Rus Like Everyone Else

by Bette Adriaanse

  MRS. BLUE WITHOUT THE SHOW

  Mrs. Blue couldn’t walk as fast since she fell on the forklift truck, so she walked slowly, pushing her rolling walker down the street to get her groceries. She had never really noticed how many old ladies like her there were, pushing their rolling walkers through the street, past the cars and the advertisements on the billboards. Mrs. Blue pulled her fur hat farther over her eyes.

  “Hello,” the checkout girl said when Mrs. Blue came into the supermarket.

  Mrs. Blue nodded distractedly. She took her hat off and redid her hair in the mirrored window of the shop. She used to walk around here knowing that Grace was waiting for her, but now that this was everything there was, she saw every little thing: all the dirt in the corners, all the fast-food advertisements.

  At the register, the man behind Mrs. Blue said that everything was going to hell these days and Mrs. Blue knew that it was nonsense, things had always been going to hell and it was just the people who really believed in civilization who got disappointed. Nature had always been growth and decay, there had always been kindness and viciousness; it just took on new forms.

  “I hope you have a nice day,” Cathy said.

  Mrs. Blue did not say anything. She turned around and walked out of the shop, back to the apartment.

  At home there was a message from her son on the answering machine. “Ma, it’s Glenn. I got a call from the hospital saying you have dislocated your hip. You know that if you need any help, extra care or anything, you can just contact your local authorities. There are plenty of services for the elderly nowadays. The number is 003—”

  Mrs. Blue put the bag of groceries in the corner without unpacking it and lay down on the couch.

  GRACE IN THE STORY

  “Hello!” Grace shouted, her hands by her mouth like a megaphone.

  She was standing in the middle of the road, if you could still call it a road, that is: the trees that had framed the road by the Fata Morgana mansion had long stopped appearing, and somewhere along the way the asphalt had dissolved into some kind of dark open floor that led nowhere and ended nowhere.

  “Is anyone there?”

  Grace’s voice remained audible for a long time; it traveled far into the empty space.

  There was nothing, nothing there.

  Cautiously, Grace looked up to the sky once more, only to quickly cast her eyes down again. The sky was still completely empty: no sun, no stars, no moon. The only light came from that strange white mist that was everywhere around her.

  Grace wrapped her veil around her shoulders like a scarf and started walking again. She was certain there used to be a sky hanging over her, a bright sun during the day and beautiful stars at night, although for some reason she could not remember a single moment when she’d actually seen it.

  RUS’S JOB INTERVIEW

  “Rus,” the manager said. “Rus Ordelman.”

  He tapped with his hand on his desk while he said Rus’s name, as if he was trying out the sound, like a new song. Then he fell silent for a while, until he smiled and asked, “How do you feel about this country, Rus?”

  “This country,” Rus said, “how do I feel about it?” Wanda had taught him to repeat questions so he would have extra time to think about his answer. The manager nodded encouragingly.

  “Yes,” Rus said, “I’m not sure.”

  Wanda told him never to say he wasn’t sure, Rus remembered. He shrank with shame in his chair. “I mean,” he said with his head bent, “I mean I am sure. I think I just cannot find the words to describe it. To describe my feelings.”

  “Well said,” the manager said.

  Rus nodded actively. He started the sentences he’d practiced with Wanda: “I am very enthusiastic about this opportunity.”

  “That is great,” the manager said, “positive things are always appreciated by everyone. So are you motivated to become adjusted in this country?”

  “Yes, yes,” Rus said, “that is, I was born here, of course.”

  The manager winked at him. “Good stuff, Rus,” he said, “good stuff.”

  He wrote something on his newspaper and smiled. “I like your attitude, Rus. And I like your name too. It is an easy name to remember, which is a plus in a large company like this.”

  “I made a résumé of my experience,” Rus said. “I worked on it with my Wanda.” He put the résumé on the table. It was in a yellow plastic folder that he’d picked out. It was a modest kind of yellow, not bright like sunflowers but more like sand in a desert. Still, it was a nice summery color, he thought.

  “Good stuff,” the manager said again. He opened a drawer and took out a gray book. “This book,” he said, “is the essence of good management.”

  He held the book up so Rus could look at it. It was called The Company Guidelines. There was a black beetle on the cover. The manager placed the book carefully on the table and stood up from his chair. “Everything that concerns the company is described in this book. I know it by heart.” He took a pen out of his shirt pocket and pointed it at the ceiling. A red dot appeared on the ceiling.

  “Let me tell you something about our international guidelines.” The manager pointed the pen at Rus’s chest. “As a company, we prefer to look at people’s qualities instead of their shortcomings. For instance, we have a lot of Asians in the calculation department. Russians, like you, do well in the docks, but also in copying.”

  Rus opened his mouth but the manager raised his hand: “I know what you’re thinking. You are thinking this is a horrible generalization, am I right?” The manager did not wait for the answer but leaned over his desk toward Rus. “Take it from me, there’s a lot of truth in generalizations. Most people don’t know this, but there is a lot of truth in them.” The manager moved the pen so the red dot appeared on Rus’s hand. It then went up onto his sleeve a little bit.

  The manager smiled. “I bet you’ve never seen a laser pen before.” Rus shook his head. He had never even heard about one. He had a strong feeling that there were many things he had never seen before, that life had been passing him by. “I’m sorry,” he said for no reason in particular.

  “That’s all right,” the manager said. “You are hired.” He squinted and examined Rus: his wide-eyed face, his skinny shoulders, his brown oversized suit. “Copying,” he decided.

  THE CHASE

  The secretary walked along the canal. She had picked up her manager’s dry cleaning at the 24/7 Wash-o-Matic and she was carrying the big bag of laundry under her arm. It was a quarter to nine. The sun had gone down and she could hear thunder in the distance. Above her head the clouds moved fast. She sat down on the bench on the bridge to rest her arms and watched the clouds gather above the houses for the thunderstorm. The blue slowly drained from the sky and was replaced by dark gray. A heron flew over, shrieking with its neck thrown back. A man sat down next to the secretary. He leaned over toward her and grabbed her arm, his fingertips digging deep into her flesh.

  With a shout the secretary pulled loose and immediately started running, holding the laundry pressed to her chest. Her heels echoed between the buildings. Behind her was the sound of the man’s footsteps. He was following her into her street. The secretary tried to open her purse while running to get her key, but she couldn’t because of the laundry. She dropped the laundry at her front door and got hold of her key. With trembling hands she held the electronic fob above the scanner. She looked over her shoulder. The man crossed the street toward her. She jammed her shoulder between the slowly opening sliding doors, worked herself inside the building, and pushed the doors closed again. Then she ran into the elevator and slammed the button.

  On the other side of the glass entrance doors the man was looking in. He held a small pocketknife in his hand, which he pointed at her. Slowly the elevator doors closed and the secretary went up to her apartment. There she shoved all her boxes against the door handle and called the police, still out of breath.

  “There is no one in front of the building anymore, m
iss,” the police said on the phone. “We have a screen here on which we can see every part of your street. There is no one there at the moment.”

  They promised to have a police car drive along the building and that someone would look into her report.

  The secretary opened the tap and held her face under the running water. Then she sat down against the boxes and waited for her breathing to become normal. She was too scared to walk to the window to see if the man was gone. Even though she was on the fourth floor, she had a strong fear that the man was right behind the curtains. She opened her purse and called the number the lawyer had given her. He was brushing his teeth.

  “Hold on,” he said. The secretary held on. Her hands were shaking.

  “You know,” the lawyer said when he had brushed his teeth, “this kind of thing would never happen to me. It’s all about how you carry yourself. Wait.”

  The secretary heard water running.

  “Have you ever noticed that I never look away first when making eye contact? And I always keep my shoulders straight. You slouch behind the desk. I’ve been meaning to point that out to you. I would have come on to you much sooner if you didn’t slouch like that.”

  “Oh,” the secretary said. She looked at the curtains. They were open. She thought she’d closed them when she left. She was almost certain that she’d closed them.

  “You don’t sound like you’re listening to me,” the lawyer said.

  “There are fire stairs outside my window,” the secretary said. “And my window is open.”

  “No,” the lawyer said. “Listen.”

  “I closed the window when I left,” the secretary said.

  “Listen,” the lawyer said again. “I am taking the time to help you here, which was not what I gave you my phone number for. How are you going to fix your posture?”

  “I never lock the window,” the secretary said. “And now it is open.”

  “You should always lock the window,” the lawyer said. “Otherwise the burglary insurance won’t pay out. Now say it with me: ‘From this moment on, I will never slouch again.’”

  “Can you come over?” the secretary said suddenly. “I’m scared.”

  “This is an opportunity to improve yourself,” the lawyer said. “If you are not willing to improve yourself you will never get any further in life.”

  “I think he is in the house.”

  “Nonsense. Say it with me: ‘From this exact moment on, I will never slouch again.’”

  “I don’t see him,” the secretary said while she got up off the floor, “but I’m afraid he’s hiding. I’m afraid he’s in the bathroom.”

  “‘From this moment on, I will never slouch again,’” the lawyer repeated. “Come on.”

  The secretary didn’t answer. She walked slowly to the bathroom and yanked the door open with a scream. There was no one there. She gasped for breath.

  “You are acting hysterically,” the lawyer said. “Do you know how impolite it is to—”

  Click. The secretary hung up. She didn’t even think about it. She was just very tired now. She lay down on the bed and closed her eyes, and without switching on her computer to see if Katie was there she fell asleep.

  PUSH IT DOWN

  Wanda had been very happy about the job and she had made Rus a Caesar salad, her favorite, to celebrate, but he could not eat. He read her the first paragraph of the Company Guidelines book that the manager had given to him because it worried him a bit.

  “‘As the employee goes through his trial period, it will become clear which parts of the spectrum of his personality are of benefit to the company and which parts are not. The employee will practice his working skills like he is meditating: there is a focus on one thing, the work, and every other thing that comes up in the mind or in the office environment is pushed down. Comes up and is pushed down, comes up and is pushed down, until this is an automatic reflex. Use the Company Guidelines as a filter to pour the personality through, until a suitable remnant remains.’”

  “That sounds great,” Wanda said, “don’t you think? Comes up and is pushed down, comes up and is pushed down. I like it.”

  She stood up from the table and pointed at the clock.

  “At nine we move to the living room,” she said. She put the dishes in the machine that did them and took Rus to the white couch, where she wiggled herself deep into the cushions and switched on the television. Wanda smiled and glanced sideways at Rus. The wall colored with the lights of the television.

  “This is it,” Wanda said, her eyes beaming at Rus. “This is what you get in return.”

  The TV was playing the show about the shoes and the women, the floor was shining and the curtains were closed. There were no patterns on the wall to look at, no tap that dripped every fifteen seconds like a slow, relaxing clock.

  “What we do is we sit on the couch,” Wanda explained when he didn’t answer. “If it is cold me and Barry used to get under a blanket together. And then we watch television and eat crisps. I am on a diet, but not today.”

  She pulled the blanket over her legs and looked at Rus intently, studying his face.

  “This is it,” she repeated.

  “Yes,” Rus said. He wished he was on his own, but it was fine, and it was warm, and he was not homeless.

  HYPNOSIS

  “Your eyes are starting to feel droopy, you feel relaxed. There is nothing to worry about. Slowly your arms fall down alongside your body, your feet fall out to the sides. Your breathing becomes deeper and slower. Do you notice your breathing? You are breathing deep and slow, and you relax as you focus on these words...”

  Mr. Lucas’s feet fell out to the sides on the couch as he listened to his own voice reading the self-hypnosis text. He tried not to think too much about the sound of his voice (which he had always thought to be warm and vibrating, but that the tape recorder mutated in a way that made it high pitched and strange); instead he tried to concentrate on feeling pleasant and relaxed.

  “You’re starting to feel a strong urge to close your eyes: you blink more often, you keep them closed longer in between blinks.”

  Mr. Lucas opened and closed his eyelids slowly, the ceiling lamp coming in and out of sight.

  “It feels like there is a heavy weight lying on your eyelids. You cannot help but close your eyes.”

  Mr. Lucas’s eyes were closed. A warm and heavy feeling pulsed through his body.

  “Very good, Sam,” the Mr. Lucas of two hours ago said. “The body is relaxed, the mind is relaxed. You are standing at the top of a staircase now, on the tenth floor. Do you see the number ten under your feet?” He saw it. “Step by step you descend the first stairs, to the ninth floor. While you descend you feel you are moving further and further away from your thoughts, descending into your subconscious. When you get there, you will be completely open and susceptible to suggestion and change.”

  Mr. Lucas nodded invisibly on the couch. “It feels like something is pulling you down the stairs, you feel so heavy you are floating down without effort, and the number nine passes under your feet. A heavy and warm feeling surrounds you, pulls you down to the eighth floor.”

  Mr. Lucas saw it all vividly in front of him: the spiraling stairs, the black floor with the white numbers. He had to suppress his enthusiasm. He thought it would be scary to be under hypnosis, but it wasn’t scary at all. It was all done very professionally, if he could say so himself.

  “The number four is now behind you, and you are getting closer and closer to your subconscious on the ground floor. You pass by number three, you’re floating down, so heavy and relaxed, number two, number one, and you’re there.”

  Mr. Lucas let himself sink down until he felt the floor of his subconscious under his feet.

  “You see a large open space around you.”

  Mr. Lucas saw it; his subconscious was a large room with pillars supporting the roof. It looked a little bit like the program he had seen on television a few days before, about the prisons in Russia. I
t was a nice program, but the subtitles were too small and therefore very hard to follow.

  “A warm and secure feeling comes over you now, the feeling you had when you were two years old, before the war. Remember how Dad lifted you up to look out the attic window, and the world outside seemed so light and inviting, the people so beautiful, so wonderful, and you could not wait to meet everyone? When you pass through the door on the other side of this room and wake up, you will take this secure and warm feeling with you. It will stay with you when you go out into the street, when you take the bus, when you meet people. There will be no white vans anymore; there will be no violence. There will be no fear or panic attacks. It will be like you are floating in a sea of calmness.”

  Mr. Lucas felt calm and secure in his subconscious, more secure than he had felt in a long time. He felt like he did when he was child, when he did not have any worries yet.

  “You walk across the room, where you see a large red door,” his voice said. “When you open that door, you will wake up.”

  A calm and stable Mr. Lucas walked across the floor of his subconscious toward the red door at the far end of the room. He placed his hand on the doorknob.

  “Open it now,” his taped voice said.

  NOTHING TO HOLD ON TO

  Ashraf sat in his van with his brother. He had parked it near the edge of the city where the building sites were, so he did not have to pay parking money. He had a headache. Richie had been telling him stupid stories all day, about girls and automatic weapons and about all the times he claimed to have been seduced by women when he brought the packages, women who had a thing for package boys and opened the door in lingerie. They’d finished the deliveries at eight, and after that he’d had to go to the police station again to get his car keys. They’d made him wait for an hour and a half.