Limonov & Marignac, early 1980s Paris

Again, damnit! I’ve been doing this forever. Most of my friends kicked the bucket before I reached the ripe old age of 30. Addicts don’t live that long, heroin isn’t a nurturing mother, no matter what you think when you use it. Since then, I had very few genuine friends. Well, Edward Limonov, whom I’ve consorted with for forty odd years, was one of them. He just died before the onset of apocalypse, as we know it with this cybernetic virus of a very dubious origin. Sly old bastard, he even figured when to leave the world scene.

I knew he was gonna die, all flags were red the last times I saw him, in Paris in May 2019, to march with the Yellow Vests, and in Moscow, October 2019, when we had that last meal. He greeted me with a joke, parted with me joking. Motherfucker had class. Knew it was likely to be our last reunion and I did too.

Although, damnit, not so soon!… Since you don’t want it to happen, you always think, it’s gonna last a little longer. In Paris in May, when I saw him drinking like a fish, I thought: all right, he knows, decided to have some fun before sunset. In Moscow in October, I confronted him with that shit: why are you drinking, when you’re not supposed to? He came up with a dubious theory according to which vodka was better than wine (one glass a day, as he had previously determined since his brain tumor was removed four years ago) for his ailment. So it was obvious, he was preparing to die. He knew that I knew, and just smiled. Between old friends, some things stay unsaid, but not unbeknownst, particularly when it’s time to go. I always knew when my friends were going to die. Call it junkie intuition.

Now, motherfucking Limonov had a tremendous influence on my life, I wouldn’t even be writing an eXile column without him. I met Mark Ames in his Moscow flat, twenty odd years ago. Because Edward had this gift as well, he just knew what was going to be fruitful, and he had the generosity.

When I first met Edward, in March 1981 in Paris, he was a freaking living god to us, coming from New York, the punk-rock Mecca, and from Moscow, essential to the punk-rock esthetics. We just hated the bleeding heart liberal baby boomers, he was the living-proof that some people from that generation, coming from the cold, could be worth our while. In freaking France, they had published his scandalous first novel, It’s me Eddie, and, wannabe journalists, we interviewed him. Not knowing to whom sell the interview. We eventually did. Edward did not know any genuine Parisians at the time, save for his publisher and the PR woman. He and my crew (most of them dead now) made fast friends. He even bought pot to my long gone friend Fabrice, a burglar fresh out of jail. He talked about it in his first Book of the Dead, published in 2000.

He and I had a special bond, for a very simple reason, I was the only one, in that crew, gifted with foreign languages, English at first, then Russian when, again thanks to him, I met Nina, a Russian immigrant who forced me to learn Russian, when I fell in love with her, as he had foreseen. She was the drinking buddy of Limonov’s new wife Medvedeva, so in a way, however strange it may sound, we had a family. This bond strengthened when I married Medvedeva so she could get a French Green Card and stay with Edward in Paris. Nina was jealous. And so was Medvedeva, her drinking buddy had tried the French guy, who was her husband?… Limonov laughed when I recounted the women’s intrigues…

Then, as years went by, it was my turn to exert a tremendous influence on Edward, when I wrote my first novel, Fasciste, in 1988. Nobody, much less him, was expecting it from me, rather an account of my street junkie days, which I wrote thirty years later. When I got drunk with him and our pal Danila Doubshin in 2015, eating gigantic pork chops, he recognized, against all odds, that my first book was a revelation to him. I never thought he would admit it, although I knew it since I have a long-ass memory. But this motherfucker was, on top of it all, also generous with his friends. And I was lucky enough to be one of them, as the New York Russian journalist Oleg Soulkin once said to me: You’re one of the few he never trashed. So Edward said, yes Thierry, I remember your first book to this day! Much to my amazement.

Then there are numerous stories, how we lost one another in JFK airport in 1982, my first trip to New York, then met again in a art opening in a art gallery in SoHo, after I put an ad in the Village Voice — “Limonov Call Me” —and when the Puerto Rican girl said we don’t put family names on ads, I answered it’s a Russian name, she didn’t know better at the time. Edward and I ended up at Chemiakin’s place, and when Chemiakin threatened me — he was gonna kill me because I was staying at some Russian woman’s place and the Russian painter was sweet on her — Edward punched him in the face.

Marignac & Limonov, Moscow

Then in February 2001, I’m detained by the FSB at Sheremetyevo airport, since I’m carrying Limonov’s letter to the infamous old mercenary Bob Denard. It’s all bullshit, since he’s inviting him to a “Congress of hot spots” on the Earth, and the Russian Embassy has to grant him a visa, and they know Denard since the Cold War days, he’s fought them in Africa, not to say Denard is fresh out of jail at the time and already Alzheimer’s. Yet, the agents dance the macho menuet to freaking make me wet my pants. Well, I’m a veteran of the junkie wars, I remember how it was in the old days in France, I don’t particularly freak, knowing they don’t have much on me.

As soon as I land in Paris I call Limonov to let him know what happened. He says: Well, that happened. Now his apartment was bugged all over, and a few weeks down the line, when I call Nina, passion of my life to this day, she says, don’t ever come back, yesterday on TV they posted conversations between you and Edward talking about coup d’État !… But I’m back there two months later, invited by the French Embassy to write a novel, and Edward is already in jail. I walk the straight and narrow. Mark Ames and I have paranoid meetings on the Red Square, away from the bugs, to determine what we’re gonna do, since our names were brought up in Limonov’s trial. We wouldn’t even utter a word in the eXile headquarters where we both worked together. And the lawyer is trying to pull us in way deeper, since it could be useful in Edward’s trial. Damn!… I don’t even remember how we survived. Nina, Edward’s original gift from Paris 1983, supported me wholeheartedly, and wisely. Mark had worked out his own immunity already 8 years living in Russia. We managed to escape any dire consequence and Edward got out of jail in 2003.

How the fuck can I forget a friend like that, with whom I’ve gone through so much, who always supported me through thick and thin?… Damn, the world doesn’t seem right without this motherfucker, something’s missing!…

—Thierry Marignac, April 9th, 2020.