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

doesn’t eat we have no choice but to kill him,” Zuka pronounced, also in Georgian, thankfully, looking to Malkhazi for approval.
    I gave Anthony my grandfather’s drinking horn and told him to hold it still while I filled it with wine.
    Malkhazi was tamada , our designated toastmaster. After all the glasses had been filled, Malkhazi solemnly stood up. “Even though there is war, we always desire peace,” he pronounced. “And this is not only peace between brothers, but peace between nations. The Armenian border guard may stand like this.” Malkhazi crossed his ankles. “The Turkish border guard may stand like this.” Malkhazi crossed his arms. “The Georgian border guard stands any way he wants to because he’s a Georgian, but we are all Caucasian people and we understand the truth of nature.”
    When I tried to translate this toast to Anthony in English, itsounded sloppy, like someone stumbling over his shoelace, or as if the sentence was about to fall apart but was being held together only by a frayed string, or possibly by the same shoelace, or more like one of our mountain musicians from Ossetia trying to keep the beat of the song on his chonguri but irritated because the percussionist is off in the kitchen. I told Anthony, “Even if you cannot understand this toast, you cannot sip. It is necessary for you to drink to the bottom.”
    My mother brought from the kitchen a Georgian blood pudding fragrant with hazelnut oil, a recipe passed down through the Makashvili family for eight centuries. And then Zuka presented Anthony with three white cakes in the shape of lambs.
    “How long will you stay in Georgia?” I asked Anthony.
    “It’s always impossible to know,” Anthony said, balancing a strip of browned village cheese on top of the corn flour bread, and then dribbling wild plum sauce with garlic and the khmeli suneli spices on top of that. “Usually,” Anthony said, trying to fit his corn bread building into his mouth, “British Petroleum gives a frantic call in the middle of the night and says, ‘There’s a problem. Please take the next flight over.’” A purple rivulet of plum sauce curled round his wrist. He looked for a napkin and Juliet got up to get a cloth one, which she had embroidered with yellow butterflies. “Thanks,” he said, winking at her. “It’s not inconvenient because I live so close to Heathrow. British Airways now has direct flights. This is delicious. Did you make this?” he asked Juliet.
    “Tell him you don’t cook anymore,” Malkhazi said to Juliet.
    “So I fly out to Tbilisi and they drive me over to Supsa, to the port up north,” Anthony said. “It’s always the same thing. I say, ‘Yes, indeed there is a problem,’ and then I fly home. I tell BP again and again, ‘If you want the pipeline to withstand the pressure of the river you’ll have to dig it three meters deeper.’ They shake their heads and say, ‘Three meters? That’s expensive!’”
    “Very expensive,” solemnly declared Irakli Khorishvili, who had been listening in to our translations.
    “I told them it would be much easier, of course, if they built the pipeline over the river, especially since this new pipeline will have tomake a hundred and fifty river crossings. But they say they can’t do that or else the villagers will tap holes in it. Once, our firm even offered to pay twenty-five dollars to every villager who found a leak in the line.” He took another bite. “But then we discovered them out drilling new ones.”
    “You are like number two,” I told Anthony.
    “Beg your pardon?”
    “One guy is digging a hole and the other guy is filling it back up. ‘What are you doing?’ calls a neighbor. ‘Well, I’m number one and he’s number three. Number two isn’t here to lay the pipe.’ So … welcome to Georgia!”
    Malkhazi turned to me, “Ask him if he wants to create one world with the pipeline. The Americans want one world. Like the Masons. And our president—even he