The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

  “Chill, will you,” he said to Noble. “Don’t ruin your complexion.”

  What happened next almost made me believe half the tales told the night before.

  Noble swept to the edge of the bed. From there he probably got to the floor, but I wasn’t sure. Black managed to sit up. And even to take off the glasses. But when he stood up he already had Noble hanging on his shoulders. Then he was trying to peel off Noble while Noble was trying to throttle his opponent. It was a grisly sight.

  The snarling figure made up of two figures stumbled awkwardly around on the floor, bumped into furniture, upended the nightstand, and crashed on the bed, burying a screaming Jackal.

  Then they rolled over to my side. I pressed farther into the bars of the headboard, petrified. Two faces, contorted . . . breathing heavily . . . saliva . . . so close. Too close. Tabaqui went on wailing. One more roll, I thought with resignation, and it’s good-bye Smoker. They’d break every bone in my body.

  They didn’t roll. Black managed to shake off Noble and spring up on the bed. His boots shuffled on the covers under my nose, then he jumped off and I finally could breathe easier.

  It was unclear who emerged victorious. Noble, curled up in a ball by the bars, looked lousy. Black, wiping blood off his face and neck with the bottom of his shirt, wasn’t much better. Judging by that last throw, he’d won. But judging by the speed of his retreat from the bed, he wasn’t quite sure that he had.

  Not-quite-crushed Tabaqui fared best of all. He was sitting on two pillows and cursing so elaborately that it immediately put my mind at ease regarding him.

  “You should be exterminated, you and your ilk,” Black said when Tabaqui paused for a moment. “Like rabid dogs.”

  “Bastard!” Noble answered. “Pigface!”

  Black spat out a broken tooth into his hand. Studied it for a while, dropped it, and made for the door.

  A multitude of pill bottles had tumbled out of the overturned nightstand. Black slipped on one of them just as he was going out and almost fell. This slightly cheered up Noble. Very slightly.

  When Sphinx, Alexander, and Blind came back, it was their turn to roll around on the pill bottles. Threading his way between them, Humpback deposited Tubby in his pen and said that we obviously hadn’t been bored.

  “Bored?” Tabaqui exclaimed. “You guys completely missed the best thing ever! It was epic, if I say so myself! The battle of Hector and Achilles! I’ll be damned!”

  Sphinx examined the trashed bed strewn with broken glass, then looked at Noble and said that he could definitely observe the battlefield and the body of Hector left on it, but couldn’t quite determine the whereabouts of Achilles.

  “And that’s how it’s going to be for a while,” Tabaqui explained. “He’s somewhere out there. Quenching gushers of blood.”

  “Got it,” Sphinx sighed. “We’ll keep that in mind.” He offloaded Nanette to the windowsill. “Good thing we hadn’t left the bird with you.”

  The next hour I spent crawling under the beds, collecting the bottles and vials. Tabaqui pretended to help me. His fervor regarding the fight was wearing really thin. In my opinion, Noble and Black resembled animals more than heroes of antiquity. The whole deal was disgusting.

  “Let me tell you, dearest, the heroes of antiquity were not much better,” Jackal said. “Worse, in fact,” he added thoughtfully, as if refreshing Homer in his mind.

  I decided to crawl away before he started to quote his favorite passages from the Iliad. Because I had a sneaking suspicion about which ones would turn out to be among the favorites.

  After we tidied up the room, Blind palpated Noble and declared that he had a cracked rib.

  The Sepulcher was out of the question. Noble allowed himself to be swaddled in elastic bandages and sat hugging a pillow, pissed off as he could be. He informed us that the bandage was restricting his airflow, while the rib prevented him from lying down, and that he was now doomed to sleepless nights of oxygen deprivation.

  Tabaqui assured him that he would never abandon a friend in need. And he immediately didn’t. He sang to Noble. He played the harmonica for him. He bucked him up with disgusting concoctions complete with floating chilies, of which he himself liberally partook as well, so that Noble wouldn’t feel singled out. There wasn’t a living soul capable of getting any sleep under Tabaqui’s tender ministrations.

  When Black returned, he was running a fever. Tabaqui sounded the alarm. He said that this was a clear sign of infection taking hold in Black’s bloodstream, and that Black was soon to tread in the valley of death.

  Black was serenaded and plied with drink as well.

  At three in the morning they started singing in harmony.

  Accompanied by their horrible singing, I dozed off. When I woke up I saw Humpback, naked, standing on the bed armed with a broom. He was holding it as if it were a bayonet aimed at an invisible foe. He looked like a complete nutcase. If I were to find myself alone in the room with him, this would have scared me witless. But Jackal was right next to me, while Alexander and Lary, swearing softly, milled in the space between the beds, moving the nightstand for some reason. Their appearance wasn’t a big improvement on Humpback’s. They were both in their briefs and in rubber boots. Lary’s boots alone were a sight, what with the pointed toes curled upward.

  The wide-open windows let in the blackness of the night, and the door into the hallway was also thrown open and even prevented from closing by a stack of books. A breeze was wafting through the room.

  “There it is!” Lary whispered. “We got it now. Humpback, ready with the broom!”

  Humpback stopped fidgeting, stood at attention, and said, also in a very firm whisper, that this might cause it harm.

  “Sissy,” Lary groaned.

  They jerked the nightstand away. Lary dove into the opening between it and the wall with surprising agility, and seemed to hurt himself quite badly. Humpback dropped the broom. Alexander jumped up on the bed.

  This convinced me beyond any doubt that all of them had gone temporarily insane. Tabaqui lifted the broom off me and handed it back to Humpback. He then said sweetly, “We’re hunting a rat. I hope you were not too inconvenienced?”

  I wasn’t, but I did not particularly want to observe the extermination, either. I’d loathed stuff like that since I was a baby, be it rats or spiders. People around me seemed to get a kick out of this attitude for some reason.

  “Freaking wimps,” Lary said from behind the nightstand. “Totally useless.”

  Humpback and Alexander blinked. Humpback indistinctly repeated something to the effect of being afraid to hurt it.

  I started putting on clothes.

  “Where are you headed?” Tabaqui asked incredulously.

  “I thought I’d go for a spin.”

  “A spin where? It’s dark in the hallways.”

  I’d completely forgotten that, but rallied and said I’d take a flashlight.

  “You can’t. There’s been an increase in activity by maniacs and people with split personalities. Your flashlight would draw their attention.”

  I looked around.

  “Where’s Noble?”

  “Now he is in fact out there.” Tabaqui nodded. “But he’s among his own kind, where you have no place.”

  I decided not to press him on that “own kind” remark.

  “What about Sphinx?”

  “He’s with Tubby, grazing in the bathroom. To save the kid the aggravation.”

  Humpback and Lary conferred and started tossing empty bottles under the bed. Black, shiny with sweat and looking unhealthy, inquired from his bunk whether he might be allowed to die in peace.

  “They barge in from the yard,” Tabaqui chirped. “As soon as it turns to winter, they just swarm the House. While the cats, they come later. They like to roam while the roaming’s good. So you see, in the meantime there’s this disconnect.”

  The poor rat, having had enough of the bottle barrage, darted to the center of the room and crouche
d in front of the open door. It definitely wasn’t thinking straight, because it didn’t even try to escape.

  Lary tossed the floor-cleaning rag on top of it. Humpback stormed the resulting bump with a hoarse wail, grabbed it, and pitched it out into the corridor. Then he kicked the door closed. The books that were keeping it open went flying.

  “Cool!” Lary screamed and hugged Humpback.

  “There,” Tabaqui said, satisfied. “See, that didn’t take long at all.”

  I was just grateful that picking up the empty bottles off the floor wasn’t going to be my responsibility. And also that the rat survived.

  “Do you think it suffered much when I threw it like that?” Humpback asked.

  “Come on, it was fine. It was inside a rag,” Lary said, obviously unconcerned for the rat’s well-being.

  Tabaqui assured Humpback that the rat was completely content, both in flight and upon landing. Black again asked if he could now get his final rest.

  That’s when Blind came in, holding the rag that formerly held the rat.

  “Are you guys mental?” he asked.

  “You mean it hit you?” Tabaqui said, trembling with anticipation.

  “It hit me.”

  “And were you surprised?”

  “We both were.”

  Blind threw the rag away and flopped on the bed. He was barefoot and frazzled, his sweater was tied around the neck, debris was clinging to his wet legs, soot covered his fingers, and he smelled funny. Of damp, and what seemed like fresh grass. There was also a thin ring of dirt around his mouth. I thought that the place he’d come from wasn’t a normal place. That it maybe had something to do with the basilisk eggshells. I also tried to figure out which type in the Jackal’s classification he fit into—maniacs or those with split personalities. I wasn’t too sure at the moment.

  Then Sphinx returned, with Tubby clinging to his back. He sat next to Blind and stared at him. Then he spoke.

  “Wipe your mug. Were you eating dirt again?”

  “It wasn’t dirt,” Blind said blissfully, using his sleeve.

  More of a maniac, I decided.

  Tubby slid off Sphinx, rolled to my side, and started tugging at my pajama buttons, trying to tear them off. Alexander was busy making tea.

  “It’s going to be light soon,” Humpback said. “How about we get some sleep?”

  That wasn’t to be. Half an hour later Noble came back. The dawn-welcoming elf clad in elastic bandages. Also in someone’s beret, with some trinket around his neck and even more drunk than several hours prior. He unloaded crumpled wads of cash out of his pockets and picked a quarrel with me over my foot accidentally slipping under his pillow. He said many hurtful things about my legs, made a show of changing the pillowcase, and scrambled off again.

  Once he wheeled out, I suddenly realized what his new adornment was. It was Black’s tooth on a silver chain.

  And the next night I spent in quarantine. In this small room all covered in foam rubber. And in cheery chintz, yellow with blue flowers, over it. There was a commode, half recessed in the wall, masquerading as a trash bin with a hinged top. Also upholstered in foam rubber and chintz. And finally, a frosted white lamp on the ceiling. Nothing else. A perfect place for sleeping and contemplation. I wish I could have sought refuge there during my first year in the House. Like once a week. But I didn’t know it was this good. The House dwellers had long appropriated this resort for their needs, and there were only two ways to get in. Either as a punishment for some transgression, or by cajoling permission from the Sepulcher. I didn’t know about the second option. And of course I had no idea that a visit to the Cage could be regifted, which was exactly what Tabaqui had done.

  Physicals were a weekly occurrence for about half of all House denizens and a monthly one for everyone else. When I was still with the Pheasants, we also had the so-called A-list, comprising those who went in every day. Six Pheasants qualified for it, and the rest all dreamed of joining them. A-list meant a less strict daily routine, the right to a nap in the afternoon, and a separate meal schedule complete with low-calorie salads and vitamin drinks. Every physical was a solemn event, so it was important to enter all your health concerns on a special notepad. I had used mine, dutifully divided into days and hours, for doodles, so they had taken it off me.

  Today was the first time I’d been for a physical with the Fourth. While we were waiting for our turn, Lary created an installation from used gum, crowned by a fresh cigarette butt in the middle, on the wall of the hospital wing. Tabaqui spent the time drawing horrific black and white stripes and polygons on his face.

  “It’s our duty to entertain the Spiders,” he explained. “Their lives are pointless, they have lousy jobs, so inventive KISS-style makeup is sure to raise their spirits.”

  The KISS-style makeup did not raise anyone’s spirits. It did arouse suspicions, though. Tabaqui was thoroughly scrubbed in the treatment room to make sure he wasn’t trying to conceal some skin ailment. Finally, all pink, squeaky clean, and literally wet behind the ears, he wheeled out of the treatment room waving a white scrap of paper resembling a store receipt.

  “How about this?” he boasted, parading the scrap in front of us. “That’s respect, that is! Here, in the Sepulcher, I’m a VIP!”

  “Whatever do you want with it?” Noble asked. “It hasn’t even been a week since the last time.”

  “It’s a present for Smoker,” Jackal explained. “I happen to enjoy giving out presents every once in a while.”

  “Are you sure he’s going to like it?” Noble said doubtfully.

  “Just let him try not to!”

  I listened to them without any clue as to what they were talking about. One thing was clear: I was supposed to be overjoyed about something that Tabaqui was planning to give me. So as he wheeled to me and shoved his scrap in my hands, I endeavored to look happy. I must have succeeded. At least Tabaqui was pleased.

  “Smoker is ecstatic,” he said to Noble. “And you thought he wouldn’t be able to appreciate it. You’re just a poor judge of character, that’s all.”

  And he took off toward the exit in his Mustang. I folded the gift and followed. At the landing, the one they called “Antesepulchral,” I put on the brakes and tried to decipher the scribbles on the paper. All the rest had wheeled or walked ahead. The writing, which I failed to understand, looked like a sloppily made out prescription. I was ready to give up and go back to the Sepulcher to ask Spiders what it said. Could it be some sort of confirmation of my former Pheasant privileges, put down on paper for some reason? Then Black mounted nearby. He didn’t even ask if I was happy or not. I must have looked like I still wasn’t able to make heads or tails of my present.

  He just took the paper and said, “It’s a quarantine referral.”

  He’s joking was my first thought. My second was that Tabaqui had played a dirty trick on me.

  “Just as I thought. You’re clueless,” Black sighed. “Listen, I understand it’s none of my business and all, but are you always grabbing whatever people shove at you?”

  “No, I’m not usually,” I said. “But Tabaqui said it was a present.”

  “Tabaqui’s presents especially must be X-rayed before you even think of touching them,” Black explained. “Right, just be more careful next time.”

  He returned the scrap and turned toward the stairs.

  “Hey!” I called out, panicked. “Black, wait!”

  “What?”

  He stopped, slightly annoyed, as if this idle chat was keeping him from something important.

  “Why would Tabaqui do this to me? Is it something I’ve done?”

  Black stared ahead sullenly, chewing his gum, and cogitated.

  “Why would he? Well, he happens to think that it’s great to end up in the Cage. Pleasant.”

  “What’s so pleasant about it?” I said angrily.

  If Pheasants were to be believed, the quarantine was a kind of solitary cell for the most dangerous miscreants. And, on cer
tain subjects, I did tend to believe them.

  “What’s pleasant?” Black’s habit of slowly repeating the question he’d just been asked could drive anyone with less patience completely crazy. “Well, it’s so quiet, you see. There isn’t anyone else in there and it’s very quiet. Soundproofed. It really is kind of nice. I, for one, like it there.”

  “Look,” I said quickly. “Since you like it . . . how about I give this to you and you can go to that quarantine place instead of me?”

  Black shook his head.

  “Won’t work. It specifies a wheeler. You can swap with Noble, though. Or with Tabaqui himself.”

  He left, and I stayed back, very puzzled. On the way to the dorm I deliberated my course of action: injure Jackal terribly or go sit in quarantine? All signs pointed to the second choice. Suffer for a bit and then just forget the whole thing. I somehow was certain that Tabaqui never forgot and never forgave. I had no idea where this certainty came from, but by the time I reached the doors of the Fourth I was convinced that I had no business refusing this present. If Tabaqui was sure he was doing me a favor, who was I to disagree?

  And sure of it he was. Beaming and businesslike, he was darning the sleeve of a denim jacket—the special Cage jacket, as he explained, for those being sent “over there.” I was to put it on without delay, because otherwise I might miss the opportunity to do that, and also just in case.

  It turned out to be so heavy as to make me think it was lined with lead. Tabaqui let me hold it but snatched it right back, spread it out on the bed, and began the performance entitled “Secrets of the Enlightened.” Alexander, Lary, and Humpback all crowded around, observing with interest. I felt like a child who was being packed off to a costume party by his entire family.

  The jacket was in fact two jackets. The lining was so thick that it could be a separate garment on its own. It fastened to the shell with concealed zippers and buttons and could be taken out completely. Jackal explained the sequence twice. The shell contained the principal hidden pockets. Two tins with cigarettes, one in each shoulder pad. Boxes of pills in the elbows. “This is headache, this is insomnia, this is diarrhea,” Jackal rattled off rapidly, “and here are the instructions. All color-coded.” Two lighters and two ashtrays in the bottom, one of each on the left and on the right. “Because there are some people, you know, who like to stub out the cigarettes directly on the floor, which is a bit of a fire hazard in that place.”