The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

  “I doubt Blind looked particularly pretty when tripped up,” Sphinx mutters. “To say nothing about tears and lacy underpants. You’re over-philosophizing it, Jackal.”

  “I thought I specifically mentioned the civilized societies? Of course, here it’s the other way around.”

  “Let’s get some sleep,” Blind says. “Or next thing we know, Black was crazy about me and that’s why he was pummeling me all day long. To marvel at how beautiful I was when in tears.”

  “Why not?” Sphinx sneers. “A fascinating concept. Except it would mean that with me it was simply love at first sight. Black clearly liked my tears much more than yours. And I had such a lot of them to share with him.”

  “Guys, will you stop with the gossiping?” Humpback’s voice drones from the upper bunk. “He’s sleeping right here, you know, and you’re babbling this god-awful nonsense about him.”

  “Play us something soft, Shaggy,” Sphinx asks, looking up. “A nighttime serenade. Jackal chased away our dreams, and all that’s left is gossip. Distract us.”

  “Yeah, go on. That way no one sleeps,” Blind says.

  Humpback stirs, then swings his legs down and begins playing. I jump into the burrow, intending to fall asleep to his flute, so I need to hurry before he stops. But I don’t pull my head in yet because Sphinx and Blind are still up, which means they might still discuss something interesting. Except they don’t. So there we are. They’re silent, I’m silent. Humpback plays, warding off the gossip.

  THE HOUSE

  INTERLUDE

  Grasshopper felt something as soon as he stepped inside the Tenth. A change not apparent to the eye. Ancient was hunched over the chess board cogitating, chin on knuckles.

  Grasshopper crouched down on the floor.

  Ancient never greeted him. He behaved as if Grasshopper didn’t leave and come back, as if their meetings were not separated by hours and days. Grasshopper had gotten used to that and had even come to like it.

  He looked at the amulet box. Empty. Ajar, it lay on the mattress next to the board. There. That’s what’s changed. Why?

  Ancient traced Grasshopper’s gaze and let the long fingers rummage inside the box. Then brought them closer to his eyes and shook off the dust.

  “No more left. I’ve given it all away.”

  Grasshopper craned his neck and peeked in.

  “Really, all of it?” he asked hesitantly.

  “Yes.”

  Ancient clicked the top shut and put the empty box away.

  “So there will be no more amulets?”

  Dejectedly, Grasshopper waited for an explanation. A lock of hair fell over his eyes, but he was afraid to move to push it away.

  “I’m leaving. Going home.”

  Here, in Ancient’s room, these words sounded strange. Like he wasn’t the one who actually said them. How could he have a home? Ancient was where he was. He had been born here, he grew up here, and he became ancient here. That was obvious to anyone looking at him and talking to him.

  Grasshopper shuffled his shoe over the dark wine-stain spots.

  “Why?”

  Ancient moved one of the pieces and flicked another off with the fingernail.

  “I am nineteen,” he said. “It’s well past time.”

  These words also shifted something. Just like his mention of a home. He couldn’t be any age. He was outside of age, outside of time itself—until he broke the spell by saying the number. And it still didn’t explain anything.

  “Everyone else is staying until summer. Why aren’t you?”

  “It smells bad here,” Ancient said. “It smells worse and worse. You know what I’m talking about. You should be able to sense it. It’s already pretty bad, but it’s going to get much worse at the end. I know. I’ve seen it before. I remember the last graduation, the one before ours. That’s why I want to leave earlier.”

  “So you’re running away? From your own people?”

  “I am,” Ancient agreed. “Legging it, you might say. Without the legs.”

  “You mean you’re scared?” Grasshopper said doubtfully.

  Ancient scratched his chin with the base of the queen.

  “Yes,” he said. “I am scared. There will come a time, much later, when you’ll understand. Then you too are going to be scared. Graduation is a bad time. It’s a step into the void. Not many can simply take it. It is the year of fear, of the crazies and the suicides, of insanity and nervous breakdowns. All of that disgusting stuff that spews out of those who are afraid. There’s nothing worse than that. Better to leave before it starts. Which is what I’m doing. Because I happen to have that opportunity.”

  “So you’re making the brave choice,” Grasshopper said.

  Now it was Ancient’s turn to be surprised.

  “I wouldn’t say that. More the opposite.”

  Grasshopper wanted to ask about himself and his amulet, but didn’t. Ancient was preparing for the step into the void, for the brave choice that looked like the cowardly one. This was the moment to be silent and not interfere. So Grasshopper was silent.

  “I am taking those two gluttons with me,” Ancient said, pointing in the direction of the fish tank. “Along with their room. They’re not going to even notice. They won’t know that they’ve been moved to the Outsides. Sometimes I wish I could trade places with them.”

  Grasshopper looked at the fish.

  He’s afraid . . .

  He pitied Ancient, and he pitied himself. What’s going to become of this room? The Den of the Purple Ratter. Without Ancient in it, it would lose its identity. No longer the Den, just dorm number ten.

  “No, I haven’t forgotten about you.” Ancient placed the queen on the black square. “It’s strange how often I’ve been thinking of you. Why is that, do you think?”

  “Because of the amulet?”

  “What’s the amulet got to do with it? You don’t need it. You don’t need the tasks either. You’re wide open. You just absorb it all.”

  “I do need it.” Grasshopper swayed on his heels. “Very much. Ever since I got it, it’s all been . . . right.”

  “I’m glad for it.” Ancient shook a cigarette out of the pack. “That it came out better than all the others. And also for you.”

  Grasshopper suddenly grew agitated.

  “What happened with the last graduation? What was it you saw back then that you don’t want to see again?”

  Ancient fiddled with the cigarette, not lighting it.

  “What’s the point in talking about it? You’ll see it all come summer. With your own eyes.”

  “I need to know now. Tell me.”

  Ancient glanced at him from under the half-closed lids.

  “The last time was like a sinking ship,” he said. “This time is going to be worse. But don’t be afraid. Watch and remember. Then you can avoid the mistakes made by others. We are all given two graduations for a reason. One is to watch, so that you can know. The other is your own.”

  “Why is it going to be worse?”

  Ancient sighed.

  “The House had one leader back then. Now there are two. It’s the House divided. That’s always bad. And in the year of graduation that’s the worst thing. No more questions now. It might be that I’m simply wrong, talking nonsense. It’s going to be either this way or that way or, more likely, something completely different will happen, something that neither I nor you nor anyone else can even imagine. Predictions are useless here.”

  “All right,” Grasshopper said, nodding.

  The look Ancient was giving him felt strange. A faraway look.

  He’s saying his good-byes, Grasshopper realized. It’s still a long way till summer, but he’s saying good-bye now. There will be no more conversations like this one.

  Ancient sighed and turned to the board.

  “Come closer. I am going to teach you this game.”

  His fingers rushed from square to square, setting the pieces.

  “Your army shall be White. Mine is B
lack. These are pawns. They only move forward one square. Except their first move can be two squares at once.”

  Ancient looked at Grasshopper again.

  “Don’t think about bad things now,” he said. “Empty your head of everything I’ve just said. Now look here . . .”

  He climbed out of the attic through the window and looked around. Most of all it resembled a desert. This gray, bare, parched desert, with aerials in place of cacti. Flat, except for the solitary hill of the other attic, looking tiny from up here. And the sky, all around him. Grasshopper clung to the window, afraid to venture away. Wolf winked at him and climbed out to the roof. The iron plates rattled.

  He sat down, dangling his feet, and called to Grasshopper, “Come on. Put your foot on the box here.”

  Grasshopper climbed up and cautiously lowered himself next to him. Once he got his breathing under control he could take in the view. They were at the very top of the House. Even higher than the roof. You could even see the Outsides from here, brightly striped, washed clean by the rains, ready for the summer. The dump surrounded by the fence, the round tops of the trees, the jagged remains of the crumbled walls—where, to their parents’ utter horror, the Outsides children liked to play. He could see the bright splotches of their raincoats among the ruins even now. A boy on a bicycle rolled down the street. Grasshopper looked in the opposite direction. The street was wider on that side, and in the distance he could glimpse the same bus stop from where he’d walked with his mother on the day he first entered the House.

  “If they find out I dragged you here, they’re going to kill me,” Wolf said. “But this is a really good place. Do you like it here?”

  “I don’t know,” Grasshopper said honestly. “I have to think about it.”

  He looked down again.

  “I guess it’s a good thinking place. Except I’m not sure if the thinking here is of good or bad things.”

  “Tell me what you’re thinking about, then,” Wolf said. “I’ll tell you if it’s good or bad.”

  Grasshopper watched a bus as it disappeared from view. Then he looked back at Wolf.

  “Promise you’re not going to laugh. In the place where we used to live, I mean, Mom, Grandma, and I, there was this park near our house. On one side, and on the other side this huge store, and a little farther down, the playground. The store sold mirrors. And other things too. Our house was right in the middle of all this. On the same street as the park and the mirror store. You know what I mean?”

  Wolf shook his head.

  “No, not really.”

  “When I remember our house, I also remember all of that. The way it stood on the street, and what was around it. You see?”

  “I guess so,” Wolf said, rubbing his ear. “There is nothing like that here.”

  “Yeah, nothing. Worse than nothing. It’s like all of this has been painted on,” Grasshopper said, nodding at the streets. “A picture.”

  “And if you go out,” Wolf said thoughtfully, looking down, “you’d punch a hole in it. Tear the paper and leave a hole. What’s behind it?”

  “I don’t know,” Grasshopper said. “That’s exactly what I was thinking about.”

  “Nobody knows,” Wolf said. “The only way to find out is to do it. I don’t want to think about this.”

  “Then it’s not a good thinking place. When you don’t want to think about something, but it still thinks about itself. And how does it feel to you?”

  “With me it’s different,” Wolf said, pulling his legs up and placing his elbows on his knees. “I like the roof. It’s the House and at the same time it isn’t. Like an island in the middle of the ocean. Or like a ship. Or the edge of the world. Like you could crash straight down into outer space from here—falling, falling, never reaching the bottom. I used to play here by myself. Imagining all that: the ocean, the sky . . .”

  “And now?”

  “And now I don’t anymore. Haven’t been here forever.”

  The rectangle of the roof glistened with glass shards. They gleamed and sparkled like diamonds. In the other corner they saw yellowed newspapers, empty bottles, and chair seats, all color leached out of them.

  “Who’s left all that here?” Grasshopper asked.

  “Don’t know. Seniors, I guess. I’m not the only one who knows about this place. People come here all the time. I like it more when it’s windy and raining. It’s completely different from how it is now. A ship in a storm. I can run around in the rain and I know for sure that no one would gawk at me from the windows. The important thing is to be careful not to slide to the sloping part.”

  Grasshopper imagined Wolf running around on the wet slippery roof and shuddered.

  Wolf laughed.

  “You just never tried. Look.”

  He stood up, swayed, righted himself, threw back his head, and shouted into the vast blueness of the sky, “Aaa! Ooo! Yoo-hoo!”

  The sky swallowed his scream. Grasshopper watched, his eyes wide in astonishment.

  “Come on. Don’t be scared.”

  Wolf helped him get up, and then they were shouting together. Grasshopper’s uncertain cry was gobbled up by the sky in a flash. He shouted louder, then louder still. Suddenly it came to him: How beautiful it was to be shouting at the sky. How there was nothing in the world more beautiful than that.

  He screwed his eyes tightly shut and screamed until he was hoarse. He and Wolf flopped down on the warm metal and looked at each other with insane eyes. The wind breathed into their flushed faces. The black scissors of the swallows scythed overhead. It was so quiet that they felt a ringing in their ears.

  It’s as if I’m empty, Grasshopper thought. Everything that was inside me flew away. This empty me is the only thing that’s left. And it feels good.

  Wolf grabbed his sweater.

  “Hey! Careful, or you’ll fall down. You look like you’re drunk.”

  “I feel fine,” Grasshopper mumbled. “I feel good.”

  The wind mussed their hair. The aerial wires crisscrossed the sky. The sparrows, no more than fluffy balls when seen from here, used them as swings. Wolf’s nose was on the verge of breaking out in freckles.

  It’s the scent of summer, Grasshopper realized suddenly.

  The summer was coming for real.

  The dorm was busy poring over the box of photographs.

  “Look!” Humpback shouted as they entered. “Look at what Max-’n’-Rexes hauled in.”

  They moved in closer. The photographs were of the seniors. They hadn’t been made in the House. Siamese pointed at one of the photos.

  “Remember this gate? How it jumped off the hinges because Sausage was swinging on it?”

  “And here’s my head!” The other Siamese pointed at an indistinct blob in the corner. “You can see our window, right there!”

  They crowded around, greedily searching for snippets of something familiar in the world populated by the seniors. And finding them. Behind the backs, over the shoulders, here and there, in bits and pieces. And then trying to connect those bits, weave them into a cloth.

  Grasshopper went to sit on the bed. He didn’t like such discussions. He’d skipped the first summer trip, and the time when he did go, they got sent to a fancy spa where the staff was so intent on providing a quality experience that there was no possibility of any unregimented fun. It was very nice, but you can’t enjoy the swimming pools and the gyms and even real horseback riding when there’s a whole army of insistent helpers always tagging along. Everyone, or at least everyone whom Grasshopper heard rehashing it over and over again, agreed that in the entire history of the House they never had a summer break as lousy as that one. Actually, if not for them, Grasshopper might even have imagined that he’d had a great time. But the House people were, if anything, traditionalists. There were only two places that were acceptable to them outside the boundaries of the House: a disused ski area somewhere in the mountains, and the old resort on the shore. Nothing else even came close. The distinction “House” wa
s extended to those places as well, they were its annexes, its feelers stretched an unfathomable distance. Grasshopper knew both of these Houses as if he himself had visited them many times. He even had a preference for the one by the sea. The oldest one. Creaking and wheezing, with its sagging beds and warped wardrobes, its water-stained walls and ceilings, its flapping floorboards, with one shower stall for each four dorms and constant queues to use the toilets.

  “The ceiling dripped in our room!”

  “Elephant sat on a chair and broke it, remember?”

  “Sport banged on the wall to shut up the guys in the next room and punched a hole clean through.”

  “Remember the centipedes in the bathroom?”

  “Centipedes? How about silverfish and water beetles?”

  The boys tossed the phrases like footballs, reveling in the flaws of the Other House, and Grasshopper was listening to them jealously. The Other House, the little brother of This House. There might even be some secret connection between them. Maybe they exchanged things. Rats, or ghosts, or something else interesting. You could see the ocean from the windows of the Other House. And at night you could hear it. There the counselors immediately fell in love with the tanned girls on the beach and forgot about their responsibilities, and when it rained the building leaked, so they all locked themselves in, like a tortoise retreating into its shell, cursed the weather, and played cards through the night—juniors, seniors, counselors, all. They played and listened to the jingle of the drops hitting the pans placed under the holes in the roof.

  “Did you steal them from the seniors?” Grasshopper asked.

  Siamese blinked at him.

  “So? They’ve got loads of them, and we didn’t have any. At least now there’s this.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I just asked. Where’s Stinker?”

  “Got called to the principal,” Magician said. “Didn’t you notice how quiet it was?”

  Stinker wheeled in, flashing the badges that covered him from the neck all the way down to his knees.