The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

  “Who was that?” Chimera asks.

  “Little Tabaqui,” Noble imparts majestically. “He was keeping score.”

  “He’s not going to barge in here too, is he?”

  “It is safe to say that he indeed will not be doing that.” Noble clamps the water flask into my rake. “He has not advanced his abilities far enough.”

  Chimera rolls her eyes.

  “You’re overdoing it,” I say to Noble. “She’s already on edge, I wouldn’t provoke her further.”

  “As you wish,” Noble agrees. “It’s just that I’m slightly at a loss concerning the correct mode of conversation with someone who swears at me blue before I even had a chance to look at her.”

  Chimera looks at him, then at me, then bites her lip. It appears to be dawning on her that she’s been behaving somewhat oddly all this time. She shrugs—her dress doesn’t have any straps, it’s a mystery how she manages not to fall out of it—and produces a packet of ground coffee from behind the coffeemaker. Grabs a handful and tosses it in.

  “Coffee coming right up,” she says, doing her best to appear gracious.

  The graciousness grates.

  Noble clears his throat and looks at me askance, in the sense of What did you do to her? Own up.

  “Nothing,” I reply aloud. “On my honor.”

  Chimera gets up, hobbles to the furniture cemetery in the corner, and switches on the television that’s standing there. In front of the television there’s a procession of empty plastic bottles. She kicks one, sending them scattering.

  “Almost out of water,” she says. “We might be a bit tight.”

  Her bright dress looks screamingly out of place among all this detritus, while its hem allows a peek at the brutal boots underneath when she walks. A Cinderella who’s not quite completely transformed.

  I sit next to the blanket, but not on it. Noble crawls closer. On the screen some bearded guy in an orange safety vest explains something, bobbing up and down on an inflatable raft. It’s impossible to tell what he’s talking about.

  “I couldn’t get the sound working,” Chimera says darkly. “I did tap the antenna feed, but there’s no sound. Could be why it got tossed.”

  Noble and I exchange glances.

  There’s nothing special about the coffeemaker, there’s lots of people lugging them around the House in their backpacks. But attempting to fix an old television is something entirely different. It says that Chimera has spent a considerable amount of time up here.

  “Did you have a fight with somebody?” Noble inquires carefully.

  “With your ass,” comes the rapid-fire answer. “Keep your nose out of other people’s business, OK?”

  “OK.”

  We get about half a dose of coffee for the both of us. Chimera gleefully passes a plastic cup with some liquid on the bottom to Noble and says that she’s giving us her share. We each take two sips, and then the cup is pointedly crumpled and thrown away.

  Goldenhead is irritated, but you wouldn’t know it looking at him. He lies down, propped by the backpack, and begins advancing conjectures.

  “Well, it’s clear that she’s here not because of a quarrel,” he says thoughtfully. “A girl like this would sooner smash the offender’s brains out than run away to the attic to mope.”

  “Don’t forget the dress,” I add. “Could it be she has a date up here? That would explain the cheerful reception.”

  “A date? That would mean that someone is not in a great hurry to arrive to it,” Noble says, nodding at the bottles. “I’d say, late by a couple of days?”

  Chimera has turned to stone. Her hands, seemingly dark in contrast with her face, are clasped on top of her knees. Noble and I don’t even have to look at each other to continue this game. We’ve spent enough time paired up in poker.

  “And about that dress, I can’t imagine how she climbed all the way up here in it,” Noble says. “A completely wrong equipment for climbing.”

  He does not mention his own legs, also completely wrong equipment for climbing. And good for him.

  “She came down from the roof,” I chip in. “You can get there by regular stairs if you obtain the key. Which is not that hard if you really need it.”

  “Could she be hiding here?”

  “In that dress?”

  “Didn’t have time to change.”

  “You mean that’s regular daily wear?”

  “And someone has been bringing up food.”

  “Yup.”

  “So at least one other girl would know.”

  “We should ask them.”

  “Right. Start with Ginger . . .”

  “Enough!” Chimera screams, putting fingers in her ears. “Stop this right now!”

  We stop and wait silently.

  “You’re even worse than I thought,” she says, looking confused. “You are so full of shit. Why can’t you just leave it alone?”

  There are plaintive notes in her voice. For Chimera this is tantamount to admitting total defeat, so I am not surprised when she breaks down crying. Noble, however, is shocked, contrite, and ready to yield immediately. I shake my head, and he turns away with a pained look on his face.

  Chimera doesn’t notice any of that. She’s busy drowning in tears. The green eye shadow turns out to be of a waterproof kind, it doesn’t run or even smear, but Chimera is a sorry sight anyway.

  “What happened?” I ask. So gently that my own voice scares me a little.

  Chimera wipes her nose.

  “All right,” she says with disgust. “I’ll tell you. You were going to drag it out anyway sooner or later.”

  She turns away.

  “From our windows you can see the counselors’ floor. And also the roof,” she says, not looking at us. “Some time ago this guy wanted to jump off. He even slid down and hung there, holding with his hands. But he couldn’t let go. I know how that works. Believe me, I know. Then I saw him again. Same place. Standing there and looking down. Just looking down. I managed to get the key, and so when I saw him next time I climbed up here too. And we talked about stuff. He even told me why he wanted to jump . . .”

  As I listen to this otherwise ordinary story it rings somehow very familiar. I swear I’m hearing about this for the first time, but the feeling of familiarity is unusually strong. And I don’t understand where it’s coming from.

  Chimera’s trembling fingers tease out a cigarette from the pack that’s been sitting on the blanket. The long fingernails are covered in green polish.

  “And that’s it,” she says. “We started coming up here. Meeting here. It was our secret. For quite a while. Since before the Law. And then I had this dream. A bad one. So I dragged myself up. And now I sit here feeling like an idiot. Funny, isn’t it. The dress. Me keeping the watch for three days straight, and he still doesn’t come. And I mean, it’s just a dream, right, but I couldn’t stay still, I kept thinking what if this one was really prophetic, and then I might be too late. Now you can laugh all you want.”

  Humpback pops up through the hatch. He’s got on his tattered shirt made from strips of cloth and also a miner’s hard hat mounted with a flashlight. The hump, the bare feet, and the shaggy mane peeking from under the hat give him a slightly otherworldly look.

  “Don’t forget to tell him everything,” Chimera says, pointing the cigarette at Humpback. “About this painted moron taking residence in the attic. He’ll die laughing.”

  “Who is he?” I ask.

  “None of your business.”

  “Hey, are you coming down or what?” Humpback says. “Because Tabaqui said you wanted to . . .”

  I look into the eyes rimmed with green shadow and see in them a rainbow-colored pathway, a corridor leading to . . . But even before I step into that corridor of unsaid words coming at me in a low whisper, I can tell that it ends at a door. A locked door, and behind it, someone whom I know very well. I feel his scent, even without opening that door. I take a step forward . . .

  “Don’t you d
are sneak into me,” Chimera squeals, and I barely manage to shrink back, avoiding the emerald fingernails flashing not half an inch in front of my face.

  “Hey, cool it!” Noble catches her arm. “One Blind is quite enough.”

  “Then he shouldn’t be sneaking inside me!” Chimera thrashes, trying to free her hand. “Tell him not to do that! And get out of here!”

  “Sphinx, you’d better go,” Noble says, wrestling with Chimera. “While I’m still holding her. Got it?”

  I get up and sleepwalk to the hatch, where Humpback is waiting for me in his ridiculous outfit, swinging his bare legs over the drop.

  “Going down?” he says, jumping up. Then takes a length of rope out of his pocket and passes it through the belt loops around my waist. “Just insurance. In case I can’t hold on to you.”

  I stumble down the hallway, eyes staring fixedly ahead. Something is interfering with my progress. I finally realize what it is and stop, and at the same moment Humpback crashes into me from behind.

  “Sphinx! I’ve been calling to you all this time, didn’t you hear? Or are you planning to walk on a leash from now on?”

  He takes off the safety rope, loops it around his hand, and stuffs it back into his pocket.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “Just thinking.”

  “That’s some thinking! All right, I’m going back up to get Noble down before he’s devoured. That Chimera seems a bit unstable. It would be better not to leave them alone for long.”

  He disappears and I forge on, all the way to our room, where I sit on the floor just inside the door and observe Tubby wander under the bed, humming and getting covered in dust.

  I look at him for such a long time that he manages to traverse the space under the bed, crawl to the center of the room, flip over a chair, and gum everything that fell off it.

  Then Noble and Humpback return.

  Humpback is just in time to take someone’s sock away before Tubby puts it in his mouth. Noble throws a towel on the table and says that water is out in the whole House.

  “Why were you doing that?” he asks. “What did you need her confession for?”

  “I have this feeling that it concerns me too,” I say. “I don’t quite understand why or how, but it concerns me. And I don’t like it.”

  Noble sidles up on the bed and pulls off the colored smock.

  “Forget it,” he says. “Forget the whole thing. Disgusting business.”

  “He can’t,” Humpback says. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but whatever it is, Sphinx is not letting go of it. I can see it in his eyes.”

  Nanette angles to drop on his head but slips on the hard hat and flops down on the floor, deeply offended.

  “How do you do it?” Noble asks. “I had this impression that she was going to spill it all, whatever you needed to know.”

  I close my eyes.

  “It was back in the summer,” I say.

  Chimera didn’t say that, it’s my own insight. Why is it important that I shouldn’t know who it was? Is it because he too is afraid of me? I’ve almost caught him. I think I can figure it out now even without diving into Chimera’s eyes.

  “I’ll go find Blind,” I say, getting up.

  “Wait. I’ll go with you.” Noble pulls a knot of shirts out of the dresser. “Except I need to change first. Still, I don’t understand why it’s suddenly so important to you.”

  “Neither do I,” I say, and an unpleasant chill down my spine makes me cringe.

  Half an hour later, in Black’s giant red-and-white jersey with a number on its back, my back crisscrossed with surgical tape, I scour the House in search of Blind. Noble also has on one of Black’s jerseys, in white and blue. His number is twenty-two. People we meet on the way ogle us in shock, apparently suspecting that this is an advance notice of the new fashion about to be established. The progressive-sporty style. These stares seem to unnerve Noble, but he’s handsome even in a jersey hanging down below his knees. It gives him this edgy hobo flavor with a dash of the dump. Combined with his looks, the effect is simply stunning.

  I have to wait for him and adapt to his pace, because he’s much slower on crutches than in the wheelchair. After the second circuit of the hallway, complete with peeking in every door, nook, and cranny, Noble asks for a breather.

  “He’s not going anywhere. And my armpits are killing me. And hell’s bells, they’re all staring at us, like we’re a trained monkey show. I’m sick of that.”

  “Deal with it,” I say. “You volunteered to tag along. Or have you forgotten?”

  “Because I worry. About you, about your wanderings, and about this whole business. I have to be close. By the way, what makes you think Blind knows anything about this?”

  “Nothing makes me think that. He either knows or he doesn’t. But if there’s anyone at all who does, it would be him.” I stop for a moment. “Coffeepot! We haven’t checked there!”

  I make a beeline for the Coffeepot. Noble shuffles after me, swearing under his breath.

  Coffeepot is all dusk and billowing smoke, as usual. The table lamps throw green palm fronds of light on the walls. The curtains are drawn on the windows, but the sun still finds its way in through the cracks here and there, ruining the attempts at coziness.

  Blind is there. Perched on a mushroom-shaped stool, in his epauletted black frock coat. Young Dracula hiding from the deadly rays. There are three cups of coffee on the counter in front of him. The next mushroom is occupied by benignly scowling Vulture, except in place of coffee he has a pot with a cactus in it.

  I crash on the nearest toadstool, and my body responds with a full-throated wail in a hundred different places.

  “Heavens,” Vulture says, emerging from his personal smoke cloud. “What happened to you, boys? You both look . . . er . . . somewhat unusual.”

  “The water’s out,” I say. “These are Black’s rags. Blind, I’ve been looking for you. I need to ask you something.”

  “I am at your service.”

  Blind peers vacantly into emptiness, hands folded on the counter, like a dutiful student in the presence of a teacher.

  “Who tried to kill himself last summer by jumping off the roof?”

  Vulture whistles and shields the cactus with his hand, protecting it from the unpleasantness. Noble, having climbed onto the counter to give himself a rest from bipedal locomotion, drags his finger along the smear of spilled sugar. Blind is rigid like a marble frieze.

  “So, how about it?”

  I understand that no answer will be forthcoming, but it’s still worth it to try and drag at least something out of him.

  “Come on, Blind. Speak.”

  He reanimates and turns his face to me.

  “I take it back. I am not at your service, Sphinx. Sorry.”

  Short and to the point. And about as disgusting as Chimera’s fear. If not worse.

  “It wasn’t you, though?”

  “No comment.”

  Noble, hunched over, watches us anxiously, clawing at his chin.

  “I’m going to find out anyway.”

  Blind shrugs. “I have no doubt. But not from me. I think you should go now, Sphinx. You’re starting to get on my nerves.”

  I climb down from the plastic mushroom.

  “You said enough by not saying anything.”

  Blind turns to one of his cups. The conversation is over. I walk out without waiting for Noble and cross the hallway, bumping into people and wheelchairs. Beaten and humiliated.

  What is it to Blind that there was this unsuccessful suicide last year? That someone likes walking around roofs? Whoever he is, whatever it is that drives him to the edge, how can I be dangerous to him? There isn’t anything ever in Blind’s empty eyes, there aren’t any corridors or closed doors in his words, but I can read the answer to my question in the solid wall he’s built in front of me. And that answer causes me pain.

  I enter the dorm. Tubby stops chewing on the blanket an
d looks up at me.

  “Carry on, old man,” I say to him. “Who knows, by trying to eat everything you can get to, you may one day make an important discovery. Find a new category of food and cover your name in glory forever.”

  Tubby doesn’t understand the meaning of the words but recognizes the tone. My voice calms him down, and he stuffs the blanket farther into his mouth. I crouch down before him.

  “Have you noticed how we’ve taken to wandering around the House, and there’s never anyone in the room? That we’ve been leaving you here alone more and more often? Life has moved to the hallways, and you’ve been left behind, poor guy. But maybe that’s what’s better for you? The entire room is yours. So many things in it. But you see, the problem here is that it was one of us up there on the roof. Someone who can walk. But not Blind . . . not Humpback . . . and not Lary. Black? Alexander?”

  Tubby spits out a loose thread and makes a face.

  “It could very well have been Black. After what happened to Wolf, it even could have been me. But it was someone else. Let’s say Black. And this green-haired girl was ready to claw my eyes so that I wouldn’t find out who it was. Curious, no? She was afraid of me. Oh, she wanted to chase Noble away too, but of him she wasn’t afraid. Now riddle me this, Tubby. Who’s afraid of little old Sphinx? And why? What could I have done to cause this? Something very, very bad. That’s the last question I have. And it seems I know the answer to that one. Or maybe I’m just imagining it. Am I lying here in wait for someone who’d answer me?”

  Tubby sighs, staring at me with his beady eyes.

  “Now I am afraid, Tubby. You see? I’m deadly afraid. Of looking into his eyes and understanding. Why he was stuck up on the roof then and why he keeps going there still. What his guilt is and what his fear is.”

  Tubby is clearly waiting for me to tell him the tale about the blue sea and white sand. The threads are hanging down from his puffed lips here and there, like whiskers on a catfish, and he’s trying to groom himself as best he can, but he still listens intently. He looks at me and then at him, who is sitting next to me, or rather also crouching. There are three of us here, in a circle around the chewed-up blanket, and the third is listening closely, because my words are really directed at him, as are my questions, and he knows that.