Rus Like Everyone Else

by Bette Adriaanse

  “Are you out of your mind?” Mrs. Blue asked. “Do you suggest I trade in Grace for some person I have never met?”

  The lady made a noise as if she was blowing into the phone. “Look. The people who play the characters are real people who pretend to be different people than they are. And the scenery is not real either. The forest scenes, for instance, are filmed in Montana.”

  “Montana,” Mrs. Blue said.

  “In America,” the lady said.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Blue said, “I know where Montana is. What I want to know is when can I see Gracie again?”

  “Gracie does not exist,” the phone lady said. “The show has been canceled because the writer quit. Someone close to him is in a coma and now he can’t think of anything else apparently. The show is not coming back.”

  “Do you know,” Mrs. Blue said, “that this Rick is a convicted murderer? And that he pretends to be all nice, but you can see it in his eyes sometimes.”

  “He is not real,” the phone lady said.

  “It is a crime to leave her in that house with him,” Mrs. Blue said. “It is a crime!” Her voice broke. “Please,” she said.

  “Oh my God,” Mrs. Blue heard the woman on the other end of the line say. “Can someone take this line from me?”

  “Madame?” another voice said. “What seems to be the problem?”

  “Do you know what happens when you don’t end a story properly?” Mrs. Blue said in the phone. “They relive and relive the last page.”

  Mrs. Blue lowered the phone on her lap and sat quietly while on the television a chef was throwing tomatoes in the air and catching them behind his back.

  GRACE IN THE STORY

  “I do want to marry you, Rick,” Grace said.

  She was standing alone in the hallway of the Fata Morgana mansion, talking to the mirror. There were bruises on the side of her forehead, purple and red bruises, but somehow Grace didn’t notice this, like she didn’t notice that she kept losing her balance or that her wedding dress was torn.

  She took a step toward the dresser. “But I need to know what you’re keeping from me.”

  The chandelier above her head swung slowly from left to right, making her shadow dance on the beige carpet.

  Grace took a hairpin from her hair. Her face contorted with pain. A long, bloody strand of hair hung from the hairpin. For a brief moment Grace stopped. She stood frozen with her hands in midair as if some question had come up in her mind, some memory, but she could not reach it.

  Then a voice from downstairs thundered through the hallway.

  “Grace! Where are you?”

  Grace dropped the pin on the carpet. She heard footsteps coming up the stairs, loud, banging footsteps. A strong feeling of déjà vu came over her, the feeling that this had happened before. Then came the blow to the side of her head and everything went black.

  DR. KROON

  The secretary was in the doctor’s office. She had changed out of the sea-green dress and into her regular clothes. She’d made this appointment a week ago, after she had suddenly thrown a plate of snacks against the wall in her mother’s house. She could not remember why she did it. Her mother had been kind enough to act like it never happened, even though it had disturbed the whole choreography of the evening. They could not chitchat over snacks as they usually did between five and six o’clock, and there were more silences than usual. Her father even came out of his hobby room asking about the noise, and out of desperation her mother had served dinner at five thirty to make things seem slightly normal, to have something to talk over. By the time she left they were feeling so uneasy that their heads bumped when they kissed good night.

  “It was very strange,” the secretary said when the doctor looked into her eyes with some kind of scope. “It is like my body threw it, without my mind.”

  “Blackouts.” The doctor nodded. Her doctor’s name was Dr. Kroon. He knocked on her knees with a hammer and looked into her ears.

  “Any personal difficulties lately?” he asked while he made her follow his finger with her eyes.

  “No,” the secretary said. She paused for a second. “I grind my teeth when I sleep.” The lawyer had told her that. “And sometimes unexpectedly say ‘no, no, no’ when I am alone in the shower.”

  The doctor sat down behind his desk. He stroked his beard and then looked very annoyed at his hand.

  “How about your thoughts? How is your general opinion of the world?”

  The secretary searched in her mind for her opinion of the world. There were a lot of countries, of course, so it was hard to say anything general about it. She had seen only a few parts of the world. Also, it was not certain, if she had understood the latest news correctly, whether the experts agreed on how the world was doing and what was happening in it. Either way, she concluded, who was she to have an opinion about something so—

  “Leave it,” Dr. Kroon said. He gave her a pat on her forehead. “It is mental,” he said. “You have a mental problem. You see it more often with women.”

  He scribbled something down in his notebook. “Men go through similar phases, of course, but then it’s different. When it happens to men it always seems much more interesting for some reason.”

  He pensively looked out the window for a while.

  “Why are men so much more interesting than women?” he asked himself. He wrote the question down in his notebook. “It is an intriguing question.”

  “So what can I do?” the secretary asked.

  “Soul-searching,” Dr. Kroon said. “Very popular these days. Especially with women, it is often the case that they just have to find themselves, and when they do find themselves, everything is better. Unfortunately it usually starts all over again after a few years.”

  He paused.

  “Why does everything repeat itself?” he wondered. “Why?” Dr. Kroon frowned and stared intently at the rain drizzling down the window, as if that would provide him with an answer. Then he turned his attention back to the secretary. “In practice, it means you should ask yourself questions, make lists, shop, redecorate, talk to new people.”

  The secretary nodded.

  “Talk to new people,” she said.

  “Yes,” Dr. Kroon said. “You can start conversations with questions that everyone likes, like ‘Do you have any plans for vacation?’”

  Dr. Kroon wrote “Do you have any plans for vacation?” on a note and handed it to the secretary.

  “Be sure to make a follow-up appointment.”

  MR. LUCAS FINDS HIS SUIT

  Mr. Lucas was searching for his old suit in his apartment. The Memorial Service was in five days and he needed to be dressed appropriately. He looked through his closet first, certain he’d find it there, but it was not there. He took out all the sheets and towels from his linen closet to see if it was there, but it wasn’t, and now he pulled the suitcase of his mother’s old clothes from the top shelf.

  “There is definitely reason to be scared,” a politician on the radio said, “certainly. The people do not feel safe, and that is always for a reason.”

  “Stay calm,” Mr. Lucas said to himself as he opened the suitcase above the bed and let all the clothes fall out. “Stay calm and focused.” Calm and focused, he threw the nightgowns and blouses on the floor; calm and focused, he opened the drawers of his dresser and emptied them on the floor. All kinds of things came out of the dresser, things he had bought while tele-shopping: a special horn to breathe through when you felt dizzy, an alarm system with a phone, an infrared lamp for when his back hurt, a spy kit, an SOS flashlight, protection goggles, cans of astronaut food, and a motion detector. But not his suit.

  Calm and focused, Mr. Lucas pulled his encyclopedias out of the book chest, the atlas, the medical almanac, the guide to psychotherapy, the history books, and the Hebrew dictionary. He pushed the chest away from the wall, looked behind it, shoved it back, pulled two cardboard boxes from under his bed, flipped them over, and went rummaging through them with both his hands
as if he were swimming.

  Finally, he went into his yard, even though it was dark, and switched the light on in the shed. He came back in ten minutes later, dragging a wooden box into the house. The label on the box read in Mr. Lucas’s own precise handwriting: “Items used during the brief period I worked at the Weekly Paper before everything went awry. Don’t open.” Below the label was another label, on which was written in the same handwriting: “Don’t open it, Sam.”

  “Not to worry,” Mr. Lucas said reassuringly to his old self, as he took a screwdriver and placed it between the box and the cover. “I will only take out the suit and put the box away immediately. Calm and focused.” He pushed the screwdriver down with all his weight but the lid would not open. He had nailed the box shut back then, and there were at least fifty nails in the wood. Eventually Mr. Lucas resorted to calmly thrashing the wood with a hammer until the cover splintered and he had access to his treasure. In the box lay a neatly folded green suit.

  Mr. Lucas sighed. Carefully he took the suit out of the box. He caressed the soft fabric. “Exactly how I remember it.” He looked briefly at the other things in the box. There was his old press card with SAM LUCAS on it, the raincoat, and the hat with a dent. “This might be useful,” Mr. Lucas mumbled as he took the raincoat out of the box. He decided to take the press card out of the box, for old time’s sake, and he also took the hat out and put it on. At the bottom of the box only Mr. Lucas’s old tape recorder was left.

  Without really making a conscious decision to do it, Mr. Lucas lowered his hand into the box, lifted out the tape recorder, and pushed the play button. Immediately, the voice of a much younger Mr. Lucas filled the room.

  “The white van with blinded windows is still parked in front of my house. I know they have all seen it now. I know the police are in on it too. They were trying to frame me from the start. The original list I have obtained from the fire department did name fourteen, like I said in the article. They cannot accuse me—I have not been involved. It is the sixth day where I don’t go out, the people in the white van are—”

  Mr. Lucas hit the stop button with force. He covered his ears and closed his eyes and said, “Munumunumunumu.” The memories of the time he made that recording came straight back into his head: it was a few days after he’d stopped working at the newspaper; it had been a difficult time for him, a time of clouded judgment. It had all been done with the best of intentions, but yes, yes, he did go too far, he did.

  Mr. Lucas pressed his hands over his eyes and said, “Stop, stop,” to the memories that were falling over one another, to his breath that was quickening, and to the stings in his chest. He opened his eyes, took the cassette out of the tape recorder, and pulled the tape out, cut it into pieces, held it under the tap, and pressed it deep, deep into the garbage bag.

  Is there someone you know so well that you can tell almost for certain what that person is doing at this very moment? Is he alone now, or with someone? Is he talking, working, sleeping? Standing or sitting? Can you see him in your mind, how he’s holding his hands, his shoulders? Can you walk toward him and watch his face from up close?

  Come with me to see Mr. Lucas, step into his bedroom. We lean over his bed like a mother watching her child sleep. Do you see his eyes shooting back and forth behind his eyelids? A train of images from the past are shooting by behind his eyes. He remembers his first—and only—job as a reporter for the Sunday newspaper, how spit would clutter in his editor’s mustache while he was shouting at him. He remembers how good he felt after that first article, but then the inability to sleep started, the fear of being found out. He remembers the editor pressing him, asking questions, and then the people at his doorstep, peering in through the windows, and the white van that was parked in front of his house for days on end, keeping him from leaving his house.

  Now Mr. Lucas’s memories dissolve into a nightmare. He dreams he is lying in his bed, and that two dark silhouettes are moving through his house, coming into his bedroom, and looking at him.

  Poor Mr. Lucas, drops of sweat are forming streams down the sides of his face. Let’s go on, out the front door, to the next street, where the secretary is sitting at her desk. She is shopping on the Internet, like Dr. Kroon recommended to her. The Japanese girl from the Internet group watches her from a corner of the screen as she orders a book that teaches you to find the you inside of you, who is amazing. She’s also made a website for herself and answered questions about her favorite music, where she listed Astronaut Redemption and the Fire, like most people at her work did. In reality, she never listens to music because it unsettles her too much. There is just the sound of that clock. It ticks like a hammer. The secretary does not pay attention to it. “Any moment now,” she says under her breath. It is true; things are about to happen with her any moment now—we are aware of that—something is slowly building up under her skin.

  A little farther, at the far end of Low Street, where the market square starts, Ashraf is lying awake in his bed. He can’t sleep because he is nervous about tomorrow, so he listens to the steady breathing of his younger brother, whom he still shares a room with.

  In our own house it is quiet, and as always the bed is unslept in. From our window we see a helicopter fly over the city. It lands in the distance, on that illuminated roof over there. That’s where the hospital is and where we find our other friend, Rus. He is sleeping blissfully under white hospital sheets, unaware of the woman who sits beside him, watching him intently, studying him, while he sleeps. A few stories below Rus, in a more serious part of the hospital, lies the son of the post boss in an extra-large bed. Around him the bed monitors are drawing lines that resemble mountains and saying beep, beep, beep, beep.

  THE BOSS’S SON

  The boss’s son sat on his knees on the soil. He was planting hydrangeas near the royal pond.

  “Gardener, gardener,” the Queen said, hanging out her window. “I’m hungry. Go get some honey from the bees and bring it up to me.”

  The boss’s son went to the bees and got honey from the hive. His hands were twice as big from all the stings when he brought it up to the Queen. She was lying on her bed by the window, her eyes closed. He stopped in the doorway. There were sheets of crumpled paper around the bed, words written on them in large, curly fountain pen letters—“Dear Citizens” and “Hello everybody, this is your Majesty speaking”—all crossed out.

  Carefully, the boss’s son entered the room and brought a spoon of honey to her mouth, but she turned her face away from him.

  “No, I’m too depressed to eat,” the Queen said. “Go away!”

  VERTIGO

  Bright white light came in through Rus’s heavy eyelids. First he thought it was the sky he saw, with a bright white sun, but when he opened his eyes wider it turned out to be a white ceiling with a bright white lamp. There was a white door to the left of him, and there were curtains around the bed he was lying on, also in white. The mattress, white; the dresser, white. His hands, which he held up in the light now, were white too, but they had blue in them as well, from the veins visible under his skin.

  Bit by bit Rus started to remember things, how he had been lifted onto a bed by people who circled around him, how they lifted the bed up and twirled it and twirled it, smiling as they circled him around. They’d shoved the bed into a circling ambulance, which they rode in circles too. The last thing he remembered was blackness, until just now, when everything became white.

  Nothing was circling in this room. There was a steady white tray standing in front of him, holding a white saucer with a white pudding on top.

  “I must be in the hospital,” Rus said pensively. And then, more contently, slowly contemplating each word: “I must be in the hospital.”

  Immediately, Rus felt a calmness come over him. He laid his head down on the pillow and looked about him. The whiteness of the room reminded him of a story his mother once told him about heaven, “where everything’s whiter than white.”

  He sank a bit farther
under the sheets and called his mother’s voice to mind. Her sweet, pale face came close to his and she started telling him the story of heaven again and all the snow that fell there. His mother and Modu loved snow, which was why Modu’s nickname was Snow. He remembered Modu getting him out of bed one night when he came home from work because it had snowed, and they built snowmen in the street, so no cars could get in or out in the morning. They worked for hours in the bluish light, smiling soundlessly at each other. When they went in his mother made hot chocolate, and Rus remembered how she rubbed their hair dry with a towel while they sat by the window, and Rus smiled when he remembered how Mrs. Wong had shouted curse words in the empty morning air.

  But then an envelope landed in the middle of Rus’s memory and spoiled everything.

  “Bleh,” Rus moaned as everything that had happened came back to him: the letter, the post office, Francisco’s friendship and his disappearance, the money, the house keys—like dominoes the memories set one another in motion. Suddenly, Rus hoped he had some very serious disease. Not a painful one, just one that would keep him in this white room with its white puddings forever. He pulled the sheets over his eyes. If he could not go to his house, the hospital was his second choice.

  A knock on the door.

  “Are you awake?” a male voice said.

  Rus heard the door opening. He kept his head under the sheets and he made sure not to move. He tried hard to sink into a coma. If only he could dive inside his subconscious and stay there, comfortable on the bed while eating through tubes.

  “Mr. Ordelman? Can you hear me?” the voice said.

  Rus did not move. Was there someone else in the room whom he had not noticed? Some little man called Ordel Man, which he thought was a terrible name to give somebody.

  He heard the door opening again, another male voice: “Rus Ordelman? I have his belongings here: a brown suit, a fur coat, an envelope.”