Virgil

Things have kind of fallen apart here lately. Nothing to do with the baby or the adoption, just our living circumstances.

I guess it started Thursday morning, when, while taking a shower, the hot water disappeared. I was nearly done, just had to rinse off some lathery spots, and so I bit the bullet and tolerated the cold.

Then later that day, after we came back from our daily visit to the baby house, the air conditioner, which was never all that strong, and like I mentioned elsewhere made this constant jack hammer noise, stopped delivering cold air. Of all the days for it to do that, it would have to pick the hottest day –the temperature reached 99F (37C) that day—since we’ve been here. It was blowing air, and I guess it was vaguely cooler than the ambient room air, but I think it was just air flow making it feel cooler rather than the air temperature being lowered. There are no fans in the apartment, and so we tried to make ourselves as comfortable as possible. We shut the lights, we opened the windows, we closed the windows, we opened the windows again, we shifted the couch to catch that little bit of air blowing from the air conditioner, we cursed.

Heat doesn’t bother me too much, but it does bother Pussnboots—a lot—and she was pretty cranky. But there was nothing we could do. As it got late, I settled in to read, finally opened the windows and tried to get a cross breeze, kicked the sheets off the bed, and decided to end the night by listening to a Beethoven string quartet off my ipod. Not all the windows have screens and I think mosquitoes got in. I remember as I shut the light, lay in bed scrolling the ipod to the string quartet, an insect flew passed my hands, visible by the glow of the ipod illumination. I snatched at it and missed. The ipod illumination faded out, and the bug disappeared into the darkness. I was too lazy to turn the light back on, and really, what was I going to do anyway? So there’s a mosquito—if it was that; it could have been a fly—in the room.

I drifted into drowsiness, slipped my headphones off, and turned over to sleep, vaguely thinking about the mosquito. I think I dreamt of that mosquito. I wasn’t sure if it was a dream or reality but I kept feeling I was being nibbled on, on my hands, my legs, my feet. I’m not sure, but I remember waving about in that dream, trying to shoo away the bugs. When I awoke I mumbled, “What a horrid dream.”

But was it a dream? Once out of bed I felt an itchy raspberry on my left hand, then one the ring finger of my right hand, then one below my left knee, one on my right triceps, and one on my left foot. Good God, I had been a feast for that friggin mosquito. He must have gotten all his friends to party on me.

Then Pussnboots went into the shower that morning. She said the water went cold on her and had to get out. She had to finish washing the shampoo out of her head in the sink. I told her about my experience the day before. I told her it was back and forth hot and cold. She said she almost got a heart attack from the cold. I then went in for a shower. I tested the water. It was warm. I got in the shower and it suddenly went cold—ice cold. I mean this was the coldest I’ve ever felt running water. Whoa, this must come from mountain run off. Our cold water is not this cold back home, even in winter. I hadn’t lathered up, so I got out of the shower. I toweled myself dry, and then opened the sink faucet and there was hot water. Sh*t. So I got back in the shower and I got a few minutes of hot water, just enough to shower and almost rinse, but then it went back cold and cursing between my teeth rinsed off with the ice water. Oh, what a shower.

When we saw our translator that afternoon and I told him about the air conditioner, he told me that he would have our in town coordinator contact the landlord about the air conditioner. Phone calls went back and forth and by late afternoon the translator said the landlord would send someone to check it out.

Ok, I was waiting for someone to come for the air conditioner. Now there have been people periodically knocking or ringing at the door these past several weeks, and I have not let anyone in or even answered the door. I don’t know who they are and I can’t speak the language, so we just pretended that no one was at home. This time I was expecting someone, so when we got a ring, I looked through the peep hole and decided to open the door. At the door was a person who looked like he might fix things, perhaps the landlord himself. I said, “air conditioner?” I have no idea how to say that in Russian. He said something back to me in Russian. I saw this would be a problem. “You’ve come to fix the air conditioner?” He started rambling. I even invited him in. He stepped in and started point to the ceiling I presumed. “This way to the air conditioner,” I tried to lead him to the living room. He wouldn’t follow. He pulled some documents from his little briefcase he was carrying. He pointed to some numbers on a page and made some universal sign for money, the rubbing of fingers together. I knew at this point this wasn’t the air conditioning man. A fellow who lives upstairs happened to be walking up the stairs. He spoke a tad bit of English, and after speaking to the man in Russian turned to me and said “telephone, telephone money.” I said I paid the phone bill and after uselessly going back and forth for a little bit, I was able to ease them back out in the hall and I locked the door. “I pay everything to the landlord. Call the landlord.”

I assumed they left but after fifteen minutes I heard a ruckus out in the hall. They were back and I ignored their knock. I looked out the peep hole and I saw a few people gathered and suddenly I saw a flash. There are some sorts of wires over the door that leads from some box, and they cut off the electricity to the apartment. Poof, nothing worked. It was all off.

Now we had been getting statements of bills placed in the door crevice over the course of this month. Our translator had told us to leave them on the TV and the landlord will eventually pay for them. We had paid the landlord in fifteen day increments. We were well ahead of the ending of the latest increment. We are paying $2100 for a month’s rent, which I think must be a small fortune for out here, and that was to include utilities and of course furnishings. Only the telephone and the internet are additional payments. Here we were stuck with erratic hot water, no electricity, and a mosquito infested place. This place is nice, but there are certain fundamentals that one must have.

I immediately called our translator and explained the situation. He got in touch with the landlord. The landlord swears there’s some mistake, but it’s now late Friday and the electric company is closed. He will have to wait until tomorrow to straighten this out. In the meantime he can put us in another apartment a few blocks away. Would I prefer that? I didn’t know; I hate to pack up for a night. I said to let me think about it while at dinner and I would call him back. My wife said I was crazy for not deciding right there—we couldn’t stay in a dark apartment with no power. She was right, but we went to dinner first anyway, and as we left the apartment another leaflet, official looking and with a notary stamp on it, fell from the door crevice. I put that on the TV with the other bills.

The landlord took us to another apartment in another building several blocks away. We packed our valuables and some overnight stuff and we were in a really nice three bedroom on the third floor. This place had two air conditioners, a tepid one in the living room and a powerful one in the master bedroom that kept the room like an ice box. Ahhh, that felt wonderful and the bed was large and firm and comfortable. We slept very well that night. Not only did this place have an extra bedroom, but each room was bigger than the corresponding rooms in the original place.

The next day they called us and said the electricity was turned on in the original apartment. I was almost tempted to ask if we could have this one instead, but it wasn’t set for internet and all our clothing was still in the other place. I guess it would have been a hassle to switch, even if we were allowed to. Back at the old place now, the air conditioner still doesn’t work—it runs but it doesn’t blow cold air and I suspect the Freon has leaked out—and so they gave us a little nine inch desk fan. It will have to do. We have two and a half weeks left and we are entering the real hot season. Oh we miss home.

Well, how about another picture of Matthew for you dedicated readers of my blog.