Update pt2

I just got back from Kiev where I spent a few days on vacation.
Which means I can continue my story...
The first time Valentine showed up in my apartment drunk, I knew that I was going to have to move. But I was surprised by how quickly things deteriorated. I came home on Tuesday at around noon after teaching my morning student, and when I opened the front door, a cool, irregular draft was blowing from the direction of my room, where the windows were closed when I had left. I knew someone was in my room, and felt it was Valentine. I wasn't sure, so I went in the kitchen and got a large knife, crept past the hallway into my room, and put the knife in my pocket so it could not be seen, feeling I probably would not need to use it. Keep in mind that Valentine is around 58, but also that I might have less fighting experience than him, and that it may not be him in my room.
When I went in, he was calmly sitting at the desk making notes; the drawers were opened and upon later inspection I understood they had been rifled through. He also had stolen 1000R, around 30 dollars. I asked him what he was doing there and he replied that he had a right to see what happens on his property. I asked him to leave, and he asked me why my sheets were wrinkled, and why there was clothing on the floor. Admittedly, I run a pretty loose ship, but as long as there are no eggshells or decaying foodstuffs around, I consider myself to be within my rights.
As an additional justification for his presence, he noted that his property- shelves containing several hundred volumes of 1990's spy novels (-Devastated and Dead-, -Blood on the Pavement-, -Hell Labyrinth-), as well as obsolete programming books and unusably worn out sporting goods- were all here, and that he could come pick them up. Since there was enough property in the room I had paid for to amount to at least thirty backpackloads, this amounted to a declaration of his right to "visit" me at any time.
I again asked him to leave, and he refused, and began listing reasons I should feel sorry for him.
"My wife left me."
"She left you because you are a drunk, and not the other way around."
"What's it to you?"
"It's the 18000R I paid you."
"I just had a cancer test." (Head jutted forward, waiting for sympathy's arrival.)
"Brain cancer? When are you scheduled to leave us?"
Silence. One mark of the long-term drunk is that even grave insults glance off the armor of experience. One thing Claptrap and the other drunks I have had varying levels of contact with is, is that there is a long graveward spiral with these people. It starts with the first incidents of drunkenness, the first broken flower vase, and then progresses to the ignominious crawl up the front lawn to waiting wife and kids, then to the broken neck, the broken wedding, maybe the car crash, maybe the grave outright. The ones who don't die earn all kinds of insults.
And the human being is the animal that gets used to anything. The drunk hears insults of varying intensity from people of varying degrees of acquaintance, and gets used to them, which means he can get even drunker. Maybe he is even anticipating the next level of humiliation. Every insult- all of which are true- means he is more and more covered in scales. Soon it takes a truly novel insult to even register.
Soon he is used not only to insults from a to z, but is used to the phenomenon of the novelty itself. A similar phenomenon, albeit a morally neutral one, exists in the development of societies. The technology that surprised us a decade ago is utterly stale now, and what we expect is not that things stay the same, or even a certain rate of development, what we are used to is the emotion of surprise, and it does not surprise us. This is called being jaded.
Valentine was jaded, but he in addition was borzoi, which is like impudence, cubed. An example of being borzoi is someone deliberately stepping on your toe, and then asking why you stepped on his toe, and issuing morally indignant threats about what you will do if you ever step on his toe again, while you are grabbing your toe in pain.
Look how much time I spent just explaining that one word. It is novel, and to my knowledge unique to Russian. (My knowledge is limited to a miniscule percent of the number of languages existing worldwide.) In any language there are novel words for ideas expressible in other languages only by circumlocution and explanation.
Soon Valentine was arriving every other day, telling me I was a drunk, complaining he had been fighting with his wife and asking whether he could sleep in my room for the night, rooting through my things, and calling me at all hours.
When I asked the neighbor living in the next room what to do, he said Valentine was borzoi, and that the previous renters had moved out, because he has stolen cash from them, and was constantly coming to their flat to collect -his stuff-. When the other renters left, Valentine moved in and ushel za poi. If someone ushel za poi, that means roughly that he has gone on an extended drinking bout during which work is not possible, and which may last anywhere from one week to one life. It literally means that he went away behind the poi, where poi means drinking. The whole expression gives me the feeling that the person physically left and went behind some physical object called a poi.
My flatmate told me that after Valentine had chased out those renters, he lived in my room behind the poi, finding fault with everyone and everything, acting completely borzoi, and finally had to beaten, in spite of his age. After Valentine had suffered a precise non-bruising punch in the chest, he cried and had to be calmed down by his son, who happened to be in the police. My flatmate advised me to toughen up and do the same.
I was sure I could clobber Valentine, but I was not sure whether I would be able to stop. Having met enough borzoi people in the last few years, and by nature being unused to such experiences, I had a store of rage that I was loath to release.
Again it is time to run...

Update

It's been awhile since I last posted. That's not because nothing has happened, rather, because what shocked and disgusted me before now only evokes a chagrined smile. I was recently pushed out of my flat (I say -pushed- instead of thrown not because it was less than being thrown out, but because this time I dealt some therapeutic bitch slaps, although in the end it was me who turned out to be the dupe, on a number of levels.) The total bill for rip-offs this year is around 1000 dollars. One of my main reasons, if not THE main reason, is the cash: subtract the amount which has been separated from you from your annual income to arrive at your total income, then compare it to your after-tax US income. The result: you get paid better here. You are paying your university debts faster than you would be able to at home. You are simultaneously learning a foreign language. Of course, there are non-monetary costs- low trust and high disgust.
A quick run-down: I was living in NW Moscow in a good but overpriced flat until October, when Claptrap, my alcoholic, iconically debt-addicted US-heartland roommate's behavior became unbearably destructive. At the same moment I understood who and what Claptrap was, the world understood what the US was. While my living arrangement was turning to shit, people were talking about runs on the banks and massive unemployment, so I deemed it prudent to move to a more affordable room in SE Moscow.
I had already lived in my "new" place once before, when I first came to Moscow in 2006. The first time I lived there, I got thrown out by the supposedly imminent return, which in fact never materialised, of the gentlehearted landlady's unloved greasebucket ex-husband, which was the first link in a chain reaction of stolen deposits, scum-wafer landlords, and sundry whoremonger or homosexual ex-pat roommates.
I did not learn from history, and it repeated itself: the ex-husband wanted to come back, and his discovery of my existence might cause intra- and inter-family violence, so I had to go.
An acquaintance named Ivan, a real estate agent, offered to find a flat for me, and even give me a decent discount on the agent's fees. Since the beginning of the Great Recession, or what Russians call the Crisis, real estate prices have been falling, and what previously would have been unthinkably expensive locations have fallen back within the reach of ESL types like me. 600 bucks for a flat two minutes from the subway, three stops from the Kremlin. I jumped on the offer.
The landlord was a gentle, thoughtful, age-tonsured fellow with sunken eyes and a grape-sized wart thriving on his spotted pate. His name was Valentine. In the first month, he collected the rent and left me in peace. On the first day of the second month, he showed up several hours early without announcement not to collect rent, but to announce to me in an absolutely even tone that he was drunk because his wife had thrown him out.
Drunks always reason backwards: my wife beats me, and I am drinking because of it. I damaged my spinal cord by jumping headfirst into 3 feet of water, and now I am drinking because the accident makes me sad. Some guys beat me up and stole my computer, and I am drinking because my head hurts. I am drinking because I fell out of the bathtub and shattered the sink and feel bad about about it. Why aren't we friends?
When Valentine told me he was drunk, a slug's trail of tasted buds starting behind my uvula and terminating just above me entry sphincter appeared, and started telling my brain, "SOUR, SOUR, SOUR...". I knew from my experience with drunk, dying old Claptrap that Valentine's confession meant I was going to have to move soon...
Soon Valentine was coming into my room, stealing cash from me (I was of course smart enough to remove most of the money), looking through drawers, all while I was not at home.
Without getting into details, I requested the help of the agent, who had called himself my friend and acted accordingly. The plan was for me to change the locks on the doors, call the agent back. Then the agent was supposed to call Valentine. I changed the locks myself one rainy Saturday, and texted the agent right away with the landlord's number. Valentine had told me I was to be out by Wednesday, ie, the agent had days to make the call.
He never called- because I had sent the wrong number. It would have taken nothing to call me and get the right number.
On Tuesday, the landlord showed up while I was trying to sleep, and tried to open the door. No go, because of the new lock. Instead he walked out of the hall and into the bathroom, and climbed out the bathroom window onto the roof- I lived on the uppermost floor, so he could walk around on the roof, peering into the windows.
Must run. More later.