The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

  Smoker looks at Sphinx indignantly.

  “Sphinx, don’t make Tabaqui this great guru figure. Please! Just admit that he’s of a privileged class. That he can get away with things others can’t.”

  Sphinx nods.

  “He is of a privileged class. And he can get away with things others can’t. Happy now? I didn’t think so. What is it you actually want?”

  Smoker doesn’t answer. Sphinx leaves the landing and starts down the first-floor corridor. Smoker follows him a few feet behind. He’s so hurt he can’t speak. He drives along and thinks about how hard the black sheep have it. How no one likes them.

  “Maybe I’m spoiled,” Sphinx says, not turning his head. “By Alexander. His wordless understanding. Or even Noble, who was too proud to ask questions. Maybe I’m biased, or simply irritated. But I also see you behaving very strangely, Smoker. Like there’s something I am supposed to ask forgiveness for. From you.”

  Smoker catches up with him.

  “Is it true you used to beat Noble, forcing him to crawl?”

  Sphinx stops.

  “It is a truth. Black’s truth.”

  “But did it happen?”

  “It did.”

  The first-floor corridor—lantern-like lights, linoleum crisscrossed by wheelchair tracks. Someone is torturing the piano in the lecture hall. Hounds yip in the changing room. Sphinx takes a quick look inside all the doors they’re passing. He’s looking for Blind, and he keeps thinking: Is it possible that Smoker doesn’t see how like a street this place is? Doesn’t smell the soot in the air, doesn’t feel the snow falling invisibly?

  They meet Blind at the very end of the corridor. He is knocking the stuffing out of a vending machine, hoping to get back the coin it swallowed.

  “Thirsty?” Sphinx asks.

  “Not anymore.”

  One last punch, and the machine spits out a paper cup. Blind picks it up.

  “Nine,” he says. “Nor a drop to drink, in any of them.”

  “Blind, this machine has been dispensing nothing but empty cups for the past hundred years.”

  Next to them Bubble, from the Third, is roaring down the highway, slamming into the oncoming cars and shaking the game console.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have met Red in these parts?”

  “What happened to your voice?” Blind inquires. “You sound hoarse.”

  “Safeguarding the pack’s property from long-legged sluts,” Sphinx says darkly.

  “Oh? Gaby has been?”

  Sphinx is overcome with a burning desire to kick Blind. Shatter his ankle, make the dear Leader lame for a while. A long while.

  “She has,” he manages, restraining himself. “And I sincerely hope that she won’t again. That you are going to take care of that.”

  Blind listens intently, head to one side, then steps behind the machine, taking his legs out of Sphinx’s reach.

  “My bad,” he says. “I shall be more careful next time. Who’s that with you? Smoker?”

  “Yeah. I took him out for a walk.”

  “He’s uneasy, isn’t he,” Blind says indifferently. “Didn’t I tell you? Black damaged him.”

  Smoker, mute with indignation, looks up at them both. Two shameless, self-absorbed bastards discussing him as if he weren’t here. Bubble’s screen switches off, the machine squeaks the first few measures of the Marche Funèbre at him. He listens to it bare-headed.

  In the lecture hall, pimply Laurus pushes the stool away from the piano and dabs his forehead with a handkerchief.

  “Now do something less boring,” the audience demands.

  Laurus smiles haughtily at no one in particular. These people know nothing about real jazz, and there’s no use in trying to explain. The wheelers in collars burst out in applause. They applaud the smile, not the music.

  Smoker, abandoned, drives around the first floor. Smelling the soot of the streets. He pointedly wheeled away from Sphinx and Blind, and is now regretting having done that. He should have stayed and listened to what else they had to say about him. Once the first angry flash subsided, Smoker began to suspect that what he had heard was meant for his benefit. And that once he left they switched to something unrelated. And that Sphinx received another confirmation that he, Smoker, doesn’t know how to listen.

  “To hell with you,” he says. “I don’t have to listen to your stupid remarks.”

  “Whose?” someone asks probingly.

  Smoker raises his eyes and meets the Cheshire Cat smile beaming at him, as performed by Red.

  “Nobody’s,” he mutters distractedly.

  He still can’t get used to members of other packs engaging him in conversation. Their readiness to actually exchange words confuses him, as if he were still a Pheasant.

  Angry at himself for that, he says swiftly, “Sphinx and Blind. They were talking about me right in my face, like I wasn’t there. It really pissed me off.”

  “Woooow,” Red drawls, his smile becoming even wider. “Lofty stuff. Not for the likes of little old me.”

  Smoker winces. He’s being made fun of again. But the innate respect for a Leader, albeit a total buffoon such as Red, prevents him from turning around on the spot and leaving.

  Red proceeds to proffer a pack of cigarettes like it’s no big deal, then flops down on the floor and lights up himself. His hair is the color of caked blood, and his lips are just as bright, so it looks like he’s wearing lipstick. Chin scraped while shaving, a bundle of dried chicken bones around his neck. In a word—weird, as all Rats are, but even more so up close.

  “Red,” Smoker says, surprising himself. “What do you know about Mother Ann?”

  Red throws back his head. The shades flash with the reflections of the hallway lights.

  “Not much,” he says and drops the ash from the cigarette right on his pants, white with the flower ornament—staggeringly dirty pants. “History is not my forte. Looks like she was the principal here at the end of the last century. Religious as all get out. Saints talking to her personally, that kind of thing. Joan of Arc gone to seed. I guess being a nun would do that to you. The hospital wing got added to the House on her watch. Before that they only had this one puny room with a nurse and two beds. Also you had to trek over to the town for every little thing. Back then the House was in the boondocks.”

  “How did you get to know all that?”

  Smoker is astonished at Red’s knowledge. Also at the fact that he can apparently talk in a normal, human way. From what he’d observed, Rats communicated mostly in grunts.

  “I have no idea,” Red says with a shrug. “Everyone kind of knows it. See, it’s this way. When you want to find something here, you go dig in the old papers. There are stacks and stacks of them in the basement. If you’re looking for something specific, it could be tough. The newer stuff is closer to the entrance, and the really old ones are in the cabinets by the walls.”

  Smoker winces again, this time at the thought that Red—yes, Red!—could dig through musty papers in search of the House’s history. Jeez! If someone were to have asked Smoker half an hour ago, he would have confidently said that Red was illiterate.

  “That’s where Tabaqui got it from.”

  Smoker isn’t asking, more stating a fact. But Red hears a question.

  “Tabaqui!” he laughs. “Tabaqui got it more than everyone else put together. He was the one doing the digging. Digging, sorting, and making us read that crap. You should ask him, he’ll tell you in vivid detail.”

  Smoker puffs so hard it makes him cough. Waving the smoke out of his face, he says hoarsely, “Oh, he did. Just didn’t think to mention the documents.”

  “Yeah, likes to play coy,” Red agrees, yawning. “That’s the way he ticks.”

  Sphinx appears before them.

  “I was looking for you,” he says to Red.

  Red sits up straighter.

  “Looks like you found me.”

  “You fixed up Blind with Gaby. All right, I suppose that if I don’t li
ke it, that’s my problem. But I’m not going to tolerate regular raids on our room. I’m warning you, if she ever tries to show up again . . .”

  Red jumps up, diligently hamming up being scared. Smoker can’t stop himself from laughing.

  “You’re going to regret it,” Sphinx concludes. “Am I clear?”

  “Better than clear. But what if Blind . . .”

  “I’ve already talked to Blind.”

  Red takes a clownish bow.

  “I’ll do my very best. Count on me anytime. Zeal and eagerness, that’s my motto, amigo!”

  “Cut it out,” Sphinx says.

  “Cutting it out right now!”

  Smoker snorts again. Sphinx and Red seem not to notice him. Sphinx studies Red’s features thoughtfully, as if trying to recall something. Red scratches himself.

  “Anything else I can do for you today?” he says.

  “If it’s not too much trouble, could you take off the glasses?” Sphinx asks.

  “Ah, catching me at my word. That’s not very nice. But what the hell. Don’t get used to it, though.”

  He turns his back to the corridor, looks around furtively, and sweeps off the glasses.

  And disappears. At least, that’s what Smoker sees. That Red is no longer there. Dark eyes framed by copper eyelashes stare dolefully at Sphinx, and the delicate face of their owner belongs to some stranger who cannot possibly be Red. The shaved eyebrows, the scratched chin, the sickening smirk—gone. Those eyes, the eyes of an angel, erased them, transforming the face beyond recognition. The apparition lasts all of two seconds. When Red puts the glasses back on the angel vanishes. What’s left is the familiar perverted neurotic.

  “Oops,” he says, licking his lips. “The fun is over.”

  “Thanks,” Sphinx says, without even a trace of irony. “I missed you, Death. Really missed you.”

  “Keep missing,” Red snarls. “There’s no Death anymore. So let’s leave the strip show for some other time.”

  “Red, I’m sorry.” Smoker interrupts the conversation. “I understand it’s none of my business, but these glasses really make you look ugly.”

  “Why do you think I’m wearing them? To look cute, maybe? Also, why do you think everyone in the Rat Den sleeps with his head in a sleeping bag? Same reason. So that I don’t have to duct-tape this fucking optical device to my face at night. Let me tell you, my exalted position does not really jibe with looking like a manga character.”

  “I figured that out recently,” Smoker says. “That Leaders in the House are supposed to look like walking corpses. I wonder why.”

  “Smart boy,” Red says. “You figured right. And one more thing: even for an honest-to-goodness former corpse it’s not an easy job to look like one. I’m not a piece of blue cheese, you know.”

  “How do you know what they look like?”

  “I happen to have a certain insight.”

  Red giggles, bows to Smoker, rattling the chicken bones around his neck, and departs. Disgusting red-lipped fool, despicable Rat Leader. With insights into reanimated corpses.

  “You know, Sphinx,” Smoker says, looking at Red’s receding back, “I used to play this game with myself: I imagined changing people’s clothes. Leaders, mostly. Undressed them in my head, shaved, changed hairstyles, things like that. It was very entertaining. Except I never could get anywhere with Red. I thought that was because of the glasses. Because they obscure most of his face. But now I see that I couldn’t because it is simply not him under those glasses.”

  Sphinx looks at Smoker with sudden interest.

  “Strange games you have, Smoker. Uncommon.”

  He doesn’t ask any more questions, doesn’t say anything at all. He just leaves because someone called to him, but Smoker is so encouraged by this show of apparent interest that, on the way back to the dorm, his mood becomes almost sunny. Could it be that things are not as bad as he feared? That even Sphinx is capable of normal human interaction? His conversation with Red was almost friendly, after all. While rattling up in the elevator, he hears the giggling of a couple on the stairs and the wet sound of their lips separating. On the landing above them, someone’s playing the guitar.

  Girls. The new Law.

  In the Fourth’s bathroom, Lary, perched on the edge of the toilet seat, takes out an empty compact, opens it, and starts squeezing out the pimples using the little mirror, wincing and hissing in pain. Still hissing, he dabs on some aftershave, closes the bottle, and secretes it behind the commode.

  Vulture is curled up on the still-made bed in the Third’s dorm. His pant leg is rolled up and the exposed knee is wrapped in a wet towel. It isn’t helping.

  “More music,” he growls, not opening the eyes, and Birds trip over one another to turn up the boombox volume. Elephant looks at his Leader, then toddles over to the window. There, on the windowsill, in a festive red pot, stands Louis the cactus. Vulture’s favorite. Its flower hangs down forlornly, a sad shard of the desert.

  “Well?” Elephant whispers to the cactus accusingly. “Can’t you see? He’s hurting. Help him.”

  Snowflakes, barely visible, stream past the window. First snow of the year. Elephant lifts his head to admire them and forgets about Vulture.

  In the First’s classroom, Pheasant Gin, with a black ribbon around his arm, calls to order the “Memorial service for the dearly departed brother Ard. Ghoul.” Pheasants rustle paper sheets with suitable poems selected for the occasion and sigh, waiting for their turn to speak.

  In the library Black is thumbing through the encyclopedia, the entries starting with F. Between the pages he spots a folded scrap of paper. He unfolds it. Freedom can only be found inside you, someone is telling him in slanted handwriting.

  Smoker is studying a catalogue of Bosch’s paintings. When he looks up he sees Tabaqui staring at him.

  “Why the long face?” Jackal asks.

  “Why not?”

  “Listen to him,” Sphinx said.

  Smoker listens.

  “Why?” Jackal asks again.

  He takes only what he needs.

  “Sometimes it’s like I don’t know you guys at all.”

  Tabaqui generously throws open both of his vests.

  “Well, here I am! For all to see. What’s not to know?”

  Under the vests he has on a grubby T-shirt. With red giraffes prancing on blue background.

  Dinner is over. Counselors, up on their third floor, shut the House out behind double locks and try to convince themselves it doesn’t exist. Kitchen workers start their cars and roll out of the yard. The first snow, wet and sparse, becomes momentarily visible in the headlights.

  At the bottom of the stairs going up to the girls’ quarters, Lary, wearing the prettiest of the shirts left behind by Noble, is saying good-bye to Needle, a tall blonde girl.

  “There’s nothing to be scared of,” he keeps saying. “They’re nice guys, you’ll see. They are going to like you. I promise.”

  Needle is shaking her head. Her bangs fall over her right eye.

  “No way! I’m not going there. Don’t even think about it!”

  Lanky Gaby stuffs the photograph of Marilyn back under the mattress and sits on top, pulling her black-stockinged legs closer under her to keep from the cold. There are three more identical pairs of stockings draped over the heater, drying. Gaby takes them one by one and puts her hand inside, trying to find two with the least number of holes, so that she can scratch together a decent-looking pair.

  In the First, Pheasants, waving black ribbons, break out in a collective song, doing their best to “bravely fight back the tears at this trying hour.” Their singing is exhausting for Smoker in the Fourth, even though he does not hear it. Cards float down on the blanket—Tabaqui is playing solitaire. Sphinx is toying with the cat: he flips it over with the nose of his shoe and then deftly avoids the sharp claws. Black is lying on Humpback’s bed, face to the wall. He can’t be seen from below, but everyone knows he’s there. He’s not asleep. He is read
ing Humpback’s poems written on the wall in crayon. He feels ashamed for doing it, like someone not averting his eyes from a private letter left open in front of them.

  The lights go out. The last Log stragglers left in the corridors rush to their respective dorms. An Asian-looking girl in a wheelchair, Doll, switches on a small green flashlight on a chain and raises it above her head. Beauty walks next to her, miraculously keeping his balance even in the dark. Doll is beautiful. Petite, with a remarkably smooth, cloudless face. Logs that are running by, lips at the ready for the next piece of gossip, giggle and slam into walls, unable to look away from her.

  Black has moved to his own bunk. He’s trying to remember the poem that he especially liked, the one about the old man who pulled the dog out of the river. Up above him, Humpback is industriously rubbing the wall with his saliva-moistened handkerchief, erasing that very poem. Smoker sighs and tosses about in his sleep. The nightlight throws pink highlights on the bumps and folds of the rumpled blanket.

  Between the bumps and folds of the rumpled blanket a white building starts to grow. It inches upward, becoming a twenty-two-story tower. The little dots of the windows light up. Smoker flies up to the fourteenth floor and peers into the window. Father, Mother, and Brother, all rigid and unmoving, creepily resembling mannequins, sit on the sofa in the living room and look back at him.

  He flies inside, awkwardly flapping his arms and wagging the lower part of his body.

  “There you are, sonny . . . Finally. Come sit with us.”

  Now he’s in his bed, the curtains are drawn. It’s dark in the room. The floor starts to vibrate.

  “What was that?”

  Like a marching column, they enter in rows. Identical black-and-white magpie clothes, identical haircuts. Pheasants.

  “Come on . . . Get up,” comes the squeaky voice of the late (he died! I remember now!) Ard. Ghoul, and the long limp noodle of his finger aims directly at the middle of Smoker’s forehead. That place immediately erupts in pain, as if he got hit there. “Up!”