Waiting for the Electricity (10 page)
“No, that’s an untested heart,” Malkhazi had said.
*
Since the power was out, I didn’t bother going to work the next day. I stayed home instead and listened to jazz on Malkhazi’s battery-powered radio. “The Maritime Ministry of Law can survive without me,” I told my mother. “No one follows the law here anymore anyway, not even on the sea.”
Outside, the late August storms swirled black water around us, like gasoline in rain puddles, but without the rainbows. These were sultry days, dreary as the dull aluminum forks at a Soviet cafeteria, or as a boot wading through gutters of turbid water.
In church, the icons continued to weep, like Father Mikhail had said, but to me it was obvious that the paint was undergoing some chemical reaction to the saturated air, which created condensation that dripped down like candle wax. When no one was looking I even licked it. It tasted salty, but I didn’t believe in these tears.
When the torrents of rain pounded down the grapevines creeping up our iron balconies, most people took the weather personally and sulked at home, quoting lines from our twelfth-century epic poet, Rustaveli: “To fate, we owe this sea of woes that over us ceaseless flows.” Only the drunk men on the street defied the dark rain, “You think you are the winner? No, I am the winner!”
I tried to think up something good to write to Hillary before crumpling up the half-written note in English:
Hillary, We are fine but little bit sad. Even after World War II we had more electricity than now. Now there is no heating, no water. All day long we are thinking about water, the price of bread. But I think it’s our destiny to carry on
.
But how to carry on? Whenever I tried to hunker down to the ground and try to hear God’s words, all He ever said was, “Why do you forget everything?” He didn’t give us any good sort of advice.
At home, Malkhazi sulked that his plan hadn’t worked out. He sat in the kitchen and brooded, leaning back in his chair uttering the name of Georgia, how much he wanted to go explore her regions in a car, as if she were his long-lost, unobtainable girlfriend—a sufferer on top of a hill taking care of the goat herd who knew how to chop firewood but also looked great in a dress, a girl who knew him better
than he knew himself. “
Sakartvelo
,” he muttered—this is our country’s real name—and looked protectively toward the mountains.
Sorry, Hillary, I just have nothing to say. The same gray colours here. I’m trying to cheer up myself but no use. Maybe you had better just come here and I think we’ll find something interesting to do. The KGB archives are closed to us, unfortunately, but we can borrow a gun and go kill a sheep
.
Eventually the radio’s battery died, and I couldn’t think of anything more to write to Hillary, because the only time I was inspired to write was when I listened to the radio—its music made me feel that I was an important hero in a movie, that I had reason to hope that my dream could come true.
I tried making a battery based on an article I found in the library called “Veggie Power – Making Batteries from Fruits and Vegetables.” The article cautioned, “Do not eat the fruit or vegetables that have been used to make the batteries. A battery cell made with a potato provides a different current than a battery made with a lemon or an onion.” Unfortunately, the writer of the article failed to mention that a current from a potato wasn’t sufficient to run a radio.
The generator still had a little petrol left so I abandoned my letter and turned on the TV. “Today the Georgian people have forgotten about the bird flu and are more concerned with how to stay warm this winter,” the news broadcaster was announcing. “The weather has let them down.” I switched the channel. A news anchor was interviewing
the American director of Sateli, the new multi-national electric company in Tbilisi. “We love Georgia,” the director said into a microphone in front of a crowd of women jeering at him. “We love the people here. The traditions. But the bottom line is, if they don’t pay for it, we can’t continue to supply them with electrical power.” In the background a group of children were yelling for electricity. “
Shuki! Shuki! Shuki!
” they said, pounding the air with their fists. Light! Light! Light! “We can’t afford to keep our presence here,” the American director said, raising one eyebrow in concentration—he was famous for that gesture—“when ninety percent of the people are stealing electricity. You have, well, an overeducated population here. Bob, have you seen these devices they’ve rigged up to turn off the meters? I’ve never seen anything like it. But they need to know we will shut down the entire city if they don’t pay their bill.” In the far corner of the screen an old woman was shouting, “May God help you the way you are helping us!” Another was preparing to throw a cabbage at the American’s head, but then,
your mother
! We ran out of petrol.
We coveted light. During Soviet Union times, we got used to getting it for free. Now the electric bill was more than our monthly salary, but the conspiracy theories still didn’t cost anything. Some said the government turned off the electricity in the winter to force people to buy oil from them in order to heat their houses. Others said all of our electricity was being funneled out of Tbilisi and into the aluminum factory in the suburbs. Some joked that if there really was such a thing as Big Brother his little brother was let loose in the electricity factory. On again off again. Every time the light would come on, the refrigerators in the building would make a banging sound. We had a refrigerator rock band in the kitchen. Once I opened the window and yelled, “I want to think about other things besides electricity! Other things!” and no one responded until someone’s window popped out—the glass shattering onto the street below. “That’s it!” a woman’s voice cried from below. “I’m moving back to Armenia!”
But some said we lived in troubled times and that the darkness brought us all together. For in the waiting came neighbors knocking on our door with matches and lanterns, sometimes carrying a pig’s head leftover from a wedding with meat still unpicked. In the waiting I lent some tools—a hammer and a ladder—to another neighbor who was doing renovations. And in the waiting Juliet would come home from the university and pound out Adjarian gypsy tunes on the piano. In the waiting some green peas would sprout on the counter and surprise us a little, reminding us of things that grow, of the real life out in the field under the sun. In the waiting everything was mostly simple.
In fact, during those hard times it was difficult to find a place similar to Georgia in the world. We had our own special logic that was not based on individual gain. There is no individual happiness on earth, but we invented our own special calmness when we looked at the sea, or when we felt our will, or when we listened to the Louis Armstrong song “What a Wonderful World.” It was even a kind of mortal rapture, the fullness of being, knowing that the next moment everything could stop working. The electrical blackouts kept us in a state of constantly remembering this. We constructed things without any special equipment, without any special effects. It was without institutions, without support of any kind. Of course it wasn’t a masterpiece or anything. There were no commodities. Sometimes there was not even food. But it was life most direct. Since I had only known darkness, I sometimes wondered if it was true that we required the darkness to keep us all together because sometimes we just sat and waited in such a strange sort of happiness.
In a magazine I read an article about how in Czechoslovakia there was a new therapy program called dark therapy where a person goes and just sits in the dark. For five weeks he sits in the dark and paints. Maybe he paints things like animals or fish. He starts to see after a few days. It is a kind of inner seeing, not in the air, only in his brain. If you go and you are a little crazy, it is supposed to help you. If you go and you are normal, maybe it makes you a little bit crazy. In the magazine they showed some of the drawings that the man drew. I cannot say they were good drawings. The body was too long maybe. But that is because he was sitting in the dark. When you leave the dark room, the guide tells you how to go. First, in order to adjust to the light, you must wear sunglasses. I thought about how if we sit in the dark long enough to become crazy, we can just sit in the dark some more and then become normal again.
But mostly we raged against the darkness like Yeltsin against the weather and tried to do something about it. Malkhazi had once tried to make some light from scratch by building a windmill out of the remains of the abandoned tea factory. He spent months on it, but even he was surprised when it actually worked, generating enough power
for eight-elevenths of his uncle’s house in the village. None of us were all that surprised however, when, two days after he got his windmill to work, the government announced that windmills were illegal. Without electricity we were forced to turn to petrol. But now we had run out of that.
I made my way down the dark stairs into the dark courtyard in search of some oil coupons for the generator. I sat on an empty oil cistern in the yard, looked up at the cold stars coming through the sky like fax messages. I waited for someone I knew to walk by, but I just heard the complaints again.
From my little brother Zuka: “The electricity went out and I only got to watch half the movie.” From my mother: “Why does only the
governor
get electricity?” From Juliet: “There’s no light by which to read at home, so I prefer to stay at the university.” From our neighbor, Sadzaglishvili: “My daughter’s boyfriend is stuck in the ski lift, so we’ve lost our chauffeur.”
A few years ago a Western aid organization came to town, like a circus troupe in a novel. They called their organization Al-Anon and opened an office in Batumi to help all the wives and sisters of alcoholics. They always said the same thing: “Let go. Let God,” which was a very funny phrase. Al-Anon lasted for about three weeks before shutting down because they realized that we already live that way. Everyone lets God do everything.
What about individual problem solving? I asked myself. What about having faith in our efficacy? But how is it possible to think deeply about solving the problems of our country when instead we are always thinking about electricity? Always wondering: If I leave the house I may miss the hour of electricity, and then I will have lost my chance to fill up the water bucket. If I leave the tap open, will I return in time so that water doesn’t overflow onto the floor and drip through the ceiling of the downstairs neighbors? Should I take a vacation to the ski resort on Mt. Kazbegi even though I might get stuck in the chairlift when the electricity goes out? Since there was never an electricity schedule we had to plan our day from moment to moment, and never more advanced than that.
I raised my head and announced to the Great Toastmaster in the sky, “I’m tired of thinking about electricity. It’s a very boring subject. I will try to put forth individual effort. And if that doesn’t work out, then I will just give up for good, and toast Your name.”
O
N THE BUS TO WORK THE NEXT MORNING
, I
SKIMMED THROUGH THE
packet of my favorite English verbs: to strive, to aspire, to achieve, to succeed. Outside my office I glanced at the newspaper kiosk.
FIGHTING RESUMES IN PANKISI GORGE; PRESIDENT SHEVARDNADZE VOWS TO GIVE UP CORRUPTION—AGAIN; ENVIRONMENTALISTS STILL OPPOSE BCT PIPELINE; MIKHEIL SAAKASHVILI, NEW WESTERN-EDUCATED DEMOCRAT, GIVES SHEVARDNADZE A FRIGHT.
I leaned closer and read the last article. According to opinion polls this new Saakashvili was the second most popular person in Georgia. Last year he had accused the state security minister and police chief of corrupt business deals. Now he was telling parliamentary members that they needed to keep itemized accounts of where they had bought their Armani suits and Mercedes and explain how they could send their children to Swiss schools. The current government had scoffed at him, had called him a Bolshevik. Wow, he is similar to me, I thought.
In the lobby, the
panduris
were humming and twanging softly. A group of Adjarian workers were amusing themselves by drinking and singing Ilya Chavchavadze songs in honor of the Georgian warriors whose deeds once awed the world.
“Three Georgians united make a world,” I chanted to myself
down the corridor. At the end of the hall Fax greeted me with a little bow. “Slims—Anthony, the foreigner, will be our guest today. I will need you to help watch over him.”
At one o’clock, when Anthony arrived, Fax had changed into his pink shirt. He heaved a box of apples onto the center of the conference table and began his charade of acting like a very important man. He sat down in the only chair in the room while Anthony remained standing before him. Vakhtang stared at Fax behind his plume of cigarette smoke, bemused, until, spotting me, he harked at me to get the guest a chair.
When I returned with the chair, Anthony was explaining to Fax, “I’m a geologist, not a shipping agent.”
“You are a pipeline specialist,” Fax said. Ha ha. Wink. Wink. Hands rubbing together like a nervous girl flirting. “A highly coveted position in Georgia. If you look on the list of jobs we are willing to give immigrant residency status to, pipeline specialist is one of them. Now, tell me, do you know Hillary?”
“Who’s Hillary?” Anthony asked.
“Hillary Clinton.”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Too bad. I’ve been waiting for a fax from her.” Mr. Fax said. “Would you like a cigarette?”
“Thank you.”
“You have children?” Fax asked.
“No,” Anthony said. He looked a little worn out and I started worrying Fax was going to take advantage of him. I tried borrowing Malkhazi’s crystal gazer power to silently root Anthony on. I imagined in his heart a mini cheerleader waving her pompoms, which were the colors of his national flag.
“No children?” Vakhtang asked, eyeing Anthony skeptically. He pointed his two index fingers at each other and touched them. “Plus. Minus. If you have two pluses, it doesn’t work out. What did you study at the university?”
