Moving Day

We knew it was coming, because our landlord, Vladimir, had been threatening to evict us for a month, and now the deadline to vacate was just 48 hours away. Problem was, nobody seemed to know where we were going, not even administrator Olga, who was supposedly responsible for finding us a new flat. For two weeks now she had responded to every inquiry by shrugging and saying, "Where will you live? You will live in box. Box at Kriyukovo Station."
Well, Olga is cryptic and difficult at her very best, but the larger problem, I guess, is that Zelenogradians are touchy about foreigners. There were apartments for rent all over the city, but no one ever called back after finding out that Americans would be their tenants.
Finally, on Saturday night, she telephoned to inform us that we would be moving the next day at 2 PM. Would Vladmir show up to help us with his big truck, as promised? No, apparently he'd been drunk when he offered that. But not to worry, Olga had hired us a taxi. One of Lena's friends. Or maybe Sasha's.
And where were we moving to?
Why, was it important?
Well, yeah.
Grudgingly, she confided that our new flat was in the fourth region, in the older district on the other side of the forest. The phone clicked off.
I packed my belongings by the simple expedient of shoving them in my suitcase, emptied all the kitchen supplies into a box (the flat was apparently furnished, but 'furnished' in Language Link terms means two spoons and a broken futon), and abandoned my sickly houseplant to the tender mercies of the downstairs babushka. There was one thing I couldn't pack or abandon though: my dog. The dog is an illegal refugee, but he's my dog, an amber-eyed beast like a little wolf, and I wasn't leaving him. So I texted Lindsay and arranged for her to come over early and smuggle him out. Then of course I had to stay up half the night talking to people on the Internet, because God forbid I might not have internet in our new flat…
Sunday dawned bright and clear. I spent the morning pacing around cramming the last things in my suitcase. The dog caught the general mood and dogged, excuse the term, at my heels, whining softly, until I made him go lie down. Then I stacked my boxes in the hall.
At 1, Lindsay showed up.
"You might as well hang out until it's time," Shayla said. "Olga's going to call us first anyway, when the taxi is coming."
Lindsay sat down on my futon to use the Internet for a while.
At 1:45 the door opened and Olga strode in. Without acknowledging me, she went directly into the kitchen, where Shayla was sitting.
"Uh, hi, Olga," I said. "Nice to see you –" and ducked into my room, pulling the door shut behind me.
"Christ!" I hissed at Lindsay. "She's here! Quick!"
She grabbed Volchik by his collar and hauled him out on the balcony. I shoved his leash and kibbles into a bag and threw it out after them.
"Hang on," Lindsay said. ''I need my cigarettes. In my coat pocket."
I picked up her parka. It weighed at least twenty five pounds. The pockets felt like dumbbells.
"What on earth do you have in here?"
"Oh you know, stuff. Change. Crayons. Teabags."
"Here, you look for them."
She found a cigarette and scratched Volchik behind the ears.
"OK, dude," she said. "I'll wait until you guys leave and then jet out of here."
I closed the balcony door and pulled the curtains shut, then went back out to the kitchen. Olga was wandering around, poking at things.
"The driver says, twenty minutes probably."
I exchanged agonized glances with Shayla.
"Then Shayla, I will give you keys to flat, you go over first with him, Lily and I will take the bus."
As always, her voice sounded indifferent and on the verge of slurring drunk. Olga is Tatar, and looks it, with her leather coat and two long black braids. She's a big fan of Stalin ("he wasn't a bad man – just misunderstood"), and rumored to hate Americans, because her husband left her for America. Or she left him and he left for America, there are conflicting stories. The only other time I'd met her, at another teacher's party months earlier, she'd spent the entire night vomiting into a sink, and then skipped home through the forest with us singing, 'Follow, Follow, Follow, the Yellow Brick Road,' – which left a lasting, but not entirely coherent, picture of her overall character.
Long minutes ticked by.
I had just tried to mitigate the awkwardness by offering to make everyone tea, when Olga's phone buzzed. She spoke quickly and then hung up.
"He's here now." She rounded on me suddenly. "Lily! Why are you not ready? Go! Go!"
She picked up a box from our stack and rushed out into the hallway. We scrambled after her.
The taxi was an ordinary Lada pulled up to the curb outside. The young driver grabbed things from us and shoved them into the trunk., then the back seat, then the front seat, until there was barely room for Shayla to squeeze in.
"OK," said Olga. "Shayla goes over. I go over. Lily, you stay because Vladmir is coming, half hour maybe, to look over his things. You wait here for Vladmir."
"Right," I said. "I'll do that."
They pulled away. I tore back upstairs and went to the balcony.
"Right, it's clear. Rock out of here."
"That was close," Lindsay said. "Why, why can't the back door be unlocked? Are you sure they're gone?"
"Yeah, but now the landlord's coming. Run!"
She grabbed Volchik's leash and they disappeared down the hall.
Alone suddenly I stared at the boxes still waiting to be moved. Then I decided to repack the teacups, but scarcely had I finished when the door opened and Vladmir came in, followed by a young couple with a toddler.
Vladmir was crazy all the way through. He had certain habits that were disconcerting in a landlord, like sneaking into our apartment during the day and leaving broken television sets in the corners, or suddenly showing up at 1649 School to demand to know why there was water on our bathroom floor, or blaming his tenants when the fridge caught fire. Now he stepped through the maze of our belongings, showing the apartment, or something.
The young couple seemed to feel a little awkward about it. The baby stumbled and stared. Like all Russian babies in winter, he was bundled up until he resembled a tiny Yuri Gagarin. What the hell were they doing here? I just tried to stay out of the way.
"Where's my other remote control?" Vladmir said. He shook it. "Why have you taken out the batteries?"
Then Olga came back, and he decided to make himself useful by throwing all our things into the hall and holding the elevator doors open until every single box was piled in.
Downstairs, all my neighbors were lined up to watch the spectacle. As we frantically scuttled back and forth (Vlad was still standing there with his finger on the hold button), the babushkas waved and called 'dosvedanya!'
Finally it was done. The driver drove away and Olga and I went over to catch the crosstown bus. A short ride later, we disembarked in front of Korpus 440 on the Central Prospekt. My new home was waiting....