Rus Like Everyone Else by Bette Adriaanse Read Free Book Online Page B

Francisco and the cleaner as they helped him out of the shop—“thank you for everything.”
    â€œWe have to hurry a bit, Rus,” Francisco said, pushing Rus around the corner and pulling him along as they ran down the alley away from the shop. Then Rus got dizzy again, and Francisco told him to sit down for a bit.
    Rus sat down and closed his eyes, and he had a very strange dream in which Francisco told him he had to leave for a bit because the plans had changed and that they would see each other in Russia by the submarines. He dreamed that Francisco folded the fur coat around him tightly, and he dreamed that he was then left alone.

Sometimes I go for a walk around the neighborhood at night. I walk along the canal, through Low Street, and back again. These streets are called area 1958 in official post terms. It is my area, where I deliver the mail every day, and I like to walk around here at night to check on everyone. Tonight you’ll walk with me, across the market square that is now empty aside from the trash on the corners, through Low Street, and down Canal Street, across from our home. If we stop here, on the corner of Canal and Low Streets, you can see our own window lit up on the seventh floor of our building, across the canal. Two floors below ours you see another light burning, over there, where the curtains are open. That is my post boss’s home.
    Around this hour the silhouette of my post boss often appears behind his bedroom window, his potbelly protruding as he paces up and down. There, do you see him? He has sleeping problems, my boss, because he worries about his son. Now and then he sits down by his sleeping wife and puts his hand on her throat. When he feels the air going in and out of her body he calms down for a moment. Then he gets up and starts walking again.
    Here, at Mrs. Blue’s house, right above us, the curtains are still open as well. You can see the flickering light of her television color her ceiling. Mrs. Blue’s daily rhythm is completely disturbed now that her show is gone; she went to bed very early today, but she got up again to see if her show had come back. She’s sleeping on the couch in her dressing gown now, her chin on her chest.
    The windows of the houses on Low Street, to the right of us, are all dark, but if you look closely at the edges of Mr. Lucas’s blinds, you can see that his light is still on. He’s been ecstatic all day, smiling until his jaws hurt. But as the sun went down his daydreams got darker too, taken over by worries about his day with the Queen going wrong. He is sitting in the bathroom now, looking at his face in the mirror. He hasn’t looked in the mirror for a while, Mr. Lucas, and he hasn’t been out for a while either, not since the supermarket started delivering at least, some months ago. “This time,” he promiseshis reflection in the mirror, “I am not going to ruin it, I am going to keep my mind under control.”
    Let us leave Mr. Lucas there, muttering to the mirror, running his hands over his cheeks, and walk on to the bridge. We have one last person to check on. He’s still awake, this person, and heading toward us. You see his dark shape over there, stumbling from left to right, tripping over the bench on the bridge? It is Rus, of course. He’s looking for Francisco and mumbles his name as he tries to get up from the street. He can’t get up, so he decides to stay down on the pavement, immediately sinking away again into a dreamless sleep.
    Poor Rus, he’s never had vodka before. He’s even lost one of his shoes; it is lying a little farther down the road, over there. We’ll give him his shoe back and return to the glass apartment building, to our apartment on the seventh floor. You’ll open the door that says LUCY and together we’ll wait for the sunrise by our window. You’ll fold your hands around my shoulders and I’ll glance up at you now and