Waiting for the Electricity (19 page)

I hated goodbyes. Besides, I told them, it was only for six weeks.

Tamriko refused to see me but wrote me a letter instead that said, “Goodbye. Not just see you later, but goodbye forever.” Why goodbye forever? I thought, irritated. Besides, if I do move there I can bring everyone over. Or at least come home for the summer. That’s what everyone else does. Then she included in her note the Georgian words for real life. As if I would forget them?
—shoes that curl up at the toe.
—hidden mineral springs with life-extending waters.
—the white flakes that fell from heaven and sustained people until they could grow better food on earth.
—the sun that is connected to women.
—the moon that rules men.
—the type of violet that grows on stone.
—the beehive that makes life sweet.
—blackberry bramble.
—mother bread.
—the mustache of a mountain man.
—eyebrow, the two coming into one across the forehead, which every Persian girl in the mountains seeks in a husband,
—the frog and the sound the frog makes when it has lost its village. I wanted to write back to her, “They have the sun and the moon in America, and blackberries too. But why do you write about the eyebrow? Is that why you like Gocha so dearly? Because of his unibrow?”

But no, I couldn’t write that. In Georgia, our Caucasus Mountains only allow certain thoughts to be spoken. Our poets, long ago, found those sentences when they searched through nature for them and their words are still enough for us to live by. If I tried to write
another kind of sentence not given to me by the pathos of the mountain, if I tried to write a sentence that might offend the woman, for example, my pen mark would slip into a curlicue.

Mr. Fax was furious. “You stole my fax!” he said. He spoke in a kind of eructation, as if he were
still
speaking from the bottom of his volcano, but now realizing he might not ever get out. “That application to attend the business seminar was meant for me!” He counted on his fingers. “Last August? I was wondering why that application never came.”

“I will not allow you to leave your place of employment for six weeks!” he added, after I refused to sell his antique plates and silver crosses for him in America. But I hadn’t been paid my governmental salary in over eight months, so he couldn’t keep me at the job, because at this pay rate we were practically a volunteer organization. “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” I whistled and then I invited Fax for a beer to celebrate, but he was insulted that I didn’t invite him for a whiskey.