Read Online Rus Like Everyone Else by Bette Adriaanse - Free Book Online

so low over the papers that if Ashraf didn’t know better, he would have thought the post boss was drunk. But Youssef had warned him: “He is burned up or something.”
    â€œAppie,” the post boss said, “do you mind if I call you Appie? You are young, ambitious. That is a good thing. You want two areas. That is fine. After that you want even more. You want to be like Gregor, I suppose.”
    Ashraf nodded.
    The post boss took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “You should know,” he said, “that it won’t be easy.” He shook his head. “You probably think it will be easy. But life isn’t always easy. And it isn’t always fair.”
    â€œI know,” Ashraf said. “I—”
    â€œFor me, for instance,” the post boss said, “it has not been fair at all. As we speak, doctors in the hospital are pumping liquid out of my son, liters and liters of liquid. He went into a coma when they had to operate on his liver. It stopped working because he got too fat. His fingers are like sausages. They always have been, but now he is just bursting out of his skin. It’s not a pretty sight.” He looked out the window. “I always told him he needed to go on a diet. After the operation I sat by his bed and I looked at the cracks in his skin, the way his face disappeared into his neck, and I just wanted to bring my mouth really, really close to his ear and yell, ‘Well? Was it worth it?’”
    For a second the post boss looked startled, as if it had been someone else who yelled “Was it worth it?” through his office. Then herecomposed himself. “Of course he can’t reply, he just lies there with this strange smile on his face. My wife said she saw him smile in his sleep like that once, and the next morning he told her he’d dreamed that he was weeding the Queen’s garden.”
    He gasped.
    â€œWeeding the Queen’s garden!”
    The post boss buried his head in his hands. Ashraf looked at the picture he kept in a frame on the desk. It was an old photo of the post boss, a small woman, and a boy smiling by a slide in the shape of an elephant’s trunk. The photo was in color, but somehow the post boss’s face seemed to consist of black and white only.
    â€œSo,” Ashraf couched, “do I have the areas? When shall I start?”
    â€œYes, yes,” the post boss said, gesturing to the door. “Just leave your license and registration papers so we can copy them. You start Monday at eight.”
    THE BOSS’S SON

    The boss’s son was weeding the Queen’s garden. He had a wheelbarrow and he pulled the weeds from under the geometric hedges. In the distance they were practicing the trumpets for the Memorial Service. The sun shone on his face.
    â€œGardener,” the Queen shouted from her tower, “gardener.”
    The boss’s son looked up. The Queen was leaning out of her window, pointing at the field behind him. “You forgot something over there!”
    The boss’s son turned around and bent over. He picked up the leaf and put it in the wheelbarrow.
    â€œYes,” the Queen said, “very good.” She retreated to her tower.
    The boss’s son smiled and pushed his wheelbarrow farther on down the gravel path.
    RUS AT THE CITY REGISTRATION

    â€œName?” the lady at the City Tax Department asked.
    â€œRus,” Rus said. “Pleased to meet you.” He smiled at the lady, ather shiny red cheeks and at her glasses. His suit was still wet and he was shaking unstoppably. He had waited six hours outside the tax office, but he wasn’t cold anymore, he was hot and his mood was good. Very good. He placed the wet letter carefully on the tray in front of him.
    â€œWanda,” he said, reading her name tag, “you’ve sent me this letter and I am here to say I would give you everything if I had anything, but I don’t have anything. Francisco