Rus Like Everyone Else (36 page)

Authors: Bette Adriaanse

A tiny panic started growing in Rus's mind, a tiny panic that he might not be at home here after all. He tried not to think of this
and started walking down the street, past the thick voices speaking strange words and past signs announcing things he did not know.

A TRUE HOME

Finally, Rus stood in front of a familiar face. It was a green face, and it was painted on a shop window. For hours he had walked in the drizzling rain, waiting for something or someone to fold their arms around him and say: “Rus, you are home.” The shop-lined street was long and he had walked up and down it, past the people selling fur hats and paintings, and drinking beer on the corners. Rus's head had started to hang lower and lower, and after a while he started to be afraid of looking at people. He had tried to calm himself down, but the only thing that calmed him down was the sound of his own feet tapping, sounding like
ta-dam, ta-dam, ta-dam
, just as they had sounded at home, so he walked up and down the street, up and down. Rus felt alone, abandoned by everyone, until the wind blew him into a side street toward the Starbucks window he was now standing in front of.

Starbucks. Even the name was poetry to him suddenly, and he remembered Modu saying it was named after a famous sailor out of some story. Humble and quiet, Rus walked into the store. The brown leather chairs, the magazines on the tableâit was all the same; it was like laying his head on a mother's bosom, Rus thought. He had gone to Russia with no other plan than to lower himself into the strong arms of his fatherland, but now that he was here he wanted nothing more than to lower his face to the bosom of his true mother, the green Starbucks woman. But, as a sign reminded him, consumptions were compulsory in his true home.

Rus took the notes the taxi driver had returned to him and placed them on the counter. “Coffee, please,” he said, not looking up to the woman, “latte, large, with hazelnut syrup.”

The woman took his notes and counted them. She shook her head. “No.”

“It's thirty rubles,” Rus said, “that is surely enough?”

The woman behind the counter laughed and pointed at the price list: 110 rubles for a tall coffee, 100 rubles extra for a grande.

THE RIVER

Rus sat quietly by the window in the Russian Starbucks, his shoulders up against his ears, taking slow sips of his tea. The interior with its leather seats and round tables had taken the panic out of his eyes and replaced it with a fear of ever going out again. Each Russian word he heard around him made him sink deeper into his chair. People outside were smiling and talking to each other while they walked past. He saw women in high heels and men in thick winter coats. Rus did not feel at home at all, he felt like a stranger, and each joke people made seemed like a joke about him. The lady at the counter asked him something but he did not understand it, and he pulled his face into a helpless grimace. She walked away.

Somehow he hoped that the Starbucks lady would understand that he needed to sit here; that she would let him stay over; that she would understand he would not touch anything in the night, because he would stay, frozen with fear, in his chair; that he felt like he could not move anymore until there was a change in the world around him.

Outside the window the streets got darker, and the streetlights went on. One by one the customers were leaving the Starbucks. Rus took tiny sips from the few drops of cold tea that were still left in his cup, and he was afraid to look up when the lady came up to his table. I cannot move! Rus exclaimed in his mind. I am frozen! But when the lady started shouting at him it turned out he was still capable of moving, and he was surprised at how fast he went out into the street.

Outside it was dark now, and Rus felt tired and cold. There were no strong arms waiting for him here, he had realized, and his own arms were too weak to pull himself up. Above Rus a bird cawed, and when he looked up he saw a group of white gulls circling above him. He had almost reached the city harbor without noticing it. There was a big bridge over the river that divided the city and Rus watched his feet walk onto it. The seagulls were fighting over a piece of fish at the bank of the river.

Rus leaned his upper body against the rail and peered over the edge. He searched for his reflection in the water, but it was moving so fast and dark below him, he could not see it. It had gotten very
cold, but Rus had stopped shivering a while ago. He looked at the other bridges in the distance, the cars racing past, the lights of the city. Rus thought about how he had always found everything beautiful from afar and from very up close, but not in between. He was aware that the heavy point of his body started to shift to his upper half as he leaned forward, and he thought of Modu and the water slide, about the fish in the water below him, and he tumbled over the rail of the bridge with his body, headfirst. Rus fell through the air for a few seconds and then into the water, which closed above him and then pushed him up.

WHITE LIGHT

There he was, our Rus, floating in the water, looking at the lights of the city he thought he'd feel at home in. From the water the city looked much friendlier. Lights make places seem a lot warmer, he thought, and then he thought it was a strange thing to think about from the position he was in. The water was not cold; it folded like a blanket around him and there was a current that pulled his feet, carrying him along.

Rus thought of Wanda in the light of the bedroom, he thought about the headlights of the manager's car in the car park, and the sounds Wanda made in her sleep. The water went into his nose and his ears. His clothes made him heavy. He'd floated almost out of the city now, floating faster and faster it seemed. The seagulls flew and cawed above him, and Rus remembered his mother saying that seeing seagulls meant you were close to the sea. The water in his mouth tasted salty and sweet. His mother's stories about angels came to mind now, and how she held his hand when she read. He thought of Francisco, his only friend, who had promised to save him. But it was all lies. He was all alone. He was not fit for this world, Rus knew now, he was not smart enough, he was not strong.

The current pulled him faster and faster toward the sea.

“They say that when you're on the right track, everything suddenly goes very easily,” the man at the airport had said. “They say that it feels like sliding down a waterslide.”

Yes, Rus thought in the water. It was true after all.

At the end of the river the water opened into the ocean. Rus saw the wide blue view just before he went down. The current pulled him under, he couldn't breathe anymore, and he swallowed the water that now tasted only of salt. Like a baby he sank in the water, his arms spread out wide, his legs too. Just as a bright white light entered his retinas and Rus thought, This is it, a low, steady sound came from the distance, words traveling over the water toward him. Was it the voice of God? It wasn't. These voices sang.

“
Da, da, da, kak dilah am pektopah
,” rough male voices sang. Rus kicked in the water. Francisco's song! He looked out over the waves and saw the black heads of the submarines sticking out above the water in the harbor, not too far in the distance. A light shone behind one of the windows and the voices sang “
Tri Werst Dobri Katja
” toward him. Rus gasped in the water. It was true after all! A wave washed over Rus and it was black around him.

“
Waizchchc
,” he said underwater, “
stoffh!
” and he kicked and kicked until he reached the surface again, the waves crashing into his mouth.

“Francisco,” he shouted. “I am here.”

He started kicking and took off his coat in the water, letting it sink away in the sea, and kicked and kicked until he got above water, and began swimming toward the submarine. The waves crashed over him as he tried to keep swimming and shouting, and when he came up for the last time, very close to the boats, he saw a flashlight shine in his eyes.

He heard a familiar voice say, “Well, well, Rus. Finally.”

In this moment we will leave them: Rus in the arms of his angel, who is wearing a fluffy coat with feathers poking out of tiny holes in the fabric; Mrs. Blue in the soil; and the others in their pajamas in bed.

You have taken your coat from the chair and you're walking back to the elevator.

I wait here by the window until you appear down below in the street, waiting for night bus number thirty-seven on the corner. I wave to you from my window when the bus pulls up, and you look up once more before you get in. When the bus turns the corner at Low Street, I get up.

Soon the sun will come up again from behind the big Halfords, and people will wake up. They'll get out of bed, stretch, and walk sleepily to their bathrooms. And I'll be there, watching over them, as I put on my Royal Mail trousers, my Royal Mail coat.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bette Adriaanse
is a writer and a visual artist. She was born in Amsterdam in 1984. Bette graduated from the Image and Language Department at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam in 2008 and received her M.A. in Creative Writing from Oxford University in 2010. She has published fiction in magazines for literature and philosophy, and she exhibits her visual work internationally.
Rus Like Everyone Else
is her first novel. She lives in Amsterdam and London.