The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

  This scent would soon be gone, the cleaners were going to sweep it out with the trash and cover it with floor polish, the rooms becoming bare and featureless, like when he first saw them. He sped up and burst into the Poxy room at a run. It was empty. Wolf’s bed was made up. Grasshopper sat on it, shook out the sand from his sneakers, and told himself there was no reason to panic. Wolf wasn’t in the room, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t somewhere else. And Blind, he must have been somewhere too. Grasshopper remembered the last summer and realized that he was looking in the wrong place. He needed to find Elk. Elk had spent the previous summer in the principal’s office.

  Grasshopper ran back out into the hallway and dashed toward the principal’s office. He kicked the door—and there they were. Wolf, Elk, and Blind. They were sitting on the windowsill, and didn’t seem surprised to see him. It was as if they knew he’d come. Wolf smiled, and Elk nodded very slightly, in approval of his choice. They shifted and made space for him. Grasshopper squeezed in and finally felt completely happy. And also that the summer was going to be a gorgeous one.

  And it was, it was. It had mornings in pink and gold, and the soft rains, and the scents wafting into the room between the curtains. And the bird.

  They saw it that one time on the back of the bench under the oak tree. It was beautiful, bright as a painted toy, all striped and with an orange crown and a curved beak. The whole summer was like that bird.

  Elk drove them out to the country in his Bug. Bug was a car seemingly assembled from parts of ten different cars, all of them picked up at the junkyard. It leaked from the top and the bottom, it got winded on long drives, and sharp turns sometimes made it shed its mysterious components. It liked to choose for itself where it would go next, and they had to concede, otherwise the engine would just quit, and Bug would be stuck in the most inopportune places and remain silent and inert until granted full independence again.

  But wherever Bug decided to park itself, it was fine with them. They would lie under the warm sun, explore the roadside puddles, eat sandwiches. They never returned to the House empty-handed. In the bed of a dried-up creek, Blind unearthed an ancient candlestick, green with age. Grasshopper found a pack of cards on a trash heap, but they had naked ladies on them so Elk tossed them right back out. Wolf took to hauling in scary-looking insects; no one knew where he got them. Elk found an old looking glass in a leather case.

  In the evening they set up tea on the deck and told scary stories. And one time they didn’t make it back for dinner. Bug threw a fit and they had to spend the night inside it, with only the remains of sandwiches and one bottle of water between them. That night all the stories were about victims of shipwrecks and getting lost in a desert. The water had to be rationed. Blind said he heard hyenas laughing in the distance, and Wolf maintained he saw a mirage of three palm trees and a stone well.

  After another excursion, they became five. A plump white puppy of an emphatically mutt lineage became their best discovery, so that’s what they named it. She turned out to be a girl. Discovery was hopelessly plebeian and hopelessly bad mannered. The boys’ pants were soon covered in white hairs and greasy stains. The legs of the principal’s desk acquired a shabby, distinctly chewed look. Elk whittled chewing sticks for Discovery. They were strewn everywhere, and the dog gnawed on them rapturously, but the desk legs, boys’ ankles, and Elk’s boots never escaped her attention either.

  A couple of times they took sleeping bags up on the roof and spent the night there. Elk told them about the stars and their names. They packed flashlights, thermoses, and blankets, and once even took Discovery, because otherwise she missed them and howled pitifully in the empty office. They tied her to the chimney up there, but she liked this even less than being alone downstairs.

  And there was the flying of the kite. It was yellow and purple, and it had narrow, slit-like eyes. It hung over the yard, smiling mysteriously and fluttering its tail. They took turns yanking its cord and observing how the wind changed the expression on its face. And one time their dinner featured food prepared according to customs of the Australian aborigines. They tried to obtain fire by rubbing sticks together, but eventually gave up and used the lighter. The food was expectedly horrible, but the aborigines did not mind and were completely satisfied. That was when the strange bird came. It also brought the rain that lasted for three days, and the air smelled of autumn. Bug went back into the garage and they had to wash Discovery’s paws every time she came in from the yard.

  When the Grayhouse folk finally returned, excited, tanned, and overflowing with stories and experiences, their arrival was met with resignation. Because it meant that this summer was over, and because all of them, except the grown-up, knew that there would never be another one like it.

  The seniors and the juniors, the cooks, and the counselors filled out the House quickly and expertly, as if there was never a time when they weren’t there. The principal’s office ceased being the most interesting place in the whole House and became just the principal’s office, a place of daily pilgrimage for teachers and counselors, of plans and phone calls. Became that which it was supposed to be. Discovery was exiled down to the yard. The narrow-eyed kite flew a couple more times, then ended up forgotten in the attic. The tale of the wondrous bird and the three-day rain failed to interest anyone. The walls of the Poxy room were now taken up with strings of seashells and tree nuts.

  SMOKER

  POMPEY’S LAST STAND

  In the Grayhouse Forest for two days straight

  Water leaks from the skies.

  Shake off the moss, wake up your mate

  And dance, and look in his eyes!

  But you don’t see the eyes and you don’t have a face,

  Wet is your fur and tight your embrace.

  Then you will find that there is no truth

  Stashed in the hollow’s black mouth.

  Let your hand inside, take it out and read,

  Tiny black beasts on the whitest paper.

  Then run away, because you need

  To shout the words that they whisper.

  To shout the truth that’s not there at all,

  That’s up to you to create,

  In the prickly grass leaving the scrawl

  Of your heavy six-taloned gait.

  Sing as you run and shout as you dance,

  You’re a freak, so let out a scream—

  Let the whole world know you’ve been born by chance

  Of the tree and the forest stream.

  Chorus:

  Quick! Quick! Go bite a tick!

  Drape the ears over the cloak!

  We’ll dance all night and we’ll sing our delight!

  We, the proud Gray Forest folk!

  “The Rain Song”

  The silence that had devoured the world once the pack moved to the Sepulcher continued even after they’d returned. The noisy morning dissolved in it without a trace. After classes, Sphinx and Blind both climbed on the windowsill and smoked there without a single word, each using his own ashtray. Humpback took Tubby out for a walk. Alexander hid himself on Humpback’s bunk. Tabaqui sat there like a prairie dog, all hushed and mournful, his sorrow on full display. The boombox hissed idly. The nastiest silence there is, the silence of many people being silent together. We stewed in it until lunch, and in the canteen I realized I couldn’t stand it anymore. It weighed on me like something that was alive, something suffocating. Then I noticed that ours was not the only quiet table. The entire canteen was silent. Even the music, usually thunderously loud, seemed hushed. I could hear cooks talking and jangling the cutlery in the kitchen behind the wall. This is where I got really scared. Trembling-hands scared.

  The lunch-end bell clanked once and went dumb, as if by magic. Usually it was followed by an immediate explosion of clatter, with the Second rushing to the door tripping over themselves, clearly showing that the air in the canteen had suddenly become impossible to breathe. They didn’t go anywhere this time. A couple of wheelchairs peeled o
ff the Pheasants’ table, circled the exit, and returned.

  “I detect a whiff of mayhem,” Jackal observed. “Can you feel it?”

  It was hard not to. As soon as we rose to go, we were intercepted by the delegation arriving from the table of the Sixth, three Hounds in all, and Laurus solemnly presented Sphinx with some kind of note.

  “‘Pompey requests the Leaders of all packs to assemble in the Coffeepot for an important discussion,’” Sphinx read out.

  He shrugged and passed the note to Blind.

  As soon as those words were said, everyone started talking at once. The silence was shattered. Logs began their rounds between the tables. Pheasants clustered together to better guard against a perceived assault.

  “This is an outrage!” Vulture shouted above the fevered din of voices. “People are in mourning here!”

  Pompey raised his hands in a mollifying gesture.

  “I commiserate,” he said. “But business is business.”

  Vulture scowled dismissively, and Birds reflected his grimace in a dozen bad mirrors.

  We were wheeling out in a throng of chattering, hopping Rats. Then there was a traffic jam at the doors, composed mostly of those who wanted to keep alongside us, trying to read our faces. The Great Game abruptly shifted into active mode.

  The sky was whitish outside the windows. The fog seemed to wrap the House in a big blob of cotton wool. And it also became very chilly. Like the temperature dropped several degrees in an instant. Or maybe it was just me getting the chills from all this.

  Near the Coffeepot the throng thinned out a bit. The Pheasants dropped away, and the rest coalesced into groups. The Leaders marched into the Coffeepot one after the other. Once they were gone, the volume of the conversation went down significantly. Everyone waited.

  The Rats were emitting muted snippets of music.

  “I told you,” Lary mumbled, chewing his unlit cigarette into shreds. “I warned you. And now this . . .”

  “So, what now? A rumble?” I asked, trying to sound casual. The way it came out almost made me gag.

  “No, a candlelit dinner, mon poilu,” Tabaqui snapped.

  Humpback said that there was no sense in all of us sticking around. He himself didn’t move an inch.

  “You’re right,” Sphinx said. “Anything important we’ll find out from Blind.”

  He also stayed put.

  Alexander gave Tubby a bread roll. Humpback lit a cigarette.

  Even knowing perfectly well that all of this was just a game, I still felt nervous. Everyone was in character a little too well.

  Finally the door of the Coffeepot opened. Pompey emerged first. He turned toward Hounds and stuck up his thumb. Hounds roared approvingly. Blind and Vulture came out together and shuffled away, immersed in a hushed conversation. Red never appeared at all. It was as if the others had eaten him whole in the course of the meeting.

  “Oh god,” Lary moaned when he noticed Pompey walking in our direction.

  The packs, having already started to disperse, quickly resumed their places in the dress circle.

  Pompey came closer. Tall, swarthy, with his chic Mohawk. But no bat, I noticed. Maybe it had already croaked.

  “Can we talk?” he asked Sphinx.

  “You already had a talk with Blind, what else do you want?”

  Pompey took out a cigarette. He stood there among us like he was in his own room. Not anxious at all. Even a little showy. For some reason, we were the anxious ones.

  “I’ve recently learned of this old Law,” Pompey explained between puffs. “It made me very sad. This, you know, prehistoric crap . . . And it’s exactly the reason I’ve dragged this out for so long. I just refused to believe it. I know all the guys were saying it was not in force anymore. But still . . .”

  Hounds drifted closer, not wanting to miss even a single word.

  “It is my opinion,” Pompey continued, looking distractedly over our heads, “that it was invented by cowardly Leaders. So that made me apprehensive, as you can imagine.”

  The invisible ice could be chipped off Sphinx with a pick.

  “But you’re not apprehensive anymore?” he asked.

  “I overcame that,” Pompey announced proudly.

  “Congratulations.”

  “But I would still like to make sure. Is your pack following it?”

  “No,” Sphinx said. “Anything else?”

  “You are behaving a bit rudely,” Pompey said, frowning. “In the big scheme of things I’m looking out for your own interest.”

  Tabaqui, behind Pompey’s back, very realistically imitated throwing up.

  “There’s no need,” Sphinx said. “We are all free.”

  “Well, that’s nice,” Pompey sighed with relief.

  “It’s not nice.”

  “You mean you’re in favor of that shit?”

  Sphinx shook his head. His look, directed at Pompey, was more calculating than anything else. Like he was weighing something in his mind, trying to come to a decision.

  “No,” he said finally and turned away. “It’s useless.”

  Pompey assumed a businesslike air. He even threw away the cigarette.

  “All right, out with it. What’s this about?”

  “Nothing. Where’s your bat?”

  This question took Pompey completely aback. At first he was surprised. Then offended.

  “Is that supposed to be funny?”

  “Not at all.”

  Pompey’s face darkened.

  “We’ll continue this conversation tomorrow. Bats and all. Maybe your head will clear up a bit by then.”

  “Maybe,” Sphinx agreed. And laughed. Really laughed, not faking it.

  I sighed, relieved. Finally someone blew it. Went out of character, spoiled the game for himself and others. I was really glad that he did, even though I couldn’t explain why. So people invented a game for themselves, what was so bad about that? I was sure that this was the end of it, that Sphinx’s laughter would now spread to others and everyone would abandon the script.

  None of that happened.

  Pompey feigned taking umbrage, said “Right. See you,” and stomped off to join with Hounds. The Sixth surrounded him, shielding him from us.

  Soon after, Rats, each in his own little cloud of music, slowly drifted away. There was nothing more that seemed to be happening in front of the Coffeepot. Tabaqui circled around on his Mustang, hanging over the side with his face almost to the floor, apparently looking for something. Alexander was pulling threads out of his sweater.

  “What are we waiting for here?” Humpback asked. “Or is this where the new place of encampment is?”

  “This is where the saliva of the Great Hound is,” Tabaqui piped happily, peering into something invisible on the floorboards. “I knew it! He spit right over here somewhere. He was really pissed, so it’s genuine hate spit. Someone stepped in it slightly, I’ll admit that, but still, putting the voodoo on him now would not be a problem at all.”

  “Don’t even think about touching that!” Sphinx barked.

  Tabaqui’s giggles became even more ecstatic.

  Humpback wheeled Tubby, covered in bread crumbs, past us, and I followed them. I desperately needed some coffee. I also needed to ask Black a couple of questions.

  When we reached the dorm, Blind was nowhere to be seen. Black was sitting on his bed. Tabaqui took all kinds of sacks and boxes out of the storage, dumped them in a huge pile, and proceeded to dive into it, emerging from time to time wearing something new and inquiring whether or not it suited him. Tubby bumped his head against the edge of his pen and started wailing. Alexander hauled him onto the common bed too.

  By the time the commotion died down a little, Black had already managed to make himself scarce, so I couldn’t ask him anything. I crawled over to Sphinx, lying there all mysterious and inaccessible with his feet up on the bed frame, and inquired what was in that prehistoric Law that Pompey was talking about.

  Until I asked the questio
n, everyone was seemingly busy with their own pursuits, but now they all quit what they were doing, came closer, and stared at the two of us.

  “I just adore Smoker,” Tabaqui mumbled, pulling another sack full of indescribable stuff closer to the bed. “Listen to the crisp way he frames his questions!”

  Humpback looked at Sphinx with what seemed like pity and passed me the coffee. Alexander was hanging off the bed frame, still holding the sugar bowl. These people were real experts in turning anything into a circus show. Must have been years of practice. I already regretted not having wheeled out after Black as soon as he left.

  Sphinx did not even deign to sit up. He lay looking up at the ceiling, his prosthetics folded up on his belly. He did explain, though. That the Law to which Pompey took such exception was called “the Law of Choice.” That it was so old that no one in the House remembered who invented it and when. And that it required any moron who followed it—that was exactly how Sphinx phrased it, “any moron”—to die for his Leader. If, for example, a coup was in the making, under this Law the Leader must be defended even at the cost of one’s life. Sphinx talked like he was quoting directly from some moldy textbook. In such lofty tones that at first I didn’t catch the full meaning of what was being said. Once I did, I almost spilled my coffee. Humpback, who was sitting next to me, gingerly propped up my cup. Tabaqui was in hysterics, giggling and snorting like crazy.

  “What’s choice got to do with it?”

  “It had to do with it that the Law could be ignored. In theory.”

  “Sounds very much like prehistoric crap,” I said, agreeing with Pompey.

  Tabaqui supplied that the ancestors were simple and austere people and therefore possessed nasty laws in great abundance. “Dark ages, Smoker, dark ages, believe you me.” And he started giggling again.

  I inquired whose ancestors he meant by that.

  “Ours, of course,” Jackal replied. “Right here.”

  “It could be that they thought this Law would protect Leaders from most coup attempts,” Sphinx suggested. “Apparently it even worked for a while. They assumed that the better the Leader, the more people would make their choice in his favor, and, correspondingly, the less chance the usurpers would have. Even though it’s obvious what it would inevitably degenerate into, if only you think about it for one minute.”