The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

Blind stopped.

  “You’re special because you’re not alone. There’s two of us, and that means war. Us against them, them against us. I thought you knew.”

  “You mean that if not for you . . .”

  “They would’ve accepted you long ago.”

  Blind wasn’t joking, because he was never joking. Grasshopper searched his face for even a trace of a smile, but Blind was somber.

  “So all of that is because of you?” said Grasshopper in a dead little voice.

  “Yup. Took you long enough.”

  Blind turned around and started walking again. Grasshopper staggered along. He was the most miserable person in the whole House. And it was Elk’s fault. Elk the kind, Elk the wise. Elk who gave him a friend and protector, along with an army of enemies and interminable war. He never would fit in with the boys as long as Blind was with him, and Blind was going to be with him forever, because that’s what Elk wished. They would always be hated and hunted. He wanted to cry and scream, but instead he silently kept up with Blind. Because if he were to say anything against Elk, Blind would go ballistic, and that would be even worse.

  Blind stopped in front of door number 10. A senior dorm. The door was painted black, with messages in red and white and splashes and splotches of paint for effect.

  Blind stood and listened. Grasshopper was rereading the messages, even though he knew them all by heart.

  TO EACH HIS SONG.

  SPRING IS THE TIME OF HORRIBLE CHANGES.

  Den of the Purple Ratter.

  BEWARE. HERE BE DOG THAT BITES.

  NO KNOCKING. NO ADMITTANCE.

  In the House, a door into someone’s dorm was not always a door. For some it could as well have been a solid wall. This was one such door, so when Blind knocked, Grasshopper gasped in shock.

  “What are you doing? We’re not allowed in there!”

  Blind entered without even waiting for a response.

  The door closed and Grasshopper crouched down next to it. He could guess why Blind would need Ancient and tried very hard not to think about it.

  After some time the door opened again. The messages shifted and then moved back in their place. Grasshopper stood up. Blind leaned against the door with a mysterious smile. His unseeing eyes flowed wetly behind the half-closed eyelids.

  “You’re going to get an amulet,” he said. “But you’ll have to wait a little.”

  Grasshopper’s heart skipped a beat and crashed down into the pit of his stomach. His knees buckled.

  “Thank you.” His whisper was barely audible. “Oh, thank you.”

  A nightlight turned toward the wall illuminated the darkened room. Ancient meditated over a tin box with an open lid. Talismans against the evil eye looked back at him through their glass pupils. Stones with holes in them; monogrammed buttons, coins, and medallions splashed with patina; dog teeth and cat teeth; fingernail-sized shards covered in Chinese characters; mysterious seeds on strings. A treasure trove such as to make young Hoover lose his senses were he ever to see it. There was a lot to choose from, but Ancient couldn’t make up his mind. Finally he closed his eyes and reached out at random.

  A tiny sandstone kitten. It had a human face, gouged by the long wait inside the box and repeated encounters with its other inhabitants. Ancient turned it around in his fingers, smiled, and put it on top of a scrap of suede.

  To it he added a root that resembled a rat’s tail, and a chip of turquoise. He admired his creation for a while, then took a drag on his cigarette and carefully dropped the accumulated ash into the middle of the tableau. Folded the corners to produce a small suede pouch and sewed up the top with thread.

  “Let’s hope you can bring happiness to your very green owner,” he said doubtfully, setting it aside to look for a suitable cord to hang it on.

  Grasshopper lingered timidly at the door, not daring to enter. The senior was sitting on a striped mattress set directly on the floor next to a large fish tank. His hair was completely white, his face had almost the same color as the hair, and the whiteness of his fingers made it hard to distinguish the cigarette he was holding. On his face only the lips and the eyes had any color or life in them. Wine-colored eyes in the halo of white eyelashes.

  “So it’s you who needs an amulet?” Ancient asked. “Come in.”

  Grasshopper approached, tense and apprehensive, even though he knew that Ancient was not going to jump off his mattress and attack him. He couldn’t, even if he wanted to.

  The fish tank glowed green. It contained only two fish, two small black triangles. Glasses with sticky residue on their bottoms crowded the straw mat in front of the mattress.

  “Lean closer,” Ancient said.

  Grasshopper crouched next to him and Ancient put the amulet around his neck. A small pouch of gray suede with white stitches.

  “That friend of yours, very tenacious,” Ancient said. “Obstinate, even. Both are commendable qualities, but they can really get on one’s nerves. I never make amulets for juniors. You are lucky. You’re going to serve as an exception.”

  Grasshopper tried to see his amulet without appearing to look at it directly.

  “What’s in there?” he whispered.

  “Your power.”

  Ancient reached and tucked the amulet inside Grasshopper’s shirt.

  “Better this way,” he said. “Less visible. Your power and your fortune. Almost as much as I gave Skull back then. So be careful. And try not to show it to anyone.”

  Grasshopper blinked, stunned by Ancient’s words.

  “Wow!” He lowered his head and looked at the harmless bump under his shirt with reverent awe. “That’s too much.”

  “There’s no such thing as too much,” Ancient said with a laugh. “And besides, it’s not going to come right away. Please don’t imagine yourself walking out of here the next Skull. All in good time.”

  “Thank you.”

  Grasshopper felt the need to say more, but he didn’t know what. He was very bad at those things. His lips formed a smile all by themselves. A silly, happy smile. He looked at his feet, grinning widely, and just kept repeating softly: “Thank you . . . Thank you . . .”

  In his mind he was already ripping the pouch apart with Blind’s fingers. What’s inside? Could it be another monkey skull? Or something even more wondrous?

  Ancient appeared to have read his thoughts.

  “An amulet cannot be opened, or it will lose all of its power. For at least two years you are not allowed to do it. After that time, maybe. And don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Grasshopper’s grin disappeared.

  “I’m never ever going to do that.”

  “Run along, then.” Ancient dropped the cigarette in the glass of lemonade and looked at his watch. “You’ve taken a lot of my time as it is.”

  Grasshopper ran out, not missing the opportunity to demonstrate to Ancient how he could push door handles with his feet.

  Blind was crouching by the door but rose to meet him.

  “Well?”

  “I have it,” Grasshopper reported in a low whisper and stuck out his chest. “Feel it. Under the shirt.”

  Blind’s fingers slithered under his shirt and searched for the pouch. They tickled, and Grasshopper giggled and fidgeted.

  “Stand still!” Blind said sternly and continued the examination. “Something hard, made of stone,” he said finally, letting go of the pouch. “Also something dried out, like grass. The suede is too thick, I can’t make out the details.”

  Grasshopper was hopping impatiently. He wished very much to blurt out what it was that he now had hidden under his shirt, but did not allow himself to. Unverifiable things like that are better kept silent. But the Great-Power-on-a-String was egging him on. He had to rush somewhere and do something to slake the itch in his legs, the urge to jump and fly.

  “Can we go climb the big garage?” he suggested. “Or the roof, that place we found, under the moon! Tonight is the greatest night! We can’t just go and sleep!”


  Blind shrugged. As far as he was concerned it was a perfectly ordinary night, and he’d much rather sleep than scramble up to the roof, but he understood that Grasshopper’s excitement wouldn’t permit them sleep. Ancient’s words had to be digested before the two of them could go back to the Pack. Ancient was great. Blind sincerely admired what he’d heard of their conversation from behind the door. There was no other senior in the House who could have pulled it off.

  “All right,” he said. “Roof it is, then.”

  Grasshopper gave out a shrill whistle and bounded down the hallway.

  The Great Power throbbed under his shirt like a second heart, lifting him off the ground. The floorboards caught him and then tossed him back up, like a rubber mat. Grasshopper’s happiness screamed and hollered. He was dancing as he ran. In his wake the dorm doors opened, letting out the indignant shushes.

  Blind caught up with him only at the end of the corridor and then they were walking side by side, two boys in tattered green shirts, so very different from each other.

  The Sixth was cursing them, yawning and fighting off sleep.

  “I can-n-n’t do it anymore,” squeaked Crybaby, peeling off his socks. “And I don’t wanna m-m-miss thi-i-is!”

  A sock traversed the room and landed on the desk lamp.

  “It’s night already! How much longer?”

  “Suck it in,” came the curt reply from Sportsman’s bed. “You waited this long, wait a bit more.”

  Rex the Siamese was holding his eyelids apart with his fingers. His brother was blissfully asleep, hugging his pillow.

  Sportsman surveyed his enfeebled Pack.

  “Wimps,” he whispered. “A sorry bunch of wimps.”

  Muffin yawned, snapped shut the journal with sports-car stickers, and pushed it under the mattress.

  “Whatever. I’m going to sleep,” he announced and turned over facing the wall. “This thing is gonna fall on them anyway, even if I don’t see it.”

  “Traitor,” growled Rex the Siamese.

  “Yourself,” Muffin countered over his shoulder.

  Sportsman sighed and inspected the remaining troops.

  Just four limp, green-shirted figures, swinging their legs, each on his own bed. Plump Elephant, who was sucking his thumb, felt Sportsman’s gaze on him and extracted the thumb and smiled tentatively.

  “Now can I go pee-pee?” he asked.

  “Damn it!” Sportsman exploded. “Can’t you manage one hour without the bathroom? One needs to pee, another needs to wash his feet, and then there’s watering the plant! What kind of Pack is this? You’re just a load of sad sacks! All you think about is eat, sleep, and pee on schedule!”

  Elephant slowly reddened; his sighs turned to sniffles and then to tears. Max the Siamese woke up immediately. Elephant was already at full bawl. Max looked at his brother. Rex hopped off his bed, limped to Elephant’s side, and hugged his pudgy shoulders.

  “There, there, baby . . . Don’t cry. It’ll be all right.”

  “I want pee-pee,” Elephant sobbed. “He doesn’t let me.”

  “He’s going to right now,” promised Siamese, his yellow eyes shooting daggers at Sportsman. “He’s going to let you like he’s never let anybody anything ever.”

  Humpback, who until then was lying quietly on the top bunk, shot up.

  “Enough!” he howled and chucked his shoe at the pan on top of the door.

  The pan crashed to the floor amid deafening clatter and torrents of water. Elephant startled and went silent. Crybaby whimpered and pulled up his feet. The floor was turning into a lake.

  THE BACKYARD

  INTERLUDE

  Humpback played his flute, and the backyard listened. He was playing very softly, for himself only. The wind whirled the leaves in circles. Then they were caught in the puddles and stopped. Their dance ended. They ended. Now they would turn to mush and dirt. Just like people.

  Softer. Softer still. The slender fingers flitting across the holes, the wind throwing the leaves right in the face, the coins in the back pocket cutting into the skin, the bare ankles freezing, covered in goose bumps. Comfort is a piece of sibilant wood. Calming, lulling, if you allow it to be.

  A leaf fetched against his foot and was stuck. Then another one. If you sat without moving for hours, Nature would include you in its cycle just like another tree. Leaves would cling to your roots, birds would alight on your branches and crap down your shirt, rain would wash down your furrows, and wind would bury you in sand. He imagined himself such a treeman and laughed. He laughed with only half of his face. His red sweater, patched on the elbows, let in the wind through the threadbare wool, and it prickled. He didn’t have a shirt under it. This was a punishment he set for himself. For all transgressions, both real and imagined, he always punished himself. And almost never commuted his own sentences. He was unforgiving toward his skin, his arms and legs, his fears and fantasies. The itchy sweater was penance for his fears in the night. Those that made him wrap his head in the blanket, making sure that there was no gap left for He Who Comes In The Dark to creep in. Those that forbade him from drinking water before bed, to save himself from the torment of needing to go to the bathroom. The fears that no one knew about, because their owner occupied the top bunk and no one from below could see what was going on up there.

  Still, he was ashamed of them. He fought them every night, lost every time, and punished himself for the loss. This had been his way for as long as he remembered. It was the game he always played with himself, gaining the next level of maturity through mortifications imposed on his body. All of his victories smelled of defeat. By winning he only conquered a part of himself, while remaining unchanged at the core.

  He fought his shyness with vulgar jokes, his aversion to fights by being the first to jump in, his dread of death with thoughts about it. But all of that, repressed and suppressed, still lived inside and breathed the same air he did. He was both shy and rude, quiet and loud; he bottled up his virtues and exposed his vices, pulled the blanket over his head, praying “O God, don’t let me die,” and attacked those much stronger than himself.

  He had his poems, written in code on the wallpaper next to his pillow, and he scraped off those he got tired of. He had his flute, a kind gift, and he hid it in the space between the wall and his mattress. He had his crow, and he stole morsels of food for her from the kitchen. He had his skeins of wool, and he knitted beautiful sweaters.

  He was born hunchbacked and six-fingered, ugly, apelike. At ten he had been moody, his lips always bruised, his awkward paws destroying everything they touched. At seventeen he became more delicate, taciturn and quiet. His face was the face of an adult, his eyebrows met above the bridge of his nose, his wild unkempt hair the color of raven feathers spread out like a gorse bush. He ate indifferently and dressed slovenly, wore black under his fingernails and rarely changed his socks. He was ashamed of his hump and the pimples on his nose. He was ashamed that he didn’t need to shave yet, and smoked a pipe to look older. His secret vice was soppy romance novels, and the heroes of his poems died slow, horrible deaths. He kept books by Dickens under his pillow.

  He loved the House. He’d never had any other home and had never known his parents. Here he grew up as one of many, and he was used to tuning the world out when he needed to be alone. His best flute playing happened when no one was listening. Then everything came out right, every song sounded as if the wind itself whistled into the instrument. He thought sometimes that he wanted someone else to hear it, but he also knew that if someone were listening it wouldn’t have come out this well. In the House it was customary to call those with humps “angels,” in reference to the folded wings on their backs. This was one of the very few tender names that the House allowed itself to give to its children.

  Humpback played, keeping time on the wet leaves with his splayed feet. He inhaled the peace and the kindness, and placed himself in the circle of clarity that never would allow the pale hands of those who confuse the soul to worm t
heir way through. Other people sometimes drifted past, behind the fence, but they did not disturb him. In his mind, the Outsides did not exist. There was only him, the wind, his songs, and those he loved. All of that was inside the House, and outside of it was nothing and no one, only the empty and hostile city that lived its own life.

  The wind was burying the yard in leaves. Two poplars, the oak, and four nameless bushes. The bushes grew under the windows, clinging to the walls; poplars occupied the two outer corners of the fence, and some of their roots left the domain of the House. With its massive arms the oak pushed at the shed that it neighbored and overshadowed its corner of the yard completely. It had sprung up here long before the House came to be, and it remembered the time when all of this was orchards and storks made their nests in the trees. How far did its own roots extend?

  The empty ball court with old crates for seats. The empty kennel, its roof leaking, the rusty water bowls in front of it full of rain. The bench under the oak, plastered with beer labels. Trash cans. White steam issuing out of the kitchen. Multicolored music out of the windows on the second floor.

  Mangy cats stole along the boundaries of the yard. Crows marched across the bare lawns, pushing wet leaves. An aquiline-faced boy in a red sweater sat on an overturned crate and played his flute, locked in a circle of empty loneliness. The House breathed on him through its windows.

  SMOKER

  OF BATS, DRAGONS, AND BASILISK EGGSHELLS

  The dorm was rocking. Humpback and I were sitting on the bed. Noble, Tabaqui, and Blind were on the floor passing around bottles and jars, sniffing, sampling, and pouring the mysterious contents of some of them into others. Tubby, in pink pajamas, watched them from behind the bars of his portable playpen.

  I was watching through the bars of the headboard.

  Humpback was whittling something from a blackened knobby root with his pocket knife. He had on his outside coat, decorated with Nanette’s droppings, and his shaggy hair was full of shavings.

  “The pine needles are past their prime, is all I’m saying,” Tabaqui was droning halfway inside a jar of something murky and brownish. “The bouquet is completely off.”