The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

I am already dressed, so I crawl closer to the edge of the bed. If I can’t see it, at least I can listen to them talk. Alexander notices my movements and comes over to the bed.

  “Would you like to have a look? Come to the window, I’ll lift you up.”

  “Never mind,” I say.

  As I crawl toward the window, Mermaid slides down from it. She is wearing men’s pajamas, about three sizes too big for her. She turned up the sleeves but the pants legs still flop around. Ginger gives me a hand and hoists me up on the windowsill, almost without any help from Alexander, who’s pushing me from below.

  I see them now. Four tents. Two camouflage green, one orange, and one dusty blue. They really are right against the fence, as if the House has sprouted them overnight out of itself, like mushrooms.

  “I wonder if it’s not the survivalists from the Sixth,” Sphinx says uncertainly. “Could be that Black decided to train them for the rigors of the Outsides. In stages.”

  “Who’s coming down to the yard?” Ginger calls. “To look at them up close?”

  “What about breakfast?” Jackal says indignantly. “You have all been neglecting it! It’s boring, going to the canteen by myself.”

  I end up looking at the tents longer than anyone else, because I was the last to see them and because I can’t climb down. Gradually they tire of discussing this event, and soon I am alone on the windowsill. When Alexander comes to help me, I notice that he is very careful to avert his face.

  “What’s wrong?” I say.

  He shrugs.

  “Nothing. I’m just not interested.”

  It doesn’t sound very convincing, not at all.

  Once in the hallway everyone darkens, and some put on sunglasses. The walls are not scary anymore. They are uniformly the color of malted milk, smooth and squeaky clean. The stench of paint is overwhelming.

  “We are a continuation of the Sepulcher now,” Lary says ruefully. “You call this life?”

  No one else says anything.

  A good half of the House is already down in the yard. Many are still in pajamas. At least it’s clear that Sphinx was wrong. Hounds of the Sixth have nothing to do with this. They are as eager as everyone else to find out who’s been hiding in the tents. Even the Brothers Pigs are here, all in a row, wheel to wheel. Identical stares and identically opened mouths. No one has risked approaching the wire fence yet.

  Finally the flap on one of the tents is thrown open, disgorging three inhabitants. Bulky camo overalls. Cleanly shaven heads. Empty eyes, staring exactly like Ginger’s bear. It doesn’t look like anyone is eager to make their acquaintance. On the contrary, those closest to the fence take several steps back. When I look around a couple of minutes later, I feel that there are significantly fewer of us here.

  One of the tent people presses against the fence, contorting his face in a smile. I zoom backwards toward the porch. Only when the wheels bump into the lower step do I realize that never before in my life have I driven backward at such speed. Lary overtakes me and flies up the stairs.

  “An empty skin,” he mumbles as he runs. “An empty skin!”

  Logs quickly disappear inside.

  The tent man puts his fingers through the netting and says something. Still smiling. I wish he’d stop doing that. I’d prefer it if Ginger’s bear smiled suddenly instead of him.

  The Brothers Pigs drive by me, each jostling my wheelchair, because I’m right there in the way at the bottom of the stairs. Then Zebra and Corpse run past, pushing crying Elephant before them, and almost flip him over. One of the last to evacuate is Jackal.

  “What do they want?” I ask him. “Who are they?”

  “Empty skins,” he answers, busily unspooling his hook on a rope. “They are looking for someone who they think would fill them.”

  “I don’t understand!” I cry after him, but he’s already up on the porch, hotly arguing with Red.

  He doesn’t hear me.

  BLIND

  Blind crosses the yard that’s been imbibing the heat all day. The asphalt is warm under his bare soles, and the stubble of the lawn prickles them gently. The grass is thicker under the oak, thicker and softer. He comes up to the tree and allows his hands to enter it. The bark leaves wrinkled indentations on his palms. He climbs slowly, even though he could fly up like a cat. But it’s not his tree. Today he is merely a guest. To the right of the entrance extends a wide corridor, leading to the place where the swing was once attached, until Elephant tore it off with the yelp of “I’m flying!”—and to the left, a narrow passageway that only the thin and small-bodied could use. That branch is cooler to the touch than the others, because they all keep the traces of every ascent and descent, and Blind likes it best. He whistles as he climbs, sending up a warning.

  Humpback says hi and rustles the twigs. The greeting is not welcoming, but Blind didn’t expect it to be. Humpback settled up here in the hopes of being left alone, not to entertain guests. But Nanette, rushing through the leafy thickets to meet Blind, is ecstatic. The wings brush his cheek and his shoulder is bestowed with a blob of gelatinous guano. She’s become heavier, and she smells of a fully adult bird now, that is, not exactly nice. While he and Nanette exchange pleasantries, Humpback asks what Blind is doing up in the tree.

  “Nothing much, really,” Blind says. “Would you play for me?”

  Humpback doesn’t answer.

  Nanette flies a little way off, attacks the canopy, sings with abandon, dances above their heads, making noise and pretending she’s three birds at once. Blind wipes off his shirt. His hand becomes sticky.

  “Why?” Humpback says.

  His voice is different here than in the room. A confident voice, even when he’s speaking softly.

  Blind takes a step forward. His face is a frozen mask, his hands bear the traces of the tree’s undulations.

  “No reason,” he says, and sits down in the goblet-like junction, the only place here that’s suitable for comfortable sitting.

  He always chose that place, preferring it to all others. Anyone sitting here cannot be seen either from the ground or from the windows. This is the very heart of the tree.

  Blind sees that Humpback’s seclusion is a burden to him. Being alone is hard when you’re accustomed to living among many, and that which he thought would bring him peace is not helping. The moon shines brightly through the night, and the air is full of tension. Humpback is part of that tension he tried to flee, he brought it with him and placed it in the branches, hoping that the silence and the tree’s vitality could do something to it. Something that he himself couldn’t. Everybody’s the same. Running around trying to hide everything deeper inside, then hiding themselves and their birds. Stepping back, always stepping back and smelling of fear, but keeping up appearances, smiling, joking, quarreling, eating, and procreating. And Humpback is not like them, he’s bad at it, he only gets as far as the very first, overt part of any action, and that makes him even more unhappy.

  The mingling aromas of vanilla and unwashed hair. The first of those he carries in a pouch of smoking tobacco around his neck.

  They are silent. Humpback searches for the words to say to Blind, Blind waits for him to find them, and then Humpback walks away on a shaky branch, returns, sits down across from Blind, and starts playing. Very softly. It’s almost a lullaby, but the wrong kind, there is no calm in it, no caress. Through its ostentatious tenderness Blind feels the cold breath of Humpback’s loneliness. Blind waits for it to subside, to dissolve as Humpback gets carried away and forgets about his presence, but he never does.

  “Happy?”

  Blind reaches out.

  “May I? I would like you to remember something.”

  His hand accepts the flute. It’s not merely warm—it’s hot, like the places on the walls where someone has just written something important. The handprints are always hot, visible to the touch. The flute trembles and meanders in Blind’s hand, the dead wood follows the traces left by the live wood. Blind plays the song he had heard o
nce, the one with the wind, the spiraling leaves, and the boy in the middle of the whirlwind, protected and vulnerable at the same time. Blind plays well, this is not the first time he has played this song. He re-creates all the nuances faithfully, and he can be proud of his performance.

  “What was that?” Humpback says.

  “You used to play this down in the yard. Remember?”

  Humpback shakes his head. They often respond like that to Blind, and only then check themselves and put their movements into words, but by that time it’s already unnecessary.

  “No, I don’t.”

  Blind plays another snippet, and Humpback’s aloof silence tells him that Humpback really does not recognize his own song.

  “Too many repetitions.”

  Blind doesn’t tell him that the repetitions are his, that they helped him weave the protective net, that it’s what the magic of monotony is about, completing the circle, doubling on itself until the end becomes the beginning, building an impenetrable wall around the player. The words remain unsaid as he hands back the flute. Other people’s songs have damaged Humpback, he can no longer do magic even when he lives in a tree. What he used to do so well is now but a trivial melody for him.

  “The tree is not good for you,” Blind says. “And the loneliness. Come down and look for what you’ve lost there. You might find more than you expect to find while sitting here.”

  “How would you know what I want to find sitting here? What I’ve already found? What makes you think you know what’s going on in my head?”

  Nanette crashes down on Blind’s shoulder like a sack of feathers and passionately pecks him on the earlobe.

  “How about you come down yourself and stop bugging me?” Humpback says, taking the bird off Blind. “Leave me alone.”

  Blind distances himself from Humpback’s words, his voice, Nanette’s crowing, stops seeing their movements by the noise they’re making, and brings up the memory of the big fish flapping its fins in a deep basin, immersing himself in that sound. Someone had done that long ago. Took a fish, put it in a basin, and placed it in the room where Blind lived. Blind spent so many hours sitting next to that basin that he can now restore those sounds inside him even in the noisiest of places, restore them and lull himself to sleep. He brings his big fish and lets it roam among the branches of the oak like a giant scaly bird, lets it splash and float in the leaves. The longer it does that, the calmer he becomes. When he touches his fingers to the bark, it is not warmer than his skin anymore, he washed it of its memory, the tree will stand untouched now for some time, like a primeval oak in the primeval forest.

  Humpback quiets down also, listening to what he wrought.

  Dozens of paths above them, growing thinner and thinner and breaking off into nothingness, dozens of ways, some wide, some narrow, all ending identically, but not for those who can see. The highest of them soar above the canopy, if you follow them you can feel them buckling under your weight, and if it’s windy you may hear the squeaking of the invisible door as you swing on the branch over the void, inhaling the scent of the closed-off path. Blind climbs the oak when he needs to feel the Forest. When his arms and legs are restless and his head is full of words he seeks solace in sending his body up the waterspouts to the roof, up the wire fence, up the trees to the highest branches. He likes himself when he does these things. He hasn’t visited the oak for a long time. He’s content here, he’s home, and even if Humpback turned him out now he’d still carry away something valuable. Humpback’s fear and apprehension. The old song, the smell of tobacco, Nanette’s excitement, and the splashing of the giant fins. And the image of the little girl, crouching, sucking on her thumb. The girl with a surprisingly heavy gaze, wearing a battered short dress stained with egg yolk and blood. Humpback is scared of her. Blind will take her with him.

  “Why is it you don’t ask before taking something from us?” Humpback says sharply. “Why do you never ask us?”

  Blind is astonished by Humpback’s perceptiveness, almost frightened by it. He leans against the gnarly branch. Always? From us? What does he always take from them, from Humpback, without asking? And why would Humpback tell him about it now, just as he realizes something is indeed being taken? He scatters Humpback’s words and puts them together again, listening to the sound they make, and sees that Humpback did not mean what he assumed. He was not talking about that which Blind has taken a moment ago.

  “Everyone grabs what they need wherever they can,” he says. “You included. We all take something from each other.”

  Humpback’s branch jerks, mirroring his move. Or maybe he thumped it angrily.

  “Yes, we all do. But you, especially so. You are greedy, Blind. You take like a thief, and it’s so obvious. I sometimes think that you feed on our thoughts. That there is no you, only what you’ve taken from us, stolen from us. And that . . . loot—it walks among us, it talks to us, sniffs at us, pretending that it’s one of us. I feel myself emptying in your presence. I hear you saying my own words—words that I never said when you were near. Logs call you a changeling. They say you steal other people’s dreams. It’s supposed to be a joke, you’re supposed to laugh like it’s another one of their silly ideas, except I know it’s true, have known it for a long time. I know you’re a fake. You’re tiny shards of us glued together.”

  “That grew into your Leader,” Blind prompts. He’s not being sarcastic or cruel. He doesn’t hear conviction in Humpback’s voice, only desire to hurt him. “I can assure you, Humpback, that I did once exist outside the House, without any assistance from any of you.”

  Does Humpback smile?

  Blind knows where this superstition comes from. A big part of it is his habit of quietly assuming the inflections of anyone he’s talking to. It happens by itself, almost unconsciously. By doing that he reduces the distance, makes the words easier to understand. Sometimes it makes even the thoughts easier to guess. But this habit by itself wouldn’t make Humpback want to hurt him now.

  “I had my dreams,” Humpback says. “They were my own. My secret place. No one knew about it. And then you barged in and ruined it. Forced that horrible child on me. She hides all the time and then jumps out when I least expect it, and starts biting and scratching like a wolverine. You turned my dreams into nightmares. I can’t even be in a room at night anymore, I’m always expecting her to sneak in on me and tear at my face. I’m not even talking about being able to sleep. Only here, in the tree, and only for minutes at a time. I know why you did it. Because you can’t stand it when someone escapes from you! Escapes to where you have no power!”

  Blind laughs.

  “What makes you think that you’re the only one to have that dream? That it’s a dream at all?”

  Humpback suddenly reeks of danger. The scent is so strong that Blind grabs the nearest branch, even though it’s not nearly thick enough to support him.

  “If I were to push you off right now, are you going to reach the ground? Or will you evaporate on the way down?”

  Humpback’s voice echoes with the sound of Blind’s fall and the twigs cracking. Or maybe it’s bones.

  “I’ll grab you, and we’ll fall together.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “I didn’t like the question.”

  Humpback sighs heavily.

  “Those aren’t dreams, Humpback. Believe me,” Blind says. “But you must have already figured that out.”

  Nanette pounds the trunk with her beak, imitating a woodpecker. Blind tears off a leaf that’s been tickling his cheek and crushes it in his fingers. They become slightly sticky and bring in the smell of the Forest. It helps Blind regain his composure. You should always smell of things that surround you, that’s one of the Forest survival tricks. Becoming a part of it reduces the danger. It’s a bit like copying the inflections. Blind has long been a believer in this technique, ever since the time he devoured the walls of the House when he was little.

  “If not dreams, what is it, then?” Humpback says
.

  “You know yourself,” Blind says indifferently.

  Humpback is silent. Only his fingers move, rubbing the flute. The dappled rays of the sun are hotter now, they burn Blind’s skin where they touch it, these solar bites wandering back and forth in the feeble breeze that ruffles the leaves.

  Once, long ago, on this very junction where Blind now sits, he was hit by a crossbow bolt. It didn’t pierce him, only hit and bounced off. He remembers how frightened he was. Not of the blow itself and not of the pain that followed, but because the one who did it remained invisible. He could not guess who it was, standing below with the makeshift weapon that was in vogue among the juniors, he could not even be sure it was one of his classmates and not a senior, and it’s the thought that it could have been anyone that was scarier than meeting a barrage of arrows from a noisy, arrogant, obvious adversary. Why was he remembering it now? What makes one relive an event that does not, on the surface, have anything to do with the conversation he’s having? Blind’s hand slips under his shirt, the fingers caressing the stomach in the spot where the bruise used to be.

  “How much time does it take to reload a crossbow?” he says.

  Humpback’s silence is more telling than would be his scream. Blind is amazed at his discovery. So it really was Humpback. Honorable and generous even at six years old. Protector of strays and bullied newbies. Blind had all the reasons to be frightened back then. The one standing under the tree with a crossbow turned out to be the one who could not have been standing there and doing what he had done. That’s where the silence comes from. Humpback is ashamed, like a grown-up would be ashamed of an evil deed.

  “How much time does it take to vanish?” Humpback says stiffly. “To fade away into thin air, like you never existed?”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Nor you, mine.”

  Blind spits out a strand of hair that somehow found its way into his mouth.

  How can you explain something that is in the nature of things for you, and at the same time impossible and fantastic for everyone else? How can you express the knowledge, the experience that took you years to accumulate, in mere words? Yes, of late Blind finds that he is being called to do just that more and more often, but it doesn’t make the task any easier.