Rus Like Everyone Else Read Free

Busy, busy, you know how it is. Please write me back, Laura. Everyone sends you their best.’” She repeated the sentence “please write me back, Laura” a few times. Ithad been a long time since she heard someone say her name. The last one had been the manager, during her job interview.
    â€œLaura Zimmerman can come in,” he said in a bored voice, the same voice her doctor used when he called her from the waiting room. She’d written her name on a contract that day, a contract that said, “Laura Zimmerman, hereon referred to as the secretary.”
    She remembered the manager taking the contract, putting it in a drawer and locking it. Since then, he called her “secretary.” Or “my dearest secretary,” when he needed his dry cleaning picked up. The secretary thought about her name, lying locked away in that drawer. It was as though it had been taken out of the air that day.
    â€œWhich is a good thing,” she reassured herself, “a necessary thing. This will lead to things, soon things will start, like they start for everybody.” She paused for a little bit. Any moment now, she thought, any moment now.
    She wanted to continue thinking about those things that would start any moment now, but she wasn’t really sure anymore what she meant. There was a silence in her head and she sat quietly, looking at the unpacked boxes and the white walls. Then she took the sheet of paper from her diary and wrote “Dear Glenn. Thank you for your beautiful card. The birthday was wonderful. All is well—I have a job as a secretary and a spacious apartment. How are you?”
    THE TAX BILL

    Rus was pacing down the street from the post office to his house, his gaze fixed on the letter from the tax office, nervously repeating specific words or sentences that upset him.
    â€œDear Mr. Rus. Recently, the existence of your ‘accommodation’ at Low Street 1 came to our attention. The construction of this ‘apartment’ was never reported to the Department of Planning and Building, and it is not mentioned anywhere in the City Plans of ’85 or ’08 (see Book 2. Appendix 5. City Plans).”
    â€œAccommodation,” Rus repeated as he walked down the market square, past the passersby, who kept their distance. “City Plans!”
    â€œWe hereby inform you that your ‘apartment’ was illegally built. Itis the only fourth-floor apartment in the entire three-story housing block. It was presumably hand-built during the war from scrap materials (see Book 2, Section 3. Unauthorized Constructions and Illegal Habitats).”
    â€œScrap materials,” Rus said, shaking his head in disbelief.
    â€œUnfortunately, under the Housing Entitlement Law as installed in the ’70s—and you know what kind of hippie mentality they had back then—we cannot demolish a home where the occupant has lived for over seven years. Not even in your case: a construction that was never even intended for living, but most likely used only to shoot enemy carrier pigeons out of the air (see Book 2. Appendix 1. War Constructions: A City Catalog).”
    Rus snorted. The thing about the pigeons was obviously something they had made up to make him feel even more under attack. The wind was cutting through the thin fabric of his tracksuit, but he did not notice it. He clenched the paper in his hand.
    â€œHowever,” the letter read, “since we cannot demolish it, the apartment has now been registered retroactively, which means community taxes will have to be paid going back to your eighteenth birthday—to be paid today, before 5 o’clock (see Book 1. Taxes).”
    That sentence was followed by that horrible amount and all kinds of threats about what would happen if he didn’t pay, even talking of things like “eviction” and “auction.”
    â€œBut why should I pay this?” Rus shook his head anxiously as he zigzagged among the