Waiting for the Electricity (37 page)

“You want me to just drive though the red light?” he asked.

“Well everyone else does because they are so used to the light never working, so you must too if you want to continue to live.” There is something about Georgia. When people get behind a steering wheel, they start to feel a little crazy, and I knew this would probably happen to him too. He drove through the red light and then he said, “Can I do that again?”

“Sure,” I said. “As many times as you like.”

He didn’t drive very well and kept hitting all the potholes. “I feel like a baby in a cradle because of all the bouncing,” I told him. We drove out of town, over the train tracks, and then he told me why he was depressed. He said, “Yesterday I was fired from my job. BP doesn’t want a whistle-blower complaining about pipeline connectors.”

“Let’s just drive,” I said.

I told him where to drive on all the back roads to avoid the police checkpoints. When we got to the river, at the base of the mountains, I told him to pull over. I reached in the back, opened a beer, and handed it to him. I told him how the first night we had met him we had been planning to kidnap him, but how it would have been really impossible to carry out because higher than the law is the guest. I pointed to Crying Mountain, the hill that Malkhazi’s uncle used to own, and told him the story about it—how when the invaders came they killed everyone on it. He became sad about that and then asked for another beer. We started driving again and then, up ahead, I saw Shalva the policeman, dressed all in black, near the rail station. He was flagging us down.

“Oh my God!” Anthony started yelling, “It’s a bandit!”

“Actually, it’s a policeman,” I said.

“Even worse!” he said. “They are all criminals.”

I told him it was no problem, that I am a Makashvili.

“Easy for you to say,” he told me. “I’m the one driving the car. And we have I don’t know how much beer in the backseat. And yesterday, BP canceled my visa. They want me out of this country.”

“I thought you understood!” I told him. “Higher than the law is the guest. Even if a
bandit
sees an Englishman he won’t bother us. I am so safe with you,” I said.

“Should I just keep driving through?” he asked.

“It’s better to stop,” I said and leaned back in my seat pretending to take a nap. And of course, as I knew he would, Shalva went to my side of the car and asked for
my
papers and I had a little private talk with him. He went back to Anthony’s side, leaned his head in the window, took a beer, and then bid us goodbye. “Adieu,” he said, blowing Anthony a kiss.

“What kind of a country is this?” Anthony asked. He was laughing so hard he almost drove into the river. “Oh sorry, sorry,” he said.

“What is this
sorry
all the time?” I asked him. “I am not afraid to die. Death is afraid of me.”

The next evening I walked to Tamriko’s house with some tools. “I’ve come to fix your sink,” I said. “The last time I was here, I saw that it was leaking.”

“There, I have fixed your sink,” I said when I had finished.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Now I must go,” I said. But I didn’t make a move toward the door.

“Our block still has no electricity,” I said. “So I will leave my phone here to recharge it.” I still waited for her to say something.

“What?” she asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Aah! Feelings. Words. They came together somewhere inside me.

I wanted to ask her if she had ever met a fairly fearless man. I wanted to tell her that I could help her if she had a problem with her car or with her cat. I wanted to tell her the story about one of my sister’s students who got drunk and confessed his love to her but how she had told him, “You are like a son to me.” He went away for many days and took the narcotics that grow up by the railroad tracks. Everyone was worried about him. When he came back he begged Juliet to marry him, but instead of telling him, “It’s impossible,” she
said, “Well, maybe if you get over your drug habit.” Maybe this. Maybe that. I became so angry at her. It wasn’t direct and kind. I wanted to be direct and kind to Tamriko. I wanted her to be direct and kind to me, to tell me if it would ever be possible or not possible to be with her. But she spoke instead.

“What are your ambitions, Slims?” she asked. “What are your dreams?”

“Don’t you know that the Makashvilis are famous for our dreams?” I cried.

“So what are they?”

“My dream is to live in nature. With you. I could build for you a little house.”

“No, I mean as in a career.”

“I can do anything.”

“I know. But what do you
want
to do?”

“Maybe something with the sea. I love the sea.”

“Maybe you could be a marine biologist.”

“I don’t want to do any more
research
!”

“I’m just saying, if you could do anything in the world, what would it be?”

“I wanted to be a lawyer but no one follows the law here,” I said. “One time, I wanted to be a nature scientist and draw animals in the dark like that dark therapy tradition in the Czech Republic, but no one has any money to buy art in Georgia. Anyway, I will leave my phone here to recharge it,” I said. “I will be back tomorrow to get it.”

“Slims,” she said when I had turned to leave. “If no one follows the law here, then how come you never became
kurdi
?”

“You too?” I said and grabbed my phone. “You want to marry a criminal? How very romantic. Maybe you
are
better off with Gocha.”

But when I walked outside, the fading light painted slants on all the buildings, marrying shadows to earth. It was that ecstatic time of the day in between day and night when the light is trying to prove that the purpose of life is love. I headed toward Malkhazi’s office. If Tamriko wanted
kurdi
then I would become
kurdi
.

The doorbell of Malkhazi’s office didn’t work so I pushed open
the door and saw the guard asleep on a chair. The hall smelled of boiled cabbage. Malkhazi’s head was slumped over on his desk, fast asleep. I noticed that the stress of his job had started to gray some of his hair.

When he woke up I told him, “I want to come with you onto that Turkish ship.” I actually didn’t want to go for a number of reasons. Here I was, Mr. Slims Achmed Makashvili, tireless worker for anticorruption, trying to bring the modern law to Georgia, but higher than the law is the woman.

“The Turkish ship with the British master is on its second voyage. We’ll have to wait until it gets back if you want to help me out,” he said.

“No,” I said. “I just want to steal some plastic flowers off a Turkish ship for Tamriko. That girl is crazy for
kurdi
.”

Malkhazi laughed heartily. “Maybe
she
will appreciate it.”

When we got to the port Malkhazi pointed to a ship lit up like a glow-in-the-dark dragon. “See that monster?” he said. “It’s another Turkish vessel. Look at it. Would you believe this one is new though? Now crouch low. We are driving through a restricted area. You would think that this Turkish master on his voyage to Batumi would have gotten used to the controls. If you were the master of such a vessel, you would get to know the controls if you had to navigate your way though the straits of Bosporus across the Black Sea, right?”

“Of course,” I said.

“And you would know how to balance the weight. But look how all the weight is on the starboard side!”

Malkhazi parked his car in the space reserved for oil inspectors. “Here, you can wear my jacket,” Malkhazi said, throwing it to me. “It has my badge on it.”

Inside, he pointed to a room humming with the sound of a generator and equipped with a green vinyl couch. “Wait here. I have to go sign some papers before we can go on the Turkish ship. Here, you can read this.” He handed me a magazine about the American sport of snowboarding. “An American sailor left it here. It will be quiet because everyone has left, but don’t fall asleep. I may need your help.
Here are some binoculars. You can see the port through that window. Make sure the Turkish ship doesn’t start to sink.”

Looking around, I realized that perhaps the reason Malkhazi liked his job so much was because it allowed him to work in such a modern environment. The colors were neutral and the paint wasn’t chipping. There was a NO SMOKING sign on the wall in English. I grabbed a handful of pens from the office supply drawer. I could give Tamriko some stolen pens.

Malkhazi’s boss from Azerbaijan came into the room wearing a green business sweater with orange diamonds on the sleeves, looking like he was trying to uphold the standards of professional dress that were becoming lax in our city. Everyone feels better when he has a purpose. Malkhazi’s Azeri boss stared at me enjoying the warmth of his heater.

“Do you mind if I sit here?” I asked.

“Do what you like,” he said and turned to his desk.

The waiting room was warm with the blaze of the blue gas heat. The lulling hum of the generator and the white noise of the Western refrigerator soon blurred the lights of the Turkish ship in the harbor and put me to sleep.

I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of documents printing and Malkhazi swearing at the print button. “Oh, I am having some difficult times,” he said when he saw I was awake. “None of these Turkish sailors speak one word of Georgian. Turkey is our neighbor! Don’t you think they should at least know how to say
hello
in Georgian to their neighbor? They go to school only to learn how to do strange tricks with their cigarette lighters. You can come with me now, Slims.”

So I finally went aboard the Turkish ship.

At first I was afraid, but to my surprise, the Turkish sailors were very friendly. Some stood by the rails looking wistfully south, in the direction of their home. I asked one for a cigarette and he gave me his whole pack.

I watched Malkhazi measure the oil. He stuck a tape measure into the hatch of the oil container and wrote the number down. But
no one here could understand his measurements. Finally, a Turkish sailor who could speak a little English said that they measured, like the Americans, in feet and
inchus
. At first I thought he was joking because
inchus
means
what
in Armenian. I thought he was saying, “What? What?”

While Malkhazi finished with the measuring I walked around the ship but couldn’t find a single plastic flower. “There is nothing to steal on this ship,” I told Malkhazi.

“Of course not,” he said. “I thought you were joking.”

“But
you
stole plastic flowers off a ship!”

“No, I didn’t. I bought them in a shop! Come with me to the American ship. You’ll like it there.”

But on the American ship they weren’t quite as friendly. When I pointed to the Turkish pack of cigarettes and said, “No good, no good. Do you have good cigarettes?” an American sailor pulled out a pack of Marlboro Lights, said, “Good cigarettes,” and then put them back in his pocket. Foo.

A few days later Malkhazi bounded into our flat and said, “Juliet! Cook me a cutlet!”

“Pardon?” she asked.

“Or, I will buy you a cutlet. Come Juliet, Slims too! Let’s go for a drive.”

“Why are you in such a good mood?” I asked him. “What happened? Did you give the English captain wine and a sword? Because that might actually work. Anthony …”

“No, Slims,” he said. “You joke. You joke. To tell you the truth, the Turkish ship came back yesterday from its second voyage. This time I said to the British master, ‘You measure.’ I stood there staring at him with my arms crossed, just watching him do his own measurements. Every time he looked at me I just said, ‘Go ahead.’ And then he found a discrepancy, himself, of five hundred and thirty tons. So his company decided not to sue after all. I told him, ‘After you take that ship on about twelve more voyages, you’ll be able to find the average
and can then adjust the calculations correctly.’ I am friends with all the Turkish sailors now. One of them even suggested I marry his daughter. I told him, ‘Even though I am learning to love Turkish people, I could never marry into your family because you like sugar on your meat dishes. Meat is not a cookie.’”

It was the beginning of summer now and the tourists were returning to Batumi. So many Armenians were driving their Mercedes to our beaches again. I thought about how already a year had passed since Malkhazi and I had sat on the beach without a job, only listening to the radio. Now, already, a new ice cream shop had opened in Batumi that claimed to have American flavors. When we drove past it I told Malkhazi, “You must try American ice cream.” We ordered pistachio and Juliet ordered cinnamon. We took our ice creams outside.

“This is so delicious,” Malkhazi said and threw his ice cream into the street. He was developing a modern man’s flair for sarcasm.

“Try this one,” Juliet said, handing him her ice cream cone. “It’s spicy.”

Malkhazi took a bite and made a face. “Next they will be making goulash ice cream.”

When we got back to the car Malkhazi took eight thousand lari from his pocket, put it into both of our faces, and laughed. “I was paid today by the British captain. It’s enough to buy my own visa to England. Juliet, if you go there I will join you. You better not let me have any wine today or I really might do it.”

“Do you have any wine?” Juliet whispered to me.

“No,” I said.

“Neither do I,” she said.

Malkhazi drove to Gocha’s new cafe near the bus depot. We stayed in the car while Malkhazi gave Gocha four thousand lari. Gocha counted it and nodded his head.

I still had the pens I had stolen off the ship. As we drove away I threw them to Gocha and said, “Give these to Tamriko. I stole them.” Gocha gave me a puzzled expression.

“Ha!” Malkhazi said, pounding his fist on the steering wheel and driving away. “Did you just see that? I had eight thousand lari,
enough to buy a visa to leave this country! And I didn’t do it! I will remember this day forever. Now we really must celebrate!”

We flew up the road, through the familiar mountains, listening to the lyrics, “I belong to you, you belong to me.” As we drove, the world of green trees was waving at us outside the windows of the car. We stopped at a bean bread place and bought six breads. There was no place to buy wine so we had to buy it at a Russian store, the one that only sells port. “The Russians always love to go to the forest and sing songs about their port,” Malkhazi said. “‘Ooh, ooh, me and my port,’” Malkhazi sang and then wiped his sweating forehead with a handkerchief. We parked the car and from there walked into the mountains, lighting people’s cigarettes along the way.