A VISIT FROM THE MAINTENANCE MAN
Last
week, the lock on my second door stopped working; I could lock it from the
inside with the bolt but not from the outside with the key. My landlady came and tried to show me an
alternate set of twists, turns and pulls to get it shut, but I didn't have the
upper body strength for it. Then she tried hitting the nail in the door hinge.
(This is not a metaphor; she actually did this). I just looked at her with eyes
that said, "this is not satisfactory". Inside I was thinking, " it's not the
door, it's the lock." Finally she
sighed and said, "nova zamok" (the Russian word for "new
lock").
My
landlady came on Sunday morning to give me the lock and show me how it would
work. The lock has two thin parallel
bolts that slide into the holder on the door frame. (Sorry, I don't know these
technical terms). It has a key that is
long and flat; on each side of the key are three angled grooves that look alike
except for the direction of the grooves (like the two slashes on a keyboard).
My landlady showed me that with the door open I have to put the key in with the
slashes facing the correct way, turn it 90 degrees to the left, pull to pull
the bolts in, then shut the door, push the key back in to release the lock, and
turn the key to the right again to release the key. She said it was easy; I said it was easy for
her. I was thinking, "why couldn't she bring me a normal lock?" I
wasn't happy with the lock but I didn't feel like complaining anymore after
she'd already shelled out 25 grivnias.
Then
the landlady said she wouldn't be able to come on Monday to meet with the
meister (maintenance/handyman). So I was
there alone when he came. I'm not sure
how old he was, but he had a relatively smooth face, white hair cut straight
and neat, blue overalls, a light brown satchel, and a cap (think Andy Capp's
cap).
First
I showed him the new lock and the key.
He couldn't get the key to work. It had worked on Sunday so I thought it
was strange. And I wasn't feeling very confident about this man's ability to
put a lock on my door. I called Lubov
and the meister talked with her (well, she yelled and he listened) and figured
out how it worked.
The
next stage, then, was putting the lock on the door. First the meister took his
tools out of the satchel—what I remember most were the pliers. They looked thickly crude and dark. I
imagined they were stolen off the set of the dentist torture scene in the 1960s
movie "The Graduate".
The
meister took the old lock off, and found that the hole for the new lock was too
small. Now, the second door is a wooden
door, but I didn't realize how soft the wood was until I saw what I saw
next. The meister took out a hammer and
a chisel and started chiseling a bigger hole in the door for the lock. I had to turn my head to keep from laughing
at the sight. Once he had finished
chiseling, he sanded it smooth with a long file. Then the distance from the keyhole to the end
of the lock was shorter than the distance from the keyhole to the end of the
door, so he started to chisel some more at the side of the door.
It
was here I started to realize that by white-bread, drill-bearing world
standards the Meister's actions were primitive, but in reality it's a special
skill to be able to chisel something correctly with no fancy tools and no
measuring tape. When he hammered the
nails into the lock, he approached each nail with single, sweeping movements
like a boxer dancing and then punching its opponent. Yet the movements seemed
more graceful and less violent, like an artist making a brush stroke on a
canvas. And as he worked he softly sang a traditional-sounding Russian love
song. It reminded me of the music from
"Fiddler on the Roof". And suddenly, it all seemed connected--
I
told him in Russian (after looking up the verb "sing" in the dictionary)
that he sings very well (and he really did have a lovely voice). He said, "da" the way an American
would teasingly say, "I know" in response to such a question.
As
his finishing task, he tested the lock in the door. He took the key out after
the first try and scraped the key. I
thought maybe he was trying to get it to fit or move better. Then somehow it
was made clear that he scraped the key so I would be able to tell which way I
needed to hold the key. (Remember I said
the grooves had to be facing a certain way, and this was difficult to tell or
remember.) My respect for him grew even
further. Now I kind of wanna break
things just so he'll have to come back.