once to talk to Richardson about Dostoevsky, stressing that the profession of writer is an exceptional one. To which Mr. Richardson answered in an irritated tone that everyone invests a part of his labor and talent in the world, and that as a businessman he, Richardson, did too. And then he brought in the usual businessman's propaganda — that they, businessmen, are important to the world, that they give people work… and other such slogans from his arsenal.
I thought then that Richardson is Richardson and Dostoevsky is Dostoevsky, but out loud I merely said that a writer's possibilities are greater, since he deals with ideas, and since he does deal with ideas, he's a lot more powerful and even dangerous. But even my hint that a writer may be a villain couldn't dislodge Mr. Richardson from his firmly held conviction that the businessmen of the world constitute a special caste, a conviction that he well knew how to conceal behind demagogic assertions that everyone invests the same amount of labor in the world.
I remembered an idea of mine and decided to share it with Linda and Richardson. I was interested in what they would say. Linda sometimes listens to me. She pretty much regards me as a "crazy Russian," but sometimes I say intelligent things.
"Listen, comrade Americans!" (I always adopt a jocular tone whenever I want to speak to Linda about serious things.) "Listen," I said. "It seems to me that you, and please excuse the necessary generalization, always tend to take a mechanistic approach to the problems of life and mankind. That is, you approach man the same way you'd approach an automobile or a tractor. I'm not saying you don't admit the existence of the soul," I continued, laughing, "but you have the presumption to approach both the soul and its problems mechanistically. Even your methods of healing people, psychoanalysis, say, are at bottom predicated on repair, just like the repair of an automobile or a tractor…
"Even your drug revolution," I continued, "with all its so-called radicalism, with Timothy Leary and the other prophets of LSD, hallucinogenic mushrooms, and other garbage for the salvation of mankind, hasn't introduced anything essentially new. It's also a consequence of this mechanistic approach to man as a machine. You want to be happy? Swallow an LSD tablet or gobble up some mushroom spores, and you'll be instantly happy. And all mankind will be happy too. It's quick, of course…"
Here Mr. Richardson started protesting. I stopped him with my hand. "Sometimes it seems to me that you Americans — a generalization again; forgive me, but I can't help it — that you're much more steeped in primitive Marxism than the Russians are. The Russians are way behind you. You're always repeating the magic word economics. You explain everything in economic terms, and you persist in believing that every event in the world is attributable to economic causes. Both wars and revolutions — everything. I regard that as a naive point of view that's at least a century out of date. There's no question that bread is a motivation in the world, but it's not the only one, or even the main one. Overpopulated India has been starving for all the thousands of years of its history, and yet it's never had any revolutions to speak of. There's something higher than bread, namely human spiritual energy… Heroism…"
Suddenly realizing from Linda's and Richardson's faces that this new topic left them more indifferent than I had hoped, I leapt to another. "All right," I said, "forget heroism, and take the historical event that's closest to us, the Iranian revolution. How can you explain that in economic terms? The Shah improved the well-being of his country; there's no question about that. According to statistics, the population of Iran before the revolution enjoyed the highest standard of living in Iranian history. But the revolution still happened; it follows that it wasn't economics that caused the revolution, true? Perhaps it was something else then?"
Linda and Richardson started objecting… They agreed with me on some things, and not on others. It wasn't that we were divided into two camps — a Russian against the Americans, two Americans against a Russian. America and Americans had long since ceased to be foreign to me. I had been living in New York going on five years, and I didn't have much sense of myself as a Russian, though, yes, I did feel like a European sometimes.
As in all our other kitchen discussions, we didn't reach a common view. They suddenly got tired of "politics," and Mr. Richardson started praising my English. "I'll admit when you first came here to work, Edward, I got a headache every time I talked to you on the phone," he said, laughing. "Now you talk like anybody else. You still have an accent, of course, but it actually gives your English a certain interest. The girls obviously find it charming."
"Edward's biggest weakness is pronunciation," Linda said. "His vocabulary is extremely large — sometimes he even uses words I don't know very well — but he can't use his whole vocabulary because he doesn't know how to pronounce the words. Get yourself a grammar book, Edward, and learn the pronunciation rules," she concluded. "I've been telling you that for a year. If you like, I'll get one for you; I'm going to Barnes and Noble next week."
"Sure, get one for me," I happily agreed. "I'll pay you back immediately."
"If you don't, I'll deduct it from your salary," Linda laughed. "Edward once managed to get me in a snit with his pronunciation," she told Richardson. She laughed and continued. "You remember last summer when they broke into the house next door, of course, the one that belongs to Mrs. Five Hundred Million. The thieves came through the garden, cut out part of the door with a saw, and broke into the house and stole her paintings and other valuables. The special alarm system she had in every room didn't do any good; they just cut the wires."
Linda told her story and Mr. Richardson shook his head in horror. He and his family live in Massachusetts, and it scares him to hear about our New York crimes.
"So the day after the robbery," she continued, "Edward came upstairs to my office with a newspaper," and here Linda tried to reproduce my accent: "'Leesen, Leenda. Zat is zee edvartizingh in niuspepper… "
I yelled indignantly that that wasn't fair, that I'd never spoken with such a wooden accent, but Linda dismissed me with a wave and continued, though dropping the accent. "'Send $399 and in two weeks you'll get a new machine gun cheaper than any life insurance you can buy. Insure your lives with our machine gun, Americans! And the address," Linda concluded triumphantly, "was 'Kunoxville, Tennessee'!"
Mr. Richarson laughed long and sincerely. And after he stopped laughing, he repeated "Kunoxville, Tennessee!" and looked at me, smiling. I laughed too and looked at Linda; she loves to tell that story. I waited for the end, which contained my victory over Linda.
"I told him," Linda continued very seriously, "Edward! You don't say 'I kunow'; you say 'I know' with a silent 'k, so why do you pronounce it 'Kunoxville'? Memorize the rule, Edward; if there's a consonant after the 'k, the 'k' isn't pronounced in English. Or an even better rule is, if there's an 'n' after the 'k, the 'k' is always silent. Always. Don't forget it, Edward, it's 'Noxville.
"Do you know what he said to me?" Linda asked Richardson. This was the point of the whole story. Richardson didn't know. Of course not. "He said, 'Are you sure? What about those delicious little things made of dough? Knishes! "
Mr. Richardson howled with delight. "Knishes! Knishes!" he repeated, and Linda looked at him in triumph. "'Knish' isn't English, of course, but a word that's been taken from Yiddish," Linda said, "but it really is just about the only example where a 'k' standing before an 'n' is pronounced."
After he'd had a good laugh, Mr. Richardson asked me, "What did you want a machine gun from Kunoxville, Tennessee, for, Edward?"
"What for?" I said. "Before they broke into Mrs. Five Hundred Million's house, they robbed Mr. Carlson's house. They went through the garden the same way. And did you read in the papers about what happened in the Berkshires recently? An owner's twenty-year-old son and his housekeeper, a seventy-year-old woman, were killed by robbers. I want to live! I don't have the slightest desire to die for the sake of your step-brother's carpets and sterling. As you perfectly well know, our front door has only one lock. And your absent-minded brother leaves the doors open all night, both the front door and the door to the garden. Our alarm system has never worked, not even while Jenny was here. And the two watchmen who are supposed to guard our block sleep all night… I live alone in the house," I went on passionately, "and I'm scared!"
Richardson looked at me very seriously. "I had no idea that even on such an exceptional block with its own security it was still dangerous," and he shook his head.