It's Me, Eddie by Edward Limonov

Author:Edward Limonov [Limonov, Edward]
Language: rus
Format: epub
Tags: prose_classic
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Luz, Alyoshka, Johnny, and others

I took my umbrella that day and left. I was still reeling from the evil weed. But, to avoid returning to my garret and the routine third-day depression, I walked out Spring Street to Sixth Avenue, got on the subway, and went to my English class. It was a gift to me from my solicitous welfare office.

I had my class at the Community Center on Columbus Avenue near 100th Street. The Community Center was not of such ancient construction, but our classroom windows looked out on what were almost ruins – broken windows, fire-blackened walls, all sorts of mold and vermin, creeping right out to the street. New York is rotting around the edges. Its clean blocks are much smaller in area than the already boundless sea of uninhabitable and semihabitable neighborhoods, terrible in their state of near-wartime destruction.

There were about a dozen such buildings where I went to school, between Columbus and Central Park. The reason I mention this is that even the little book we used – "we" being ten women from the Dominican Republic, one from Cuba, one from Colombia, and the only man in the class, namely me – well, this book was entitled Every Night There's No Hot Water. The book told about people who lived in a neighborhood roughly like this one, and how they were surrounded by misfortunes of every description. There was no hot water, they were afraid to step outdoors at night because of crime, a father of two girls felt annoyed that their home had been taken over by a certain Bob, a ne'er-do-well and dangerous character, leader of a youth gang. There was an open implication that the father of the two girls was simultaneously the father of this Bob. All the residents of the neighborhood described in the sentences and exercises of this book were linked to one another by nearly incestuous relationships, and watching over all was an old procuress and scandalmonger in a shawl (the illustrations showed her in a shawl and with a face like a fox). A jolly little book.

I was slightly late that day; they were already writing a composition based on the teacher's questions. The teacher had a surname of Slavic origin, Sirota, although she could not recall that anyone in the family had been a Slav. Women of various hues greeted me joyfully; they were sincerely disappointed when I didn't come. Luz threw me a smile. She very much liked to smile at me, arching like – forgive me this very vulgar and trite simile, but she arched like the stem of a rose. Luz was altogether white, the perfect Spaniard, though she too was from the Dominican Republic. Luz had a child, though she herself was still a child, small and thin; her earrings did not help, nor did her high heels. Her earrings were cheap little things, but she always changed them if she put on a new blouse. She and I were almost lovers, though we never once kissed, and I told her only once that I liked her very much.

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