For some time, we lived in an old house that was built in the early 20th century. It used to be a printing house before being converted into a residential building with eight apartments. The house had a small patio, so tiny that with the three-story height (plus the roof), it never saw any sunlight. Our apartment was on the third floor and spanned two levels, occupying the space under the roof. The windows faced the patio and the inner courtyard. Since we lived on the third (and fourth) floor, we enjoyed plenty of sunlight, especially since the windows were large, some almost floor-to-ceiling. However, “sunny” also meant sweltering heat in the summer and freezing cold in the winter, as it was nearly impossible to heat the entire space with single-pane windows and two levels, and a significant amount of heat escaped through the roof and those very windows. On the bright side, we had a large terrace on the roof where we beautifully planted various trees and set up a table and chairs.
Of course, the sound insulation in this building was practically non-existent, but we didn’t suffer from it since there were no adjacent neighbors. Each apartment occupied one side of the square that formed the patio, connecting with neighbors only through storage rooms or stairwells. Those living on the top floor had no neighbors above them, and those on the ground floor had no neighbors below (the first floor was a parking garage and a meeting room available for rent).
However, our neighbors suffered from the lack of soundproofing. So, we thought it over, and I went around to all the neighbors asking them to understand that our kids play the piano at 8 in the morning. The sound of the piano was very audible in the quiet patio. We had every right to do whatever we wanted from 8 AM, but maintaining good relations with our neighbors was important, so I sought their support and, in the process, received a lot of compliments like, “Oh, we thought it was the radio,” or “They play so well, we often listen in.” My request was also made easier by the fact that the house was surrounded by three churches, which rang their bells every fifteen minutes starting at 7 AM, and the sound was definitely five times louder than the piano playing through closed windows.
This went on for about two years, until the day when the tenants of one of the lower apartments, all of whose windows faced the patio, moved out and a strange couple of young people moved in. They were strange mainly because of their lifestyle. No one interacted with them. The guy was very busy with nonsense, meaning he didn’t work and never went outside. He lived at night, either glued to his computer or watching TV, and during the day he slept behind closed curtains. As a result, there was no daylight in that apartment. They relied on takeout for food, which could be inferred from the contents of their trash, sorted and placed outside the front door by the other residents every Monday. The girl worked as a teacher and took care of this slacker. Both of them looked painfully pale, and their behavior was clearly sociopathic.
And one fine day, I received an anonymous letter signed “your neighbors,” which politely contained threats if we continued to play the piano. It was clear who had written it. The new tenants didn’t realize that I had made friendly arrangements with the other neighbors, and “your neighbors” certainly didn’t sound like a collective request.
From that moment, the war began. Neighbors, the city mediation service, the police—anyone was involved. The guy refused to negotiate. The essence of the demands from this fool boiled down to the fact that he didn’t want to hear anything before noon because it disturbed his sleep. Then his demands shifted to “a jackhammer can be used from 8 AM, but a piano cannot.” After that, he started threatening the children, using racist rhetoric. I, on my part, took noise measurements and showed that the noise levels did not exceed the norms, even for nighttime. My landlord and I agreed to soundproof the apartment, on the condition that he would allow measurements to be taken “before” and “after.” But he refused, as it was clear he wanted conflict, not resolution.
Then he started running down to the basement and cutting off our electricity. After that, he began regularly calling the police, who would show up, shake their heads, but still take our statements for reports, of which I later counted more than 20. Eventually, he started stealing all the mail from our mailbox, which didn’t have a lock.
The negotiations between the landlords also hit a dead end, as it turned out that the guy was somehow acquainted with the owner of his apartment. My landlord was eager to buy his apartment and leave him out in the cold. He also helped me with a lawyer, but that led nowhere. It turned out that when a person is a petty jerk, there’s not much you can do within a reasonable budget. The police, who were on my side, kept saying, “We have no evidence.” When I argued that secretly recording his actions was illegal, they just shrugged. It was clear they didn’t want to deal with such a “minor” case, and as it turned out later, the guy was already on their radar because he didn’t just leave his previous apartment for no reason; he had a conflict with the neighbors there.
But with the mail, I decided to catch him in the act. One day, a package arrived for me, which I took directly from the postman’s hands. I carefully opened the packaging, took out the contents, poured some stevia powder (a fine white powder used as a sweetener) into the package, made a small hole, and put the package back in the mailbox. An hour later, I saw a clear trail of stevia powder stretching from my empty mailbox to my neighbor’s apartment.
After taking photos and documenting everything, I rushed to the police to file a report. The police were reluctant to accept my statement again, clearly trying to brush me off, until one of the officers, overhearing my story, said, “Hey, wait a minute.”
Finally, I was sitting in a room, talking to a police officer who was writing up a report. I was elated, but not for long. It turned out that this psycho had run to the police before me, claiming that my neighbor wanted to poison him with “white powder.” And just like that, I was no longer the victim but a suspect in a criminal case that involved something about chemical and biological weapons. Now I was facing the prospect of at least having to cover the costs of chemical and bacteriological analysis of this “white powder.”
I wasn’t a victim for long, just until the moment I asked how I could have poisoned my neighbor with “white powder” if it was in a package addressed to me and sitting in my drawer?
At this stage, the case had reached a “let’s sweep it under the rug” state, but I asked, what about my neighbor? Is he not going to be held accountable for his false testimony, theft of property, and so on? I was assured that he would be held accountable, and I left the police station satisfied.
Then the police sent me an excuse saying that the neighbor claimed he took the package not from the mailbox, but from the common shelf (where the mailman puts packages for anyone who hasn’t specified their apartment number), that he “took the package to give it to me” (sure) and that the police again “have no evidence,” and that I could have taken a photo of the package in my mailbox and then moved it to the common shelf to supposedly provoke the neighbor (selectively, of course).
But in the end, the neighbor, apparently after a tough conversation with the police, stopped stealing the mail, didn’t mess with the switch for a while, and didn’t call the police. Six months later, all that nonsense started again, but by then I had already put a lock on the mailbox.
The guy tried several times to get a job as a salesperson in the nearby stores, but he never lasted more than a couple of weeks anywhere. We successfully moved out of that apartment, and our former neighbors brought us the news that the guy and that girl had a baby. Well, now he will definitely be “happy” with the silence in the house. Peace to him.