Day 250 - Mr. Saitsky's House

Mr. Saitsky's House

The Department wasn't alone in wanting us to get out of hotel rooms and into leased housing. So long as we were in hotels, we had no control over the temperature. Chişinău had centralized steam heat for all office buildings, government buildings, schools and apartment buildings. Normally, the heat was turned on October 1, but during our first year that date came and went without the heat coming on. The construction throughout most of the streets that revealed the steam pipes that should have been covered was one clue that all was not well.

Our trip to Iaşi was one way we dealt with the cold. Most weekend days we chose to go to work instead of staying home because we had oil bath heaters in the embassy - not enough - but we moved them from room to room as each warmed up.

Since Walt arrived in mid-December, we had had plenty of cold days and we welcomed his assistance. One of the first leases he helped negotiate was Mr. Saitsky's house just down the street from the embassy. I had met Mr. Saitsky earlier since he had been in contact with David almost the first day the embassy opened. He was eager to rent his house, still under construction, to the embassy. David told him that we couldn't negotiate to rent the house until it was complete. Still he returned often to ask questions such as what type of wallpaper we wanted him to put up.

By the time Walt arrived, Mr. Saitsky's house was still not done, but it was close. Walt was impressed with the progress he had made given the shortage of building materials in the country. The initial lease began in January, but we explained to Mr. Saitsky that we would not pay him any rent until he finished the house inside. Some of the issues were:

• A triangular-shaped gap in the parquet flooring in the corner of the living room where Mr. Saitsky envisioned a fireplace would go;
• An 8-inch gap in the glass at the top of the windows that lined the back of the house overlooking what Mr. Saitsky referred to as the orchard, but to us was just a mud patch;
• The 6-inch gap between the water faucet in the tub in the master bath and the tub itself; and
• The absence of rods in the closets.

Mr. Saitsky assured us he would correct all these problems in addition to installing a divider in the middle of the living room to form two rooms - living and dining rooms - in ten days. Ten days came and went but the work wasn't done. At that point, we explained, through a translator, that we would pay him if he completed the work within ten days, but if the work wasn't done, we would not pay until it was done because we couldn't have anyone move in until it was ready. At the same time, we had laborers from the embassy working to correct other issues, such as covering all the walls with wallpaper because the paint Mr. Saitsky used brushed off like chalk on everything that touched the walls. We also had to have the outlets in the kitchen raised six inches so they wouldn't be behind the kitchen counters.

Our friend Jim and the ambassador
helping us clean Mr. Saitsky's house
 when we moved in.

At the end of a month, the house still wasn't ready. We pressed Mr. Saitsky and he completed the few items we insisted he complete within the next two weeks. The workers from the embassy also completed their work, so six weeks after the start of the lease, Alex and I moved in.

Here is what the house looked like:

The front yard was mud. The side yards were mud. The back yard was mud.

There was a divider in the middle of the living room, but it was only waist-high and it wasn't anchored against the wall. In the middle of it, there was a door frame with a door that didn't close. We didn't need the door because we could step over the divider on either side of it.

The tub in the master bath had been constructed from concrete blocks and covered in tiles. It was large enough for either of us to lie down with hands extended above our heads and barely be able to touch the ends with toes and fingers. But the hot water heater couldn't produce enough hot water to put more than an inch of water into it. There was no shower head, so in order for us to bathe, one of us had to sit on a stool in the tub while the other used the hand-held shower head that served to extend the faucet to reach the tub itself to rinse the other.

The previous gap in the glass on the windows was filled with a second piece of glass with nothing between them. Cleaning the windows invited sliced fingertips.

Two of the four outlets in the kitchen - Mr. Saitsky was very proud of the fact that he had installed one on each wall - were in the corner right above the kitchen sink, making them far too dangerous to use.

Then there were the aesthetics. Each of the three bathrooms was tiled, but instead of one tiled in blue, one in green, and one in pink, each one was tiled partially in all three colors.

Finally, at the far back of the land was a separate building which Mr. Saitsky had wanted us to rent as well. It was a narrow, two-story building with one room on each floor on each side of a central hallway. To get to the second story on either side, there was a ladder, not stairs. It was more like bunk rooms or a playhouse than a two-story building. Since we declined to rent this extra building, Mr. Saitsky decided to use it for his office. There were two ways to get to that office - through a beer garden to the west of the house or through the house itself. Mr. Saitsky kept a key to the house and that was the route we discovered he continued to use.

We moved all of our furniture as well as all the embassy's furniture into the house. Two weeks later, Mr. Saitsky learned that we had withheld rent for the six weeks we weren't able to move into the house. The translator we had told to explain our plans to do that admitted that she hadn't told him because she thought it would be impolite. So Mr. Saitsky decided he would rather not have us as his tenants. Alex and I moved out and back into one of the suites at the Hotel Codru, now our third residence within six months.

A few months later we learned that Mr. Saitsky had leased his house to the Israelis as both their embassy, on the ground floor, and the ambassador's residence, on the second floor.