Rus Like Everyone Else (24 page)

“Ah,” Rus said. He folded his hands around the handle of the plastic bag.

“It means that we mostly buy the debt of poor people,” the manager said, “and then we arrange for their things to be sold.”

Rus thought about the numbers he had entered the day before: birdcages, beds, tablecloths.

“But the best part is how we do it,” the manager said. “We are the first to sell the stuff in bulk. Because a lot of the small things some poor family in Asia owns, for instance, are hard to sell. I mean, who wants to buy a duvet that belonged to some debtor somewhere? But if it is two thousand duvets, and we process them into stuffing, we make a nice profit on the whole.”

The image of his flowery duvet rose up in Rus's head, and he pushed it down again. “I see,” he said.

“We also buy interest of course, and other companies and all that kind of stuff.”

The manager laughed and patted Rus on the shoulder. “But what we sell does not matter. What we do is work with numbers, making sure they go up. You only have to think about copying those numbers, and yesterday you did a very good job.”

“Yes,” Rus said. “Thank you.”

He tried to see his life as a line, a line going up, like Wanda had said.

“I have switched on your seat massage,” the manager said, “do you feel it?”

Rus felt the chair moving behind his back. It pressed just below his shoulder blades, as if it knew exactly where his muscles hurt.

HOLLOW SECRETARY

The secretary was lying on the bathroom floor. The white tiles underneath her felt cold. She looked about her. The door was white, the ceiling was white, and the walls were white. The air that entered her body through her nostrils was cold, and it felt as if the air she inhaled were white as well—cold and white it went into her lungs and out again. The secretary breathed in deeply. She imagined the air chalking the inside of her nostrils white like the walls of her apartment, her air pipe, her lungs, and all the branches of her veins, everything chalked white. She felt like a stone, a hollow white stone in a hollow white stone apartment.

In the distance her telephone rang. “Hello, this is Dr. Kroon speaking,” her answering machine said. “I'm just looking at the rain tapping on my window again, thinking about the conversation we had. Being alone in your thoughts can be very difficult, and the word ‘depression' does come to mind.”

Dr. Kroon was quiet for a moment. She could hear his pen drumming on paper. He cleared his throat.

“We're all familiar with the desire to have someone to share one's ideas with,” he continued, “someone who fully understands you and you understand them. But how do we know if such a person exists? And where can we find them?

“This was Dr. Kroon, calling about your follow-up appointment.”

The answering machine made a beeping sound and the window banged shut. A cold stream of air blew over the secretary's skin. She wanted to get up from the bathroom floor, but she was tired, too tired to even lift her head off the tiles. She took deep, slow breaths and lay still. There were no thoughts in her head, just silence.

THE COMPLAINT

“There has been a complaint about you,” the post boss said to Ashraf. “From a man. A lawyer. He called.”

The post boss had called Ashraf into his office to say this. He had taken off his glasses and he rubbed his eyes while talking.

“He did not want to make any hard accusations against you, but
he did allege that there could be a suspicion of theft. It is about a racing suit, apparently.” The post boss put his glasses on his forehead and looked at Ashraf, who was standing across from him. His office was messy; his desk was filled with the new policy instructions.

“So?” the post boss said. He tapped his pen on the paper.

“What did you tell him?” Ashraf said.

“Well,” the post boss said, “you must understand my position in this.” He rummaged through his papers. “I have personally looked into it, and if the order number is still here, I could not find it. Richie would never fit in any racing suit, and he is not the type, I mean, well, um.” He wiped his forehead.

Ashraf felt the blood rushing to his head. “You know I did not take it, right?” he said.

The post boss nodded. “Of course, of course,” he said nervously. “But a report must be made. If this suit stays missing, the complaint will be sent to the head office and, in the end, I am held accountable. And the facts are against you. I mean, racing suits are obviously attractive, I suppose. Especially white ones.”

The voice of the post boss sounded far away. When Ashraf got angry his mind switched off and it seemed like he got transported miles and miles away from where he was. Ashraf picked up a pen from the desk and breathed in and out slowly.
BELGROVE HOSPITAL
, it read on the plastic.

“I did not take the suit,” he said. “I don't take things.”

The post boss got up from his chair and walked around his desk. “However it may be,” he said, “however it may be, you now have an official warning. The official warning will stay in your file for six months. If something happens in that time you will be fired. And if you are fired because of theft, you will go on a list that is open to other employers. It is already in the computer, so there is nothing to be done.” He patted Ashraf on the shoulder. Ashraf abruptly pushed his chair back and bumped into the post boss's leg. Papers fell from the corner of the desk onto the floor.

“Everything okay in here?” Frank, the district manager, came into the office. He took Ashraf by his elbow. “Are we going to take it easy?” he said.

Ashraf closed his eyes.

“No need,” the post boss said quickly. “Thank you, Frank. Just having a conversation.”

Ashraf turned toward the window and looked out. The new postman from Ghana was practicing with his bicycle while the others were cheering him on. His boss sat back down behind his desk.

“I can see you are disappointed, Appie,” the post boss said, “but let me speak like a father to you now. Let me give you some advice.”

Ashraf turned around. The boss was leaning on his arms over the table.

“Don't have high expectations,” he said. “Be quiet, be thankful.”

The boss took off his glasses and stared into the distance.

“The fact is,” he said, “and I have told my son this over and over again, that you belong to an awful generation. My generation built this country up after the war, the generation before me fought in the war to save this country. Your generation, for some reason, is good for nothing.”

The post boss shook his head.

“It is as though you were all born rotten or something, nobody knows.”

He raised his arms and waved at the window. “But, as I've told my son many times, we've built all of this for you, it is finished, and there is enough. All you have to do is cooperate.”

He sighed.

“I have burdens to carry; I have a load on my back. But what did he have to carry, what problems did he have? Nothing, no burdens, but still he got fat like an elephant.”

The boss stared out the window. Ashraf closed the door to the office behind him with a restrained click.

THE NOISE

It was two o'clock, and Rus had already worked through his first pile of files, and he was halfway through the second one.
Tiktiktiktiktiktik, kzzzkzzk
,
hum
, the demure sounds of the office sang softly in Rus's ears while he worked through the papers. He had even found a cadence to it.
Tiktiktik
, he took a new paper,
kzzkzzk
, he entered the numbers,
ring
, he put the paper away,
tiktiktik
, he took a new paper,
kzzkzzk
, he entered the numbers, and so forth. The
hum
of the air vent just continued and surrounded it all.

The cooperation between the sounds and his movements made Rus feel like he was a machine, just like the computer and the phone. And he was a bit like a machine actually; the manager said there had never been anyone in the copying department who could work uninterruptedly for hours like him. But of course a machine would not have trouble breathing and it would not have moments when its heartbeat became irregular and thumbed in its throat. But that was no problem for Rus, who was becoming more and more like everyone; Rus, who had found an excellent place to hide his plastic bag behind the copying machine.

The only thing that Rus wished would stop was the sound in the air vent. It was a strange, irregular scraping sound, something scratching and tapping on the iron. The sound had gotten louder and more frequent, and it kept interrupting his work rhythm. Each time he heard it his head turned automatically toward it, making him forget where he was on the list.

There it was again!
Kiehg, kiehg, kiehggg
. This time the sound was sharp and audible all through the office. Rus looked at his coworkers. They all kept working silently, not looking up from their desks. Then the sound stopped.

Rus took up a new file and looked up the Chinese words and numbers in file number eighty-nine, filled in by a certain Ming Rong Heng. Three hundred and twenty-five kettles, six thousand forks. Above him the sound started again. This time, there was first a scratching and fluttering and then a loud thump. What was it? The question came up in Rus's mind and he pushed it down again, typing three hundred twenty-five kettles and six hundred tablecloths into the computer. Or was it forks? With his shoulders up against his ears Rus stared at the numbers on the screen. “Focus,” Rus said to himself quietly, as he bent over Ming Rong Heng's file again, “eyes on the target.”

ONE MORE DAY

Mr. Lucas made his preparations for the next day in a state of bliss, glowing and nonstop talking to himself. The beauty of the hypnosis
surrounded him, the sea of calmness pulsed through his veins. The only thing that was not going very well was the sleeping and he was a bit shaky because of it, but he had rebelliously resolved that he “could sleep when he was dead,” as he had heard someone on the radio say. Right now it was important he thought everything through and practiced every detail for his perfect day. He had called the public transport services for the bus times, the weather line for the weather, and now he dialed the number of the Secret Service, to find out where exactly would be the best spot for him to stand during the Memorial Service to get a full view of the Queen.