Rus Like Everyone Else (28 page)

The sound of the trumpets went from Mr. Lucas's ears straight to his heart. They sounded for the sadness and the war, but for Mr. Lucas they were trumpets for his triumph, celebrating his redemption. In this moment, he felt like his miserable life was being redeemed, that every second here erased one failure in his life. Then the bells started ringing and the Queen started to speak.

THE MEMORIAL SERVICE

Ashraf drove down to the city center. It was past eight and he was nowhere near being finished. He'd had a bad day. Richie
called in sick, so he had to go back to get his own van first. It was past ten when he started. Now he was trying to get to area 1980 to deliver the last packages, but they had closed off half the city for the Memorial Service.

Memorial Square was right between area 1979 and area 1980, and no matter which side he approached it from, he could not get past. Each turn he took he drove up to a police roadblock, so he ended up driving past the square five times but getting nowhere.

Ashraf drove into a street with a no-cars sign. It was empty because the shops were closed for the ceremony. He knew that at the end of the street there was an alley that led to the main road in the business district. Slowly, he drove over the pavement, past the closed shop windows. At the end of the street he tried to turn left into the alley, but he had to back up onto the square to make the turn. The people on the square were focused on the Queen, who was making her speech. Slowly, Ashraf reversed the van a few meters onto Memorial Square and turned into the alley, where two motorcycles were parked in his way. He drove the van carefully up to the motorcycles, but the gap between them was very narrow. The front wheel of the second one was turned toward the road and just in his path.

Ashraf inched up to the motorcycle, bumping slightly against the front wheel. If he gave it another small bump, he thought, and turned it two more inches the other way, he could fit right past it. He inched forward.

Wie-joe-wie-joe-wiejoewiejoe
. The motorcycle alarm sounded loud in the street.

“Dammit, dammit.” Ashraf looked over his shoulder and quickly started backing the van up, trying to turn back into the shop-lined street. The alarm was loud and the people at the Memorial Service were looking his way.

The Queen had just ended her speech, and the old people in uniforms were giving salutes to the flag.

“Dammit, dammit.” Ashraf backed the van out of the alley into the street, but he could not do the turn in one go, so he had to drive back into full sight again.

He backed out and drove as fast as he could in reverse down the street. He parked the van around the next corner and turned
the engine off. He pressed his hands to his forehead. In the distance the alarm silenced. He heard the trumpets of the Memorial Service again. That meant it was nine o'clock. All the offices were closed now. He banged his hands on the wheel and started the van again, driving away without knowing where to go.

THE MOMENT

“May this war never happen again,” the Queen spoke. She was standing on the stage between the pillars of the monument. Mr. Lucas had a perfect view.

“Although it is not very likely that it will happen again,” she continued her speech, “it is much more likely that some other horrible thing will happen. In that case may we quickly determine what exactly is going on and who is to blame. Unfortunately, it is always very hard to determine what exactly is going on and, if we do, to figure out what we must do about it. Especially if it happens far away.”

Mr. Lucas had to keep himself from nodding at the Queen's words, which he thought were very significant and true. It is always a relief to hear people say the things you feel, Mr. Lucas thought. It makes one feel less alone.

Suddenly the stone on the monument seemed to him a symbol made specifically for how he felt at that moment, a symbol of his own sufferings, not only his suffering in the war, of which he did not remember much, but of all his sufferings. It was like his worries were lifted from his shoulders and walking away from him on a hundred skinny pins. Mr. Lucas smiled. The sky above him was dark blue. The streets around the square were deserted. It's beautiful, Mr. Lucas thought, the most beautiful moment.

But then the sea of calm around him suddenly parted. In the street a little to the left of the Queen a white van appeared.

Mr. Lucas shook his head. “The white van,” he said. With one wave his hypnosis streamed away from him, leaving him unprotected in the middle of the square.

Mr. Lucas brought his hands to his neck. “The white van,” he said. He stepped back and forth. “My hypnosis.”

The white van disappeared into a side street.

“My hypnosis is gone.”

“We try, we try,” the Queen concluded her speech, “but it is just too difficult.”

Mr. Lucas turned on his heel and started pointing and talking. “This is not right,” he said, “there is something wrong. I saw the white van. This is not right, this is not right.”

He suddenly saw the mass of people surrounding him; he did not like masses of people, and he suddenly saw how unprotected he was. He felt like he could hear everyone breathing, everyone surrounding him with their thoughts and their personalities, entering his personal space.

Then he saw the van again, reversing and trying to get onto the square, trying to get to him. Mr. Lucas blurted out, “Excuse me,” and started walking straight ahead, through the red rope fence that was set up around the Queen.

“Excuse me,” he said, his heart racing, “the white van, my hypnosis, I have to get out.” He did not know if there was sound coming from his mouth or if his lips were moving breathlessly. He saw two guards coming toward him, their black boots stamping on the ground.

“Don't arrest me,” Mr. Lucas said. His voice was suddenly the voice of a young Mr. Lucas, a child Mr. Lucas, who hid behind his mother when the soldiers came in. The guards, the black boots, the panic; memories started flooding Mr. Lucas's brain, memories of fear that grabbed his throat, choking him. He started running straight ahead, pushing people away. He screamed.

The Queen stopped speaking. Then the first people in the crowd started moving, looking over their shoulders to see what Mr. Lucas was running from. Someone else screamed too and then the crowd started running. Like a flock of birds they spread out in all directions and then came back and formed a group again, all following Mr. Lucas to the exit of the fenced-in area. This exit was very small and next to the monument. People started pushing one another to the sides, pushing one another against the skinny legs of the monument. While Mr. Lucas was running into the shopping district, behind him the
legs started bending—one pin after another they bent—and the stone tilted sideways.

THE FIRE

The secretary opened the door of the copy room and stepped into the hallway of the office. Everyone would have left the building by now; it had closed at eight because of the Memorial Service. The secretary walked through the empty dark hallway to her boss's office and opened the door with the company's master keys. She took his cigarettes and his lighter out of his drawer and walked toward the lawyer's office. There she pulled all his furniture toward the middle of the room: the couch, the desk, the leather chair, the posters, the pencils, the law books, the photos, the curtains, the carpet, the cushions. She opened the file boxes and took out his files—the A files, the B files, the C files, the D files . . .—she took them out and piled them on top of the desk and made small piles around the heap in the middle of the room. After that, she sat down on top of the pile and lit a cigarette.

She kept the smoke in her mouth, slowly blowing it out toward the ceiling. The clock said four minutes to nine. When the cigarette was almost done, she dropped it in the heap of files. A small white flame rose up out of the paper like a tiny flower, and it spread around the grayness, taking bites off the paper and turning it into flames. Soon the flames were joined by other flames; they spread out over the paper and the furniture. Smoke filled the room. The secretary turned around and closed the door of the lawyer's office behind her. In the hallway she set off the fire alarm and the sprinkler system, took the elevator down, and left the building.

At home the secretary took the gray blanket from her bed and wrapped it around herself. The felt of the blanket and the smell of fire in her hair reminded her of a story she once read, about a man who had fought on the wrong side of the war and crashed his plane. He was found by a strange people who rolled him in felt. When he came out, he had become a new person who had nothing to do with the person who fought in the war.
He still had his memories, but aside from that he was a new person, a blank slate.

THE QUEEN'S ENDING

The Queen stood on the stage in Memorial Square. She watched the pillars of the monument bend.

Below her the people were running toward the exit, her guards shouting to calm them down, holding them back to keep them from pushing one another. The Queen did not move. She kept her eyes fixed on the giant stone that was slowly starting to slide off the pillars.

The Queen took a deep breath. The people around her were running and screaming. They had never seemed more unreal to her than in that moment.

Finally, the rock slid off the pillars and came down with a thundering noise. The Queen crossed her fingers behind her back and dove forward.

Twenty minutes later, in the hospital room, the heart rate monitor made a flat line. To the astonishment of the doctors, she sat up right at that moment and opened her eyes, smiled, said, “Well, hello there,” and fell back on the bed.

MR. WHEELBARROW