Boomerang of Happiness - 15

It took the Border Patrol about two weeks to have the phone in their apartment fixed. All that time, Anna complained about not being able to do anything. She fell into a habit of going to the city’s main post office that had a long-distance phone connection and calling her mother from there. She spent hours talking, with her mother patiently listening and then relaying the gist of the conversation to Boris. Anna’s father tried to stay away from their chatter but they inevitably pulled him in, with Anna complaining and crying and her mother begging him to do something to get them “out of that horrible place.” All these conversations always ended the same way, with Boris saying again and again that he had no power over Alex’s assignments and Anna crying and ending up with a 2-3 ruble bill for one phone conversation. It was an enormous amount of money by those times standards, when Alex’ salary was about 100 rubles. Anna tried to keep the conversations secret from Alex so when she ran out of her own money, she asked her mother to send her some money so that they still could talk, which her mother promptly did. When Alex asked Anna what she was doing during the day, she’d always tell him she went out for a walk and tried to see if she could find a job.

Alex did not ask for details. He was happy to hear that Anna went out to explore the city. At least she was not simply idling in the apartment moping about her poor fate. Anna also told Alex that she made friends with a couple of military wives. It was only half true: she indeed tried to befriend her neighbors across the hall and right above their apartment but once they figured out how chatty she was they started to actively avoid her. As Anna still showed no interest in domestic affairs such as beautifying the apartment, keeping it clean, or cooking, Alex had to do those chores himself. He found it easier than arguing with Anna about why nothing is done around their home when he is at work.

Once the phone was installed, Anna made several calls about jobs and when told that those vacancies were already filled, she stopped trying. She gave her mother their phone number and asked her to call at that number. They still spent hours talking, or to be more exact, Anna was talking while her mother was mostly listening, but now Anna could stay at home and not go to the post office for that. About a week after the phone was installed, Alex asked Anna, “How’s your job search going?”

“Nothing is available,” Anna answered quickly. “All the vacancies I found earlier are already filled and there are no new ones. You know this town is so small, everyone knows everyone, they just probably hire their relatives and friends. I can’t see how I can get any job here without any connections.”

“Would you like me to ask if the Border Patrol has any vacancies?” Alex said.

“Why? Do you really think they need accountants?”

“Why not? Every institution needs some sort of reporting. They require I give them the time logs and equipment requests, so there must be someone who keeps track of these things.”

“Why are you so keen on me getting a job, Alex? It’s not like we are starving, you are paid well and we even manage to save some money as we can’t spend it on anything in this god-forsaken place…” Anna started to sound irritated.

“I just don’t want you to stay at home with nothing to do,” Alex said. “Seems like a waste of time.”

“It’s not a waste of time for me at all. I can stay at home, read magazines and books…”

“And watch TV,” Alex added.

“Yes, and what’s so bad about that? Not like there’s anything good on there, I just turn it on for background noises, so that I don’t feel alone in this place. Besides, I’ve been working since I turned 16, first part-time and then full-time. This is the first time in my life, beyond annual vacations, when I don’t have to work. Can’t I just have a break?”

“You sound as if you are like 60 and did hard manual labor all your life. Back in Novosibirsk, whenever I visited you in your office, you were just sitting around most of the time, chatting with your co-workers…” Alex cut himself short as he noticed crazy angry sparks in Anna’s eyes and realized what kind of a mistake he’d made.

“Chatting??? Sitting around??? Are you kidding me? Is this really what you think of my work??? Like I was completely useless, just idling and wasting my time?” Anna was getting angrier and angrier.

“C’mon, Anna, in all the time I’ve known you, you only worked a couple of hours during the workday and the busiest time was when you needed to submit monthly or quarterly reports and reconcile the books, but even that didn’t take your entire day.”

“It’s all because I was so good! You can’t even imagine how many times I had to go over the parts of the reports done by others because they made so many mistakes and I had to correct them!”

“Oh, so that means you would have worked even less if everyone was as good as you were,” Alex said, smirking.

“It’s not funny! I worked hard!”

“Oh c’mon! How many sweaters has Lena knitted at work? I wonder how many sweaters you would have made if you knew how to knit?”

Alex referred to the fact that Lena, one of Anna’s co-workers, boasted about making a new sweater every time Alex stopped at Anna’s office. Accountants, human resources staff and other workers of “intellectual labor” in the Soviet Union indeed spent a lot of time at work simply talking, reading fiction or knitting. They were all salaried, didn’t have to worry about productivity, and had no motivation to do work. Some of the offices even had open knitting and crocheting competitions.

“That’s just so unfair!” Anna yelled. “We did everything we were supposed to do. We did have a lot of free time after and in between we were done, but that’s what the entire system was about. Everyone, anywhere in the country, works like this, it’s not that we were different or spent less time working.”

“If you remember, this conversation started because you suggested you were overworked and desperately needed a break,” Alex said, already getting tired of this conversation, with a nagging feeling that it might end in a fight rising from his stomach. “All I pointed out was that you didn’t do hard manual labor.”

“Right, you always do this, trying to make me feel less of myself!”

Alex didn’t even manage to open his mouth to point out that he actually never did that. On the contrary, he was quite patient with Anna’s shenanigans ever since they moved to Tajikistan and gave her enough space.

“Honestly, how much time do you spend at work actually working?” Anna suddenly challenged Alex. He knew she was deflecting but took the bait because he knew it would work for him.

“Actually, I work all the time,” Alex replied honestly. “If I’m not building the satellite dish with my crew of technicians, I make calculations and projections in my head or on paper. I’m busy all the time.”

“Well, good for you, I guess!” Anna replied, defenseless. “It doesn’t mean other people don’t work hard.”

“I didn’t say you didn’t work hard. I just doubted you needed this long break from work, especially because it seems you are just bored out of your mind and do nothing at home.”

“Again with this! You just can’t live with an idea that I’m taking this time for myself, to figure out what to do, when there’s nothing to do in this hellhole.”

“Listen, we are going in circles now. It’s been almost two months since we moved to Tajikistan, that’s enough of a break for you, I think. You really need to start working or we both will go crazy.”

Anna didn’t say anything back. She knew that when Alex sounded like that, determined and with a solution in his head, it was not good for her to argue. Especially because she had nothing convincing to say in response. She just hoped that if she did nothing and continued to pretend looking for a job Alex would simply get busy with his work and leave her alone. She also decided that it was time to start doing some household chores so that he has no reason to nag her about it.

To Part 16

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