Rus Like Everyone Else. Bette Adriaanse

bar. “She taught me everything I needed to know. All the wind directions, all the geography, the stars. We thought I was going to be a sailor, like my dad. He was helmsman on a cargo ship. But I never met him.” Rus took off his coat and stroked the fur. “All I have of him is this coat, he left it to my mother when he was shipped out, for when I was born, he said, for when I would grow up to be a sailor and it was cold at sea.”

      Rus felt tears come up, and he pressed his hands against his eyes. He had never felt his sorrow in this way before: it felt pure and clear, like the vodka.

      Francisco took the coat from Rus and stroked the fabric. “Why aren’t you a sailor then?”

      “I practiced every day when I was little,” Rus said, “helm, ropes, right-of-way regulations, lighthouse signs.”

      He looked away from Francisco and the man who poured the vodkas. “I was supposed to start at shipping school when I was sixteen. But I did not pass the exam.” He closed his eyes. “I had seasickness.”

      Rus was scared to look up at his new friend after he told him this, afraid that there would be a silence like the one between him and his mother when she drove him home from shipping school in the van, back to the apartment on Low Street, where he lived with her and Modu, where they had planned to live just the two of them when Rus was off to shipping school.

      Francisco stood up from his chair and took Rus’s face in his hands. “But that is beautiful, Rus,” he said, “beautiful! There is beauty in that story.”

      The man behind the bar nodded.

      “You try really hard to get something,” Francisco said to the bartender, “you spend your whole life working toward it, and then you fail. That is what life is about. There are no good things without the bad things, I always say. That is why people like me exist.”

      “Like you?” Rus started, but Francisco pulled Rus from his stool and pressed him close against his chest, bringing his mouth to his ear.

      “Submarines, Rus,” he whispered. “I have an uncle in Russia who works in the navy, selling discarded submarines. They’re always looking for people to drive the submarines to the buyers. It is a job just for people like us. We will never be like everybody, Rus, no matter how hard we try, we will never fit in. We will go to Russia together. You don’t get seasick underwater, because the waves are all on the top.”

      THE SECRETARY ON THE LAWYER

      The secretary went home with the lawyer, who lived in West, in an apartment building with a pool. Now she was naked on top of him and held on to the edge of the headboard.

      “I like to lie on my back and watch you,” he told her, “so I can see all of your bouncing beauty.” He also liked his tongue in her mouth when kissing, but not her tongue in his.

      He called me a beauty, the secretary thought while sitting on top of him. She held on to her ankles and looked at her red-flushed reflection in the mirror above the bed. The lawyer had his eyes closed. With every piece of clothing he had taken off he’d looked more and more friendly to her. When finally he was sitting undressed at the foot end of the bed, his skinny body changing colors with the light of his atmosphere lamp, searching impatiently for condoms in his sock drawer, she had even found him touching.

      And that is the first step of falling in love, she decided.

      FRANCISCO TAKES IT ALL

      Rus and Francisco stepped out of the café together. They walked under the stars in the street and Rus felt so happy; he had never felt so happy before. Francisco had taught him an old Russian song about pain and when you have it, and they had sung it over and over again in the café, with the man behind the bar as the third voice. Everything was intense and beautiful, and unfortunately Francisco had left his money in his sports car, so he paid with Rus’s money, but it was all good because he would give it back to him.

      Now Rus and Francisco were on their way to Hadi’s Phone Centre to get Rus a phone, so they could call each other. The stars blinked and twinkled above them, and Rus took the letter from the tax office from his pocket and he wanted to tell Francisco how happy he was, but he did not have the words.

      Suddenly they were at Hadi’s, but the lights were all off.

      “Hadi,” Francisco shouted. “Hadi.”

      Hadi was not there, so they banged on the door until the cleaner appeared in the window.

      “I can’t sell the phones,” the cleaner said, “I’m the cleaner.” But he did let them in when Francisco explained he knew Hadi and his wife and his beautiful kids.

      “Not very well though,” he explained to Rus under his breath, “not like I know you.”

      Rus held on to Francisco’s shoulder as he tried to step over the threshold into the shop.

      The cleaner was wearing a brown suit and white running shoes, and he showed Francisco around the store.

      Rus leaned against the wall. He had never been in a mobile phone store before. It was very warm there, warm and comforting. He smiled as he watched Francisco walk around the shop, looking at the phones and trying to lift the lids off the glass boxes. His day had turned from a nightmare into a dream, and it was all because of Francisco. He raised his hand and called him, because he wanted to talk about tomorrow, about what they would do. “Francisco,” Rus said, trying to stand up from the wall, “when are we going tomorrow?” but Francisco didn’t answer, he was discussing something with the cleaner in a low voice. His voice was calming, and even though Rus couldn’t make out the words, he enjoyed listened to the cadence of it, the whispered words, and he smiled at the cleaner when he pointed at him.

      Time jolted forward again, and the next moment Rus was pulled up from the wall by Francisco, who said Rus had to take off his clothes, because he’d arranged something for him.

      “Why?” Rus almost fell over as he pulled the zipper of his tracksuit. “What?”

      “We’ve just bought his suit,” Francisco said, pointing at the cleaner, “because it will help your case at the tax office. They don’t like tracksuits at the City Department. Lean on me.”

      Leaning on Francisco with one arm, Rus stripped to his underwear in the brightly lit shop. For some reason it was hard to keep his head up, and he smiled as he looked down at Francisco helping him into the brown trousers and buttoning the brown jacket over his vest. The cleaner took Francisco’s clothes, because otherwise he’d be naked of course, Francisco explained, and Francisco took Rus’s velvet tracksuit, which was left to him by Modu when they disappeared.

      “Thank you”—Rus nodded at Francisco and the cleaner as they helped him out of the shop—“thank you for everything.”

      “We 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.