The young Russian poet Eduard Limonov emigrates with his wife Elena to America. Elena, a beautiful and romantic person, fell in love with Eddie for his, as it seems to him, immortal soul and for his sexual abilities. Eddie and Elena are very fond of having sex, they do it in any circumstances, for example, during Solzhenitsyn’s television appearance.
However, very quickly Elena is fed up with the impoverished emigrant life, she begins to make rich lovers of different sexes and does not take poor Eddie for her entertainment. Eddie continues to love Elena, he is not even against her lovers, if only she continued to sleep with him. Elena does this less and less, and Eddie, in complete despair, tries to cut her veins, tries to strangle Elena, and soon the couple begin to live separately.
Eddie gets a “welfare” - a benefit of two hundred seventy-eight dollars, lives in a tiny room in a dirty hotel, which, however, is located on one of the main streets. The circle of his compelled communication consists of emigrants - weak, lost, crushed by the lives of people who believe in American propaganda and find themselves in a humiliated position in America.Eddie stands out from these people with her love for expensive and elaborate clothes (high-heeled shoes, lace shirts, white vests), on which he spends almost all his money.
He is trying to work in a restaurant as a bassboy, as an assistant to a waiter. Among people of this profession, it is customary to finish off customers with glasses and eat meat leftovers from plates. Eddie does this too, but soon leaves an unworthy work of the Russian poet. In the future, he sometimes moonlights as a loader.
Elena continues to occupy all his thoughts. “Though bitches, even adventurers, even bandits, but all my life together. Why did she leave me? ” Here and there, in huge New York, he finds traces of his love: for example, the letters "E" and "E", scratched with a key on the elevator door in a hotel.
Eddie makes several attempts to change her life, and it’s quite traditional for a Russian writer: to get a job at one of America’s countless educational institutions (and even receives an invitation to work in Bennington, but she understands how boring it is and doesn’t go), and the attempts are rather fantastic: they offer themselves as companions to a rich lady who published an advertisement in the newspaper about finding a partner for travel.
Eddie is a leftist, sympathizes with all anarchist, communist and terrorist movements, believes that the world is unfair, that it is abnormal when some people are born poor and others rich, and hopes to eventually join one of the fighting organizations and take part in some something revolution. A portrait of Mao hangs on the wall of his room.In the meantime, he goes to meetings of the modest Workers Party, but they seem to him too boring.
In search of new sexual partners, Eddie understands that since “women are disgusted,” it’s time to master men's love. He meets Raymond, a rich elderly homosexual, they are mutually attracted, but Raymond has recently had a new lover, and Eddie is not sure that he can give Raymond what he wants, a tender big feeling. However, Eddie’s desire to lose this kind of innocence comes true soon enough. Staggering at night in some suspicious areas, he meets a black guy sleeping in the ruins, almost certainly a criminal, rushing into his arms. And the next morning, lying in his hotel, Eddie thinks that he is "the only Russian poet who managed to ... get along with a black guy in a New York wasteland."
Edichka also has other lovers: another black Johnny, a Jewess, Sonya and an American, Rosanna (who was contacted on July 4, 1976, Independence Day), but he still cannot forget Elena. He sometimes meets her (once, for example, she calls him to a fashion show where she acts as a fashion model - Elena tries to master the catwalk without any success), and each meeting responds with hellish pain. On the day of the fifth anniversary of his acquaintance with Elena, he finds himself in a house where she cheated on him, and this bitter coincidence makes him stifle himself into beer and marijuana unconscious.
Edichka's best friend is New York. In his high heels, he can walk around the day of three hundred New York streets.He bathes in fountains, lies on benches, walks in the heat on the sunny side, talks with beggars and street musicians, watches children, visits galleries: he enjoys the rhythm of a great city. But for a second Eddie does not forget that somewhere in this city lives his Elena.
In it, aggressive desires erupt periodically: steal Elena, ask a medical friend to remove a spiral protecting her from pregnancy from her womb, rape her and hold her locked up for nine months until she gives birth to a child. And then bring up the child whom the beloved woman gave birth.
In her loveless thoughts about Elena, Eddie concludes that she herself is still a child, does not know what she is doing, does not understand what kind of pain she can cause people. And that someday she - never truly loving - will understand what it is and the one whom she will pour all this accumulated love will be happy.
But by chance, Eddie’s hands fall into Elena’s diary, from which he learns that she understands a lot, that she pities him and scolds herself for such ruthless behavior, and it turns out that she understands something, but that’s not the point, but hell knows what.
