Grey's Journal:
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| Days before we were to move into our
new flat, Zornitsa asked me what I looked forward to most.
Without a moment's hesitation, I replied. ``Toilet paper.'' In our flat in London Metropolitan, there were six people living together with a common bathroom and kitchen. When that many people are in such a small space the value of shared resources becomes artificially inflated, chief among these in our flat was toilet paper. During the first few weeks of communal living, everyone made an effort for the common good and contributed new toilet paper when the old roll ran out. But, this didn't last. Soon, the tragedy of the commons reared its ugly head. Toilet paper is a resource difficult to go without. When you complete your business and reach for that fresh roll of toilet paper you put in just yesterday, and find only an insultingly small scrap of tissue paper clinging to the cardboard tube, your spirit of altruism evaporates. The result was everyone hid their own toilet paper their rooms. It was a small thing, but I really looked forward to a flat where toilet paper could be shared responsibly. But this was only a symptom of the real problem: too many people living together. With six people, it's too easy to let the common areas go to hell because responsibility is diffused among the crowd. Case in point: One day in our flat, a kidney pie was left in the microwave for too long. It caught fire, exploded and set off the fire alarm for the building, forcing all several hundred students outside. Once the air cleared and we returned to our flat, we tried to discover whose pie it was. Clearly, one of the six of us was at fault, but no one was confessing. Trying to discover the culprit, we were a mini United Nations conference around the kitchen table with representatives from America, Bulgaria, China, England, Kuwait, and Nigeria. There were suspicions, accusations, indignant defenses of personal character and yelling. I knew it wasn't me. Four other people knew it wasn't them, and one liar was in our midst, but there was no way to sort that person out from the rest and the matter was never settled. In the new flat just Zornitsa and I would live together. Two people is the ideal number for communal life because it provides the strongest push to keep everything clean and nice, because it is not possible to hide behind the group. Either the mess is yours or it is the other person's. *
* *
My original moving plan involved Zornitsa and I carrying our personal possessions from our old flat to our new flat on our backs across London. When I informed Zornitsa of this she expressed other ideas. ``You will hire a mover.'' And it was so. Using the same division of labor as when we looked for a flat, Zornitsa did the initial research and passed the results to me to make the phone calls and final details. She found a webpage listing short, private moving advertisements. Almost all of these were titled `man with a van'. Once again, my mother's paranoia kicked in. `Man with a van' read to me as `serial killer with mobile cage'. I remember that in The Silence of the Lambs and far too many other movies, the victim is lured near, then pushed into, an unmarked white van. Instead of allaying my fears, the details of the ads served only to antagonize them. When I clicked for more information, I was either presented with one line: `Man with van. Call 079-murderer' or a message in ALL CAPS or iNCoNSIstEnt CaPS' like spam from China selling `HerBa1 Vi@GRa'. I made a decision to go over Zornitsa's head and searched for a real moving company but, even here, things were not much better. One mover's website told horror stories of `moving services' where dodgy men in dodgy vans drove away with a flat's worth of loot. However, this mover proved his integrity by writing: `Anyone can make up recommendations on a webpage, but these are real!' Then followed recommendations so enthusiastic they couldn't be real. One read, `XXXXXX Movers harkens to a bygone age of service, respect and honor.' An afternoon of searching, and I was still no closer to finding a moving service that I was confident about. But, it was nearly 7:00 PM when Zornitsa comes home from her part-time job. I feared her wrath if I had not yet settled the movers, so I held by breath, dialed a number, and hoped for the best. *
* *
To simplify our upcoming move, I called our real estate agent and arranged to sign the paperwork and get the keys to our flat a day ahead of schedule. Zornitsa was getting off work early and we planned to meet at the London Bridge Station to take the train into Dulwich to the agency. The last time we met at London Bridge to go to the agent, it hadn't worked out well. I arrived ten minutes early and attempted to figure out the trains while I waited. Zornitsa didn't arrive on time, and I paced back and forth, back and forth as I anxiously waited for her. When, very late, I spotted her, she was not running -- out of breath and disheveled as I expected someone late to be -- but smartly dressed and walking calmly toward me. I was too panicked about reaching the agent to start a fight, but still wanting her to know that I was annoyed, I said ``I've been trying to figure out these trains for the past forty minutes and I still don't know how they work.'' She regarded me calmly and uttered a statement I have heard from the mouths of obliviously late people all my life: ``Why have you been here so long?'' Speaking in my calm-and-overly-precise way as I do when annoyed, I said, ``Became I was ten minutes early and you are thirty minutes late.'' She nodded, considering this information. ``They will wait for us,'' she said, and led me to the trains. This interaction, along with many others, has caused me to think of Zornitsa as a Bulgarian Princess. A daughter of Eastern European royalty residing in London where she won't be recognized so she can experience the common life before the duties of the ruling class call her back to her native land. Now, once again, I waited nervously in London Bridge Station for Zornitsa to arrive, but this time I positioned myself before the row of flat-screen monitors displaying connections for the Southeast of England. This I liked, as I could concentrate on the numbers and plan my contingencies. It's 16:45 now. There is a 16:56 to East Dulwich from platform 5, but Zornitsa won't be here early enough to make it. After that is the 17:09 on platform 15. I hope to catch that, but we can *just barely* be on time with the 17:19 on an unannounced platform. If disaster strikes there is the 17:29, which will make us late. The 16:56 came and went, and I waited for the 17:09, keeping an eye on the escalators to spot Zornitsa when she entered the station. 17:02 17:03 17:04 17:05 This is where I began to prefer that Zornitsa would not show up until 17:10, when it would be impossible to catch the 09 and we could leisurely board the 19. As much as I don't like being late, I really hate running so as not to be late. The whole reason to be early is so you don't have to run anywhere. Running in a train station or an airport is a public declaration that you are the kind of person unable to manage time. My fondest time-related memory is on a cruise my parents took around Europe as a dual celebration of their wedding anniversary and my graduation from high school. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I remember very little about the countries we visited. What I do remember, and what made the trip so great, was the Dutch. They ran the cruise ship and are a nation of people who understand the importance of time; I will love them forever for it. If the daily itinerary said breakfast is served at 8:00 AM, it didn't mean that you could arrive sometime between 8:00 and 9:00. It meant that at 7:59:55 the waiters left the kitchen to set plates of food before you on the hour. If a show started at 9:00 PM, the curtain went up at 9:00 PM. People who felt they could interrupt the rest of us by coming after the stated time were denied entrance. But, the best moment of the trip, the part that still brings a smile to my face, was when the Dutch left behind one of the passengers. Our departure from Venice was at 4:00 PM. My family and I were on the deck of the ship well ahead of time. At 3:55 crewmen started untying the ropes and withdrawing the gangways. At four on the dot, the engines started and the monstrous ship began to crawl out of the dock. As we moved along the long pier, I saw a fat woman burst out of one of the tiny Venetian alleyways and run along the pier, her tiny voice yelling `Wait for me! Stop the ship!' The selfishness of chronically late people is for me forever embodied in that woman. She wanted tens of thousands of tons of ship to reverse and delay thousands of passengers -- thus punishing those who had been on time by spending less time in the city to ensure a punctual departure. The Dutch looked down at her, their faces impartial, and continued on their way. I like to imagine her, a fat, selfish child-woman, still sitting on that pier, crying for the ship that left her behind and not understanding why. At precisely 17:08 Zornitsa arrived. For half a second, I debated lying to myself and pretending that there was no 17:09, but, my need to be on time (especially given that we were late the last time we saw the agent) overrode such foolishness and I lead a breathless Zornitsa through the ticket gates and onto the train platforms just in time to miss the train by no more than five seconds. I would like to add that at no point did I yell for the conductor to stop the train or wait for me. As we now stood waiting for the 17:19, it was a few moments before I realized that I didn't know which platform was the right one. Zornitsa and I headed back to the main departure board to get this relevant bit of information but I left her inside the gates so she wouldn't have to walk and deal with the tickets again. ``Stay right here,'' I told her. Ten minuets is one of those intervals of time that's hard to grok. It's long when you need it to be short (the last ten minuets of a boring class might as well be an hour) and short when you need it to be long -- when, for example, you are trying to catch a train. Once I learned the platform number, I realized with horror that we had 120 seconds remaining to get back to the platform and on the train. I dashed through the gates to where I left Zornitsa. A Bulgarian Princess with a long mane of burgundy hair and wearing Zebra striped pants usually sticks out in a crowd of commuting English businessmen, but I couldn't find her. Assuming she had independently figured out the platform and realized the time shortage on her own, I moved swiftly to the train expecting to see her in the crowd ahead of me. It wasn't until I was on the train myself that I had the presence of mind to call her with my cell phone and test this idea. Ring... Ring... Ring... Ring... ``Hello?'' ``Where are you!? The train is on platform sixteen! Are you there!? It leaves in forty seconds!'' ``OK, OK. I'm coming.'' I stood in the train, leaning outside to see if she was there, but the crowd made it difficult to tell. Then the doors closed on me and I was forced inside. I picked up my cell, paused for a moment to gather myself, and dialed. Ring... Ring... Ring... ``Hello?'' I took a deep breath. ``Please tell me you are on the train.'' ``What?'' ``The train from platform sixteen.'' ``There is no train at platform sixteen.'' I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead against the cold glass. ``Well, not any more.'' *
* *
I waited at the East Dulwich Station for Zornitsa as she came in on the 17:29 train behind me. When she arrived, we had a brief argument over whether she had stayed where I had left her or not. ``I did not go anywhere. You just come in, glance around, do not see me, panic, and run.'' To try and lighten the mood as we walked toward the real estate agent I told the following story: This past December when I was with my parents on Long Island, I decided to visit my friends Eric, Troy and Vinny in New York. Vinny, like myself, is from Long Island and familiar with New York, but Eric and Troy are upstate boys and had never been to the big city. I arrived in Penn Station first and waited for the three of them in a coffee shop. When Eric and Troy showed up without Vinny as their guide, I raised an eyebrow. ``He's on the train behind us,'' said Troy. Apparently, time was short when they got to the station and Vinny yelled for them to run ahead and hold the train while he bought the tickets. As upstate boys, they didn't know `hold the train' means `physically obstruct the doors to prevent them from closing' so they boarded and politely asked a passing attendant: ``Excuse us, m'am, but our friend is running a minute behind. Would you mind holding the train until he gets here?'' ``Oh sure,'' she said in a sarcastic tone they didn't catch. ``No problem.'' And then she signaled for the conductor to leave. Zornitsa, unimpressed with my little tale, told a far better one about losing a grandmother afflicted with Alzheimer's disease at a train station in Burgas in Bulgaria. I didn't mind losing the story contest because the mood was lightened and it was with smiles we went into the agent's to pick up our new keys. *
* *
It's Saturday morning and I'm packing my belongings for the mover coming in the afternoon. For my recent life, I have lived as a nomad. Over five years I've packed all my belongings and moved them eighteen times. But, I am not alone in the nomadic lifestyle. The day that I moved to college was also the day that my parents moved out of their house and proceeded to relocate five times while I was at school. Each Christmas I came home to a different house. Zornitsa, who discovered me in the kitchen pouring over my school records and photographs trying to reconstruct all the rooms I've rented, commented that only the crazy Americans would move around so much. In her life she only moved twice, once from her parents' home in Bulgaria to the London Metropolitan dorms, and then from the dorms to our current flat. She also added ``And with all your experience, I was still calmer than you when we moved. Put that in your journal, you always make me look bad.'' With every move I streamlined the process, jettisoning more and more of my personal possessions. It's simultaneously a cleansing experience and an act of desperation. I like knowing that I can live with less and less, my ultimate goal being just a laptop and a single small suitcase of clothes and books. But, when I move I feel the need to ditch everything to make each move as easy as possible. It feels like I'm in a hot-air balloon sinking over a dangerous jungle and that I need to lose mass to save my life. When moving, I hate just about everything I own, particularly things like my jar of pennies -- easily the object with the lowest value per unit weight of anything I own. My winter coat also draws my anger. While it is almost weightless, it is also huge and simply Will. Not. Compress. I can sit on it or pack it beneath heavy books, but the instant I turn my back it expands, like Bruce Banner transforming into the Hulk, and pops off the buttons and zippers of its container. To lighten my load before opening a drawer, I try and remember the last time I accessed that drawer. If I can't remember, then 50% of its contents must go -- no negotiations. Ditto for whatever is under the bed. Shortly after I packed the last of my bags, the front desk called me: the mover had arrived. *
* *
I ran down the stairs and met the mover in the parking lot. ``Is it OK to park here?'' ``Sure is,'' I said. He walked to the street to direct a van into the lot and I frowned. ``There are two of you? But I specifically requested only one so it would be possible to ride in the van with my stuff.'' ``Well,'' he said, ``there's three of us, and you aren't going to fit.'' At this, two men stepped out of the van looking exactly like the sort of tough, manly men I have a difficult time relating to and am intimidated by. I also noticed that the van was white and unmarked, not emblazoned with the company logo as pictured on the website. I went into a barely-contained panic, shaking my head and saying `I don't like this. I don't like this at all.' Over and over. One of the moving men, trying to break my infinite loop, suggested that I could ride in the back in the storage space of the van. Another `I'm not happy with this' came from my mouth, but, realizing that I had no other options, I forced myself to append `alright, let's go.' Just before the movers finished, Zornitsa managed to grab me for a quick, breathless conversation. ``What's wrong?'' ``We can't ride in the van. They will let us ride in the back, though. I'm going to protect our stuff. Do you want to come?'' ``What do you mean, `in the back of the van'?'' ``Where they put our bags.'' She didn't seem to understand, and again the image of her as a Bulgarian Princess came into my mind. ``If we had furniture,'' she said, ``we could sit on that in the van.'' The movers were waiting for me. I was rushed and flustered and unsure how to respond to this factually-accurate-but-completely-unhelpful statement. ``Yes, that's true... but we don't have furniture so I will sit on the floor. You you want to come?'' She frowned. ``I am not dressed to sit in the back of a van.'' As usual, she was stylishly attired in an outfit that managed to look both appropriate for a corporate boardroom and a night club, but not for a trip in a dusty, dimly lit cage. ``Well, that settles it,'' and I ran downstairs to the movers. I looked up to our flat to see Zornitsa watching from the window. I gave her a weak smile and then the movers locked me in the back. *
* *
In the truck, I immediately realized there wasn't anything I could do. I had gone in with the nebulous idea that I could protect Zornitsa's and my possessions. But, now I could see that wasn't true. If they drove to some abandoned warehouse what could I do about it? I was just cargo now. I searched through our belongings for a weapon, but the most dangerous item I could find was Zornitsa's umbrella. To take my mind off of my growing nervousness, I took out my cell phone and sent text messages like this to just about everyone in my phone book: I thought you might be amused to know that I am now in the
back of a moving van. If they kill me please tell the cops that
the van's licence plate number is XXXXXX.A few moments later, Zornitsa sent me How r u doing in there?
to which I replied It's a good thing you didn't come. You can
tell the police what happened when they pull my body from the river.As soon as I sent the message, I realized that Zornitsa would be of no help to the police. She seems to have an inability to answer descriptive questions. If asked, she will tell you about her day in a factual manner, but if pressed for details about a garden she went to or a painting she saw she can't tell you anything. Adjectives in her sentences are as few and far between as flowers in a desert. On the rare occasion she uses a metaphor or simile, I feel like breaking open a bottle of champagne to celebrate. My own memory is like a blurry photograph or distorted movie, but I imagine Zornitsa's Mensa Member brain to be more like a log book or schedule diary, the last entry reading: 14:42 -- Grey left in van with three men. After an hour and a half, the van came to a stop and I heard the ka-da... clump of the front doors opening and closing. I held my breath and too late remembered that Zornitsa packed steak knives somewhere in one of the boxes. Umbrella in hand, I waited to see what fate had thrown my way. The back door opened, and I breathed a sign of relief as I found myself on the street of my new home. *
* *
With great efficiency the three movers deposited our belongings in our top floor flat. Afterward they presented me with the bill, and though it was expensive, I tipped them rather more extravagantly than I should have because I felt guilty for doubting them. Now, in my new flat, I walked around it and loved it even more than when I had seen it with the agent. It was in a nice, safe-feeling part of town with a row of little shops nearby. It is by no means large, but having lived in a room that was too small for me to do pushups without rearranging furniture, the space here seems extravagant. I unpacked and started to arrange our belongings, put on a kettle of tea, and waited for Zornitsa to come home. |
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Copyright © 2004 Wellington Grey  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. |
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PDF Version of Urban Jungle Part II |
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