The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

  Elk, the blue-eyed catcher of little souls, went out to the porch and looked at the sky. The scorching flame was being extinguished on the horizon, but the coming evening did not promise any respite from the heat.

  The boy sitting on the porch had a black eye and was also looking at the sky.

  “What happened?” Elk asked.

  The boy grimaced.

  “He said I was supposed to learn how to fight. What for? He is always silent, like he’s deaf or something. So why doesn’t he just stay silent, because when he speaks it’s even worse. I used to think how it was so sad that he never said anything. Now I think it was better that way. I don’t need his fighting lessons. He punched me in the eye for some reason. I guess he’s jealous that I can see and he can’t.”

  Elk thrust his hands in his pockets and swayed back and forth on his heels.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “No.”

  The boy stood up and leaned over the railing, hanging down halfway into the yard.

  “I’m sick of him. Sometimes it’s like he’s not right in the head. He’s weird.”

  “That’s exactly what he says about you,” Elk said, holding back a smile, intently watching the dejected figure on the railing. “Do you still remember the deal we had?”

  The boy pushed his feet off the floorboards and started swinging.

  “I remember. No complaining, no sulking, and no grumbling. But I am not complaining and I am not sulking. I just went out for a bit of fresh air.” He stopped swinging and looked up. “Elk, look! It’s beautiful. The red sky. And the trees are black, like the sky burned them.”

  “Let’s go in,” Elk said. “It’s even more beautiful from the balcony. Here you’re a mosquito buffet.”

  The boy reluctantly peeled himself off the railing and followed Elk.

  “And poor little Blind can’t see any of it,” he said with barely disguised glee. “I guess that could make him a bit edgy.”

  “So describe it to him,” Elk said and opened the door. “He would very much like to hear about what he can’t see.”

  “Yeah.” The boy nodded. “Sure. And then he can punch me in the other eye, so that we both can’t see, equally. He would very much like that too.”

  Two boys on the balcony were lying head to head on an air mattress amid a sea of stale popcorn and cookie crumbs. The boy in a straw hat, with the empty sleeves of the shirt tucked under his stomach, was droning in a monotone, not taking his eyes from the vivid colors of the mattress cover.

  “So they are white and they move, and the edges are like somebody was tearing them or chewing them a bit. Pinkish on the bottom. Pink is kind of like red, only lighter. And they move very, very slowly, and you have to look at them for a long time to notice. There aren’t that many of them now. And when there’s more of them then it’s not sunny anymore, and then when they turn dark they make everything dark too, and it might even rain.”

  The long-haired boy lifted his head and frowned.

  “Don’t talk about things that aren’t. Describe what is now.”

  “All right,” the boy in the hat agreed and turned over on his back. “So they’re white, and pink on the bottom, and they float slowly, and it’s all blue around them.”

  He squinted through his sun-bleached eyelashes at the smooth blue expanse of the sky, untouched by even a single cloud, and continued with a smile.

  “It’s so blue under them, and above them too. They are like fluffy white sheep. It’s too bad you can’t see how beautiful they are.”

  The House was empty. Or it seemed empty. Cleaners crossed its hallways every morning, leaving behind glossy trails of floor polish. Fat flies threw themselves against windowpanes in the empty dorms. Three boys, tanned almost to the point of blackness, lived in the cardboard hut in the yard. Cats went out for night hunts; they slept all through the day, curled in fuzzy balls. The House was empty, but still someone cleaned it, someone prepared the food and put it on the trays. Unseen hands swept away the dirt and aired out the stuffy rooms. The inhabitants of the cardboard hut came running into the House for water and sandwiches, leaving behind candy wrappers, blobs of gum, and dirty footprints. They were trying their best but there were too few of them, and the House was too big. The sound of their feet faded away, their cries were lost in the emptiness within the walls, and they ran back to their little encampment as soon as they could, away from the dead faceless rooms, all identical and smelling of polish. The invisible hands quickly erased the signs of their visit. There was only one room that remained alive. Those living in it were not afraid of the uninhabited House.

  The boy didn’t quite know what scared him on the first day when they returned. What woke him up was the din of their presence. He opened his eyes and realized that the House was full of people, that the silence—the sultry summer silence, so familiar to him now after this past month—was gone. The House creaked, slammed its doors, and rattled its windows, it was tossing musical snippets to itself through the walls, it was bubbling with life.

  He pushed away the blanket and ran out on the balcony.

  The yard was brimming with people. They milled around the two red-and-blue buses, they laughed, smoked, and lugged their bulging backpacks and bags from place to place. They were colorful, tanned, rowdy, and they smelled of the sea. The yard sizzled under the burning sky. He crouched down, pressed his forehead against the railing, and simply looked at them. He wanted to join them, become a part of their charmed grown-up life. He was aching to rush down—and still he didn’t move. Besides, someone would have to dress him first. Finally he tore his eyes off them and went back to the room.

  “Can you hear that?” Blind, sitting on the floor by the door, asked him. “Hear how much noise they’re making?”

  Blind held the boy’s shorts for him. The boy quickly thrust his legs through the openings, one, then the other. Blind did the zipper.

  “You don’t like them?” the boy asked, watching his sneakers being laced.

  “Why should I?” Blind pushed the boy’s foot off his knee and put the other one in its place. “Why should I like them?”

  The boy was barely able to wait for his blazer and refused the comb. His fair hair, grown out during the summer, remained disheveled.

  “Come on, I’m going!” he blurted out. Then he ran, his feet unsteady from anticipation. The corridor, then the stairs, then the first floor. The door was being kept ajar by a striped bag. He ran out into the yard and froze.

  He was surrounded by faces. The faces were unfamiliar, alien, they cut like knives. The voices—shrill, frightening. He was scared. These were not the people he’d rushed to meet. They too were browned by the sun, they laughed, they were dappled with patches of color, but they were all wrong.

  He lowered himself onto the step, keeping his catlike gaze on them. A shiver ran down his spine. So that’s how they are, he thought bitterly. They are all assembled from little pieces. And I am one of them. I am just like them. Or will be soon. We are in a zoo. And the fence is for keeping us all in.

  There was one in a wheelchair, white like a marble statue, with snowy hair and a haggard look, and another one, nearly purple, bloated as a week-old corpse and almost as scary. This one also could not walk, and he was surrounded by girls pushing his wheelchair. The girls laughed and joked, and each had a flaw; they too were glued together from pieces. He looked at them and wanted to cry.

  A tall girl with black hair, dressed in a pink shirt, came near him and stopped.

  “A newbie,” she said. The irises of her eyes were so dark they became indistinguishable from the blackness of the pupils.

  “Yeah,” he agreed sadly.

  “Do you have a nick?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then you shall be Grasshopper.” She touched his shoulder. “Your legs have little springs inside.”

  She saw me racing down the stairs, he thought, blushing.

  “There’s the one you are looking for,” she added and pointed tow
ard one of the buses.

  The boy looked and saw Elk standing there with a man in black trousers and a black turtleneck. Relieved, he smiled at the girl.

  “Thank you,” he said. “You are right, I was looking for him.”

  She shrugged.

  “It was an easy guess. All squirts always do. And you are a very green squirt. Remember your nick and your godmother. I am Witch.”

  She went up the steps and into the House. Grasshopper observed her very thoroughly but could not distinguish the little pieces.

  I have a nick now, he thought and ran to meet Elk.

  The soft hand descended on his shoulder; he pressed against Elk and purred contentedly. The man in black was looking sarcastically from under the bushy eyebrows.

  “What’s this, Elk? Another trusting soul? When did that happen?”

  Elk frowned but did not answer.

  “Joking,” the man in black said. “I’m sorry, old man. It was just a joke.”

  He strolled off.

  “Who was that?” Grasshopper asked quietly.

  “One of the counselors. He went to the resort with the guys,” Elk said distractedly. “Black Ralph. Also R One.”

  “Are there others like him? Two, Three, and Four?”

  “No. There aren’t any. It’s just that he’s called that for some reason.”

  “He’s got a silly face,” Grasshopper said. “If I were him I’d grow a beard to hide behind.”

  Elk laughed.

  “You know what?” the boy said, brushing his cheek against Elk’s hand. “I too have a nick now. Wanna guess? I bet you’d never guess.”

  “Wouldn’t even try. Something to do with flying?”

  “Almost. Grasshopper.” He jerked his head up, searching Elk’s face. “Is it a good one?”

  “Yes,” Elk said, mussing his hair. “You can count yourself lucky.”

  Grasshopper scrunched his nose, all peeling from the sun.

  “That’s what I thought too.”

  He looked at the glued-together people around them. There were fewer now, most had gone inside the House.

  “Aren’t you glad they’re back? You won’t be so lonely now.”

  There was uncertainty in Elk’s voice.

  “I don’t like them,” Grasshopper said honestly. “They’re old and ugly and broken. It all looked different from above, and from down here it’s all messed up.”

  “None of them is even eighteen yet,” Elk countered, visibly offended. “And why do you say they’re ugly? That’s not fair.”

  “They’re freaks. Especially that one.” He nodded at the purple one. “It’s like he drowned long ago. You know?”

  “That’s Moor. Remember that nick.”

  Elk took a suitcase out of the pile and turned toward the House. Grasshopper kept close to him, silent as a shadow and just as unavoidable. They passed the purple one. His malicious little eyes were lost in the flowing, melting face. Grasshopper felt their gaze on his back and picked up the pace, as if spooked by it.

  Did he hear what I said about him? Stupid! He’s going to remember me now, me and my words.

  Three of the able-bodied were smoking by the entrance. One of them, closely cropped and tall, with a fierce expression on his face, gave Elk a nod. Elk stopped. So did Grasshopper.

  Around the neck of the fierce-faced, on a twisted chain, hung a monkey skull. Delicate, yellowed, with pointy teeth. The boy was mesmerized by the grown-up toy. There was some kind of mystery attached to it. Something was built into it that made the empty eye sockets glow mysteriously, even wetly. The skull seemed alive. Touching it was the only way to learn its secret, examining it closer, putting one’s finger into the holes. But to look at it without understanding was just as fascinating. He did not catch what Elk and the owner of the trinket said to each other, but as he was entering the door he heard Elk say, “That was Skull. Remember him too.”

  Moor, Skull, and Witch the godmother, Grasshopper repeated to himself, flying up the stairs. I must remember these three, and that unpleasant counselor in need of a beard, and the white man in the wheelchair, even though no one told me anything about him, and the day when I got a nick.

  The rooms were changing before his eyes. The taupe walls plastered with posters, the striped mattresses piled with clothes. Every bed was claimed by someone and immediately turned into a dump. Rough-sided pinecones, multicolored swimming trunks, shells and shards of coral, cups, socks, amulets, apples and apple cores. Each room acquired individuality, became different from the others.

  He wandered around, awash in smells, tripped over the gutted bags and backpacks, slunk around the corners absorbing the changes. No one paid him any attention. They all had their own concerns.

  There was something like a hut being built from thin planks in one of the dorms. He sat there for a while, waiting to see the result, then got bored and moved to another room. They were constructing something there too. To avoid being trampled, Grasshopper sat on a low stool by the door. The seniors were laughing, needling each other, tossing around bags and sacks, drinking something out of paper cups, then just crumpling and dropping them. The floor was strewn with the cardboard concertinas. They flattened easily and smelled of lemons. Grasshopper furtively guided them under the stool with his feet. Then a scrawny counselor with unkempt hair, resembling Lennon in his rimless glasses, came into the dorm and dragged Grasshopper out of his lair.

  “You’re new,” he mumbled indistinctly, chewing on a toothpick. “Why aren’t you in your dorm?”

  The myopic eyes behind the glasses scurried like black mites.

  “I don’t have a dorm yet,” said Grasshopper, trying to wrench his shoulder from the bony fingers gripping it.

  The grip tightened.

  “In which case you should find out where you are supposed to be at the moment. For a start,” said the bespectacled counselor, spitting out the toothpick. “I think you will be in the Sixth. They have a spare bed. Let’s go.”

  The counselor marched him out into the corridor. Grasshopper almost had to run to keep up with his strides. The counselor kept tugging him impatiently by the collar.

  Dorm number six was located at the very end of the hallway. It was smaller than the seniors’ rooms and looked gloomier because of the canvas shades over the windows. The unpacking was in full swing here as well, but the boys were his own age. Maybe a little younger or older, but only by a little. They mostly sat on the beds busily rummaging through their bags. As soon as the counselor entered, they put the bags aside and stood up.

  “New one for you,” he said. “You are to show and explain everything to him.”

  He produced a fresh toothpick and shoved it into his mouth.

  “Understood?”

  The boys all nodded.

  The counselor nodded as well and left without looking back.

  Without saying a word they surrounded him and stared at the flopping sleeves of his blazer. Grasshopper realized that they already knew everything. They had odd looks on their faces. Indifferent and mocking at the same time, as if his deformity amused them.

  “You’re a newbie,” one of them, skinny and bug eyed, informed him. “We’re going to beat you up now. And you’re going to snivel and cry for your mommy. That’s what always happens.”

  He took a step back.

  They laughed. His back was pressed against the door. They approached, smiling and winking at each other.

  They too were glued together.

  THE HOUSE

  Lary the Bandar-Log was mounting the stairway to the second floor, stomping his steel-shod boots. Horse was following him, keeping two steps back. The clatter of Horse’s shoes mingled with that of Lary’s, but the familiar sound—Lary so liked it in the “thundering assault” mode: ten pairs of hooves, the squeaking of leather, the jangle of buckles—was grating on him today to the point of headache. Because it wasn’t real. All the clatter and sound and fury, signifying nothing that could protect them from any actual trouble. That
’s the Log reality. Cardboard Hells Angels. No bikes, no muscle, no true scent of the male animal. Not scaring anyone, save the pathetic Pheasants. Safety in numbers and noise. Unwrap the black leather of a wide-shouldered coat and you’ll discover a skinny, pimply figure inside. Wrap it back up, hide the protruding ribs and the scrawny neck, hang some hair in front of the panicky eyes—and there’s your Bandar-Log. Put ten of these together, and there’s your formidable pack. The avalanche of stomping feet and wafting skin lotion. Enough to put fear into a couple of Pheasants.

  Lary only realized that he was thinking aloud when Horse respectfully coughed behind him—“Wow, that’s some heavy stuff, man!”—and that upset him even more.

  “Hey, that’s not true.” Horse caught up with him. “We’re not that small fry. So we don’t have the heavy fists, but we know everything about everyone. He who possesses the knowledge, remember?”

  Of course Lary remembered. Those were the very words he, as the head of the Bandar-Logs, had used to cheer up his compatriots. Before everything started falling apart. Before he felt the need for some cheering up himself. Then it turned out that those words were not as cheerful as they seemed. It was nice of Horse. But the worn-out words had lost their magic.

  Lary kicked the trash can standing in his way. An empty sardine tin on top of it that served as an improvised ashtray flew off and clattered on the floor. He stepped into the gunk and continued on his way, scraping his heel against the wood to get off an errant piece of gum.

  “I don’t think we should’ve left just like that,” Horse kept mumbling. “They’ll all go to the dorms now. We’ll have to pry them out of there if we want to find out anything.”