Part One – Here
(Western Hemisphere)
CHAPTER TWO – GETTING USED TO A NEW LIFE: AN APARTMENT
In the very first month of our life here, many events and meetings took place that significantly changed our situation as an emigrants.
The main thing was that we found housing for ourselves and separated from my Dad’s one. It was a fairly comfortable apartment, the same as Dad’s, with relatively large rooms on the fourth floor in one of “our” houses. See, I already said “ours”.
“We found housing”, of course, was some kind of conventional term. We looked everywhere, but the most successful offer came from my cousin, Lia’s eldest daughter. She had already lived in America for ten years, experienced her ups and downs, had a beautiful house and a dacha, which she earned together with her husband, a jeweler and watchmaker, who managed to create a business. But alas, he was accused of illegal transactions with metals, and his partially unpaid house and summer house were confiscated by bank. We managed to visit a beautiful dacha in Pennsylvania before it was gone.
Another thing was worse: as a result of the investigation, a mistress emerged, which led to divorce. In short, my cousin was very upset and was looking for an apartment for herself and her children. In our houses, emigrants (from the USSR and Latin America) quickly accustomed the manager to take bribes – like a payment to an apartment agent in the amount of a month’s rent. This was the usual price, no one was against it, and things were going well in the houses.
My cousin was an experienced “dealer”, she used to live in this residential complex, was well acquainted with the manager and arranged apartments for relatives and friends. And now she was trying to get an apartment for herself. This apartment just turned up, which she liked, but she couldn’t find the required amount of money, then she offered this apartment to us. We also didn’t have money for this operation, but I had Sasha, who easily transferred me the required amount.
We waited for several days while the apartment was undergoing hygienic renovations, and finally, having received the keys from a manager who looked like me, I went to inspect my new home.
For this day we were planning a grandiose operation: to move into the apartment and bring into it the furniture that wealthy people had given as gifts. This was done close to a New Year. Of course, at that time we did not yet know the mechanisms for reducing taxes through charitable donations.
There were a wall unit, table with chairs, coach – in a word – a whole suite and a bedroom. The owners, for their own reasons, had to remove their furniture no later than this afternoon, and before this time we had nowhere to take all this treasure.
So, checking my watch, I went to look around the apartment.
The key in the lock did not turn, voices were heard in the apartment. I called. Someone’s eye looked at me through the peephole, and the door opened. A guy in a T-shirt and sport pants smeared with white paint stood on the threshold. I, deciding that this was a plaster man, resolutely entered the apartment and asked,
“Still painting?”
“No paint, we live here.”
Apparently, the expression on my face changed, in any case, the woman with the baby in her arms, who came out of the bedroom, looked at her husband and angrily said to him in Russian,
“Who did you let in, you asshole? He is a Russian.”
Then I chimed in, “Do you speak Russian? Who you are?”
“And you? Aren’t you the manager?”
“No, I’m a lodger. This is my apartment.”
“You are mistaken, we already live here; they gave us the keys in the office!”
There was no time to figure it out.
“So now we will live together,” I said, and sat down on a stool by the window.
Events unfolded slowly. The whole family of the “invaders” convinced me that they are poor, unhappy emigrants, and I was too well dressed, therefore was a rich guy, one of those who both here and there lived well at the expense of the poor people. But I was adamant and did not leave. I read as many classics of Marxism as they did, but I didn’t believe in fairy tales.
There was no telephone in the apartment yet, mobile phones did not exist in principle, and all that was left was to wait until they missed me at home. I didn’t swear or argue at all with poor people scared of unfamiliar life and lack of immediate support, but I had to call for furniture delivery.
After a couple of hours of waiting, my dad appeared in the yard, scouring around in search of the prodigal son.
“There are other people here, bring the manager!” I shouted from the window.
After a while, the manager came, wearing jeans, a leather jacket and a cap, very similar to mine.
“That’s why they confused me with him and opened the door,” I thought.
He began to persuade those who moved in to leave the apartment, but someone taught them that in America people aren’t thrown out onto the street, and that they just have to be persistent. But the manager knew this and called the police for support. My wife and daughter replaced me for a while, and I ran to call. Alas, the furniture has already gone. After waiting until noon, they called “a group of emigrant backups”, who immediately arrived and took out the furniture…
When I returned, the police had already arrived. Actually, it was one patrolman who tried to convince the aliens to leave the apartment they illegally occupied.
“Understand,” he said, “This is not possible in America, he has a contract, he paid for this housing, and you are illegally occupying it. You are making a mistake. By the way, why did you choose a one bedroom apartment without furniture? Around the corner is my apartment – three bedroom and full of furniture. Why don’t you grab it? I’ll give you the keys for a while. You were taught, the first part, that they don’t throw you out into the street in USA, but the second part is unknown to you – you will be sued politely, and it will cost you much more. By the way, we also can report it to NYANA, you never know how they’ll punish you there.”
I think that the persuasion would have lasted a long time if the manager had not used a distracting technique. He said,
“I have an empty studio – that is, one room shared with a kitchen, where I can place you for a while, and then – as it turns out.”
Apparently, this meant, “If you find the money, we’ll come to an agreement”. And they agreed.
Everyone left our apartment, we installed new locks and began to live, although we lost very good furniture. What about furniture in general? We were not left completely without it. Some were bought, some received from organizations like the Salvation Army, and some were brought in from the street.
As I already said, on major holidays, and especially at the end of the year close to the New Year, people got rid of outdated (boring) things, many of which seemed “new” to emigrants. But they had to be dragged by hand from the nearest streets to the house. And when my wife and I were dragging the “wonderful” pull-out sofa-bed, Lilya tore (overstrained) her lower back.
So the memory of the first steps of the emigrants: the move, “forced work as loaders” and most importantly, the lost beautiful furniture remained forever in the form of a herniated intervertebral disc L4 – L5…
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