The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

  Ginger complains to Sphinx about Catwoman, the owner of the three haughty cats. Vulture lets Blind in on the plans for his funeral.

  “I am to be displayed in a glass sarcophagus, and the mourning period is not to exceed twenty-four hours.”

  “What about the poor Birdies?”

  “You may immure them nearby. Them, and my entire cactus collection. But I’ll expound on the exact procedure in my will, so you don’t have to worry about getting it wrong.”

  “How are you doing, Smoker?” Beauty asks bashfully.

  He puts out his hand and flips over the glass of Pine. And becomes upset. Terribly so. A brownish line trickles down the blanket.

  Alexander hands me a towel.

  “You seem to have spilled something.”

  I towel myself off, shake Beauty’s hand, say, “Hi, nice to see you, don’t worry about this, it’s just alcohol,” and try to crawl away from the pine-scented puddle slowly seeping into the covers—but there’s nowhere for me to go. I am hemmed in by Noble on one side and Jackal’s boundary pillow on the other.

  “They had it good in the old times, being buried together with their horses and the entire household,” Vulture says dreamily. “So that’s my request too, to be interred among my cacti. Close my eyes, put two small silver keys on them, and cross two lockpicks on the chest . . .”

  “I am so, so sorry, Smoker!” Beauty wails. “It is all my fault! Everything is always my fault! Everything!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I protest, digging in my shirt pocket for a handkerchief, but grab the smoldering cigarette instead, and it hurts. Very much.

  “While we’re on the subject, how is my dear relative doing?” Vulture says to Blind. “Is she well? Has everything she requires?”

  I can’t hear Blind’s answer, but as he speaks he shows Vulture the palm of his hand for some reason.

  “Tsk, tsk.” Vulture shakes his head. “What an utterly vicious creature.”

  I decide that Vulture probably gave Blind a cactus as a present, and now they’re discussing it, so I switch my attention to Ginger.

  “I don’t think she’s got much left,” she’s saying to Sphinx. “Sleeps almost all the time, and doesn’t recognize us anymore. Even the cats are avoiding her.”

  Sphinx says that this is sad.

  “Or not.” Ginger shrugs. “I guess everything’s for the best.”

  I knew that the girl was a monster, and so did Sphinx, apparently, which is why he’s not appalled by those words.

  The monster extracts a ragged teddy bear from the backpack and puts it on her knee. Playing up the innocent child. I get almost physically sick from her routines and all that talk stuck on death and burials. I lie down and turn my face to the boombox’s speakers, so I can avoid hearing any of them.

  But even here I’m ambushed by Lary, jumping out from who knows where.

  “Even if Spiders found something really bad with you, it’s still not the end, man, it’s not the end,” he says, handing me my own pack of cigarettes.

  “Thanks,” I say. “That’s very comforting to know.”

  It is Tabaqui who wakes me up.

  There are only two of us in the dorm. It’s very sunny and very hot. One half of the bed is made, exactly up to the place where I am. Tabaqui is wearing three T-shirts of different lengths, with no buttons in sight. None. I remember that yesterday I didn’t see any on him either. I guess that period of his life has come and gone.

  I rub my face, scratch my head, and yawn.

  “Let’s ride!” Tabaqui demands impatiently. “It’s the perfect time for paying visits! Come on, get dressed! Quick!”

  An untidy bundle is aimed at my head. I unwrap it. It’s my shirt, crumpled, covered in brown stains and with the burn mark on the breast pocket. I put my finger through the hole; it’s black when I pull it out. I decide not to change out of my sleeping T-shirt. It also isn’t fresh, but at least I’m not going to look like I killed someone.

  Tabaqui crawls to the edge of the bed and noisily tumbles down to the floor. Had he tried that trick in the Sepulcher he’d be put in plaster casts for a week. Arms and legs, both. To wean him off that nasty habit.

  The paying of visits begins in the Coffeepot. We take the table by the window, and Tabaqui orders two coffees and some rolls. It’s a sparse crowd today. Four Hounds, yawning, work on scrambled eggs.

  “Do they serve stuff like that here? I thought it was only rolls,” I say, not entirely sure because I’ve never been a regular.

  “They do now. Almost no one goes to the canteen for breakfast anymore, so Shark has authorized some stuff to be redirected here. It gets reheated, and the result is truly atrocious. I emphatically advise against it.”

  “Where is everybody? Why is it so empty?”

  Tabaqui extracts a cigarette from behind his ear, sniffs at it, and pulls the ashtray closer.

  “Who’s everybody?” he asks suspiciously.

  “I mean, our guys.”

  “I don’t know. Look, we’ll sit here for a while, have a talk, and then go visit Humpback. Then we’ll be three of our guys.”

  We drink the coffee in deathly silence. This is so unlike Tabaqui that I feel more and more awkward.

  Hounds finish their reheated eggs and leave. I suddenly remember what it was I wanted to ask Tabaqui.

  “Listen, where’s my diary? Where did you put it yesterday?”

  “Your what?” he says, looking puzzled. “Oh, the diary. Must be in the room somewhere, I guess. I didn’t put it in with my stuff.”

  He slaps the side of the fat backpack strapped to the back of his Mustang. The backpack is so overstuffed that it would have tipped him over if he hadn’t balanced it with small weights attached to the footboards. They jangle and rattle as he goes, and must be getting in the way, but Tabaqui is ecstatic at his own ingenuity and is not planning to get rid of them. One might even think he likes the clamor.

  For some reason I start talking about the Sepulcher, how bored and alone I felt there, and how I couldn’t even get down from the bed and crawl around to keep myself in shape. Crawling is frowned upon in the Sepulcher. As is smoking. Or reading at night.

  Tabaqui listens with apparent interest.

  “Horrors,” he says when I exhaust my complaints. “I don’t know if I can eat properly, now that I know all this. Or at least if I can enjoy food anymore. A scary place, that Sepulcher, I’ve always said that.”

  I say that it’s not that bad really, that it’s more comfortable than a Cage, that you only get prodded and bothered during the rounds, and the rest of the day is yours to enjoy peace and quiet, but Tabaqui just repeats that he’s never heard anything more horrible.

  “Rounds,” he mutters. “Imagine that. Horror, pure and simple.”

  “You mean you’ve never been in the Sepulcher?”

  “No, I haven’t. And now it’s unlikely I’d end up there before the end. Which is the only thing that comforts me when I think of graduation.”

  Someone slaps me on the back and says that he’s happy to see me. Black. Carrying a pack of milk with a straw sticking out. He sits down on the edge of our table and asks me how I’m doing.

  “Great,” I say.

  “Horrible!” Tabaqui counters, swaying back and forth in his Mustang. “Don’t listen to him, Black. He’s just been telling me about all the ghastly things happening in the Sepulcher, so ghastly I wouldn’t even venture to repeat them.”

  Black winks at me, with the eye that Tabaqui can’t see.

  “And what does Sphinx say about it?”

  “Sphinx didn’t hear that. He wasn’t here at the time.”

  “No, I mean what does he say about him returning, not about the Sepulcher.”

  “About Smoker returning he has so far said nothing,” Tabaqui explains readily, “which means he probably won’t be saying anything about it. If he has something to say, he either says it right away or doesn’t say it at all. Anyway, whatever you say or don’t say, he’s be
en returned, and that’s the end of it.”

  Black finishes the milk in one gulp, crumples the pack, long-tosses it in the trash bin, and says, “What I mean is, if he decides to say something after all, I’m ready to take Smoker. Anytime. Tell him that when you see him.”

  He gets up from the table, smooths out the tablecloth, says “See you around,” and leaves.

  “How incredibly kind of him,” Tabaqui fumes. “He’s always ready to add another Hound to the eighteen he already has, but only if Sphinx starts behaving like a crotchety old maid and says something untoward. I’m so touched I’m going to cry!”

  “Listen, you promised to take me to Humpback,” I remind him. “Could we go already?”

  “We could,” Tabaqui mutters darkly. “Unless you are of the opinion that I am now required to pass Chief Hound’s message to Sphinx while it’s still steaming.”

  “I am not. The message can wait.”

  “Let’s ride, then.”

  Tabaqui takes a battered acid-green baseball cap out of his backpack, shakes it out, and shoves it down on top of his shock of unruly curls.

  “I’m ready. Don’t leave the cigarettes, they’d be gone before we get two feet away.”

  It’s warmer out in the yard than inside the House. A group of fully clothed Bandar-Logs are sunning themselves, splayed theatrically against the wall. They quietly acknowledge us from under their drawn-down caps as we drive by.

  “Like a firing squad’s just been,” Tabaqui notes. “Except there’s no blood.”

  The oak gives a dense, almost purple shadow. The dappled sun plays on the gnarly trunk. Tabaqui turns off the path into the grass, stops, and rummages in his backpack.

  “He’s got a whole system set up,” he explains. “With every visitor having a distinct call, and a way to communicate the reason for coming over. As a hint that we shouldn’t bother him too much. Because you know how it is, there’s this rumor now that he can see into the future, so they started coming here in droves. Ruined the lawn. It’s strange, really. All it takes is climbing up a tree, and suddenly you’re a prophet.”

  Not pausing for a second, Tabaqui takes out his harmonica, wipes it off, puts it to his mouth, and starts tootling the Rain Song.

  I look up at the oak. From here it’s hard to tell where Humpback’s tent is, let alone Humpback himself. It’s all vaguely canvas-y, half-hidden in the canopy. I peer at one flap, shielding my eyes from the rays piercing the mass of leaves, and imagine that those are Humpback’s underpants drying on the clothesline, and somewhere higher up he has pots and pans hanging off the branches, and strings of dried acorns, and maybe right now he’s working on some mysterious concoction of oak leaves, June bugs, and crow guano. While I’m picturing all that, here he comes, in the flesh, tanned almost black, shaggy and half-naked, looking very much the hermit, the whites of his eyes flashing and some trinket on a string around his neck jingling.

  He sits down in a fork of two thick branches and crosses his bare legs. Not high and not low. Too high for us. A walker could probably reach him.

  “Hi!” Tabaqui waves the harmonica. “See? Smoker’s back. And he’s staying until graduation. Who would’ve thought, huh?”

  “Who indeed,” Humpback says.

  He’s only got his boxers on. The hair is cinched on the forehead by a grubby-looking cord. I don’t think he’d be able to see anything otherwise. He isn’t surprised by what Jackal has just told him. No wonder, since he surely spotted me before coming down.

  As Tabaqui rattles off the latest news, he keeps looking over the oak and its inhabitant in a proprietary sort of way, like a native guide showing off a famous landmark to a chance tourist. I am the tourist and Humpback is the landmark, so we’re both silent. Humpback keeps his eyes on the lawn and the Logs in the distance. I’m watching the lower branches of the oak and his bare legs.

  “So, what do you have to say about all this?” Tabaqui demands, having disposed of the news.

  “Say?” Humpback looks up distractedly. “I’d say that it’s all probably for the best. What else can I say? Excuse me, this is not a very comfortable place for sitting.”

  He nods at us, with not a hint of a smile, gets up, and disappears in the branches. We hear the rustle as he climbs up, and quickly lose sight of him.

  “Hear that? The oracles of antiquity got nothing on him,” Tabaqui says admiringly. “That’s why he’s so popular. Because he can toss off tired truisms and sound good doing it.”

  We make a couple of rounds of the yard, looking at the oak now and then, at the canopy where Humpback is hiding from the world. Suddenly Tabaqui stops dead.

  “There’s one other thing I think you need have a look at,” he says. “Give me five minutes and then come to the classroom. That should be enough for me to prepare it.”

  “Prepare what?”

  Jackal smiles mysteriously and drives off.

  I watch with apprehension as he’s approaching the ramp. The weights are not going to be enough to hold the wheelchair upright when he’s on the incline. The backpack will tip the whole thing over.

  Without slowing down, Tabaqui reaches over, extracts from the pocket on the back of Mustang a length of rope with a grappling hook on one end, unspools it, and makes a deft throw, catching it on the railing on the first try. He even neglects to give it a tug to check if it is lodged securely, simply flies up the ramp hand over hand on the rope. On the porch he can’t help himself and looks back at me. Have I seen that? Have I admired that?

  I have, and I have. Tabaqui, looking very pleased, stows his siege weapon and disappears inside.

  On the stairs between the first and the second floor I bump into Lary. He’s also plenty tanned and managed to grow a patchy beard. I didn’t get a good look at him yesterday.

  “Hey, Smoker,” he says. “So you’re, like, healthy now? Nothing hurts?”

  I tell him I’m fine and ask if by any chance he knows what that wondrous thing is that Tabaqui is planning to show me in the classroom.

  “Oh. His collection.” Lary waves his hand dismissively. “It’s nothing. A pile of junk, if you ask me. But don’t even think of calling it that. Tabaqui’s going to kill you if you do.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” I say.

  “Anytime, man.”

  He continues down, for his sunbathing session, and I go up to look at the collection.

  Which turns out to be a pile of junk. Literally. Dumped in the middle of the classroom. The desks have been pushed against the walls, probably to give it more space. Mermaid has chosen one of them to sit on, completely cocooned inside her hair so that only the very tips of her sneakers peek out. Tabaqui, frozen in anticipation at the bottom of Mount Rubbish, almost seems like a part of the collection himself. A living exhibit.

  “Well?” he says. “What do you think about all this?”

  I make my face reflect deep cogitation and circle the collection. It is not exactly overwhelming. A garage sale. A couple of paintings, two huge photographs of the Crossroads glued to wooden frames, a rusted birdcage, an enormous high boot, a battered ottoman, a dusty box of cassettes, and assorted knickknacks spread on chairs: small boxes, books, pendants, trinkets.

  I make another go-round.

  Further driving seems pointless, so I tell Tabaqui, “Looks nice. What’s it supposed to mean?”

  “What? You don’t remember? You were there when I started assembling it! Those are all nobody’s. Completely, totally no one’s. No one admits to owning them. No one remembers anyone else ever owning them. They just appear in odd places all by themselves, under mysterious circumstances.”

  “Oh. I understand now.”

  I don’t understand anything, of course. How could things be nobody’s? So those who had used them are no longer in the House, so what? The House has gone through so many people and things that it’s impossible to claim to know who owned what.

  “All right,” Jackal grumbles. “Out with it. I can see the direction your thought process
is taking.”

  “Good for you,” I say. “I hope your collection happily grows and multiplies.”

  Mermaid jumps off the desk and runs to me, the bells in her hair tinkling.

  “You don’t believe us? But it really is nobody’s, all of it.”

  I like Mermaid. She reminds me of a kitten. Not those postcard-ready fuzzballs, but a homeless, scrawny one, with hauntingly beautiful eyes. It’s impossible not to pick one up even if it isn’t asking you for it.

  So I say that of course I believe them, I believe that everything they’ve assembled here really and truly does not belong to anyone, and that it must be amazing and odd, finding things like those, except I don’t understand why they need to do it.

  Tabaqui’s eyes fill with disdain.

  “You see,” he says, “life does not go in a straight line. It is like circles on the surface of the water. Every circle, every loop is composed of the same stories, with very few changes, but no one notices that. No one recognizes those stories. It is customary to think that the time in which you find yourself is brand new, freshly made and freshly painted. But the world only ever draws repeated patterns. And there aren’t that many of them.”

  “But what does this old junk have to do with that?”

  He sighs, visibly hurt.

  “It has to do with the sea, for example, always bringing up the same things that are nevertheless always different. If this time you got a twig, it doesn’t mean that the last time it wasn’t a seashell. A wise man brings all of it together, puts it with what’s been collected by those who came before him, and then adds to it the stories of what came up in the olden days. And this way he would know what the sea brings.”

  Tabaqui isn’t mocking me. He’s deadly earnest. Even though what he’s just said sounds like he’s delirious. Mermaid is hanging on his every word, eyes open wide, almost glowing from the inside. I think about how she’s still just a child, really, and so is Tabaqui.

  “These things are nobody’s things,” Tabaqui insists. “They don’t have an owner. But there must have been a purpose to them lying forgotten and lost in some corner all this time, right? And then being found suddenly? They might contain some sort of magic. The answers to all our questions are right around us, all we have to do is find them. And then the seeker becomes the hunter.”