Free Waiting for the Electricity by Christina Nichol Page B

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