It’s like I only remember one hour of every day, Grace thought.
She looked at the gun she was holding. That strange thing Rick had said when she shot him. The pain had made him come to his senses, and his eyes were wide open suddenly, looking up at her. “Where has the voice gone?” he’d asked her. “Where has the voice gone?”
THE MANAGER TEACHES RUS
“Headfirst,” the manager shouted while he paced up and down the glass hallway of the office building. He was teaching Rus how to business walk. “You don’t see the other people,” the manager said, “because you have a destination. In your mind you are organizing conferences, making decisions, writing important e-mails.”
Rus’s fur coat was hanging from the manager’s shoulders and dragged over the floor of the glass hallway as he paced up and down. The coat was Rus’s part of the deal the manager came up with: essential information on corporate survival in exchange for the coat. Apparently the manager had met with a group of Northern businessmen a few years before, and despite doing everything to impress them, they remained stoic. He drove them around in his white BMW and took them to a restaurant with food that you would never think to eat yourself, but what they’d really gotten excited about was the fur coat of a Norwegian businessman sitting at another table.
This had annoyed the manager a little bit and he got annoyed again while telling it to Rus, but when he put on Rus’s coat his mood cleared and his eyes shone like a child’s.
They practiced for an hour together, with the manager quoting parts of the Company Guidelines book, which had extensive advice on creating a successful business mentality. The basic principle was to focus so strongly on the goal that the rest of the world became a blur.
“And when approaching a group,” the manager concluded his teachings, “always shout something first so you have their attention, and then come closer. You never want to stand behind them with your arm outstretched, waiting until there is a space in the conversation for you.”
Rus wrote it all down in the notebook Wanda had put in the plastic bag. Now and then a voice in his head said, My coat, my father’s coat. But aside from that he was doing well. The manager thought so too, and he made a circle in his chair when Rus paced down the hallway without looking up once, showing that he had mastered the business walk.
“You are ready,” the manager said. “Come stand over here.” He pushed a button on his computer. On the screen the fifty-five employees of the copying department became visible, each one sitting in his or her own little square on the screen.
“Everyone, this is Rus,” the manager said.
The manager pulled Rus toward the screen and held his chin up. The people in the squares looked back at Rus and the manager. “Hello,” Rus said. He raised his hand to wave but the manager shook his head.
“Never wave,” the manager said under his breath.
“Our Rus here will be working as a number copier. He will be occupying desk number thirty-four during his trial period. Work pace two hundred files a day. Anyone want to say anything?”
One person lifted his hand. “Ah, Fokuhama,” the manager said. “Speak.”
“Can I just say what an amazing fur coat you have on?” Fokuhama said.
“What, my fur coat?” the manager said. “Chic you say?” His mouth turned into a broad smile. “It’s a real Russian one. Very rare. I have a connection who gets them for me.”
WAITING FOR RICHIE
An ant walked over the pavement. It walked around a dead fly and tried to lift it. The fly did not move. Ashraf was sitting on the pavement, leaning with his arms on his knees. Richie had gone for cigarettes. The ant on the pavement climbed over the fly. Two other ants came and started to walk around the fly too. Together they dragged the fly’s body toward the gutter.
Ashraf wondered why people would compare a human society to an ant colony. Ants were very different from people. Ants probably did not dislike one another, and they also probably did not want to get more areas for themselves and sell them. He had never really seen the purpose of comparing one thing to another. If you wanted to understand something, he thought, you had to study that specific thing and all its aspects, not something else that had some things in common with it. He felt the same about this war they were having the Memorial Service for. Every conflict that occurred was compared with this war, in order to find out which were the bad ones and which were the good ones. That’s how you learn from history: you don’t let the exact same thing happen again. Although he was not even sure of that.
It was not very strange that someone had wanted to write a book of rules and pretend it came from an invisible person much wiser than us, who had made the world, Ashraf thought, someone who was watching to see you followed the rules and punishing you for not following them. It might be the only solution for the world. Although on the other hand it had not been a solution at all so far, it may even have made problems worse. Maybe there was no solution—problems would turn into different problems—and he just hoped he could stay out of it all.
“Money is a game,” Youssef had said. “Everybody is playing. If you break the rules, and no one notices, you have not broken the rules. There is no point in being the only one who’s playing fair.” The past week, Youssef had been trying to talk him into a moneymaking scheme he came up with, which involved stolen SIM cards and setting up a premium rate telephone number. “It’s not any worse than what the phone companies themselves do. They have insurance for these types of things with the big banks, so in the end you only steal from those who steal from us.”
Ashraf knew Youssef’s plans and schemes. He had a new one every week. Sometimes they worked, usually they didn’t; sometimes he got caught and turned his life around for a few weeks, like when he worked with the packages. When he had money, even when it was enough to live off for a year, he spent it within a month, on rental cars and shoes and drinking.
“You’ve got to pick your own place in life,” Youssef said, “otherwise life will place you. And you know very well which position that is.”
Ashraf knew what he meant. Work for your salary. Pay half your salary to the bank, which owns your house and your car and your furniture. Pay the phone company, pay the gas company, pay your insurances, pay the supermarket. Own nothing except for some expensive clothes you bought to feel like you are somebody, have a heart attack when you are forty-five, leave your kid with the mortgage payments.
Ashraf stood up from the sidewalk. He did not want to steal; he wanted to live by his own rules, even if the world was arranged as Youssef said it was. He did not want to steal, he did not want to swear, he did not want to become bitter. He brushed the sand from his trousers. In the distance Richie was talking to a woman who was politely trying to get away. Ashraf got in the van and pressed the horn until Richie came running with a red face.
MR. LUCAS AND HIS SHIELD
Mr. Lucas touched his eyes, his cheeks, his forehead. He pinched his arms to see if he was really there, in the street, in the middle of the day. Everything was going so perfectly fine that for an instant he was worried he might still be lying on the couch next to the tape recorder, in deep hypnosis, just dreaming he was doing all this.
But he wasn’t, he was really walking over the busiest market square in East, no white van in sight. The hypnosis was lying like a shield around him. He’d put on his suit for the Memorial Service and an old yellowed shirt. Normally he walked very close to the wall with his head bent, but now he walked right in the middle of the sidewalk. Luckily, the hypnosis blocked out the worst aspects of the state the neighborhood was in, the things he’d heard about in local news reports. Mr. Lucas knew there was a drug dealer on every street corner, but he was not able to see them, just as he was unable to see the dysfunctional families, who he knew from the news were sitting drunk in their front yards with their stolen goods on display. He only saw the square and the people shopping, who looked at him with friendly eyes.
“I am hypnotized,” Mr. Lucas s
aid quietly to the people who passed him by. “Are you going to the Memorial Service too? It is the day after tomorrow. I’ll be there. What is that you say? Yes, yes, you do have to be invited. That’s such a pity, maybe next year for you, who knows.” This is how he walked through the entire square until he found the stand where they sold shirts.
“That’s quite an outfit you’ve got there,” the man behind the market stand remarked.
Mr. Lucas looked up and smiled. “Thank you,” he said, “I dyed it myself.”
He bought two shirts from the man, in expensive black silk. The fabric was shiny and it would look perfect with his suit. The man carefully wrapped them in paper before he put them in the bag. Nodding almost without interruption now, Mr. Lucas made his way back to his house, taking his shirts out of the paper every five seconds to marvel at them.
And when a man behind him prodded his shoulder and started talking to him about the world that was going to hell nowadays, about youngsters putting out cigarettes on random people’s faces, Mr. Lucas did not panic. He nodded calmly and answered, “I myself experience it very differently at the moment, but I have certainly heard that on the news, certainly.”
THE BEAUTY OF THE NUMBERS
Tiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktiktik. This was the sound of the office, and this sound came over Rus like a wave when he opened the door. The other sounds were: phones ringing, people talking, printers going kzzk kzzk kzzk kzzk, and the air-conditioning blowing in the background, filling up Rus’s ears with a low, steady hum.
So there he was, Rus, at his first job, his hands a bit shaky and a tingle in his stomach. All the desks had numbers, and across the department he saw his own number, 34. Rus started walking between the desks, counting the desks that he passed by left and right. His coworkers looked up from their screens as he walked by.
Rus walked as the manager had taught him to, eyes on the target, headfirst, but he could not help but notice that everyone wore black suits and no one wore brown, and he tried to hold the plastic bag behind him a little bit, so they wouldn’t see it.
Desk 5, desk 6. Number 34 seemed very far away, and all of a sudden Rus did not remember how he used to move his arms when he walked. Did he move his right arm forward when his right leg moved forward, or was it the other way around?
Finally, Rus reached desk 34 and sat down in a chair that had wheels under it. There was even a sign that read R. ORDELMAN, and a phone, and a keyboard, and a screen. The plastic bag Rus folded and placed on the floor under his table. Fokuhama, who sat across from Rus, rolled his eyes when Rus tried to find the button to switch on the screen, which was in a different place from where Wanda had explained.
The work he had to do was to copy the numbers in the files from China and to write them in Arabic numerals on the screen. The manager had given him a list of the Chinese number system and a dictionary. A stack of files was waiting on his desk. For some reason Rus had expected the work to start more slowly, that he would look around a little bit at first, then perhaps start tending to some work, maybe adding up a few numbers, but no, here he was, with a desk, a screen, and a pile of files.
The pile of files was so high that Rus could not imagine how he could ever be expected to finish it. With sweaty palms he picked the first file up from the stack. “,” it read, “,” and “.”
“Yes,” Rus said, “let’s see.” His voice quivered a little bit. Nervously he looked up from his desk. Around him everyone was flicking through heaps of files and tapping on the keyboards, not once looking up from their desks. Rus lowered his gaze, and with a hesitant move of his hand he took the Chinese number list, following the lines with his fingertips. After twenty minutes he whispered triumphantly: “Six thousand seven hundred ninety-nine televisions sold!”
Form by form Rus continued like this, looking up the words, translating the numbers, and after a few hours he could recognize the word for “profit” and for “sold.” When at one o’clock the others got up to go to lunch, Rus ate Wanda’s sandwiches behind the screen, quietly mumbling things like “five hundred thirty beds, sold for eight thousand” and “one hundred old-fashioned birdcages, sold for eight hundred and ten.”
One by one he translated the amounts and entered them into the computer. He was determined to be focused, to make it through his trial period, to make Wanda happy, and to buy a briefcase to replace the bag.
EMPTY GIRL
The secretary was sitting at her gray desk, watching the gray clock tick. She had been doing it for a few hours now. Aside from that, she had not really done anything. It had started that morning, when she came into the office two hours late and her gray telephone rang.
It seems as though I’m not picking it up, the secretary had thought as she looked at the phone that was ringing, ringing, ringing and then stopped. When she sat down, she noticed that she did not open her e-mail, and when someone came in to see the manager, she’d said, “He is not in,” although he was. There was a conference call to introduce a new employee, but she did not pick up. The files people placed on her desk she first stacked on the table against the window, but later she had opened the window, shoved the files out, and watched them fall into the dumpster in the parking lot.
It was very strange behavior. The lawyer had sent her a memo saying that he needed to see her in the copy room in five minutes, but she did not go. She put the note through the paper shredder. She also put all the Post-its on her desk through the paper shredder, and all her files and books. All she had done from then on was stare at the glass wall in front of her, stare at the gray clock, stare at the gray people who were moving through the hallway like an old black-and-white movie, except that they were using mobile phones. The people passing by glanced at her, and when the manager walked past her desk he had asked if she had any idea where his laundry was. When she said she didn’t, he stared at her for a moment and just said, “I see, I see.”
At five a boy came in her office to bring the packages. He brought her the colorless pencils, the colorless dress, and the colorless wallpaper that she’d ordered on the Internet.
At that moment the lawyer came into her office, shouting, “We are not signing anything!” He yanked the clipboard out of the boy’s hands and started rummaging through the packages. “I have been waiting four days now for my racing suit.” One by one he picked up the packages and threw them on the floor. “I am going racing on the circuit this weekend with the shareholders. My suit was supposed to be here four days ago. Where is it?”
“I don’t know,” the package boy said. “This is all I have.”
The secretary saw the lawyer’s cheeks turn dark gray with anger, and he squeezed his eyes into slits as he looked the package boy up and down.
“So this is all you have,” he said. He put his hands on his hips. “And what if I say I don’t believe it. What if I think you know where my suit is. I think you should take another good look in your van and bring me my suit.”
The boy picked the clipboard and the pen up from the floor. “I don’t have your stupid suit,” he said. His hands were shaking a little bit as he put the pen back in his pocket. He glanced at the secretary.
“I am going to file a complaint against you if you don’t apologize,” the lawyer said.
The boy’s eyes darted to the secretary. Then he turned around and stepped in the elevator.
“I’m a lawyer,” the lawyer shouted after him. “I can get you fired in a second!”
The glass doors closed and the boy sank away behind the glass. Abruptly, the lawyer turned around toward the secretary. He pointed at her.
“You,” he said. “You have not answered the phone all day. Everybody knows it. What game are you playing?”
The secretary looked up at the lawyer’s face. He was normally a tanned brown color, but his skin was now gray. A few hairs had gotten away from the grip of his hair gel and shone in the light of the ceiling lamp.
“I don’t see any color,” the secretary said. “Since this morning everything is
gray to me. It is a mental problem.”
For a few moments, the lawyer said nothing. He just shook his head rapidly, letting out short, sharp breaths.
Then he said, “I can’t believe this,” and “After all I’ve done for you.” He turned around and walked out of her office. He tried to slam the door, but his coat got stuck so he had to open it again and take his coat out. The secretary looked at the gray veins in her wooden desk. She drew a stripe on the desk for every second the clock ticked, drew stripes all over her desk for minutes and minutes, until the office got emptier and emptier, and at six she took her coat and her plastic bags and got up.
THE BOSS’S SON
The Queen sat in front of the mirror in her black Memorial Service robe and her crown with the dark red rubies. She touched her face with her hand.
“Don’t you think it’s strange,” she said to the boss’s son without looking at him, “that I am the Queen? That I am the Queen?”
“Yes,” the boss’s son said. “I never thought I’d meet you.”
“No,” the Queen said impatiently, “not in that sense. Not in the sense that it is special or unique. I mean”—she stroked the mirror—“that it is strange that I am the Queen. The whole idea of it.”
“You mean it surprises you that you are the Queen,” the boss’s son said.
Angrily the Queen shook her head. “This”—she pointed at her reflection—“is the Queen. And I am that.” She took the mirror and held it desperately up to the boss’s son. “Don’t you think it is strange?”
“Well,” the boss’s son said, “if you are precise, it is not the Queen you see in the mirror, but the reflection of light on a flat glass surface.”
The Queen sighed. She closed her eyes for a moment.
“Take your shoes off,” she said.
Quickly the boss’s son took his boots off his feet. The Queen got up from her chair and smashed the mirror on the ground in front of the boss’s son’s feet.
Rus Like Everyone Else Page 13
