Rus Like Everyone Else (29 page)

Mr. Wheelbarrow sat bent over his desk, his head buried in his hands. Then his telephone rang. It was the hospital. “Good news, Mr. Wheelbarrow,” a voice said. “Freddy just woke up.”

GRACE IN THE STORY

“Hello?”

Grace opened the door of the small, white-tiled building that she found along the road. There was no one inside. There was just a sink and six bathroom stalls. Grace walked into the building
and looked into the long mirror. There was a crack over the whole surface of the glass. The white-tiled wall was dirty and the ceiling lamp flickered. Someone had written MR. LI IS IN EAST across the wall.

Grace thought of the pastel tints in the mansion. Even the basement Roberto had kept her in during her abduction had been more stylish than this, the light more gentle.

Carefully, Grace sat down on the seat of one of the toilets. She wondered if she would forget this moment too, like she had forgotten almost everything. Would she remember this place if she ever came here again?

She tried to print the image onto her memory—the dirty tiles, her torn wedding dress, the names etched on the wooden door of the stall—but she could already feel it slipping away from her. Resolutely, she took another hairpin out of her hairdo, to etch her name into the wood. But when Grace placed the tip of the pin against the door, she gasped. A name was already written in that spot on the door.

GRACE WAS HERE
.

ASHRAF IN THE UNIVERSE

Ashraf stared into the back of his van that he'd parked by the construction site. The clouds were dark and they were floating over him at a quick pace. The Royal Mail Centre was closed so he could not return the packages, and there were thirty or so still in the van. Deliverers were not allowed to keep the packages overnight. They could suspend him for it.

The first package Ashraf pulled out of the trunk was addressed to the Overall Company, from Racewear Supershipping. It was half opened.

“Dammit.” Ashraf banged the door closed so hard it bounced open again. He would have to deliver that stupid racing suit tomorrow, too late and half opened. They were never going to believe he got it like this. “Dammit.” He banged the door closed again and again, until it finally stayed closed. He sat down in the passenger seat, for the umpteenth time that week, and stared outside.

By ten o'clock he had drunk the last bit of vodka in the bottle his brother had left in the van. It was just enough to make him feel a little more relaxed.

The sky above the van was dark, and he could see vaguely the contours of the Milky Way, looking like spilled milk in the sky. He switched the radio on and heard a man say, “A dark day, a black day in the history of this country, and the question is: How—” and he switched it off again. In his damp sleeping bag he thought of all the news in the world coming to each separate person, and what you were supposed to do with all that.

It is strange, he thought. There is Ashraf, the little dot in the universe, then there's Ashraf who is a part of this city, Ashraf who is part of the world, then there is Ashraf in biology, a collection of cells whose thoughts are just pathways in the brain, whose feelings are a shortage of this hormone and an excess of that. There is Ashraf in my memories, whose life is like a story of cause and effect. Ashraf in the economy, high up in the money pyramid compared with the people in other countries, low in comparison with the people here. And then there was Ashraf the son and the brother, and Ashraf in history, who was just as small as Ashraf in the universe. But during the day, there was just Ashraf who was trying to get to the other side of town, who set off the alarm of the motorcycle and disturbed the entire Memorial Service, who wanted to go home but would not be left alone by his family, and who was probably going to get fired over some stupid yuppie's racing suit.

Like spiderwebs, all these realities laid over the world he saw around him, over all of his thoughts and actions. He remembered a teacher in high school who called his interest in the universe escapism. “He has very little attention for the here and now, the reality of the classroom and what is required of him.” The reality of the classroom, with its latest educational system, which was made up by someone somewhere. The reality of “A farmer goes to the market in a tractor going 25km an hour. He encounters a hill.”

Ashraf closed his eyes and pulled the sleeping bag over his nose. “He reads four lines in a book and then stares out the window for half an hour. He finds the things in his own mind more important than what is in the books.” The startled face of his father at that parent-teacher meeting; somehow he could only remember his father's
eyes, how they looked at him, but not the rest of his face.

Tomorrow he was going to take that racing suit to the Overall Company straightaway, before work. Then he'd pick up the rest of the packages at eight and work faster than yesterday, more focused and efficient. The beginning is always the hardest, he thought. The rain trickling down his window made him calmer, sleepier. This land was cleansed weekly, daily, sometimes hourly by the sky. He thought of the office girl, her hand on his trousers. Maybe he could send her some flowers when his first salary was paid. Slowly his thoughts started dipping into a bath of sleep, flooding his plans with dreamy images of his boss in a tight racing suit, motorcycles in narrow streets, and his mother tapping on the window of his van.

“Do you know it is illegal to park here?” a voice said through his window, and then more taps. Ashraf opened his eyes but did not look to the side for one moment. He took two deep breaths before facing the police officer he knew was at his window. “Can we take a look in the back of your van, please?”

WHAT I NEED YOU TO BE

When Rus came home from the office at eight there was no one in the living room and there were only empty plates on the dinner table and no dinner for him. Rus walked to the kitchen and placed his forehead on the cold steel of the kitchen counter, breathing in and out slowly.

When he opened his eyes he saw a hand in front of them on the counter, the nails tapping on the steel. It was Wanda's hand; she had painted her fingernails lilac. Then Wanda started talking about how she had heard from her friend who worked at Overall how he had acted during the meeting, and could he imagine how embarrassing that was for her, and how disappointed she was in him.

He sat down at the dinner table and Wanda walked around him and around the dinner table as she talked, and she did not really shout but her voice was very sharp sometimes, and then her voice got very soft suddenly and she cried and said she felt alone when they were together and that she was prepared to be self-critical and change for him, and he could say what he did not like about her.

Rus shook his head. He had nothing he wanted to change. She could just be Wanda, who ate crisps from the bag hidden behind the cupboard door in the kitchen; Wanda whose eyes sparkled when she talked about her grandpa, who used to shoot the ornaments from the Christmas tree with a slingshot when her grandma wasn't looking.

“There is something very strange at the department,” Rus said. “If you would come with me you could see the bird for yourself. It makes very loud noises and I don't understand—”

Wanda did not let him finish. “I've given you a chance because I believe in you,” she said. “I used my connections to get you that job interview. It is very important to me that you keep this job, no matter what happens in the air vent. Do you understand?”

Rus tried again to explain about the noise and how disturbing it was, but then Wanda pulled his plate from the table although he hadn't eaten yet and smashed it in the sink. She said she had done everything for him, that he needed to see this from her perspective, to think of someone else for a change. She said he had to be mature and focused and finish his trial period, and asked if he understood that.

“But the bird—” Rus said.

“I don't want to hear one more word about it.” The conversation ended with Wanda slamming the drawers, like Rus's mother used to do when Modu came home singing “I Shot the Sheriff,” and laying out the receipts of all the things she'd bought for him.

Now Rus was lying next to Wanda in the quiet bedroom, looking at her back, the round curves of her shoulder blades. Rus wanted to press his head against her shoulder, but he was scared. When he switched off the light and closed his eyes, he heard her voice in the dark.

“Promise me you will leave this thing alone,” she said.

Rus did not say anything.

“Promise me.”

“I promise,” Rus said, sinking deep under the sheets.

It is night again and the moon is shining on our city. The Memorial Monument, which we could see from our spot by the window, is now missing from the skyline.

Mr. Lucas is standing in his bedroom in the dark.

We saw him come home a few hours ago, rushing down the dark street, walking so close to the wall his jacket grazed the stone. The windows stayed dark after he went in; he was too afraid to turn on the light. Without making any sound he now takes his suit off, and his shirt, and pulls his socks over his pajama pants. With another failure added to his list of failures, he steps quietly into his bed and pulls the sheets over him.

We look out over the dark windows of the city. In all those different cubicles people are sleeping, reading, sitting up in bed, dreaming, eating, just going to bed, or just getting up. How often do you sleep curled up to someone under the covers? Do you stretch your legs or do you sleep on your side with your legs pulled up? Do you look forward to the morning?

Some people lie awake with their eyes closed like Mr. Lucas, buried deep under the covers, trying to hide from everything.

Others, like Mr. Lucas's old neighbor Rus, across the city, aren't paralyzed by fear but acutely activated by it. Lying wide-awake in his bed, staring up at the ceiling, Rus presses his nails into his palms and clenches his teeth. He's been trying to count sheep jumping over a fence to fall asleep, but a bird keeps landing on the fence and tapping loudly on the wood.

The only one sound asleep is the secretary over there, rolled in the felt blanket. She is in her deepest, most peaceful sleep for a very long time. She won't even wake up when, in an hour or so, Mrs. Blue hammers on her door.

GRACE IN THE STORY

Grace ran along the dark, empty highway toward the city lights. There were no cars passing her—the road was empty, and she was all alone. She could not understand how her name could be etched in the door in her handwriting; she could not understand how she could have been here before. It was as if she had gotten caught in a revolving door within a revolving door.

A yellow emergency phone was standing alongside the abandoned highway, lit by a blinking green SOS sign. N5 CONTACT POINT, it read.

“I don't know if anyone can hear me,” Grace said in the receiver. “But I am in trouble.”

The line crackled.

“I am on a highway. The signs say N5. Can somebody help me?”

She paused. There was no voice on the other side, no response.

“Please, can anyone hear me? I'm on a road called N5. I'm in a white wedding dress. I'm all alone.”

Her voice broke. The line was still quiet.

Grace lowered the receiver. She'd heard something behind her. A car. She turned around. In the distance two headlights were coming toward her. The lights weren't coming from the direction of the city, but from the direction she had come from herself, from the empty space.

MRS. BLUE HAS A DREAM

On the couch Mrs. Blue opened her eyes. She'd had a dream about Gracie. Mrs. Blue sat up on the couch. The moon shone through the blue curtains.

“I know where the N5 is,” she said. “That is near the airport.”

She pulled her legs over the edge of the couch and stood up. She almost fell over because her hip was still hurt.

“Not important,” Mrs. Blue said to her hip as she dragged herself to her wardrobe. “We need to get to Gracie.”

She tried to pull her stockings up over her feet, but she could not bend down far enough because of her hip. The stockings were necessary to keep her ankles from swelling up.

Mrs. Blue stepped into her sandals and put on her coat over her nightgown. Leaning on her walker, she went into the hallway with the stockings in her hand. She knocked on her neighbor's door.

“Laura,” she said to the closed door. “I need you to put on my stockings.”

She knocked again. The light in the hallway flickered.

“Laura. Come out for a moment.”

No one answered.

Mrs. Blue looked at the other closed doors in the dark hallway. Then she turned around and walked into the elevator, out the sliding doors, and into the cold night.

ASHRAF AT THE POLICE STATION

Ashraf was in the waiting room of the police station, waiting to get his passport and his keys back. They had asked him questions about the parcels and about him sleeping in the van. He said he'd worked until late and he could not return the packages since the Royal Mail Centre was closed. He said he slept in his van for reasons that were not anyone's business and that he didn't know he could not park there. He explained it to them several times, and they explained to him several times how he should have stopped working when the Memorial Service began, and how people cannot live in cars, because if everyone started living in their cars, who knew what would happen. It had ended with an hour in the cell where someone had written MR. LI IS IN EAST on the wall, and some reprimands about parking in places where it was restricted (“We don't just restrict things—things are restricted for a reason”). Then they'd given him a fine for parking in a restricted area and let him off the hook for not having his Royal Mail pass yet.

Ashraf sat down on one of the green plastic chairs in the waiting room. Behind the counter the policemen on duty were talking about their shifts in prison. “Hoodie-wearing big-mouthed little shits,” one said, “you just want to smack them at some point, but you can't.” Ashraf looked at the clock in the hall. It was a quarter past four. His head was thumping and he was nauseated with lack of sleep. He tried to determine whether it was better to sleep a
little before going to work or to stay awake. The hand of the clock quivered each time it pushed forward one second.
Tick. Tick. Tick
. Ashraf stared at it in silence. The quivering of the hand somehow resembled how he felt, trying to resist the inevitable.
Tick. Tick
. He felt like he had to brace himself against everything.

“Go with the stream,” the lady at the counter said, smiling as she gave him his things back. “Don't be irreverent.”

If he could really go with the stream, he thought as he steered his van away from the police station's parking lot, he would be back at City Statistics next week and he would be married in a year.

He counted the money he had left on his dashboard. Fifty. Only half aware of where he was going, he drove the van onto Canal Street. He found himself looking up at the building where he'd dropped the office girl off.

He'd just decided to go to sleep for a bit when one window in the building lit up. A few moments later, he saw an old lady coming out of the sliding doors, leaning on a rolling walker. She was wearing sandals and what looked like a nightgown under her coat. She turned the corner at the end of the street.

Ashraf waited for a few seconds to process the image. Then he turned the ignition and drove slowly after her.

MRS. BLUE WALKING THROUGH THE NIGHT

It was early, night still, as Mrs. Blue walked down Low Street. Most houses were still dark, except for one where a yellow light was burning and a man was eating his breakfast standing up, flicking through a newspaper. Somewhere a baby cried. The wind blew straight through Mrs. Blue's nightgown. She felt small in the street, now that it was so empty.

“I'm coming, Gracie,” she murmured to herself. “Wait, wait.”

The wind blew the words away from her mouth. The bus stop timetable said the first bus in the direction of the airport would come at five thirty. Mrs. Blue looked at the clock above the bus stop. It was four o'clock.

At the end of the street she saw a woman turn the corner. Her hair was pinned up and she was tugging a suitcase behind her. It
was a flight attendant. A taxi pulled up to the curb.

“Hello,” Mrs. Blue said, “I need a taxi too.” She pushed the walker forward, trying to run, but her legs were going slower than she wanted. “Go on,” she said to her legs, “forward, forward,” but when she turned the corner, the taxi was gone.

Mrs. Blue stood still. She had to hold on to the rolling walker. It felt as if sharp pins were piercing her ankles. Without looking down she knew her ankles had swollen up.

Mrs. Blue sat down on the walker. The wind was cold and she was tired. She shivered and got up again. Two lampposts farther down the street she had to rest again, leaning forward on the walker. A van drove slowly past her. At the end of the street the van turned and came back toward her.

ASHRAF AND MRS. BLUE

The old lady in her nightgown was standing a little away from Ashraf. The sun was starting to come up. Ashraf had parked the van by an abandoned service station building near the airport, after they'd driven up and down the N5 endlessly, the old lady pressing her face against the glass. She was very old, the lady, and she made small wobbling movements with her head. She said she had to meet someone here, a girl she knew from a television show who was stranded along the road.

“And don't you dare take me to the hospital,” she said when he lifted her rolling walker into the back of the van. “I'll jump out.” Now she was standing at the far side of the parking lot, looking out over the highway and across the dark pastures.