F I V E - C O R N E R S

'Tool Time' Russian Style

By Charles Digges

I HAVE never met a Russian who cannot - with a bang from the butt end of a screwdriver or a few twists of jerry-rigged wire - get a car working or a toaster toasting like new.

But in St. Petersburg, as regular blackouts advance on the ancient wires of my neighborhood, I even have a neighbor who can revive an entire electrical grid.

It begins like this: Returning home to find a dead switch in my entry hall, I will call my landlord with the helpless foreigner act.

I ask whether he has paid the electric bill on time.

He always has, and we both know that I am really calling because I have forgotten the elaborate checklist I am supposed to run during the blackout: Is it just my place or the whole building? We must find out.

"Go look out the window and see if the third window from the left on the first floor across the way has lights," says my landlord.

This is Yury's window and he always reads late into the night.

If Yury's light is off, however, it might just mean he's at the dacha, so there's another window I have to check.

"Go back and see if the television in the second window on the third story on the east side of the courtyard is on," says my landlord, when I return to the phone.

This is the apartment of Ivan, the courtyard alkash, or drunk, who has passed out every night for 20 years - or so my landlord says - in front of his television.

If I see Yury's light or the blue flicker of Ivan's television, my landlord is hosed. That means the problem is local, and so he has to fulfill option A.

Option A involves coming over and banging around with the butt-end of a screwdriver in my fuse box - an ancient, cobweb-covered shoe box brooding near the ceiling in my entry hall.

My landlord has a special ladder for this that he straps to the roof of his car and brings over. I hold a flashlight for him as he climbs up and fiddles with the old shot-glass fuses.

Soon there is a spark, a succession of lights and the voices of radio and TV announcers boom from speakers - all of whose switches I have left in the "on" position.

Never once in more than two years have I ever seen my landlord need to instal a new fuse.

But if Yury's lights and Ivan's television are off, then the blackout is building-wide and I am left without the help of my landlord.

That leaves me to stand idly and observe as option B unfolds.

Under option B, most of the men - with the exception of Ivan - and some of the women in my building gather idly in the courtyard to curse the dark for awhile.

Yegor, who works at nights tinkering with his ancient over-stuffed-sofa-looking car, will be the first to complain.

He has lost the bald lightbulb dangling from the ceiling of his garage - and in the resulting dark the points to his carburetor fell through the engine and out of sight. Now he can't find them, he complains.

Sasha and Viktor from the fourth floor arrive with a bottle and a handful of burnt-down candles, which they offer for 1,000 rubles apiece.

I will usually buy some, because the last nub they sold me has invariably melted down to a colored stain during the last blackout.

But Irina Yevgeniyevna, the matriarch of apartment 39, the one immediately above my own, will have none of it.

You can keep your candles, she says, because she's calling the avarinaya sluzhba or emergency service.

About this time, as if on cue, Sergei - who does "experiments" in the basement below my entry - will arrive.

Sergei surveys the darkened windows and scratches his head. Sasha and Viktor give him a slug of booze - which he takes while waiting for Irina Yevgeniyevna to shout from her window:

"The bastards can't come until two weeks from now."

Without a word, Sergei sets off down the courtyard and into the street. Option B is underway.

Sergei walks for half a block, stops dead in the middle of the road and pries up a manhole cover.

Sasha and Viktor, who have followed, lower a candle to him.

After Sergei fiddles with wires in the flickering shadows, both Ivan's television and everyone else's lights fill the courtyard.

Option B is fulfilled, and another blackout has ended.