The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

  “I hope the music isn’t bothering you?”

  “Not at all, old man. Quite the opposite. Pity you’re not singing. How about it?”

  He smiles, a mute question in his eyes. “You, of all people, should know I don’t have the voice for it.”

  I know. He only sings when he’s drunk now. Not having the voice doesn’t stop him when he’s not sober. He launches into “Immigrant Song.” By itself, without the singing, it’s harshing me, but I can handle it. By the time he gets to the end, the Coffeepot is packed. Rats’ skulls mostly, making my eyes see spots, but then Rodents are huge fans of the Big Song, wouldn’t do to throw them out of the dear old feeding trough. I put on dark shades instead. All there’s to it. One hundred percent improvement. The skulls acquire a gray uniformity, the nerves settle down. We can listen in peace again.

  At the first strains of the Lady and her “Stepladder to the Skies,” Sphinx wanders in. Three perches empty in short order. He mounts one of them and goggles with his black beetles set deep into the virginally clean skull. An amazing specimen. I pull off my shades because he needs to be appreciated in color, and we continue listening. Sphinx begins to pipe in softly. Rats sway. Shuffle’s guitar picks up steam and breaks into arpeggios. Sphinx picks up steam and breaks into scream-whispers. I pick up steam too and start keeping time with my foot.

  Someone jumps up and closes the door, just in time to prevent the invasion of more riffraff. This charming evening is going to end in a scuffle, because that’s the way it is with Rats, but we’re not there yet. We’re good. Especially me. Shuffle scratches his nose, Sphinx grins. Music is a perfect way of erasing thoughts, bad and otherwise. The best and the oldest.

  We’re chilling for about half an hour, and then a depressed junior Rat suddenly bursts into tears and digs out a razor. They can’t help themselves. That’s about the only redeeming quality in a Rat, his constant readiness to off himself, anytime, anyplace. Himself or those around him. That old fart Don Juan Matus would be happy. But not many others would. I, for one, detest these things.

  The Ratling is sawing at his wrist, drowning in snot. Shuffle, entranced by the performance, stares and bungles the melody. End of the fun. Rats file out reluctantly, hauling off the youngling to be patched up. Nice-looking scarlet puddles on the floor. Sphinx sighs. I put on my Number 5 shades, in the cheery orange-yellow range. They’re a big help when talking to the Poxy brethren.

  Sphinx notices the freshly acquired nail-sized key and approves. It’s the little things that matter. We drink our coffee and shoot the breeze. First about Breughel. Then about Leopard. Neutral, inoffensive talk. Also a kind of escape. We’re swimming in cigarette smoke, coffee stains are barely visible through the white clouds, and here are the Birdies peeking in timidly, looking for their Leader. I snap at them without turning around, and they’re not there anymore, and never were.

  “Obedience to the point of reflex,” Sphinx says. “What are they so afraid of, Yelloweyes?”

  “My hulking bulk.”

  I choke, cough, and it turns out that Birds didn’t vanish completely. Two appear out of nowhere to pat me on the back. Shadow’s ghost laughs on the stool next to me, also coughing. No one’s patting him.

  The conversation drifts peacefully toward Santana. I’m ready to melt and dissolve in the nearest coffee puddle. It’s so pleasant that it gives me the creeps. For an inhabitant of the Nest, a conversation with someone who knows how to talk is a rare pleasure indeed. We’re yammering away. Shuffle is cleaning his travel bag. He keeps his finger picks in it, and it is, frankly, filthy. Scratching at it won’t help, it’s time for a washing machine. And Shuffle himself would benefit from being thrown in after it. I smile at my cup and fiddle with the ring on my finger.

  Moonflower and Amigos, oh yeah . . .

  The smell of the nearby toilet filters into the Coffeepot and spoils the mood. That’s sad. A learned discourse is a necessity. Especially for this one Bird I know. Poor thing . . . I pity him dearly sometimes.

  Bald One finishes the coffee, or whatever passes for it in the Coffeepot, bids us good-bye, and leaves, taking care to step around the mess left by the young Rat cutter.

  “So how about it? Are you coming tonight?” I ask Shuffle.

  Doghead pales and fiddles with the crutch.

  “Eh . . . I mean, I’d love to, but . . . Your place . . . You know, it’s kind of . . .”

  “Disgusting,” I say. “Sure. If we’re so revolting to you, you don’t have to come.”

  I climb down from the perch and take off. I am positive that he’s coming.

  I hobble lively. The House is in the throes of spring madness. It’s contagious. You can come down with it in every nook and at every corner. I’m running from it as fast as I can, but they still manage to slither into the memory, the stupidly content faces with the winking slits of the eyes, the beautiful dazed faces smiling at each other. The soft jangle of chains on the girls’ slender necks, in lieu of the collars. The wheelers whispering to each other, locking fingers and wheels, reading palms, divining their wingless fates. This is not a good time to be abroad alone. The House belongs to them. All of it, the cracks and the leaking pipes, the walls and the writings on them, acquiring another, mystical meaning . . .

  Sad. I’m hobbling, lame as that unfortunate devil. The leg starts to heat up. We’re in store for a night of torture, with my own bones doing the honors. It’s rare indeed to have such a strong stimulant at one’s disposal. Let’s be grateful for what we’ve got.

  I take off the glasses and wait. I know that in another moment the White Rabbit is going to sneak by at the end of the corridor, galloping at full speed, late for his Carrollian shindig. And there he goes. Flashing for a fraction of a second. You just have to know where to look, or you’d never catch him. I rest for a bit longer and then crawl forward again . . . Step, step . . . There goes Great Bird, the one feeding on carrion . . .

  TABAQUI

  DAY THE SEVENTH

  You boil it in sawdust: you salt it in glue:

  You condense it with locusts and tape

  —Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark

  Winter is the time of the great cat migration. They don’t come one by one; no, they arrive all at once, each taking their posts by the familiar doors, waiting for permission to enter. When Noble and I wheel out of the dorm in the morning, the first thing we see is a rat’s corpse. The one offering the bribe is sitting unassumingly beside it. An extremely skinny, extremely mangy ashen-striped tigress in white socks. Mother to countless offspring and a bane of rodents everywhere.

  “Hey, Mona Lisa!”

  Noble reaches down excitedly to pet her. Mona vaults onto his knees and rubs her scrawny side against his sweater.

  “Whoa, that’s a big one,” Lary remarks from somewhere behind. “King sized.”

  Meaning, of course, the late rat. We let Mona in the room and proceed to the canteen. The basic arrangement is repeated in front of the Third. Two more rat carcasses and cats waiting over them. There’s only nine of us at breakfast. Whenever it is snowing, Tubby goes into hibernation. He doesn’t do breakfast or lunch, snacking on whatever morsels we bring back, and only if we manage to shake him awake. Winter’s here.

  Ginger comes in after classes, returning my socks and Noble’s sweater, and then she, Noble, Humpback, and I go down to the yard. It’s empty and snowy. The House dwellers do not like to frolic in full view of the Outsides, so the snow battle, if it’s to be at all, is postponed until darkness. We make a crumbly snowman and take it back inside. It drips sadly in the middle of the room, becoming a puddle with clumps of snow in it. Humpback declares that such is life.

  Then we sit down to dry off and have tea. Ginger teases Humpback’s hair into a mass of braids, but only on one side. She gets bored, and also there’s interference from Nanette, jealous and showing it. Humpback puts the bird on top of his head, and she immediately calms down and stops screeching. I say that even one-sided braids look nice, a
nd Noble says that he misses his hair like crazy, because the way it is now it can’t be plaited at all. I play the Snow Song—it’s not as good as the Rain Song and is also much shorter, but on the other hand it fits this winter day better.

  At lunchtime Dylan arrives, fashionably late for the great migration. Sphinx’s favorite, son of Mona, coal black and the loudest singer we know. Except you have to wait until spring to hear his songs.

  “And where’s your tribute rat?” I ask him.

  He just turns around and walks away, the shiny back swaying as he goes. A supremely self-absorbed animal.

  The floor is covered with sausage ends and saucers of milk. The windows, with the crystal patterns left by the frost.

  It’s evening now, and it’s snowing again.

  The crow and the cats are testing each other’s alertness. Humpback, one side of his head still in braids, is trying to soothe them with the flute. Lary powders his zits, cinches the belt, turning a bit blue as a result, and runs out in search of adventure. Noble wheels out immediately after. No one has come out for the snow battle, for some reason. I sit on the sill and wait, but it’s empty down there. Empty and dreary. I study the frost patterns on the windowpanes and discover myself in them, endlessly repeated, all kinds of me—on Mustang and without it, shaggy and well-groomed, there’s even one clad in the new vest. I scratch out a tiny window for that crystal me, to make his life easier and more pleasant. Sphinx frowns as he observes me do it.

  “It’s kind of a superstition,” I say. “You see, there’s another me here.”

  “Oh. Yeah,” he says, “you can find all kinds of stuff in there. Tell me this, though. When you were painting that dragon on the ceiling . . . you wouldn’t happen to have drawn it a heart? Shot through by an arrow? You know, accidentally.”

  “No,” I say. “That would have been too corny. All I did was give it an eye. In accordance with the instructions received in a dream.”

  Lary comes back. He’s still on the purplish side. Circles around the room a couple of times, sighing like a hungry ghost.

  “I’ll bring her,” he says suddenly. “To say hello. You’re going to like her. She’s a really cool girl, you’ll see.”

  We wait. Lary waits. Watching Humpback all the while, for some reason.

  “Sure, why not,” Humpback says. “What are you looking at me for? It’s not like I make the rules around these parts.”

  “You see, we love each other,” Lary explains. “You see? I mean, for real. Could you, like, have a friendly conversation with her when she comes? You being my friend and all.”

  Humpback stares in horror.

  “What about? What do I need to talk to her about?”

  “Well, there’s knitting, for one,” Lary says eagerly. “You should see the sweaters she makes! Crazy! Almost as good as yours. Honest.”

  Humpback wilts. Everyone knows he likes to keep that skill private. Everyone, including Lary. But apparently real love interferes with the basic functioning of memory.

  “Friendship demands sacrifices,” I say soothingly when Lary runs out again.

  Smoker asks who Lary’s girlfriend is. We shrug in unison. No one knows. All we know for sure is that there isn’t another Gaby in the House. There are plenty of other horrible creatures besides her, though, and Logs’ standards are notoriously loose, so we all fret a bit, Humpback more than others.

  We don’t have to wait long. Lary comes back accompanied by this flaxen-haired stick of a girl, unsteady pencil-thin legs perched on top of high heels. She takes position behind Lary’s back and marvels at us from there. He reddens in apparent delight. Another second and he’s going to melt like a blob of tomato paste.

  “Allow me to introduce Needle. She knits gorgeous sweaters. Like really gorgeous. I’ve seen the last two myself. They’re in huge demand. Cool, huh? Humpback?”

  Humpback shoots me a desperate look. Then clears his throat and asks what gauge of knitting needles she, that is, Needle, prefers. You couldn’t hear him at two paces.

  Needle smiles pitifully. It’s time to ride to Humpback’s rescue. And Lary’s, even though he’s a nitwit. I take charge. When I speak, everyone hears what I say.

  “Patterns? What kind? Cables, twists? Herringbone? Oh, eyelets, how lovely!”

  It takes me half an hour to establish that the girl’s favorite color is beige, that she was born in November and is therefore a Scorpio, that she likes tea but not coffee—at which point Lary pours two cups of tea into her—that she gets sunburned easily, can cook oatmeal but not much else, and also puts on a bit of mascara but no other makeup, thank you. Finally Lary takes her away, satisfied, and I can breathe easier.

  “Thanks, Tabaqui,” Humpback says. “I’m in your debt. Whatever you need. I mean, whatever I can get.”

  “Don’t mention it,” I say airily. “Even though chatting her up was no mean feat, that’s for sure.”

  Noble returns. Also red faced and crazy eyed, almost like Lary. Green sweater decorated with white lizards running across the front, wet hair combed back to conceal the bald spots. I go to work on cracking nuts. Sphinx is swinging back and forth atop the nightstand, clanking its innards. Noble, looking very strange—which is by now usual for him, but this time even more strange than usual—makes coffee, cuts it with cola, crushed almonds, and cinnamon, then shakes out the contents of the basilisk eggshell amulet over the cup and gulps it without wincing.

  I ask him what just happened.

  Noble crunches the shell with his teeth and doesn’t answer.

  We can’t help cringing, looking at the way he consumes his ghastly coffee and the stuff he’s thrown into it.

  “I leaned too close to the fire,” he says finally. His grin is almost manic.

  We wait for a while to see if he’s going to expire right then and there, and then Smoker asks where he managed to find an open fire to sit next to.

  Noble just smiles mysteriously. As if the House is lousy with open fires, each one surrounded by scores of people betting on who’d manage to lean the closest, and Smoker is somehow alone in not having noticed that.

  If I were Noble I wouldn’t be dressing up normal everyday stuff in so much romantic nonsense, annoying Smoker in the process, but he’s in love. So what can you do? They’re all a bit nuts. If he thinks that gobbling the basilisk eggshell, a unique specimen, by the way, would help him win Ginger’s heart, he can gobble it all day long. My only concern here is Smoker. He’s on edge as it is.

  “Lary brought his girlfriend over,” I say. “Knitting Needle.”

  “Really,” Noble says. “How interesting.”

  Lies. He’s not interested at all.

  Sphinx sighs.

  “Noble. Next time could you please not lean so close to the fire?” he says. “Fire really is a dangerous element.”

  “Oh god,” Smoker moans. “I am so tired of you all.”

  I have a strange dream that night. A dead lake, grayish, calm as a mirror. Withered white stalks peeking out of the water. I sit by the edge and wait for some horrific creature that lives at the bottom to come out. There’s a rusted sword on the sand next to me. The mist is drawing in, enveloping everything. Suddenly I’m in the water . . . and here I wake up.

  The night is not too dark, even though the moon isn’t visible. Noble is awake. He’s sitting on the bed looking at me, absentmindedly gnawing at the collar of his pajamas. And petting Mona, the striped rug draped over his knees.

  SORCERY

  Mermaid crouches down by the desk drawer that she pulled out. There’s a pile of junk in there, and mixed in it there’s some really valuable stuff. Very little. Her textbooks and notes are in there too, along with the daily journal from two years back, taped over so that it’s impossible to read without tearing it apart, certificates of achievement, and several bells rejected by Rat, the ones she refused to hang over her mattress. Mermaid sends her fingers to the back of the wooden cigar box (so old that the label is completely gone), and they find what she wa
s looking for—a crocheted gym bag for the flats she wore at physical-therapy sessions. She pushes away the cat sniffing at her hands and spreads the bag on the floor. It’s not exactly the way she remembered it. Grubbier, more mundane. There’s a moth-eaten hole right in the middle. She imagined it to be much more attractive. She doesn’t have to look closely at the pattern to remember how she knitted it. Row after row of tiny brown men, holding hands in a sort of silly dance. Each with its leg in the air at a different height, so they could all be different from each other. She loved them all, her ugly bubble-headed brown creatures. She was eight. She’d made a wish, and for it to come true she needed to do something extraordinary. Something that was hard. To knit a bag, for example, when everyone else was quite content with scarves. “Why would you want to take on something you don’t have any idea how to do?” Hecuba had asked her then. Mermaid didn’t answer. When the bag was done, and even Hecuba pronounced it “cute,” but the miracle still wouldn’t happen, that’s when she thought of the little men. It is not easy to just abandon a dream. Much easier to complicate the road to it than to accept that it could never be achieved. Twelve little men. They took more time than the rest of the bag. The figure in the center was unlike the others. It looked a bit like a mop. That was Mermaid herself, wearing a fluffy crown made from her real hair. “Look at that,” Hecuba said. “That’s really good . . . You’re going to knit amazing sweaters for your guy, mark my words.” Mermaid did mark them, and weaved them into her enchantment—they sounded wonderful. She remembers as she runs her fingers over the little men. All of her wishes have come true. Except one. That last one. Her guy is not wearing her sweaters yet. In fact, he doesn’t even know he’s hers.

  Mermaid folds the bag and secretes it under her shirt.

  “What’s that?” Catwoman asks from the mattress where she has been watching Mermaid. “Overcome by the childhood memories?”

  “I guess you could say that,” Mermaid says.