Waiting for the Electricity by Christina Nichol Read Free Book Online Page A

full of dirt.”
    My mother shrugged. “Take him into the living room with everyone else. The generator is too loud in the kitchen.”
    Irakli Khorishvili, his wife, and the local alcoholics from the entrance were already seated in a parliament-like seating arrangement. They had saved the baize chair for our guest so he could feel like a king.
    “Please sit here,” we all said together in a medley of English, Russian, and Georgian.
    Anthony sat down and stretched out his legs. His shoes were funny: red leather sports shoes.
     
    “Why does he wear red?” Malkhazi asked in a low voice. “Is it in honor of communism?”
    “It’s Euro-fashion,” Juliet said, as if she knew.
    I turned on the TV. It was the comedy station. The comedian was weeping and saying, “No, don’t force me to go to Kazbegi. The women there refuse to have sex before marriage. Waa waa.”
    “So stupid,” Malkhazi said. Malkhazi’s family is originally from Kazbegi.
    I changed the channel to the news. An American soldier was passing out boots to the Georgian army. “We better not find these boots on the black market or you will be jeopardizing any future American-Georgian relations,” the American soldier said to the camera. “American G.I. Joe,” I said to Anthony. Now the news broadcaster, the young one whom all the Tbilisi girls used to swoon over (before he was later tragically killed in his hallway by some thugs), was saying, “Today, President Shevardnadze again vowed to give up corruption …” I stood up to turn up the volume, but Malkhazi waved me away and switched the channel to the exercise station. The aerobics leader shrilly yelled out in Russian, “Do not give up!”
    My brother, Zuka, wearing his blood pressure pump around his neck, showed Anthony the new icon he had carved.
    “Do you see this icon?” I asked Anthony. “Do you think it’s beautiful?” I couldn’t remember which saint it was though. “Our problem is that these days we can’t remember how to pronounce the names of the saints correctly. In the village schools there were so many leaks in the buildings that the only thing we learned when it rained was how to wash our hair.”
    Anthony’s brow furrowed further and I worried about his sense of humor.
    Juliet lit the candles on the table while Zuka piled onto it plates of farmer cheese, tomato wedges, and green onions. A pan crisped the edges of the khachapuri my mother was making and the smell spread throughout the kitchen. I set out the jade cups and emptied five liters of white wine into three clay jugs.
    At the table, thin ribbons of Sulguni cheese marinated in bowlsof butter still browning from heat. Platters of eggplant, rolled in garlic and nuts, sat atop the wild turkey. In Georgia our buildings are always falling down—we pile plates on top of each other like a last hope. Irakli’s wife had brought a humble mound of goose pate from the import store. Dishes of sweet carrots, roasted red peppers, stuffed grape leaves and olives vied for a place. I scooped some pkhali onto Anthony’s plate. “ Pkhali! ” I pronounced for him. “Ground walnuts and boiled nettle leaves.”
    “ Fali ?” he asked, trying to articulate it.
    “ Pkhali, pkhali ,” Malkhazi said, trying not very successfully to be helpful. There was a potato and beef stew, also from Irakli’s wife; a chicken and tomato soup from another neighbor; a mutton pilaf; mashed liver; a beet salad layered with cream; fried forest mushrooms; and crepes flavored with pepper. Malkhazi had caught a trout from the river and had slit it open for the eggs. Someone else had brought a soup made of knucklebones. Banana liquor for the ladies, and vodka for the men at the far end of the table, who were quietly toasting themselves. Anthony picked up his fork. “This looks like some sort of Roman feast,” he said, “that you see in those religious paintings.”
    “Tell him to eat,” Malkhazi said in Georgian to Juliet.
    “Tell him that if he