Finally, after all this time, Lyudmila
and I have had a proper confrontation where I actually gave my side of the
argument.
Today, as soon as I got to university
I went into the office to tell them about what had happened and see what could
be done about it. Julia is on holiday this week, but thankfully Larissa stepped
in and contacted her. Within half an hour I was lined up with a new potential
landlady; however, the problem with my current landlady hadn't yet been solved.
I then needed to explain the situation again to Natasha, who works in the
office alongside Julia and has helped me in the past when I needed to get back
to England. She tried ringing straight away but after there was no answer to
either the home number or Lyudmila’s mobile, she said she would try again
later.
That day, attendance was at its worst,
there being only nine students and two teachers, so we ended up finishing an hour
early (just on the day I’d rather be anywhere but my flat). When I came out,
Natasha told me she had spoken to Lyudmila and that I wasn't going to have to
pay for the window, which somehow seemed too good to be true. It came out that
Lyudmila had said the workman might repair it for free; however, if there was a
charge and she wanted me to pay it, the university would move me.
I put off going back to the flat and
walked to the theatre with Joe to check out tickets for Chekhov and Carmen next
month. Then, feeling only a little comforted by the discussion the university
had had with my landlady, I slowly made my way back. Lyudmila was,
unfortunately, in the flat, and it was an effort to force a ‘hello’. The
workman hadn't been yet, and after a few minutes, Lyudmila came into my room to
start berating me yet again. She asked me what I’d been saying to the
university and said I shouldn't have over-reacted, that I’d made her look bad.
But what made me think that she was the bad one, hadn't that boy even said to
me a few weeks ago that I was horrible? That seemed like a really low blow to
me.
I did everything I could to explain
how far I had gone out of my way to abide by her rules and respect her, at
which she claimed I woke her up when I came in from nights out. I know she’s
only been woken up twice during the whole time I've been here and explained how
hard I try to keep quiet and don’t turn on any lights, even when she goes back
to bed in the morning. Apparently, she can’t sleep at all until I get back in
from a night out; this is just plain ridiculous. She added that I was
ungrateful and didn't say thank you when she gave me meals – a complete lie,
since every time she tells me dinner is ready I respond with ‘thank you’. Apparently,
I should thank her after the meal too, as the first ‘thank you’ is for telling
me that dinner is ready, and not dinner itself. This is a first to me,
especially in a culture where ‘thank you’ is considered a superfluous word.
She went on to say that if I didn't like living here I could easily have moved out, to which I replied that I would
have moved out a lot sooner if the apartment wasn't in such a good location.
She then claimed that she had been nothing but kind to me, which seemed
ridiculous considering the way she’d treated me over the last few weeks. I told
her this and she said she had been nice to me up until the holidays. I just
laughed at that and said that she was angry with me for following the
university rules; but her response was that most people didn't deduct for when
they were away, and that the girl from Oxford on the floor above hadn't I don’t
know about the girl from Oxford but I know full well that this was a rule set
by the university in the contract, and that everyone else had done the same as
I had.
Anyway, it came down to this: if the
window is badly broken and I refuse to pay, she’ll phone the university and I’ll
have to move out tomorrow. I don’t know what will happen if the window isn't broken, but at the moment I can’t imagine anything worse than staying here.
No comments:
Post a Comment