Waiting for the Electricity (31 page)

I headed for the kiosk in the basement of the post office to read the news about Georgia. I glanced at the headlines:
RUSSIA
’
S OIL RESERVES COULD PROVE TO BE THREE TIMES HIGHER THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT; GEORGIA
’
S GREEN TEAM TRY TO STOP BTC PIPELINE FROM RUNNING THROUGH BORJOMI
.

Zurab, the newspaper seller, was talking to Zaliko about the high
price of petrol. When they saw me Zaliko threw up his hands and cried out, “Ah, Slims, tell me, what is the price of petrol in America?”

“It’s always fluctuating,” I said.

“But their money doesn’t fluctuate!” Zurab said, as if that explained something.

When his gesticulating hands came to rest he wrapped my
Newsweek
magazine in a piece of brown paper and bound it with a string, now talking with someone new about the rising cost of cornmeal.

I didn’t feel like going to Seaside Boulevard and seeing anybody I knew, so I brought the brown packet to the park that surrounds the lake near the university. Here, New Georgians walk their exotic dogs, grandmothers push their bundled-up grandchildren in strollers, and someone is always fishing from behind a bush so that undoubtedly you trip on his line and he shows himself long enough to give you a condescending look. I sat on a bench under a magnolia tree, untied the string, and opened up the pages of the magazine.

I used to depend upon this act of reading articles in the park to make me feel like a character from one of my sister’s Dickens novels, a Mr. Pickwick. It prevented me from sinking too deeply into the darkness of a Georgian man’s world on those days that were especially difficult, though I now considered that perhaps those dark days were necessary in order to appreciate the days that had light. In any case, I wasn’t able to concentrate very well. Irakli, my neighbor, walked by and, seeing me, sat down and began snapping and spitting out the shells of his sunflower seeds. I showed him an article in
Newsweek
about how George Bush claimed he had been called by God to fight in Iraq. “Look for yourself what is happening over there!” I said. He whistled in astonishment.

But he was more attracted to the ad on the opposite side of the page: a housewife standing next to her shiny white refrigerator.

“What a lucky refrigerator,” Irakli said, “to have the embrace of such a woman.”

Irakli’s wife came and sat with us with her little daughter. She glanced at what we were looking at and said, “That is an advertisement for a
refrigerator
and not meant to be sexy.”

I was going a little out of my mind. I tried to explain to myself that I was still suffering from a cultural shock. Why is it that cultural shock is more extreme upon returning to the familiar than upon visiting a strange place? Is it because something inside has changed and now all the old familiar things must be introduced to this new person? I had missed home greatly, but the idea that I was perhaps stuck here forever gave me nothing to look forward to for the future. And reading these magazines did not help me feel like a Mr. Pickwick. I looked up at the Tamada in the sky and quoted Rustaveli, “Alas! O world, what troubles thee? Why dost thou whirl us round and round?”

I decided to visit the Center for Democracy thinking that there I could perhaps find a portal between the worlds I was trying to reconcile within me. But when I crossed King Parnavaz Street to get there a policeman blew his whistle at me. I marched straight toward him intending to kick him in the shin, like Irakli had when he returned from Afghanistan, but instead, I broke down. I told him how I had just gotten back from America and how crazy I felt. “I feel like some sort of insane person with a bad brain,” I said. The policeman looked at me with sympathetic eyes but didn’t suggest I kick him. He only said, “But how is their Coca-Cola? Is it really different from ours?”

I didn’t know where the Center for Democracy got their money, only that the restoration of the building was funded by our local dictator. The building itself was appropriated for him by his brother-in-law, much to the chagrin of the people who happened to be living in the east wing at the time. Near the entrance, the smooth bronze heads of fashionable New Georgian patriarchs had been soldered over the roughly hewn edges of recently decapitated Soviet leaders. As I advanced across the street, toward one of the corduroyed columns, I saw the security guard talking to some girls. I approached them, nonchalantly, intending to follow them into the building, but when one of the girls removed her hood I realized it was Tamriko. I didn’t want to encounter her and Gocha so I stopped and bought some sunflower
seeds from an old Abkhazian woman on the sidewalk while I waited for Tamriko to leave.

After the girls left, I walked up to the security guard, who was now standing alone, polishing his shoes. “Is Anthony the British guy here?” I asked. I thought maybe Anthony could be my Western soul brother, could help me adjust to being back here a little. He pointed down the hall and I handed him my newspaper cone full of sunflower seeds.

I’d never been inside the Center for Democracy before. I’d heard from my neighbor, Sadzaglishvili, that the building was heated with a 150-square-meter fireplace, lit by crystal chandeliers from Czechoslovakia, and connected to an electrical line that always worked. But look at those marble floors! A thousand hectares of it to cool the enormous rooms, without need of an air conditioning unit. No wonder people wanted to spend time here.

I walked down a series of unmarked doors in a long corridor. Behind one door people were engaged in a meeting so official that they didn’t even notice me. I opened another and saw some young men slouched on the leather furniture, smoking, and drinking beers. I recognized them as acquaintances of Gocha’s, but not close ones. Gocha would probably call out to them on the street the more formal “Prince!” rather than “Friend!” One was playing patience on the computer. Another was on the phone. Seeing me standing in the doorway, he said into the phone, “Hold on, Zuri.”

I asked if he knew where Anthony was.

“Anthony? He’s not here. But you can wait.” He pointed to a place on the couch.

After waiting a while I ventured to ask the one playing patience if
he
knew where Anthony was.

He looked up from the computer. “By the seaside,” he said. “I think he’s with your sister in fact,” and gestured toward the window.

“You mean his
mother
,” the other snickered.

“No, really, his sister. Don’t you recognize him? He’s a Makashvili.”

I looked at the window, at the metal bars protecting it. I looked
at the locked metal cabinets. They were most likely filled with fax machines. I imagined for a second attaching one end of a metal chain to the bars on the window, the other end to Malkhazi’s new Mercedes, and in this way tearing away the metal bars and stealing all the fax machines.

The one called Ruslom looked up at me and said, “I remember you from university. You used to write little stories, trying to imitate Dumbadze. I heard from Gocha that you were trying to get a job with an American telecom business.”

“That was a while ago,” I said. “Actually, I just returned from the States.”

“Really?” they said, suddenly interested.

“So besides telecom, what other kinds of businesses are Americans interested in?” Ruslom said.

“Ecotourism,” I said. “Tell me, do you think we should go the way of tourism or the way of agriculture?”

Ruslom pointed to a picture of our local dictator on the wall and said, “It’s up to him.” Then he leaned over and asked me to help him fasten his gold bracelet.

Since Anthony wasn’t showing up I decided look for him by the seaside. As I walked I considered asking Zuka to lend me a tape of his industrial music, a recording someone had given him of the Azeri oil derricks pumping on the Caspian Sea. I could write to Hillary, “This is the sound of democracy in the Caucasus right now. It sounds like the end of the world.” That would be the most authentic way. To express my country in music is the Georgian way.

Dear Hillary
,

Your version of Democracy and our version are quite different. Our version means if the leader says something we say, “Yes, you are right
.”

By the way, I just read that US Troops, GI Joes, are recently deployed in Georgia, fighting against terrorism:-), training Georgian “commandos”;-) called Special Operation Caspian Guard, and US is spending 64 million dollars for their training. But do you have any idea who they are fighting against? Perhaps a villager to get access to his potato field to bury an oil pipeline? New government says we are approaching new democracy :-) but we just have to wait
.

I have some good news to report to you though. You will be happy to know that your own local Center for Democracy in Batumi enlarged their office after they evicted some families who were living in the east wing. They now also have purchased a modern air conditioning unit which will be useful in the summer. New Georgians have recently made a lot of money. I think you do not need to be afraid of Georgian mafiosi because Georgian mafiosi act just like Americans—the same easy confidence, and how you say happy-go-lucky. They don’t really look like in your Al Pacino movies. The only problem is that they don’t know what to spend their money on. One Rolex for this suit. A different Rolex for another suit
.

In other news: thousands of pigs died in my village last month. It was probably a conspiracy by the Turkish pork sellers because our scientists say that Georgian pigs have the best quality of meat. It won’t be a good
kingkali
year because there’s no pork to put in the noodle. But don’t be so sad, Hillary. It’s nothing
.

Why this terseness? Why was I so angry at Hillary? Our problems weren’t really her fault. Maybe I was just angry at myself.

At the seaside I sat down. The water smelled like lemon rinds. I looked around for some small flat rocks to skip into the water but I only found big round ones. The surf splashed up onto my shoes and I saw that the sea was still layered with a thin emulsion of oil.

I felt a tap on my shoulder, turned, and saw Tamriko. She was wearing long black pants with the silver disco cuffs that flared out and platform shoes that were fashionable for women in those days.

O the Georgian woman! She makes me feel as if I am on a holiday. Even if at first she is a silly ridiculous girl, she will eventually become a woman. She is such a longtime sufferer that nothing offends her anymore—eternal and loving mother, fashionable beauty, always holding her head so high after retouching her temples with glitter.

“Why are you sitting on the beach all by yourself?” she asked.

I patted the ground for her to sit on beside me. “I’d give you my shoes to sit on but they are wet,” I said.

She sat down.

I tried to think of something cheerful to say but all I could tell her about was an article I had just read. “I read in the news today that the water from our sea is more polluted than the Indian Ocean. I can’t understand how we are still alive,” I said. I picked up a stone to toss but then put it down. “Maybe I didn’t study the right kind of knowledge at the university,” I said. “And I definitely didn’t take advantage of my time in America.”

“Forget about the university. And forget about America. Why this foul mood? Why do you blame yourself?”

“That’s the problem with Georgia. No one takes any responsibility. They blame it on everyone else.”

“If you worry so much you’ll get cancer. Come on. Let’s go for a walk,” she said pulling me up. “Look at that little girl over there, standing in the water with her mother. What greater happiness is there than that?”

“Have you read that Isaac Asimov story about the man on the moon who waits all year for the space shuttle? Sometimes I feel like I’m that, stuck on the moon.” We continued to walk. “Look around,” I said, “all those people staring, always so amazed at things.”

We passed the public bathrooms, Gocha’s peewee golf course, a beach sign that read: IT IS YOUR NOBLE DUTY TO RESCUE ANYONE WHO IS DROWNING.

“Ah, there’s Zaliko!” I said and nodded to Batumi’s head archaeologist walking past us. He nodded back.

“Look at these people!” I said after he had passed. “Why is he smiling?”

“What’s
happened
to you?” she said.

“Don’t laugh at me. Here, take a cigarette. Smoke! Do
something
!”

“Everything is going to be okay,” she said.

And then the sea splattered more water. More oil.

“Yeah, why worry about polluted
water
,” I said, “when we could be worrying about venereal diseases.”

“Perhaps you already have one now?” she asked. “Is that why you are in a bad mood?”

“That’s impossible,” I told her. “Where could I find the time? But maybe you do?”

“That’s impossible,” she said, turned, and walked away.

“Oh, right!” I said. “That’s because you had a virginity restoration operation.”

What had happened to me? I had never been so rude to a woman.

21.

I
WAS BECOMING GLUM—GLUMMER AND GLUMMER—AND ALREADY FOR
getting my English too. The sky pushed its oppressive weight down on my head. Even the corridor to our flat seemed dimmer.

Juliet welcomed me home by playing the American national anthem on the piano. But then she started complaining about Malkhazi.

Next door, through the walls, I could hear Tamriko ardently pounding wedding marches on her piano.

“So is she getting married?” I asked Juliet.

“How should I know?” she said. “I’m not a fortune-teller. But actually, to be a fortune-teller would be a good career. Sit at home. Tell a fortune for ten lari. If ten people a day came that would be a hundred lari. Imagine if a hundred people came!”

There is a joke about a Georgian who goes to a Bulgarian fortune-teller. The fortune-teller says, “It will be difficult in your country for two years.”