The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

  I wasn’t doing anything for them. Almost nothing. Even though miracles were as necessary for them as air and water, and there I was, silent, simply living among them, and all I wished was to really become one of them.

  I secretly gave them bits and pieces of miracles—so small that you could pass them around, stuff them in a pocket and then pretend there was nothing there, nothing at all. I was good at it. Until one of them discovered my secret. It was inevitable. They all had a keen sense of smell, the Tube and the venom of the multitudes on the outside never dulled it. And I was careless. Little Jackal knew that Alexander was not like anyone else. Blind suspected something. And Wolf . . . It’s funny and sad at the same time: he was the one I feared the least of all, and the one to whom I gave more of the forbidden miracles. The burning substance that clung to my hands when I passed them over his spine tried to poison me in the time it took to carry it to the sink. My palms swelled with his pain, and I was grateful for it. Gratitude and love, those were their lessons for me, and I came to expect those from them. Foolish. Sphinx knew what he was doing when he warned me that day: “There are to be no miracles. None, you hear?”

  If two are placed within the stuffy, soft-walled limits of the Cage, they are at the same time close and alone. Too many hours to spend this way, in closeness and isolation. And . . . “I’m not stupid, Alexander, I can feel it. Wolves can always feel things like that.” And “Don’t you trust me, goddamn it? Aren’t we friends?” I should have heard that, should have remembered the toothless grin and the gray mane of that other one who so loved to pepper his speech with “damn it.” I should have locked myself with a million locks there and then, as soon as I was given that warning, but I’d forgotten my previous lives. The warmth of this life melted my resolve, and I talked to him the same way I talked to Sphinx, offering myself to him, but he wasn’t Sphinx, not even close, I realized it right there, in the stifling confines of the Cage, when he bared his crooked fangs and smiled: “You’re mine now!” I realized that the trap had sprung, that it was already too late. I was chained again; not an angel this time but rather a demon, because that was what he needed, and I always morphed into whatever was needed, with only one exception. “Hey, quit whining! It’s not like I want a lot from you!” I cried and hugged his knees, I crawled at his feet like the least of the shaved heads, I screamed with the pain of the reincarnation. “What are you bawling about? I’m not hurting you, I’m not doing anything to you, leave my feet alone, you miserable weirdo!” I fled into the corner, but he pulled me out again, he shook me and slapped my cheeks with cold, detached curiosity. Of course I knew what he wanted. Wolf’s innermost wish was no secret from anyone. “I don’t want him dead, understand? I’m not a murderer. Let him just walk away. Leave the House, go into the Outsides and never return. Got that?” The walls like pillows in flowery chintz, white lights, his sweaty face and angry hands . . . And “Stop the hysterics! What’s so scary about what I’m asking?” What he was asking was hideous, but I couldn’t find the words to explain why. It’s better to kill someone than to make him a slave to your desires. Wolf didn’t know that.

  Are curses becoming a demon? Of course. But I didn’t do anything. I resolved to remain Alexander until the last possible moment, until I couldn’t anymore. Knowing that tomorrow the end would come, Gray House would learn the truth, and then I’d be torn apart by the seekers of miracles. Alexander would be no more. Someone else would take his place, and there would be a different House, without Sphinx, without Tabaqui, where I would be completely alone, like a gutted insect slapped between two pieces of glass to be studied through the thick lenses of a microscope. “I’ll tell everyone about you, miracle worker, every Pheasant will know, every stray dog. They’re going to tear you to pieces, understand?” I crawled away and lay on the floor. My head was swimming, needles pricked in my hands, I was burning up. My answer, my refusal, I buried deep inside my soul, along with the coming fall out of a window—or maybe off the roof, the roof was even better—and the broken rusty chain that could never again be used to bind me, forever and ever amen . . . Then the deliverance came, I freed myself of myself and roared away, through walls and ceilings, through clouds and rain, into the burning blackness of space.

  For two days after that he left me alone, did not remind me. But I was tired of the fear. It all happened by itself. My curse pierced him in the night, and he did not wake up. I ran away from my sin, I locked myself in the bathroom, I prayed and cried. I went looking for the way up into the attic. I didn’t find it, neither the attic nor the way to get there. Then I went down to the yard and climbed up the fire escape. I stood at the edge of the roof when the sun came up, bathing the world in gold and turquoise, and the swifts jetted overhead with joyous noise, and still I stood there, unable to make myself jump. It turned out to be harder, much harder than I thought. I was all swollen with tears, I swayed and pleaded with the wind to help me, but it was too feeble for that. Then I heard a horrified scream—I imagined it was Sphinx—and my legs pushed me on their own accord. I took a step, slipped, scrambled for purchase on the rounded edge of the steel plate, fell, and grabbed it with my hands. And immediately realized that I was not going to let go. No matter what. Not if I had to hang like that for a long time, not if I got tired, not even by accident. I hung there and cried. Then I pulled myself up and lay flat on the roof, legs still dangling. The palms of my hands were on fire, there was blood on them, and also something was trickling down my leg and pooling in my shoe. I knew that I was forever a coward, and I hated myself. The sun was beating down on me. The edge of the roof dug under my ribs. One of the girls saw me out of the window of their wing, I heard her shouting and pulled farther up, so I was fully on the roof. But I could not get up and climb down. This was how the two long-limbed Spiders found me. They grabbed me and took me with them.

  Later I tried doing it again, in a different way, but it didn’t work the second time either . . . Blind came to visit me in the Sepulcher. He had on this one-size-fits-all white gown; it would have fit two more of him easily. He climbed on the bed, sat there cross-legged, and listened to my silence.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “There is a great sin on me,” I said. “I cannot be redeemed.”

  After Wolf I knew better than to trust them. I waited. What would this one say? The one hiding inside himself. Not nice at all, the way Wolf had seemed. Quite the opposite. It could have been anything. He could turn into Sphinx. I remembered the oath I gave him and then broke: “If you want to stay with us . . .” If he did that, I’d have to go away. Or he could turn into Wolf and make a razor blade out of me. I never told him who it was that I was supposed to forever tether to a post beyond the House gates. He could have decided he owed me something, and I didn’t want that.

  “Come back,” he said. “No one is going to find out.”

  “Why?” I said. “And how do I pay for it?”

  “Stupid,” Blind said. And left.

  So I went back. Life goes on, and my sin is still on me. While I live, it will be thus. I have no way to atone. Ghosts constantly stream through these walls, but only one of them bares his fangs at me. He is everywhere. On the windowsill when I pull away the curtain, waiting for me in the shower, even at the bottom of the bath when I am about to climb in, looking at me with burning eyes from underwater. I am almost used to it now, and don’t go to pieces anymore every time we meet. I go to bed later than before and rise earlier, to make sure my nights are dreamless—because in the dreams he can do whatever he wants with me. I’m tired of him, and he of me, but we cannot get rid of each other. The pills help, but only for a while.

  Every morning I go down to the yard to feed the stray dogs running around in the predawn hours on the other side of the fence, in the Outsides. They know I’m going to show up and wait for me there. All it takes is the secreted half of my dinner, and they are ready to talk to me about their vagabond life, and listen to me talk about mine. They live in a pack, and so do I. We have a
lot to discuss. I never ask them if they know what sin is. But I suspect they do. Sometimes, very rarely, I work miracles for them: healing gashes on their paws, growing fur over burns, or conjuring a phantom of the Great White Bitch that resembles a polar bear a bit. They like to chase it along the fence. Then we go our separate ways. They leave to tend to their quarrelsome business, and I return to the House. Occasionally I meet Blind in the hallway, as he’s returning from his nightly wanderings. More often on my way down to the yard, but sometimes also on the way back. I often think that if I were to come out at night he would be everywhere, in myriad different disguises, just like my ghost. But I never go out at night. I’m afraid of the dark.

  I’m afraid of the dark and of my own dreams. I’m afraid of being alone and of walking into empty rooms. But most of all I’m afraid I might end up in the Cage again, this time by myself. If that were to happen most likely I’d stay there forever. Or snap and bust out of it in some nonhuman way, and that’s even worse. I don’t know if I’m going to burn in hell or not. Probably yes. If it exists. I can only hope that it doesn’t.

  TABAQUI

  DAY THE THIRD

  They roused him with muffins—they roused him with ice—

  They roused him with mustard and cress—

  They roused him with jam and judicious advice—

  They set him conundrums to guess.

  —Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark

  By the time I pry open my eyes, the morning has already morphed into the day. Guests are gone, as are all traces of them ever having been here. Alexander sweeps out the broken glass and cigarette butts. Lary is sitting all forlorn, his head wrapped in a towel. Someone seems to have put thistles in my eyes and filled my throat with especially scratchy saliva.

  “Hey,” I say in a frail voice. “What’s the time?”

  Alexander drops the broom and stares at me in horror.

  “Must be dying,” Lary says to him, ruefully shaking his betoweled noggin.

  Al gasps and runs out, forgetting to close the door behind him. I shouldn’t have scared him like that. A simple recitation of the list of all the places where it hurts would have sufficed. I already regret what I said. Though it’s flattering, to be capable of arousing an emotional response of this magnitude.

  “And you had to choose the first day of the new Law for it,” Lary continues selfishly.

  “No one chooses the day of their death,” I say.

  The pack has an entire arsenal of treatments for every ailment, mostly contradictory. First Humpback dutifully pokes me in various places as prescribed by ancient Chinese wisdom. Then, following Sphinx’s method, I am stuffed into a bath hot enough to cook me alive. I do not protest, because Sphinx’s method knows only two variations: scalding hot or freezing cold. They fish me out, pull a sweater over my naked body, slather my back with something that feels like fire, wrap a scarf around my neck, and put socks on my feet, preceded by a thorough alcohol rub.

  At this point in the course of treatment I no longer can distinguish whose method is which and try to rip off all of that stuff, but they hold me rather fast while Blind produces a jar of honey from his secret stash, a very small one, and proudly parades it before me. As if I’m still capable of being moved by such things. Then they feed it to me, and force me to wash it down with milk. I have to suffer it until I begin melting under the layers they’ve wrapped me in, sweating milk and coughing out cream.

  Pity me, who is in favor of only one method of healing the sick: tender loving care.

  Sphinx entertains me by reading from The Mahabharata. Humpback plays the flute. Lary mashes lemons with sugar in a bowl, while Blind keeps watch, preventing me from slipping away. I grow so tired of these ministrations that I manage to fall asleep inside the fiery, honey-infused cocoon, and all the sarcastic repartee regarding tormentors and torturers, ready to escape from me and enlighten the pack, remains unsaid and tickles me all through the night, insinuating itself into my sweaty dreams.

  TABAQUI

  DAY THE FOURTH

  “For, although common Snarks do no manner of harm,

  Yet, I feel it my duty to say,

  Some are Boojums—” The Bellman broke off in alarm,

  For the Baker had fainted away.

  —Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark

  By next morning my sore throat is gone. I myself am almost gone as well. All that’s left are bones and some kind of syrupy substance. At the physical everyone remarks on my perky countenance and milky scent. Mentions of milk make me want to throw up, but this detail happily passes unnoticed by Spiders. Considering the atrocious torture I’ve been subjected to, I came out of it remarkably well.

  The days of the physicals are always on the jittery side, because you never know what the pesky Arthropods might uncover in your internals. And when they confirm that there’s nothing wrong with you personally, it’s time to start worrying about everyone else, and the rest of the day is taken up by recuperation of the nervous system. So those days are mostly quiet, given to apprehension and then exhaustion.

  Already filtered through eight different tests and a swarm of Spiders, but still a center of attention as the weakest link in the pack’s chain, I lounge on the pile of blankets with Humpback’s gift, a packet of walnuts in the shells. I crack and eat them, chasing them with raisins, and a thought occurs—it’s not that bad, being a convalescent. On the other hand, I’m not allowed out into the hallway, and therefore not able to look at the girls and smell for myself the new Law in action. Sphinx keeps saying that there’s nothing interesting going on out there, but I don’t believe him. How can he know what is or isn’t going on in other places when he’s right here in the dorm? Also, I’d like to check up on my dragon. I haven’t had a chance to look at it properly yet. But both breakfast and lunch are served to me in bed, and even Sphinx, charged with guarding me, takes the meals without leaving his post. So I’m left with nuts and raisins. And they are about to run out.

  “If you keep grumbling, I’ll invite Long Gaby,” Sphinx says threateningly. “Then you’ll have your new Law right here in all its inimitable glory.”

  “I’ll have a coffee, please,” I say to Alexander, and to Sphinx I reply, “You’re bluffing. You’re not man enough.”

  “You’re this close to getting it,” he warns.

  But all of that becomes irrelevant, because Long comes by herself. Without waiting for any invitation from any of us. Slams the door and saunters in with that giraffe-like gait. Plops down on Alexander’s bed, crosses her legs.

  “Well, hello, dudes,” she rasps.

  The skirt is almost nonexistent, and we are treated to a view of the elastic on top of the black stockings and a band of white skin above it. Great legs, no argument there. Something to feast the eyes on, especially as compared to the face. Black lifts up his glasses. His eyes open so wide they’re almost square. He stares at the legs and then at Sphinx.

  “What the hell’s that?” he says.

  “That is me, dearest,” Gaby wheezes. “Who did you think it was?”

  Black blackens. He’s still unaware of the whole business with the locked door, and now he’s imagining things that are doubtless intriguing but unfortunately do not have anything to do with reality. He thumps the book down and rounds on Sphinx.

  “Was this your idea?”

  “Black, come on,” Sphinx sighs. “Of course not. You seem to have a very strange impression of me.”

  “Whose, then? You were mentioning her just now!”

  “Now that was a joke. Besides, what’s your problem? The new Law is in effect, everyone is free to invite whomever they want.”

  “That’s right,” Gaby pipes in, lighting up. “Chill, man. Who knows, maybe someday it’s going to be your lucky day too.”

  “Who?” Black screams, ripping off his glasses. “Who invited you?”

  “Blind.” Gaby winks. “Like the boss of your boss, unless I am mistaken.”

  Black sits back down
. At first he seems paralyzed. Then he pulls the book back and buries himself in it. Looking right through it. Gaby puffs. I resume teasing the nuts out of the shells. Looks like a very promising development.

  Sphinx’s polite comments regarding the weather and the teachers result only in Long snorting merrily and recrossing her legs, which are impossible not to look at. So I don’t fight the urge and gawk freely. Sphinx does as well. Humpback and Alexander seem to prefer studying the ceiling. Finally Gaby becomes bored just sitting there, gets up, and starts pacing about the room.

  “What’s this you have here? And this? Ni-ice . . .” Boobs on the table, butt sticking out in our direction, oohing over the record stacks. “Oh, wow. Cool stuff. I think I heard this one. And the one on the B-side here is, like, the shit! I didn’t know you guys were into this.”