If I were part of such a group, Rus thought, then I could tell them about the letter and they would help me and fix it for me. He imagined himself placing his letter on the dinner table, his head bent. When he looked up, he would see all the men placing money on the table, until, note by note, his burden was taken from him.
Rus looked down. In reality his burden was still there, in the shape of a white envelope, held by hands that were white from the cold. For the fifth time that day, Rus took the money out of his coat pocket and started counting again. Around him fewer and fewer cars drove down the street. The wind blew in his face, making his eyes water. Three hundred forty-one and forty-five cents, the outcome did not change.
“I don’t have anyone,” Rus said with his face buried in the fur of his coat. “I am all alone.”
At that moment, Rus felt a hand touch his shoulder. It was a strong hand, and when Rus looked up he saw a tall, dark-haired man in a fluffy coat with white feathers poking out of holes in the fabric, smiling at him.
ASHRAF AND THE STAR CEILING
Ashraf was walking home from the Eid dinner at the mosque. He was walking ahead of his family. When he was younger he had really liked the Eid celebrations, but walking home from the Eid dinner was the last thing he’d done with his father and he did not want anyone to talk to him about it. It was a very clear night and there was a star ceiling above his head. Ashraf looked up at the crescent moon and the stars. The sight reminded him of primary school, when a teacher had told them about the universe for the first time, how it had no end, how the stars they looked at were the stars from the past. It had given him a horrible bellyache, this news, and at the time he could not understand how all his classmates could be playing in the schoolyard now that they had just received this information.
Ashraf thought about how it worked the other way around too; if someone at just the right distance in the universe happened to look at this street along the canal with a gigantic telescope, they would see him and his dad walking there, as they did five years ago. He could recall the image without effort: his father walking next to him, holding his shoulder, talking slowly and pressingly.
“Don’t waste your opportunities, Ashraf. See what is out there, don’t just do anything. You have to make calculated choices.”
Ashraf searched his pocket for the key to the white van he’d bought that day. He hadn’t even told his family he’d quit his job at City Statistics yet. They’ll find out later, he thought as he looked up at the skyline of the city. The cranes that were placing the monument on Memorial Square were visible all the way from where he stood on the bridge, towering over the houses. Ashraf took a deep breath. If only tomorrow went well.
IN THE DEATH CAR
It was the lawyer who’d said “please don’t tell me you’re leaving” to the secretary. He had leaned over the cloakroom counter while he said that, smiling at her. “I wore a suit especially for you, when I much, much rather would have worn a dress, so it would be very impolite of you to go without even talking to me.”
They had been the last ones to leave the office party, after eleven. The lawyer had talked to many people and told her everybody’s name. Sometimes he’d stopped talking to wink at her. He had shown her his office, how he arranged his files, and he had grabbed her breasts from behind. He had stayed by her side all evening, not once leaving her to stand alone.
Now it was late and the secretary was sitting in the lawyer’s car. There were stars in the sky and the car was parked by a gas station that was lit up against the dark blue. There was a song on the radio that was called “In the Death Car.” The secretary watched the lawyer through the window of the gas station. He was very handsome, the lawyer; everybody in the office said so. He was ordering things and made a pistol with his fingers at the man behind the counter. The man behind the counter put his hands in the air. They both laughed.
Social skills, the secretary thought.
The lawyer got back in the car. He’d gotten her a Diet Coke. “I don’t like it when women drink regular Coke,” he said while he turned the ignition. “By the way, do you smoke?”
“I never really got around to it,” the secretary said. “But who knows.”
The lawyer laughed out loud. He brushed her cheek. “I can’t stand women who smoke, you see.”
AN ANGEL
The name of the man in the fluffy coat was Francisco. “I was just passing by the bridge in my car on my way to a meeting,” he told Rus, “and then I saw you sitting there, with your pile of money, looking so miserable, and I was overcome by a need to help.”
Francisco had immediately parked his expensive car around the corner and went over to him. He was a businessman and a humanitarian.
“I felt connected to you,” Francisco told Rus, “and it felt like a sting in my chest.” He pointed at his chest.
Rus looked up at his new friend. Francisco had the face of an angel. His eyes and eyebrows were like they were painted on with black charcoal. Yellow clouds were passing over above them, giving his hair a golden glow.
COMRADES
“Can you believe them?” Francisco called out, shaking his head. “Do you ever even use the roads?”
Francisco had taken Rus to Café Valentines on the corner of the canal so he could read Rus’s letter with the dedicated attention it deserved. He whistled between his teeth when he read the amount of taxes they were charging him.
Rus took a small sip of his drink. It was vodka. He’d never had that before, but it warmed his throat. He kept his eyes fixed on Francisco as he read the letter, his facial expression, his hands. He was also a kind of a tax expert, he’d told Rus: you have to be, when you are rich. There were many interesting similarities between Rus and Francisco: Francisco also despised debt collectors, and he also didn’t have any close friends in the city, until now. “We are comrades,” Francisco had said, and when Rus said his father was Russian Francisco had almost cried and kissed Rus on the forehead, because he too was Russian by origin.
“You don’t have to pay this.” Francisco folded the letter and put it back in the envelope. He downed his drink in one go.
“I don’t?”
“No,” Francisco said, slamming the glass on the table. “God, I needed that. And something to eat maybe.”
“I don’t have to pay it?” Rus stood up from the table. “Shouldn’t we call them? Or tell the collectors? What should we do?”
Francisco pulled Rus down to his chair.
“Easy,” he said. “It’s past ten. They’re closed now. Have a drink.”
He pressed the glass against Rus’s lips.
“We’ll go there tomorrow. Trust me.”
Rus swallowed a large gulp of the drink and looked at Francisco, his round face and sparkling eyes, the vodka still glistening on his lips, and he did trust him, completely. The warm feeling of trust spread through his chest. A feeling of dizziness also came over him in that moment; the paintings on the wall seemed to move away from him, falling to the right and back again to their old place.
Then Francisco was suddenly standing behind Rus, pulling him toward a stool at the bar. It seemed to Rus that time passed in