The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

  While Humpback was busy feeding paper into it and typing whatever came into his mind, Grasshopper was imagining how he’d write a letter to Death and Ginger and drop it in the hospital mailbox—there was an actual box on the door to the hospital wing.

  Stuffage sounded even rowdier than usual.

  “Are they planning to attack us?” Humpback said.

  “Or already attacking each other,” Grasshopper suggested.

  Humpback rattled out the word attack.

  “Or maybe this is the sound of Sportsman’s empire crumbling,” Wolf said. “And we are soon going to be hit by its splinters.”

  Somebody scratched softly at the door.

  “See what I mean?” Wolf said. “The splinters are flying.”

  Beauty quickly hid the orange behind his back.

  “Could be someone coming for the trunk,” Blind said.

  But it was, in fact, Magician. Sad little Magician in a striped shirt, with a crutch under one arm and a sack of clothes under the other.

  “Hello,” he said. “Can I come in?”

  He looked like someone who’d narrowly escaped some catastrophe.

  “Did something really blow up there?” Humpback asked, alarmed.

  “They let you go?” Grasshopper said incredulously. “I thought they never would.”

  “Two newbies arrived at once,” Magician explained bashfully. “So I grabbed my stuff and got out. They have other things to worry about now, and I always wanted to move in with you. Can I please stay here?”

  He briefly looked at the wall.

  “Did you bring anything useful?” Stinker inquired.

  “He can do magic tricks,” Grasshopper said quickly. “With cards and with a handkerchief. And with everything.”

  “You’re in. Choose a bed,” Wolf said. “Who are the newbies?”

  Magician marched to an empty bed, thumping his crutch, and put his things on it.

  “One is normal,” he said. “And the other is scary. He’s got this spot. Like someone poured chocolate on him. Almost his entire face.” Magician pressed a hand to his own face. “Oh, wow, a guitar!” he exclaimed and put the hand down, mesmerized by the instrument on Wolf’s pillow. “Where did you get it?”

  “Can you play?” Wolf said quickly.

  Magician nodded. He couldn’t pry his eyes off it.

  “We’re in luck,” Wolf said. “I was going crazy with this tutorial. Come on, play something.”

  Magician thumped over to his bed. Wolf shifted to make space for him.

  While Magician was getting comfortable with the guitar, he also cleared his throat significantly, as if he was about to sing.

  “‘A Taste of Honey,’” he announced.

  Grasshopper recalled that he always announced his magic tricks in the same artificial kind of voice.

  Magician started playing, and indeed also singing, even though no one had asked him to. He must have decided to showcase all of his talents at once. He had a high-pitched, piercing voice, and he pulled off both playing and singing with confidence. It was obvious that he was really good at both, and that this voice was not an impediment for him. Everyone clustered around, except Stinker, who was still busy with his drawing.

  Magician was wailing in his tragic falsetto, swaying back and forth over the guitar, singing along with the licks, pa-dam, pa-dam, shaking his bangs, and staring distractedly at the wall. By the end of the song his voice was hoarse, and he had tears in his eyes. The next song he played without singing or announcing its title. The third one he dubbed “Tango of Death,” and in it he bungled the melody once. Magician’s songs made Grasshopper sad, and not only him but the others too, apparently.

  “I can also play the violin,” Magician said after dispatching “Tango of Death.” He added, “And trumpet. And also accordion, a little bit.”

  “When did you manage all this?” Wolf said, surprised.

  Magician twanged a string a couple of times.

  “I just did. Just like that.”

  Suddenly his sharp face lost the veneer of self-satisfaction and twisted in a grimace. He turned away.

  He must be remembering something from the Outsides, Grasshopper thought. Something good that happened to him there.

  “Do the trick with the handkerchief,” Grasshopper said. “You know, your best one.”

  Magician started digging through his pockets.

  “It doesn’t work every time,” he warned. “I really should be practicing more.”

  Stinker wheeled away from the wall and regarded Magician with interest. Behind his back, in the corner that had been assigned to him, something creepy was now visible, with a flattened nose and bugged-out eyes, and covered in spots. Everyone turned to the something and forgot all about the magic tricks. Even Magician quit his search for the handkerchief.

  “What is that thing?” Wolf asked, horrified. “What were you trying to make?”

  “It’s a goblin,” Stinker explained smugly. “Life-sized. Isn’t he pretty?”

  “Yep,” Humpback said. “So pretty we’d better cover him up.”

  Stinker took this as a compliment.

  “No, really?” he said. “Is it heart-stopping?”

  “Certainly is,” Humpback confirmed. “Especially if someone wanders into that corner at night with a flashlight. That’ll stop it for sure.”

  Stinker giggled.

  “Can you show me how to make juice?” Beauty said and handed him the orange.

  Stinker grabbed it and peeled it in a flash. Divided it into sections and stuffed them in his mouth. He then explained to a stunned Beauty, “Not enough for juicing. Much better to just eat it.” He generously handed Beauty the last sloppy, half-squashed section and said, “Here. Have this. It’s good for you. Vitamin C and all.”

  SMOKER

  ON MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING BETWEEN BLACK SHEEP

  Silence. And the smells of dust and mold. That’s what the Crossroads is at night. I was sitting beside the barrel where something raggedy and moribund was trying to grow, touching this skeleton of a plant and reading the messages. They covered the barrel from top to bottom. Boar, Poplar, Nail . . . All unfamiliar nicks. The darkened letters looked like old carvings, partially obliterated. But some things were still legible.

  Crossroads was illuminated by two wall fixtures. One with a purple shade, in the corner with the TV set. The other, with a cracked blue glass cover, over the low, battered armchair by the opposite wall. The central space between them, containing the sofa, the withered plants, and myself, was shrouded in darkness. I almost had to read with my fingers, the way Blind did. Or sometimes with the help of a lighter. A rather pointless pursuit, but still better than nothing.

  THE COELACANTHS ARE EXTINCT, BUT NOT REALLY, a message declared cryptically. Next to it, one Saurus intimated: FOLLOWING THE PATH OF THE COYOTE. Exactly where, he did not elaborate. To extinction, probably. Below it was a poem dedicated to a girl. AND TO YOUR LEGS, AND TO YOUR ARMS, AND RUMPTY-TUMPTY-TUMPTY-TUM . . . The poem was incredibly clunky, and obviously had in mind some specific girl. Otherwise the author wouldn’t have mentioned her “piebald curls.” I wasn’t sure what “piebald” meant exactly, but applied to hair it definitely wasn’t a color worthy of poetic praise.

  We didn’t have much contact with the girls. None, as a matter of fact. Even though their wing was connected to ours by a common stairway. As far as I knew, no one ever used it to go up to them. They occupied the third floor; the second was taken up by the sick bay, and I had no idea what was there on the first. Probably that mysterious swimming pool with its eternal renovations. The only time we ran into them was on Saturdays, during movie nights. They sat separately and never joined in any of our conversations. In the yard they always kept to their own porch. I didn’t know where all those strict rules came from, but obviously not from the principal’s office. Or they would have been broken. Which they weren’t.

  The other section of the poem related the story of some records being given to so
meone. And of a book THAT YOU HAVE SO GRACEFULLY DROPPED ON MY HEAD, WITH NARY A SHRUG OF YOUR SHOULDERS . . . The only place where one could drop a book on someone’s head would be in the library, standing on a stepladder. And girls never went to the common library.

  The more I thought about this, the more intrigued I became. I remembered an episode that I’d witnessed in the yard once, in my very first month of being here.

  Beauty, from the Third, and a wheeler girl, whose nick I didn’t know, were playing with a ball. This must have been the weirdest game I’d ever seen. The petite, dark-haired girl, with a little face as white as a china cup, threw a tennis ball down from the porch. Then, by miracle (with the role of the slightly clumsy miracle performed by Beauty), the ball would find itself back on the porch. Actually, Beauty missed more often than not. Then the girl had to wheel down and search for her toy in the bushes. In over half an hour, Beauty managed to throw it accurately, so it landed at her feet, only four times, and I’m not sure those weren’t just accidents. But each time she would smile. It certainly seemed that she was smiling at her own happy thoughts, because neither she nor Beauty ever looked at each other. Only at the ball. Watched it appear in front of them, time after time, as if from some other dimension. The girl was much better at it. Beauty kept losing his concentration and trying to trace the ball outside of his territory, but the girl . . . I could have shot a gorgeous short film starring her: The Girl and the Ball: Playing with Shadows. I was mesmerized by this spectacle. I didn’t realize that I was watching two lovers, and that this game was the closest they could allow themselves to be to each other. Back then I just figured that they didn’t know each other too well and were a bit embarrassed about it.

  I was thinking about that time when Black appeared. Sleepy, surly, in a pajama top and untied sneakers. He’d put them on like slippers, flattening the backs. He approached, limping visibly, and inquired if I knew what time it was.

  I didn’t. Like every other inhabitant of the Fourth I no longer had a watch. I mean, actually I did. Buried deep in the bottom of my bag.

  “Quarter to midnight,” Black said. “The hallway lights are going to be out soon, and I doubt you thought to bring a flashlight along. You are going to get personally acquainted with every wall on your way back.”

  “I was reading this poem,” I said, pointing at the barrel. “Very unusual. It’s about this girl. Can’t figure out who wrote it. Can you believe it, it says that she was dropping on him—that is, on the guy writing all this—some books, and also giving him records. Who could that possibly be? Do you know?”

  Black glanced briefly at the barrel.

  “It’s old stuff, from six years ago,” he said indifferently. “They graduated. Can’t you see, it’s all blackened and stuff.”

  “Oh! I see! Boar, Poplar, Saurus—they’re all from the previous class.” I was a little disappointed in the mystery being resolved in such a mundane fashion. “So that’s why I couldn’t find a single familiar nick.”

  “I think you managed to dig up just about the only place where their scribblings are still visible. Beats me how you found it,” Black grumbled, lowering himself onto the sofa. His face contorted as he did it, and he gingerly straightened his leg once seated.

  “It was so quiet in the dorm. It felt . . . different. Alien, somehow. You were asleep, and anything I touched made an awful racket for some reason,” I said, trying to explain why I’d scrambled out of there.

  “Yeah.” Black shrugged. “You think I don’t understand? I woke up and it’s, like, all dark and silent. Like I was in a coffin. I could hear my own heart beating. All I could do not to scream.”

  I had a really tough time imagining Black screaming because he was scared. So I laughed.

  “Really,” Black said. “You don’t believe me?”

  He took a pack of Lucky Strikes out of his pocket and lit up. I was completely floored. I was sure he didn’t smoke.

  “I don’t, usually,” Black said. “Only when the day is particularly shitty. Like today.”

  He smoked in silence and with great concentration. Like everything he did: eating, drinking, reading . . . Every action he performed possessed this thoroughness, as if announcing to the world: “Now this is how it’s supposed to be done.” Probably that was why no one ever interrupted him while he was doing something. When he found himself in need of an ashtray, Black rummaged under the sofa with the same absorbed look on his face and hauled out a flat copper saucer in the shape of a maple leaf. The old-timers would do magic tricks like that sometimes, producing unexpected objects out of the most unlikely places.

  “Listen,” he said, installing the leaf on the sofa’s arm, “I wanted to ask you something. How come you stayed? Why didn’t you go with them?”

  I paused. It was not an easy thing to explain. In all honesty, I didn’t want to leave Black alone. After his conversation with Sphinx in the morning, when I saw the way they looked at him, or rather, avoided looking at him . . . It all had this horribly familiar feel. Familiar and unpleasant.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I guess I’m still too much of a Pheasant. I can’t even imagine how this could work—turning up at the hospital wing, at night, without permission, carrying supplies. For me that would be the same as, I don’t know, busting into Shark’s office and stealing his fire extinguisher. I thought I would be out of place there. And it’s not because I’m scared. I just don’t see the point.”

  Black nodded.

  “I get it. It’s the same with me. I wouldn’t have gone even if this whole thing with Noble hadn’t happened. In times like this someone has to stay back and secure the base.”

  It seemed that, despite the approaching lights out, Black wasn’t in any hurry to leave. He was, if anything, open for a discussion. Or maybe it was just that his leg hurt and he was simply resting it. I decided to go for it and clear up some things that had been bothering me ever since that talk with Sphinx.

  “I’m sorry if this is not a comfortable topic,” I said, “but why is it that Sphinx dislikes you so much?”

  Black choked on the smoke.

  “Sorry!” I repeated hurriedly. “It’s just that the impression I got—”

  “It’s not an impression,” he interrupted. “And that’s a mild way of putting it. It’s not just that he doesn’t like me. He hates me. But generally that wouldn’t be any of your business, agreed?”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled again. “Of course it isn’t.”

  Black disgustedly crushed the cigarette stub against the ashtray.

  “When Sphinx first got to the House, I did kick him around. It’s been nine years already, but he never forgot. Good memory, for that kind of thing. He’s so cool and tough now, but back then he was a spoiled mama’s darling. Crying into his pillow every night, tailing Blind’s every step. You know, everybody’s little pet. All of them fussing around him, wiping the snot off his nose.”

  I remembered the photo out of the Moby-Dick. Where I couldn’t find Sphinx. Maybe he hadn’t arrived at the House yet. Or maybe he was somewhere else, crying into his pillow, as Black put it.

  “So,” Black said, shoving the ashtray back under the sofa. He bumped into something there, pulled out a pink rubber bunny, and stared at it in apparent surprise. “What was I talking about? Oh, right. It’s a long story. Everything was fine until he came in. And then it all went screwy. First he wanted a separate room. Then he wanted separate friends. And whatever he wanted, he always got. Half of my pack defected into that damn room of his. All drawn in by his pretty smile.”

  Black was fiddling with the rubber bunny, regarding it thoughtfully, as if he was in fact seeing something else there in front of him.

  “And ever since that time we kind of can’t stand each other. Silly, I know. I bet you’re thinking right now, ‘This is nonsense, those grown-up guys still nursing their childish grudges.’ Well, these grudges keep getting reinforced. A lot of other things get added in. And they keep adding. Like this one, with Noble.
Sphinx makes it look like I doomed him to something horrible. When in fact all I did was save him. But would anybody say it like it is? Of course not, how could they? There is only one truth, and Sphinx is the one telling it. He’s the smartest here, and we’re all like nothing before him.”

  “He certainly has charm,” I offered carefully.

  “You should have seen him when he was nine,” Black chortled. “The shining light of the House. One smile and swoons all around. It’s not the same now. He’s been cranky lately. But he’s still got it, no question. So I’m surprised you haven’t dashed off after him to the Sepulcher, trailing smoke. Usually that’s more or less the effect he has on people.”

  It wasn’t a pleasant experience, listening to what Black was saying, but in some sense I’d brought it on myself. And maybe, just maybe, there was a grain of truth in all of this.

  “Are they going to take Noble away now?” I asked, in a clumsy attempt to change the subject.

  Black was wiping dust off the bunny and didn’t even look in my direction.

  “Probably. I wouldn’t be so hung up about this. But for the guys in here, there’s nothing worse in the whole world. For them, there’s no life in the Outsides. As for me, I’m counting down the days until graduation. I guess I’m a black sheep in that regard.”

  Being a seasoned and much-persecuted black sheep in my own right, I nodded understandingly. Now I knew what made Black different from the others.

  “I understand,” I said. “That’s how it was with me too, the last half year.”