The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

  “Must be from overwork,” he says, meaning the bright mind. “All things need rest.”

  “Not at my expense,” I say. “Please.”

  Blind immediately assumes a solemn expression.

  “Of course not,” he says. “Who do you think I am? I will never leave you here alone. Neither you nor the others.”

  I close my eyes, trying to get a handle on the spinning head that’s making the objects around me elongate, flow, and merge into colorful stripes. He will never leave us, wouldn’t you know! I am familiar with that smug self-assuredness in his voice all too well. But will he allow us to leave him? I doubt it, at least not those of us who have already been touched by the House.

  “Hey, what’s that?” Blind grabs me by the collar and jostles lightly. “What’s going on?”

  “Go to hell!” I whisper back.

  “Tomorrow!” Shark thunders, shaking the lectern like King Kong on a rampage. “Tomorrow we are saying good-bye to our esteemed teachers, departing on their well-earned break. Since the exams have been canceled, it is going to begin a full month earlier than was planned.”

  The entire teachers’ row stands up and turns around to face us. A sustained ovation. They earnestly put on a display of being touched, but the elation in their faces shines clean through even from afar. Conversely, the counselors’ row sinks further into depression as they are coming to the realization that soon they alone are going to be left with us face to face. The audience applauds, the teachers bow, Shark melts with delight. Through all this Blind keeps a firm hold on the back of my neck, seemingly concerned that as soon as he lets go I’m going to faint right there and then. He’s not far off in that, and he’d get even closer should he attempt to soothe me in the manner that he’s already tried just now.

  “Now we are going to hear from those of our teachers who wish to say a word to all of you,” Shark says, blotting the sweat behind his ears with a tissue. “I would only like to add, in closing, that on this Saturday as well as the next one, the parents of students who have completed the testing successfully are invited to visit, and if they’d like to take their children away at that time in order to provide an opportunity for them to apply to various colleges and universities, they are certainly welcome to do so.”

  The audience claps lazily, celebrating the end of Shark’s oration. One of the more ebullient Hounds even shouts “Bravo!” and whistles, but is quickly suppressed, so Shark departs the podium amid scattered feeble applause, and his place is taken by the biology teacher, a slight old man burdened by the massive scroll of his prepared remarks.

  “Your nervous system,” Blind remarks, “seems to be rather shaky.”

  “Thanks in part to you,” I snap back. “And get your hand off my scruff, I’m not planning to fall down.”

  “Sorry,” he says, removing his hand obediently. “It’s just that I got this impression that you were.”

  His smile is missing a tooth and lacking kindness, but he’s intent on bestowing it on me. I look at him closer and notice certain changes. Sightless One used to walk around in a black jacket, so long that it resembled a turn-of-the-century frock coat, directly over his bare skin. Today he’s got a tee under it, and also something ringlike hanging on a string around his neck, catching on the buttons.

  “What’s that?” I ask. “On your neck.”

  “This?” he says, showing me a steel ring. “Oh, I keep forgetting to tell you. I’m engaged.”

  “Oh boy. Who to?”

  “Rat. Last night.”

  “Congratulations,” I sigh. “I realize there’s no use in trying to debate this after the fact, but could you maybe have considered someone more . . . sane?”

  “Yeah, right,” Blind sneers. “Like I was going to consult you about it. After you’ve torn my first love away from me. In a cold-hearted manner, I might add.”

  “You can’t mean that maypole Gaby? For goodness’ sake, Blind, you don’t even come up to her shoulder.”

  “On the bright side, Rat and I are the same height.”

  He slips the ring under his shirt, but immediately winces and pulls it back out. It must have scratched at his wounds.

  “So the decorations on your hide are kind of an engagement present?”

  Blind’s face hardens.

  “Enough,” he says. “This matter is closed for discussion.”

  “Yes, sir!” I bark and turn my attention back to the podium, where the biologist already has been supplanted by surly Chipmunk, reading his own farewell sermon. I can’t make out a single word of it because neither Shark nor Ralph is present, having retired temporarily from the hall to have a smoke, and the discipline is deteriorating rapidly. Many are already puffing out in the open, the din of voices grows in intensity, certain individuals run between the rows to converse with the neighbors. Rats turn up the volume on their music.

  “With all our hearts . . . blaze the trail . . . bright future . . . in spite of . . . the honor of our school . . . in high esteem . . . ,” Chipmunk drones unenthusiastically, stopping only to take a hopeful sniff at the empty water carafe.

  I shove my other foot on the chair in front of me and assume an almost horizontal position, even though the chairs here seem to be designed specifically to prevent people from getting comfortable. Humpback clicks off the Walkman, sighs, and puts it into his backpack.

  “What just happened?” he says.

  “Our dear teachers are saying their good-byes. They’re taking off, tomorrow or maybe the next day.”

  “Really?” Humpback goggles at Chipmunk in surprise. “You serious? We’re not going to see them anymore?”

  “Guess not. So if you feel the need to hug any of them and burst into tears, you better hurry. Oh, and by the way, our Leader is engaged. You can hug him too.”

  Blind makes a vicious face. Humpback clears his throat. We’re prevented from a further exchange of information by Red, cigarette in his mouth, filtering to us from the front row and sidling next to Blind. Our row is suddenly teeming with visitors, crowding and shoving each other.

  “What do you say we move?” Humpback says. “It’s getting a bit busy here.”

  I nod. He grabs his stuff, throws his backpack on his shoulder, and we migrate three rows back to put some distance between ourselves and the pack that is acquiring guests and hangers-on at an alarming rate.

  “Who’s Blind engaged to?” Humpback asks.

  “Rat, who else.”

  “Could have been anybody,” Humpback says. “He’s like that, you know. Unpredictable.”

  Very true. Only the people who rarely voice their opinions are capable of doing it in such a deadly straightforward way. It still doesn’t cheer me, though.

  “Rat’s better than Gaby,” Humpback insists.

  “Depends,” I say, remembering the gashes on Blind’s chest.

  My mood crashes even further. Humpback lights a cigarette and stretches out on the chair. From the general direction of Birds a radio cuts in suddenly, so loud as to drown out everything else, but is hurriedly hushed.

  “Good luck to you on your journey, my dear children, the journey into your adult life and the pursuit of your dreams! I wish you all the best!”

  Chipmunk scurries off the podium, replaced by Mastodon. His appearance is met with unhealthy excitement. Also Shark and Ralph return. The last defectors, in the rush to take advantage of the pause created while they cross the aisle, are stomping loudly and moving chairs around. I look at Mastodon and miss the moment when someone sits next to me. Humpback’s greeting makes me turn to the side and notice that someone is in fact Black.

  He doesn’t look half as imposing without his customary retinue of Hounds. You might even say he looks harmless and familiar. Still I tense up. Of course, a courteous greeting is a matter of habit, and then I turn back to look at Mastodon. Otherwise I’d be brazenly ogling Black.

  “Well, what can I say . . .”

  Mastodon, the checker-coated rectangle with the flattened boxer�
��s nose and the lips to match, stares at us over the scrap of paper with his notes.

  “A good machine gun in your hands,” prompts someone in the audience, rather loudly. “And for the first two rows to hit the floor!”

  Mastodon turns livid and tries to move his neck, seeking out the offender.

  “You down there,” he rasps, “shut up!”

  The assembly goes quiet. But not for long.

  “Like the other teachers talking here, for me it’s been blood and sweat and . . .”

  Black is telling Humpback of Nanette visiting him this morning.

  “And then I see her trying to climb through the crack in the window. All by herself, I didn’t call her or anything. I didn’t even realize at first how unlike her that was. You should know, she never came to me before, not even when she was a chick, but there you go.”

  Black is staring at Mastodon while saying that, and Humpback does as well. They barely move their lips, but I still hear everything. This makes me uncomfortable for some reason, as if I’ve been eavesdropping. Except that I absolutely have not. It’s not my fault they are sitting so close to me. And if Black didn’t want me to listen it’d be easy for him to catch Humpback any other place.

  “Tried to get you a little bit stronger,” Mastodon’s voice muscles its way into my head. “Can’t say it worked too well.”

  “Sure would be handier with that machine gun,” comes the voice again.

  Mastodon holds a pregnant pause. The audience giggles.

  “But as I told you time and time again . . .”

  “The only good cripple is a dead cripple!” an entire chorus sings in unison.

  Of course. Mastodon’s maxims are classic. Quoting them from memory is something even Elephant can do.

  “You bloody bastards!” Mastodon roars, slamming both of his fists against the top of the lectern. “Waste of genetic material! Human debris!”

  A cloud of dust floats up in the air. The audience howls and applauds furiously.

  “I wish I had a hand grenade, screw the gun . . .”

  He is being dragged off the podium. The entire counselors’ row pitches in. Shark, out of range in the back, flaps his fins miserably.

  Black turns to me and asks, “What’s going to happen to Smoker now?”

  “Same as the others, I guess. His parents will come and take him.”

  He nods, thoughtfully rubbing the chin.

  “I’ve got two of those in my pack, too. And still I worry more about him than about them. Strange, huh. I guess that’s what’s best for them, but I still feel like a traitor. Wonder why that is.”

  “Because it’s true. We have betrayed them.”

  Black glowers at me. The tiny skulls on the scarf wrapped around his head do their black-and-white dance.

  “How so?”

  “By failing to change them.”

  Black takes a pack of cigarettes from his backpack, shakes out one, and stashes it in the front pocket of his shirt.

  “Too bad. He’s a nice guy. You just got to him with your tricks, no wonder he’s flipped. I know how that works.”

  “Yes, you would, wouldn’t you,” I say politely.

  Humpback steps on my foot while continuing to study the ceiling nonchalantly. But strange as it seems, Black doesn’t take offense. Leadership certainly has effected some positive changes in his demeanor as well.

  “You’re a meanie, Sphinx,” he says.

  And that’s it. I wait for the follow-up, but it never comes.

  Shark announces that “one of our students expressed a desire to address us” and a proud Pheasant is being wheeled out to the podium, indistinguishable in his black-and-white fatigues from any other representative of the species.

  “Every pack,” Black says, “has its own black sheep. Even Pheasants. We only notice them if one gets kicked out and lands on our territory, the way they did it with Smoker. Hounds are no different. Snapping at each other until they concentrate their attention on one person. Then for him it’s curtains.”

  I open my mouth, catch Humpback’s eloquent look, and shut it back up. Black, however, manages to read a lot in my expression.

  “You were going to say something about me again? Go ahead, say it. Except it’s not exactly the same. I wanted to be a black sheep. I was goading you. Maybe I did become it, though not to the extent I wished.”

  “Whose degree of blackness concerns you at this moment, yours or someone else’s?” I say. “What is it exactly we’re discussing here?”

  “Everything concerns me.” Black takes out the stashed cigarette and starts rolling it between his fingers. “The Sixth has its own rules. It’s in the Sixth that I understood how the nonconformist, the ‘other,’ is bullied. Whatever was going on in the Fourth is child’s play compared to that. Once you see what real hazing looks like you recognize it anywhere. It’s not a pretty sight.”

  “I’m so happy,” I say, “that you finally saw something like that. As for me, I lived through it when I was ten. As I remember, with your help. And enthusiastic participation.”

  “Hey!” Humpback throws up his hands. “Sphinx, don’t . . .”

  “No, wait.” I’m angry now, and it’s hard to stop. “He says he’s never seen anything like it until he ended up in the Sixth. So I’d like to know what exactly was it he saw when his gang was chasing me all over the House like a plague-ridden rat!”

  Black torments the still-unlit cigarette without looking at me. I am slowly cooling off and beginning to regret my outburst. This is probably the first time ever that we’ve had a normal conversation. Or at least tried to.

  Black tosses the gutted cigarette.

  “All right, I’ll tell you what I saw. If you want. You’re not going to like it, mind you. But it’s probably better that way. Because I’d really like you to understand. It was not about you. Absolutely not. It was about Elk.” Black takes the bandana off and stuffs it in his pocket. “You see, I ended up in the Sixth, and then it took me a while living there to finally understand what was going on with me in the Fourth. I was even asking myself afterward how I could be so stupid and not see it right there. But then I figured that if I didn’t make that step away, didn’t look from a distance . . . I mean . . . Try to do the same thing. Picture all of us back then. The House. Elk. Imagine that you’re that squirt, ankle biter, and there are all those grown-ups around, and they never have any time for you, none of them, except one. And that one you can’t just share among everybody. So we’re all jumping out of our skins to be special, to be noticed, to have him say something only to you, to ask something only of you. But all of that is on the inside, you never show that, because it’s embarrassing when you’re a big guy, ten years old already and so on. Blind wasn’t bothered about that and tagged after him like a mutt, but he was the only one. And Elk never fussed around over him more than with anyone else. He never played favorites. Until you. Yes, laugh all you want, it may sound funny now, but just imagine yourself in our place!”

  “I’m sorry, Black,” I say, fighting the giggles, “please understand, but it’s been such a long time since I’ve last heard that. ‘Elk’s pet.’ And to think how much grief that nick caused me. Honestly, I would never have thought I was his favorite. Or that it would look like I was.”

  “Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t.”

  Black is very red, and it looks dangerous, though much more familiar than his newfound serenity. I’m bracing for the explosion, so it’s hard for me to concentrate on what he’s saying.

  “. . . as soon as we stepped off the bus. He was waiting for us in the yard, in the corner. He assembled us around him and then told us about you. And that we shouldn’t touch you. And that we had to help you.”

  “What? That’s a lie!” I scream, springing up from the chair as if someone hooked it up to an electric socket. “That never happened! It couldn’t have!”

  Humpback pulls at my sleeve.

  “Hey, what’s gotten into you? Shark’s looking.”


  I crouch down next to his chair, and Humpback whispers in my ear, looking sideways at the podium, “That’s how it was. The way Black’s telling it. It’s true. I was there too when he said that.”

  “You never told me!”

  “In the back row!” Shark thunders. “Stop that commotion!”

  I lower myself back on the chair, trying my best to look calm. Humpback stares ten rows ahead, all rapturous attention.

  “What for?” he whispers. “What difference would it have made?”

  “You were the first newbie we had to help,” Black presses on. “We were helping each other anyway, with anything we could. Some more, some less. But before you came in no one had ever told us we had to do it.”

  “Damn,” I say. “Was he that much of an idiot?”

  At the word “idiot” Humpback and Black both wince.

  Humpback says, “Watch it, Sphinx.” Black doesn’t say anything, but his silence is so expressive that I understand: not only am I a favorite, I’m a favorite who doesn’t appreciate his privilege. Who treads on the most sacred. Now I need some time to come to grips with the Joseph complex that these two have managed to force on me, with being that one guy who always rubs his brothers the wrong way. And to accept that the disgusting blond youth whom I remember being tall as a tower, muscle-bound, and completely, utterly free of the need to be loved by anybody could have been tormented by jealousy. Him and the others. Him and Humpback, the proud loner. Him and possibly even Solomon née Muffin, who is no longer with us. All of them.

  I need time to look at them from a distance. To understand and to forgive. I am stretching out that time, slowing it down, erasing their faces from the album of childhood memories and allowing the photographs to develop anew. I realize that there still won’t be enough time for me to do it here and now, that the work is too involved to fit into a few minutes. I also understand that I’ve just hurt both Black and Humpback, and that I’m lucky it’s them sitting next to me and not Blind.

  “That was some favor Elk did for his favorite,” I say, trying to smile. “Wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”