Waiting for the Electricity by Christina Nichol Read Free Book Online

would holler, jogging after them. If they didn’t respond, we would shout, “Or German!” At that time, we had wanted to start an importing business. Through some South American sailors, we imported a few chickens from Brazil. We made an advertisement of a seductively dressed chicken and taped it to a palm tree on the boulevard: “Brazilian chickens. So sexy!” But unfortunately the chickens caught the bird flu. Then we started an ice cream business, importing specialty ice cream bars from Russia. But with the electricity continually going out, imagine our nerves! We kept the ice cream in the big freezer at the port because there they always had electricity. But then the local dictator moved the freezer to his private residence. “Too many people are sharing the freezer. We are not a communist country anymore,” he said.
    Maybe this Englishman would be a wrestler. I sang to myself a wrestling song from Eastern Georgia.
     

You are my brother

You look like an eagle

You are so strong
    but your cap is on crooked
    and you look like some sort of a boaster
    I know that your town is far from where I’m from
    but I came to meet you anyway
    because I have no other business
    What was his business anyway? And perhaps, since I had none, he could share his business with me.
    When Malkhazi came home, he plunked down two glass jars of Kakhetian wine on the dining room table. “Were you able to steal some electricity?” he asked me.
    “Even the third line is out,” I told him.
    “Come on, come on,” he said to the electrical wires protruding from the wall, untangling them with the teeth of a plastic comb, “I’m tired of shaving with only cold water.”
    Unable to steal any electricity from the mayor’s line, we decided to use the rest of our gasoline on the generator. When Malkhazi got the generator going, he yelled to me above the noise, “This Englishman works for an oil company. Maybe he can get us some more gasoline.”
    My mother looked at all the food we were cooking and shouted at Malkhazi. “Where are all the guests?” Malkhazi shrugged and said no one was home.
    Zuka yelled, “He didn’t invite anyone else! He wants to hog the guest all to himself!”
    “Go call Tamriko,” my mother said.
    “Tamriko just left for the resort,” I said. “With Gocha.”
    “Call Zaza. Call Guliko. Call the bishop,” said my mother.
    “Something is wrong with the phone,” Malkhazi said.
    “Then shout out the window,” my mother said.
    Irakli, the neighbor, still watching us cook, called all the neighbors to come join us.
    *
     
    We heard a little rap on the door. We knew it must be the foreigner because no one knocks on the door anymore. They only shout.
    Anthony, the foreigner, stood in the doorway, wielding a flashlight and an umbrella. “You’ve got some wires that are sparking down there in the stairwell,” he said.
    “That’s normal,” I said in English.
    He looked like one of the illustrations of the hoopoe bird from our reader in third form. He wore an olive-colored tie and had brushed his blond hair in a lopsided swath behind his ears. He was thin and would have looked jaunty in the English manner, except for his brow, which was furrowed and grim. His brow resembled that of the American president Bush when he was trying to think of something to say, but his boot was stuck in the mud and a combine harvester was heading his way.
    My mother stared at him and turned to Juliet. “Ask him how old they must be in England before they marry? Seventeen? Tell him as soon as you marry, I can go back to the village. Tell him the water is purer there.”
    “Deyda,” Juliet said, her face crumpling, “I told you. I have a good job. You don’t have to wait for me to marry if you want to go back to the village.”
    “Oh, how I miss the village,” my mother started complaining.
    I quoted a Georgian proverb: “The mother said, ‘I will die.’ The daughter said, ‘I will marry,’ and in the meantime the house is