a little coffee

Around 7:45 this morning, I was jolted out of my warm, semi-sleepy state by the sound of the gate outside our door rattling.

I shook Chris’s shoulder, “Someone’s at the door.”

His eyes popped open and he moved the fastest I’d ever seen him: he flew, yes flew  (legs in the air, feet not touching the cold, cold ground, his hand in a fist out in front of him a la Superman) to answer the door.

In walked a cheery man dressed in army fatigues carry a couple dirty tools in his brown, surprisingly smooth hands.

He was here to fix the radiator. He was supposed to come at 8:30.  

The heat officially turned on last week, but quickly turned off again for a couple days due to a leaky radiator somewhere else in the building, this forcing me to prance around the apartment in my new purple long undies. Once the radiators turned back on, the bedrooms and our studies transformed into nests of warmth, a shelter from the icebox of our living room, where the radiator did not turn back on.

After two seconds of looking at the radiator, the repairman proceeded to babble a Shakespearean soliloquy at us- in Chinese.

“doodle doodledoodledoodle doodledoodle doodledooodledoodle doodle not OK doodledoodle…” 

“Uh… wo men bu dong,” I said, turning to Chris for help. Surely he got all this? But he just stared straight ahead, hands jammed in his pockets looking very sad and cold.

The repairman laughed- he seemed to be very amused with this situation and thoroughly determined to somehow make us understand.  He pointed to a slender silver pipe descending from our ceiling and connecting with the radiators near the floor.  He led me over to the radiator, touched it, had me touch it, doodling at me all the while.

Chris then, had the clever idea of calling James, the man in charge of us that we pleaded with to have this guy come over, to translate for us.

While that happened I used my detective skills to put together a theory- maybe it’s so cold because the heat is coming from a small pipe?

The repairman finished with James and then spoke to me some more in doodles, taking me back over to the radiator again and then to the clock.  He pointed at the clock, monologuing again, but he said one word over and over that I understood, “eight.”

I stopped fighting and just nodded, “yes, yes.  Everything makes sense.”  

He left then with a big smile and a wave.

According to James, the problem, that the repairman had patiently, enthusiastically explained to me was there was nothing wrong with our radiators, oh, they worked, but it was the sixth floor that had the problem because that’s where the pipe descends from, and at 8:30, he would go up to fix it.

Ah.  ”It will get warmer,” James (tried to) assure Chris.

Blarg. But this time I couldn’t be annoyed when the repairman was so cheery and really tried to make us understand what the situation was.  He even used gestures, which is more than the lady at the cake shop did when she talked at us for ten endless minutes, explaining (we eventually pieced together) we would have a longer wait.

We will just have to trust them that our apartment won’t be cold enough to form icicles come December.

And we’re still waiting for another repairman to fix our toilet…