Waiting for the Electricity (8 page)

But anyway, Fax was holding today’s newspaper, shaking it in my face. “I see here that you have met the new foreigner in town? Mr. Anthony?”

I nodded.

Fax lifted an eyebrow. “And what can you tell me about him?” he asked, his voice low and greasy, like under a car engine.

“What is there to know? He likes
tkemeli
on his cornbread. I think he likes my sister.”

“This Anthony,” said Mr. Fax, “says he is in Georgia to inspect the oil pipeline. But he has been seen near the port observing the oil inspections. And now he is photographing new building construction in Batumi. Yesterday, he was seen at the new kindergarten asking about who funded the project. And next week he is going to visit our office to photograph our customs regulations. How can one person have so many jobs? There is only one explanation.”

“He is obviously an agent provocateur!” I said. “Sent to detect self-incriminating acts!”

“Not a spy,” Mr. Fax said. “A judge. He is judging our country!”

“Oh,” I considered. “That is an interesting perspective.”

“The point is, if he is going to judge us, we need to renovate.”

I never ceased to be surprised at the method by which Mr. Fax arrived at his conclusions. He developed this particular conclusion-forming method after reading the famous capitalist handbook
How to Win Friends & Influence People
by Dale Carnegie. He had since become a Dale Carnegie technician, perfect at imitating a Westerner, or at least how he supposed a Westerner acts: fawning, unctuous, sanctimonious.

“Perhaps we should show him some anticorruption strategies,” I told Mr. Fax. “This might be the perfect time to set up our community electric meter. It could be a showcase.”

At work I was trying to promote the use of mandatory community
electric meters. The old ones were out of order and disregarded by every energy distribution company. I had told my boss that if we could get fifty families to share the meter and pay as a group, no one would ever betray their own neighbor, and we would always have reliable electricity. As it was, people would always steal from the government, but never from each other.

Fax looked dubious. “Why don’t you work on that while I go to lunch? Make sure you keep an eye on the fax machine.”

I always kept an eye on the fax machine. And I wasn’t the only one. Whenever Fax was at lunch, Fax’s acquaintances usually came to visit. Today, as usual, they drove up in a black Volga, Radio Fortuna blaring. The driver stayed in the car while Zaliko, our town’s chief archaeologist, got out, strode over to the door, pulled his mountain hat down over his eyes, and asked if Fax was here.

“Don’t worry. He’s out,” I said.

Zaliko leaned close. “Have I received any faxes?” he whispered.

I told him that he hadn’t.

“Foo! I’m expecting a packet from the U. about government aid programs in Armenia. Our land is filled with one-point-seven-million-year-old giraffe skulls, but does
our
government care about funding this? They already have enough Mercedes for everyone in their family.” He pronounced Mercedes the French way, with the accent on the last syllable. “What else do they need to spend their money on?”

“You think I know this?” I asked him. “Batumi doesn’t even have a bowling club.”

The archaeologists usually frequented the local Center for Democracy so they could use the long distance telephone there. But there were too many competing archaeologists at the Center for Democracy. Tempers would soar like the missiles Yeltsin used to launch into the air to blow away all the clouds for a sporting event. The archaeologist had to choose his friends wisely or he would be stepped on. Inevitably he got stepped on anyway, and then he had to pick himself up and learn to run with the others.

When Zaliko left, I typed in “Black Sea Fish” into Google. I only found another recipe for salted jellyfish.

That afternoon, after lunch, Fax called me to his office. On his desk lay the stack of Zaliko’s faxes. “Look at this,” he said. “It’s so interesting. Last year the Americans gave a lot of foreign aid to Armenia! There is an NGO starting a company for, read here,” he said and pointed, “‘Sustainable Uses of the Armenian Boulder.’”

Fax turned to another sheet of paper, his finger stabbing the page like a blunt sword. “Here is a joint American marketing venture trying to popularize the use of ketchup in Armenia.”

I leaned closer, disbelieving. “And here,” he added. “A nongovernmental tourist organization in Armenia that is promoting the religious significance of Mount Ararat. And look at their family farmer loan program. Look at their budget. They’ve included a salary for a secretary for each cow.”

“Ah,” he continued, shuffling further through the pages, “here’s one called ‘Global Marketing of Traditional Armenian Bread.’ Slims!” he said. “You’ve been studying English. Why don’t you put it to some use for once. You need to write about how Georgian bread is better suited for export than Armenian bread.”

“But what’s the difference between Georgian and Armenian bread?” I asked.

“The difference is that Americans really like Armenians,” said his secretary, as if she knew.

“It’s not the bread that matters,” Fax scowled, as if we were both some brand of donkey. “It’s what you smuggle in the bread. How can we get ahead if we don’t tap into this resource?”

“You’re a bigger dreamer than me,” I told him, “and you’re not even my relative.”

“Slims, you need to learn to wield your power, like those journalists in Moscow always threatening a political celebrity with a satire.”

“That was more effective in the nineteenth century,” I pointed out.

“The Americans only give foreign aid to the Abkhazians. I’ve heard they only like to help refugees,” said his secretary.

“I’m not interested in the bread business, but how about water?” I said.

“Water? Yes Borjomi water,” said Fax. “Beautiful water. Famous water. We can start a business.”

Though Fax was talking about sweet Georgian water, his tone of voice was gruff—as if he were speaking from inside a very important volcano.

When it was almost time to go home, I heard Fax’s offensive voice boom down the hall yelling for his secretary, Mzia, to bring some glasses for himself and Vakhtang, a minister from the Ministry of Finance.

When Mzia brought Fax the glasses, I went with her to peruse his bookcase for the Georgian history book
Swords Without Sheaths
in order to ascertain what kind of corruption Fax was planning for this evening.

Fax doled out wine for the minister, Mzia, himself, and poured me a glass as well. “This kind of wine is what we call the beauties from my village. Sweet and dense,” Fax said and held up his glass and made a toast. It was the true story about how his wife always criticized him for being so obnoxious when he drank, so one day, when it was their son’s birthday, he told her to prepare a feast. Of course she had to drink in her son’s honor. She got drunk easily, even on rose petal cognac, and only wanted one glass, but Fax kept making toasts to their son so she couldn’t desist. She drank, felt woozy, and went to bed. Then Fax broke all the plates in the house. When she woke up, she looked at all the broken dishes and asked what had happened. He said, “Terrible woman. You got so drunk last night that you broke all the plates. Now don’t scold me when my friends force
me
to drink.”

Vakhtang patted Fax’s back. “
In vino veritas
,” he said.

I put my glass down.

“Why didn’t you drink?” he asked me.

“Your wine is too sweet,” I said.

“Too sweet? Then just add some salt!” Fax said and cleared his throat. “Anyway, anyway, I have called you here to discuss how we are going to welcome Mr. Anthony to our office. We must present to him an image of modernity.”

“How are we going to do that?” I asked.

Fax took off his jacket. He was wearing a pink shirt. “Imagine a Georgian
Santa Barbara
,” he said.

“The TV serial?” I asked.

“If we just clean up our beaches a bit, from all this crap that floats up from Turkey … just imagine the kind of people we could attract to our beaches.” Fax held up a photograph. “Look at this reception for British Petroleum at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Baku.” The photo showed some dark-haired Russian women sitting on the hood of a sports car, wearing nothing but stilettos. He flicked them with his finger. “My actresses,” he said. “They will sit in the lobby.”

“Why don’t you make a TV serial called
Sex in the Elevator
? That is more true to life.” I was referring to the time he and his secretary got stuck in the elevator, after which time their relations have never been the same. Though, to be fair, since the elevators were always getting stuck, this was a very common phenomenon. “Actually, it could be a kind of documentary,” I suggested.

“I suppose you would like to make a movie called
Communal Electric Meter
,” Fax said.

Mzia, Fax, and Vakhtang all looked at me with pity. And then Fax called me a Bolshevik.

On my way home from work, I sat down at the Paradise Cafe, ordered a beer, and took out some more paper to write to Hillary. The beer was warm and strong and made me start to think philosophically. It’s better to be philosophical while drinking, I told myself, even if some might consider it sophisticated, because it’s still better than being like a Russian who shouts on the street, “Do you respect me?”

Dear Hillary
, I began again.

Since the Soviet Union became broken, the Russians cannot forgive us. It’s a complicated story, an ancient story of jealousy. We were the crown jewel of the Russian empire. Now Russia is feeling nostalgia for us, which is normal, except that it has become a dangerous type of Imperial Nostalgia. You know, we already suffered a lot at the hand of the Arabs, Persians, Mongols, Seljuk and Ottoman Turks, but no power could ever separate Georgian peasants from their grapevines. In the valleys, the first question a guest will always ask his host will be: “I hope no misfortune has befallen your vine, has it?” Every foreign invader has attempted to destroy the vine. Even the Russians tried to make us grow watermelons instead of the vine! It seems a bad fate that God gave us such kind of neighbors
.

But forgive me. By now you may be tired of reading our war episodes. Hillary, I want to cuddle you and your mighty country
.

In writing these letters, I admit, I had fallen a little in love with Hillary. Or perhaps I just needed a woman.

It was in the beginning of last summer that I almost got a wife. I had gone back to the village for the cattle breeding holiday. As I walked to our house from the bus stop, I could see girls giggling through the veil of the wooden banisters, the lattice carved with each family’s signature design: hoopoe birds, apple seeds, jugs of wine, poppy petals. Some boys were washing clothes while others were playing tug-of-war with the clothesline. The littlest one was making a hammock out of string. Their mothers sat in the shade of their balcony awnings, fanning themselves.

“Slims!” one of the women called out to me. “I heard your mother has gone to the market to trade the bull for a cow!” Her companion, Nona, the postal worker, yelled out that she had read all the letters I had sent to my girlfriend Tamriko that month. In fact, they had
all
read my letters to Tamriko. “It’s true,” confirmed a third. But it didn’t matter to me anymore what they thought. All the problems of Batumi felt as if they belonged only to a bad dream that the cold water from the well could wash away. It was summer and I was home in the village, sunshine and watermelon coming out of my limbs. I was even singing a song to myself, an old Adjarian folk song:

A falcon has flown out of its silk nest

But your love, girl, will never fall out of my heart
.

It’s raining

and the water washes through my white trousers

But girl, your love is deep in my heart
.

I walked by the doctor who was making medicine from herbs and flowers, pounding them down in his boxwood mortar, made by our village’s master mortar manufacturer. He scooped out a spoonful of his famous bee venom powder and held it out to me. “This will help you live a potent life,” he said with a wink.

Next to him lived the bed-maker. He wasn’t home. He was out plowing the popcorn fields. Shota, the artist who made Biblical scenes out of sheet metal, was his neighbor. He was very sorry, he called to me, that he had just sold all his corrugated landscapes to some rich tourists from Tbilisi.

I arrived home to join my cousin’s birthday party now midway in progress. My uncles were midway intoxicated, as was the priest who had borrowed a guitar on which he was playing Django Reinhardt’s “Minor Swing.” My mother met me at the doorway and handed me a jar of cream to go trade for a bottle of shampoo—a birthday present for Giorgi, my five-year-old cousin. Giorgi’s older sisters said they wanted to come. Instead, they dragged me out to the tomato plants, sat me on a log, and told me that they thought I should propose to Tamriko that day.

“Why else would your mother be trading her bull for a heifer?” they cried out.

All was colorful and emotional that day. Grapevines ran rampant over rusted iron balconies; velvet plums ripened into orange, red, and royal purple horse riding outfits. Wild sweet peas dangled this way and that, donning their little folk dancing hats. I remembered how in the village, deep depression in the morning is always cured by breakfast.

When I returned with the bottle of shampoo, Tamriko was near the front gate, wearing a white dress. I took off my shoes and sat down on them.

“Why are you sitting there?” she asked me.

I said it was obvious.

She stood next to me, looking suddenly shy. I told her I was waiting for my friend Zaza, who would bring me a fake passport so I could find a government job. I offered her a shoe to sit on. She again asked me why I was sitting there for so long. I looked at her closely and said, “It’s simple.” Then we threw little stones at each other, gray ones. She still stood so I said, “Why are you standing like a soldier, all stiff?” She didn’t say, “I thought this is how wives should be. Attentive,” and I didn’t say the traditional man’s marriage proposal of, “Follow me!” Nor did I propose the way our old Soviet textbooks advised, that if a man wanted to make a woman his wife he was to say, “Let’s go to Siberia together and build a city!” Or even better, “Let’s join a space program, go to Jupiter, and build a city there!” But Georgia is no longer affiliated with the Kazakh space station so such propositions are irrelevant these days. Instead, I asked her how many days she could go without food.