Waiting for the Electricity (11 page)

“Geology,” he said.

“Yay, geology,” I tried to imagine the little cheerleader crying out.

“Ah, so biology is not your strong subject,” Vakhtang continued. “You have a girlfriend?”

“Um, ha ha,” laughed Anthony. “I don’t need a lifetime supply of roses.”

“Yes, you do,” I thought. “For the little cheerleader in your heart.”

“Ah, yes,” Fax said. “Our friend is a business man. He is not interested in roses.”

“Perhaps he prefers apples,” Vakhtang said and dug into the box of apples. He gave one to Fax. Fax studied it.

“It’s firm. It’s pink. It’s a beautiful apple,” Fax said to Vakhtang. “And we have an entire shipping container full of them.”

“Don’t eat it. It was grown near the Armenian nuclear power plant,” I told Anthony. “Fax bought the cargo of apples from Armenia because they looked good on the video. But now he can’t transport them anywhere. Transportation is our national problem.”

Fax scrutinized me. Even though Mr. Fax was trying to be a capitalist, he had the unfortunate fate of looking like a communist—yellow skin from smoking filter-less cigarettes down to his fingers, the ash long like the criminals’ cigarettes in the illustrations of one of my Sherlock Holmes books, his spectacles like magnifying glasses that so exaggerated his watery eyes—heaven help anyone whom he chooses to fix them upon. “You are like a little kindergartener,” he said. “So cute with your little jokes.”

I heard a man selling watermelon outside. “Would you like some watermelon?” I asked Anthony. “Our watermelon has no radiation.” I ran outside to get one.

“Ripe as a fine woman,” the watermelon seller said.

“I don’t want a wife. I want a watermelon,” I said and hefted it inside.

“Is it a good one?” Fax asked.

I cut it open. “Well, it’s red,” I said and handed Anthony a huge slice.

Anthony took a bite and watermelon juice ran down his chin. “Georgia has the sweetest watermelons I’ve ever had,” he said. “I’d like to take back some of these seeds to plant.”

“Do you have a cow?” Mr. Fax asked.

“Beg your pardon?”

“You need good cow compost for this kind of watermelon,” Vakhtang contributed.

“Okay, cow compost,” Anthony said, writing it in his notebook.

“Do you really want to know how?” I asked him. I told him I had some watermelon seeds from Kakheti if he wanted them, and that it’s better to burn the place where you will plant the seeds in order to get rid of the roots. “Plant them indoors in cellophane first. That way when you plant them outdoors you trick them because you can cut the plastic with a knife so carefully, without disturbing them, without them knowing.”

“Tricky. Tricky,” Mr. Fax said.

“Stop watering the watermelons when they are big and the leaves dry up,” I said.

“Then you wait. You wait for the watermelons to sweeten,” said Vakhtang.

“Eat some more watermelon, please,” Mr. Fax said. “Now, let’s talk about apples.”

But Fax’s secretary peered her head around the doorframe and told Fax that the shipping captain from Odessa had arrived.

“Why don’t you take Anthony into my office? Treat him with some wine from my village,” Fax told me.

In the hall Anthony stopped to photograph the hat rack piled with sailor caps. I told him, “My boss is going to try to sell all those Ukrainians a Georgian flag so they can maneuver their ships in and out of customs more easily.” I pointed at the bookcases. “He is also trying to renovate.”

In Fax’s office I opened the cupboard, saw the bottle of wine from his village and a bottle of brandy. I chose the brandy and poured some of it into a cup.

“Now, tell me, do you think our law firm looks like modern civilization?”

“Modern enough.”

I noticed that Anthony wasn’t drinking his alcohol. “This will
help you understand us better,” I said, pushing the brandy closer to him. “Go on. Drink it. I am afraid I have not been a good enough host,” I said. “I wish I could offer you more.”

Anthony laughed. “You served me a huge feast, sold your house, whatever the joke was.”

“No, really we should have welcomed you with an orchestra.”

Anthony laughed.

“It’s been done before. Really. If only I could go to England.”

“I believe you wouldn’t like it. We aren’t as hospitable there.”

“No, I meant that then I could be your
host
there.” I turned on the computer and waited for it to warm up. “My website isn’t attracting very many clients,” I told him. I opened the page (www.blackseatrading.org.ge). “Do you have any aesthetic suggestions for me? I am trying to appeal to business investors.” I showed him what we were advertising:

GEORGIAN FLAGS

MATERIAL
: Polyester

FLAGPOLE MATERIAL
: Plastic

STYLE
: Flying

USAGE
: Advertising and Customs Patrol

Also: “We have immediate supply of Greenleaf tea. Georgia’s finest elite. Full bodied malt flavor, (bright and bubble varieties). We have large quantities.”

Also: “At this time we can provide airplane scrap metal from L-29 piece by piece. Minimum units: one. Maximum units per week: seven.”

He looked at the two pictures of oil tankers, at the Georgian and American flag entwined, and the caption that read. “Bridging Nations.” He read the quote on the bottom, “We feed our horses on wolves’ meat.”

“Georgians are quite taken with this warrior mentality,” Anthony said. “This manly-man complex.”

“What?” I said. “This is not about warriors. Don’t you know it’s impossible to feed horses on wolves’ meat? They eat grain. But we
have to do what is impossible. Our society is so corrupt that the only hope is to go against the current. We need to find foreign investors for our country but no business wants to risk coming to Georgia because it won’t benefit them financially, at least not right now when the leaders take all the money. But investors must invest out of love, for the love of our history and traditions.”

I saw a strange, sarcastic look on his face. “Perhaps you ought to join the rest of the world. Try swimming
with
the current,” he said.

“As our former president Gamsakhurdia once said, ‘Only dead fish swim with the current.’”

Anthony cleared his throat and scooted his chair closer to the heater.

“I should have gotten a degree in air quality control,” I said. “It would have been more useful than knowing about fish. I can haul this heating unit over to your hotel if you like, along with those bookcases in the hall. In exchange, you can teach me about long-term business practices, about the free market economy.”

“I don’t need a heater,” he said testily. “Or a bookcase. But what I can tell you is that if you really want people to invest in your country, first of all you’ve got to get rid of your mafioso-style habits.”

I looked at him in surprise. “Mafia? You think we roll our enemies around in pickle barrels? You think we have connections to Saudi Arabia and carry around a suitcase with twenty million US dollars in cash? You think we say to each other, ‘I have the most
beautiful
house in Beverly Hills but you can buy the one next door’ and then burn down the house for the fire insurance?”

“Well, the ones in power, take your dictator of your little province of Adjaria here. I think he’s kind of sheisty.”

“Ah, yes,” I said. “Of course. But. Do you think he cares what you think?”

“He may not care what I think. But what about the long-term? Is it really in his long-term business interests to lose his foreign investors?”

“You think he cares about long-term? Long-term he will be sitting on the beach laughing at you.”

“I still think that it is necessary to set a precedent that it’s possible to achieve progress through legal means.”

“Well then,” I said. “Teach me how!”

“You can start.” He took a sip of his brandy. “You can start by telling those men in your villages to stop poking holes in the pipeline.”

“Ah, I see. You think it’s only men. It’s also the women. And the archaeologists. In order to fund their research. They think, ‘If the pipeline is going to run through our archeological sites and old graves and property, then we have a right to some of the oil. It’s the capitalist way.’”

Anthony snorted.

“Please tell me, with complete truthfulness. Do you think we have a chance at success?” I asked. “Or should I just give up and praise God’s name?”

“You have a chance here if you can help me stop those folks in your villages from poking holes in the pipeline.”

I surveyed him and lit a cigarette. “The people in the village are real mountain people,” I said. “They are very, you know, rude. They aren’t used to foreigners, and so who knows what they might do to you?”

“I don’t think you understand that if they keep sabotaging the pipeline the military is going to be sent in.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “Our little villages are so important?” I asked. “I’ll take you there and you can tell the archaeologists yourself to stop poking holes in the pipeline.”

He took another sip of brandy and asked for a cigarette. “I never used to smoke,” he said. “I seem to be in some sort of culture shock. I’ve lost my iron will. I spent the whole morning just staring,” he said. “Feeling like some sort of Hamlet. Like those men outside. Those men just yelling in the parking lot.”

“Which men?” I asked.

“Out there, in front of the fruit stall.”

“Them? Actually, they are not just yelling,” I said. “They’re watching out for each other.”

“Well, what are they yelling about?”

“Well that one, the security guard? He used to be a famous Soviet actor. There is a monument to him in Kutaisi. He just said, ‘Hey, brother! The price of flour is cheaper over there.’ That one relaxing in the beer truck? He used to be an opera singer. He just shouted to the woman standing at the bus stop that the bus doesn’t stop there anymore. And that one leading a goat used to be a famous mathematician at the Agricultural Institute. He is yelling at the little boy not to smoke.”

“I feel languid,” he said. “Like I can’t move.”

“It’s blood pressure,” I said. “Because of the weather. You need to drink a cup of coffee.”

“I don’t think it’s about blood pressure,” he insisted. “Before I came here I had my astrocartography chart done. My astrologer said that Georgia was a dangerous place for me, that I would be dealing with forces beyond my control—sex, death, the oil industry—that frankly, I shouldn’t come here unless I was participating in a sporting event.”

“Your astrologer needs to go hit himself with a big stick,” I said.

“But perhaps he was right. I feel that fight-or-flight instinct here,” Anthony said.

“You have traveled all around the world doing your geological surveys. Haven’t you accustomed yourself to that feeling?

“Yes, but other places I felt like fighting. Here, the flight instinct dominates.”

“Yes, I see that.”

He was only seeing the darkness here, not the light and relief that darkness brings.

When I walked home, the new bishop was speaking in front of his handmade church he had just completed. Tamriko was there, listening in. I hadn’t seen Tamriko since the summer. I’d heard she’d gone to a resort in Borjomi with Gocha. She was wearing a yellow housedress, and the usual halo of her hair was flattened against her face by what looked like the heat of exertion.

The bishop was making the following announcement: “I have told you before, it is a sin to trade your cow for some furniture.”

Tamriko objected. “Of course it’s a sin to barter your honor for gold,” she yelled out, “but where’s the sin in bartering cream for a sack of cornmeal?” The problem is that the new bishop worked for the government and it was bad for the government’s economy to barter—that practice didn’t support a sustainable taxation system.

When she saw me she pointed at my pants and said, “Nice trousers. New shoes?” The bishop had recently tried to object to these kinds of conversations during his sermon. He said, “When you are in a church, or standing outside of one, you should speak more quietly. Practice reverence.” But we are Georgians. We don’t know how to speak quietly.

The bishop was now reading from the Bible, from the book of Isaiah. “Those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength.” He looked up from his book and told us, “This is a story written by a desert people—not in a subtropical climate—but do we not have the same desert climate in our hearts now?” He bent his head back to the book. “They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint.”

The only problem is that these days usually Georgian women don’t have a second wind. When they walk up a hill, “Whoo!” they say, fanning themselves, and must sit down for a little rest.

“Slims, can you help me carry some buckets?” Tamriko asked. “The water is out.” I wondered if her opinion of men was that they were only useful in order to haul things. But in the beer factory district neighbors always help neighbors haul up buckets. Guests help hosts haul buckets. Press the elevator button. Hard. Press it again in an exaggerated fashion, as if you are on stage and the audience is far away.

“The problem is the new import store,” Tamriko said on the stair landing. “Whenever their electricity goes out it affects the fourth, sixth, and eighth floors. When are they going to fix it?”

That was the question. The answer was that no one knew how. That was the problem.

“We don’t know anything about these
industrial
problems,” Tamriko said as we hauled another bucket up the stairs. “We are an agricultural country. Slims, we don’t remember, but my mother says that Russians always did the industrial work. In Rustavi, at the metallurgical plant, they had to call in people from the Urals who knew about these things. We are deeply connected with the
land
. We are perfect at watching over the vineyards.” She began to sing:

Blossoming vineyard

So tiny, so kind

planted in paradise