Waiting for the Electricity (26 page)

“You think the Svani mountain man without a brain, and now without ears, is useful? But everyone in his town still loves him.” But I was running out of advice. “Nothing looks beautiful on an empty stomach,” I declared. “It’s better if we eat something. So do you want some macaroni?”

While we ate I wondered if America needed to change its dream. All the time on TV the politicians said, “Everyone has the right to the American dream.” The house. The car. The laundry room. A whole row in the supermarket of laundry detergent. But is this a very good dream? In his head, the man, like everywhere, is always wanting things, but here he thinks he should be slurping the entire world up. Every morning, wake up, drink coffee, go to work, slurp up some world, and then have a weekend. And people must leave their families at such a young age! Only thirty-four? In Georgia we stay with our families until forty or fifty.

Every day in Georgia we are eating and drinking with our families. But in the U.S., I felt like a fish on the factory floor. My gills opening, closing, trying to breathe, developing strange complexes because everyone had to be very ambitious and not have the normal human connections, urgently trying to create their own happy bubble. In Georgia if you called out on the street, “Hey you! Ambitious!” you would get a punch in the head. I wondered if it was possible that the American dream had become old-fashioned. Perhaps I should have chosen the European dream instead, or even the Venezuelan dream.

I had actually been looking forward to my job at the fish packaging factory, which was to start the following week. We had had two weeks of the American doctrinization program and now it was time for the internship. It was located over in Oakland near the Honda dealership and I would have to commute. I was looking forward to becoming a commuter. And at the factory, at least I could just work
and not think. At least I had that. But after the very first day there, I felt a heavy soreness in my heart. On my way home I stopped at the employment agency and then went to the corner store and bought the
San Francisco Chronicle
and the
San Jose Mercury News
.

When I got home Merrick said. “Buddy, I think you’re addicted. Sometimes I find the news a real downer. I hope you’re going to recycle all that paper.”

“I bought these newspapers for you so that you don’t spill your walkabout paint all over the floor. Actually, that’s not the truth,” I admitted. “The truth is that I do not want to package fish. I have to come up with a new idea. Maybe these newspapers will help me think of something.”

“But I thought you were really into the Black Sea spiny dogfish.”

“I don’t have a problem with the fish, but I have a problem with the packaging. After today, I am not sure I can go back.”

“What was so wrong with it?” Merrick asked.

“Do you know what happens there?” I cried. “They send us the leftover pieces of the fish, frozen blocks of it, two feet by one foot. They don’t even use cod. They use pollock for cheaper sticks. I told them, ‘Cod tastes better!’ They said, ‘What does it matter? Everyone dips it in ketchup.’ Then they cut the blocks into little fingers. They add a layer of water and a layer of flour and a layer of batter and a layer of crumb. They call it the three-pass system. When they dip it in the hot fat, all the water turns to fat and then they package it, freeze it, and send it to the shops. I do not like this factory farming.”

“Right?” Merrick said. “But Slims, what you’re describing doesn’t only happen at fish factories. The whole system is breaking down, but no one has time to mention it.”

“Actually, the fish factory is in quite good condition. The point is they want me to stand at an assembly line and make two hundred fish fingers a minute. I don’t mind about the work. But there is no love going into the food.”

“Right,” Merrick said. “I know what you mean. Well, what did you want to be when you were a kid?”

“When I was a child? I wanted to be a nature scientist because
there was one man at my school who drew pictures of big fish. I forget the word. What is this word that means a big fish with milk?”

“A whale? Whale milk?”

“Maybe. Let me look in my dictionary.” I looked in the pocket dictionary I carried around until I found the word “Ah. Mammal. Mammal? Like
mama
? That is a good word! It is like a word for homeless people. Not like high-level word—corporation. Separation. Disappear. It is like words in my language. It is like an Eastern word a little bit. Mammal. Mammal. Like Bible. Bibble. Mammal. It feels good in the mouth. Anyway, so today, after work I stopped at the employment office. I looked at the Opportunity Knox and the government employment job board. So many employment opportunities! It doesn’t make sense to limit myself anymore to packaging fish. I never realized in America you could get a job as an insect catcher. There was even a job working for the Gorilla Foundation. Emotionally, at this point in my life, I would love to work for the Gorilla Foundation.”

“Whatever you do, don’t work for a nonprofit,” Merrick said. “There was an article last week about how the majority of them can’t even pay their rent anymore. Slims, you gotta realize that this is a major urban community and what runs it is money. As soon as those people from, say, Kentucky realize how much money is to be made here, they are going to start flooding the market. If you’re gonna live in California you’ve got to be making at least fifty thousand a year. You’re worth that but you’re not going to be able to make that as an insect catcher. These young guys starting these dot-com companies are making so much they don’t even know the worth of it. They throw thirty million here on a tract house on two acres, grow some grapes, and then buy old whiskey barrels because the barrels are cheap, and then they’ve got this whiske-tasting wine that nobody will drink. Listen, the thing you’ve got to get into is the techpub.”

“What is that? Some kind of beer house?”

“No. It’s tech publishing. I mean face it. You gotta work for the rest of your life, right? So you might as well do what you’re good at. I read your essay about the dogfish, but with a class or two you could
write about modems. Keyboards. Software. There’s some people in Fremont—true ritzy neighborhood—and there’s this sign that says GOATS FOR SALE. It looks like it was written by a five-year-old—all the letters backward and shit. You KNOW they are just that rich. They probably owned all that land and are just holding out with their five acres and their goats. Their goats are real cheap too. Fifty dollars. A hundred dollars.”

“Are they milking goats?”

“I don’t know about that.”

“How about sheep? Are people selling off their sheep?” I asked.

“I haven’t seen very many sheep around,” Merrick said.

When I opened the newspaper I read an article about how farmers in England were selling off all their sheep, exporting them to other countries, in order to move to the city to work in technology fields. Misha continued to joke about how Georgia’s main export was sheep to Qatar, but maybe this is a very modern thing to do. What if
I
exported sheep from Georgia? This way I could export them alive, like the old story of Jason and the Golden Fleece, without any packaging.

17.

“S
O WHAT DO YOU DO WITH YOUR HOST FAMILY?
” I
ASKED
M
ISHA ON
Monday morning.

“We travel to the wine country. We drink wine,” he said, twisting his mustache. “We go to restaurants, very
fine
restaurants. And you?” he asked.

“We sing Leonard Cohen songs,” I said.

He tapped his forehead with his middle finger as if trying to draw memory to the surface, “Cohen, Cohen, ah yes, he was a minister of something.”

“No, not a minister. Just a poet.”

“But the name Cohen comes from Cogan, like Khan, as in Genghis Khan. Yes, Cohen’s family were Tatars, like me. It is a fact,” he said jabbing his finger at me. “What are the words to the songs?”

“I can’t remember the words,” I said.

“You sing all weekend but you can’t remember the words?”

“Misha,” I said. “I know you didn’t really go to fancy restaurants. What did you really do?”

“I observed the local travel agency,” he said. “I studied their techniques. And you?”

“I took a rest from the fish factory and studied the techniques of the police instead. They were very interesting.” I had noticed that
usually you can’t see the police; they are invisible. But if someone starts to speed, goes through a red light, or if he is missing his front license plate then the highway troopers appear and give that person a ticket. If in the grocery store the large bin of almonds falls down on an old woman’s head, spilling almonds all across the aisle, a policeman and a fire truck come at once in order to put a Band-Aid onto her head. The policeman first talks to one person and then to the other person and everyone stands there, not even shouting at each other or throwing the metal part of a seat belt at each other. He, but sometimes the policeman is even a woman, writes down all their information, and then another policeman arrives and sometimes still another, all driving different police cars, all flashing their lights.

So much money spent on policemen and their flashing lights but it seemed to me that the postal workers were dying out. They didn’t even have their own sirens to deliver the mail. Maybe because everyone had started using e-mail.

Even back in Georgia Juliet had started using e-mail. That afternoon I got the following e-mail from her:

Dear Slims
,

I know you have had problems too with love in your life. Is America changing you? Can you tell me, darling, what the men in America are like?

Was America changing me, I wondered, or was I becoming more of myself?

It is written in our civics textbooks at the university, “The Georgian man must not be greedy or an egoist, a miscreant or a villain. He must not equivocate or perform espionage. He must be sweet, kind, and gentle.” But I am certain that there are only thirty percent of those kind left. The Georgian man was much more fulfilled when he was running through the forest with his sword, staving off the Scythians, shouting at the women to go hide themselves in a cave and guard the wine
.

Malkhazi used to be so gallant, driving me up to the top of a cliff overlooking a rugged view of the sea. He would take off his worn sweater as we stood together in the cold, though of course I would notice that the sweater was unraveling at the elbow and feel obliged to repair it for him. On some days I really believed that he was there to protect me. But then struggle, hard labor, too much hard labor, the unrelenting daily shackles of survival: haggling, conniving with policemen, and probably his mandatory hubris are crushing him down
.

But oh, his car: he treats it so tenderly. His car is his only means of expression. He shifts its gears in sync with his gloomy thoughts. If I have trouble closing the door he says, “Just kick it shut.” But when I kicked it he got offended and said, “I didn’t mean it. What kind of person kicks a car door!” Yet, when he drives he treats his car like a horse and he, a boy in a village violently lashing it to get to the next house around the curve where a bowl of homemade
chacha
waits for him. God help any pedestrian trying to cross the street when he’s driving—she must jump to the center divide
.

He loves to wave to the policeman, to slap some pocket change into his hand, or yell some humorous remark to the neighbor while I am trying to talk to him about something significant. If modern music blasts through his speaker system like, “You and me baby ain’t nothing but mammals, so let’s do it like they do it on the Discovery Channel,” he will throw up his hands and quickly change the station while cursing the Americans and their stupid music. Life itself offends him because it’s not tough enough to meet his challenge, to overpower his capacity to endure
.

So proud is he of being able to give me a ride in his car that when we arrived at the destination he forgot to open the door for me and said instead, “Now, get out!” He refused to come inside and eat some pickled watermelon
.

“
Watermelon?” he said, as if he doesn’t understand the word anymore, as if a man wouldn’t even use that word
.

When he is with a group of his friends, they stand in a huddle as if helping to preserve themselves. No longer does he sit politely, deferentially, at the dinner table in the company of guests. He has no time. He excuses himself with, “I won’t join in the conversation but I’ll pay for everything.” He doesn’t like to talk anymore, especially if anyone wants him to. He forgets about flowers, about cheese, about his date with me and a can of Pringles on a dark street. He rolls his eyes and says, “I don’t have time.” If I object he puts his hand to his head and with a beaten-down voice says, “I’m tired,” so that suddenly I want to console him, but he says it in a way that makes me suspect that maybe he is tired of me. If I suggest this possibility he looks up shocked; suddenly awake, suspicious, “You don’t understand me?
”

When I asked him, “What has happened between us?” he said, “Too many questions. Once questions begin, friendship ends
.”

The only time he smiles anymore is when he’s talking to a policeman or sea captain, making a joke, calling his bluff, or when he talks to Anthony, joking with him about how now
he
has more access than Anthony to coconut milk
.

He says that he works this hard because it is his duty to me. He even told me that he would support me so that I can do more important things, like nurture my soul. He actually does have feelings because he is a human, but he can’t find them anymore. He covers them up because they serve him no purpose. He only appreciates something after he has lost it. Then he is filled with regret. And only then does he hunch over a bowl of wine. But he’s so big these days it’s difficult for him to get drunk. I write this because it’s not only Malkhazi who acts like this but Gocha too and Gocha is worse. I worry about Tamriko. I think she misses you
.