The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

  Every time I pack and unpack the things I realize that this is a completely pointless endeavor. The actual contents of the backpack play almost no role in it, the important thing is the process itself. Take something out, smell it, put it aside. Take out, feel, put aside. And then when you try to stuff everything back it won’t fit. That’s an interesting but separate conundrum. And so on. It acquires an almost meditative quality.

  It used to be called “One Bag Syndrome.” A very serious disease. As I observe its symptoms in myself, I don’t quite understand what could have caused it. There are no luggage restrictions, either by weight or by size, for the graduation. And still I fret immensely that the backpack obstinately refuses to accommodate the kite. I guess that’s the mind playing games. A distracting tactic. You huff and puff and count the loot, and gradually forget what it was you started the whole repacking over. Instead a lot of other things bubble up to the surface, because each item means time, events, and people compressed into a solid form and requiring a proper place among its own kin.

  My backpack must be at least forty years old. No one makes them this sturdy anymore. Real leather patches, heavy brass buckles, ten pockets on the inside, five on the outside, and a dedicated knife holster. It’s not a backpack anymore, it’s a cave from “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.” Twice I had it stolen, and both times I managed to return it, and I myself stole it so long ago there isn’t anyone left who remembers that it hasn’t always been mine.

  I’m relating all that to Noble as the backpack disgorges its contents and I slap the deflated sides affectionately.

  “See this pocket? There’s a safety-razor blade inside, coiled and ready. As soon as you pull on the zipper, out it jumps, and then it’s good-bye.”

  “Good-bye what?”

  “Good-bye, fingers. That’s how I got it back both times after the thefts. You look around the canteen, spot whoever has a bandaged arm, wheel over and tell them nicely, ‘Give it back, you dirty bastard.’ And they do. Because they know it would be worse for them if they didn’t.”

  Noble peeks inside, intrigued.

  “It’s a mystery to me how come you haven’t soaked it in poison. It doesn’t sound like you, giving a thief an even break.”

  “Nah,” I say, putting back the woolen blanket and the mug with my initials on it. “One of the burglars was Lary. You realize, of course, how much whining ensued, now imagine what would’ve happened if it had been poisoned.”

  The archival album with the cuttings and stickers goes on the bottom. The clay whistles nestle in the mug. The camp pot, the binoculars, the purple vest, the box of glass beads . . .

  Noble drags the pillow closer to the pile, flops on it with his belly, and observes. For about a minute and a half. The next time I raise my head he’s already out cold. Feels like a door that’s been slammed in your face. You are talking to someone, and suddenly he’s gone.

  I sigh and pull off his mirror glasses. The envelope with the stickers hasn’t gone inside the backpack yet. I go through the specimens. Pick out the two most appropriate for the occasion and peel them off. A large strawberry goes on one of the mirror lenses, and the other gets a cartoon boy with his pants down. I thread the glasses over his ears and lower the lenses back on his nose. Noble’s look takes a definite turn toward festiveness.

  “My soul longs for music,” I say to Smoker. “But we don’t have anything that hasn’t been listened to hundreds of times. So, that calls for bright colors to liven up things.”

  “You can decorate me,” Smoker suggests glumly. “Or start a fire.”

  He’s flat on his back, staring at the ceiling and only occasionally gazing down at the world below. And that reluctantly, as if there’s something extremely important just about to happen up there. He probably dreamed of being a pilot when he was little. At least that’s the impression I’m getting.

  “You know,” he says after a pause, “I would never in my life even dream of opening your backpack. Never.”

  And falls silent. Sounds like a very definitive and somewhat threatening statement. Like I’ve spent the past several years imploring him to get a good rummage in there, and today is finally the day when he conveys to me his firm and unyielding refusal.

  “Why’s that?” I ask.

  Silence. Of a very meaningful kind. Likely in stern disapproval of my tamper-detecting devices. There isn’t anyone else I know who can be silent as meaningfully as Smoker. As exhaustively covering the entire issue.

  I continue to pack, reverently listening to the ominous silence. Noble is still sleeping.

  A deck of cards, spare bulbs for flashlights, compass, saltshaker, earplugs, feather for the hat, suspenders.

  Yes, yes, I’m a philistine, I’m bloodthirsty and somewhat paranoid, and generally far from perfect. But I have my good moments when I’m nice and caring, and Smoker’s prosecutorial silence does not allow for that at all. Having had my fill of it I finally snap and declare that he’s being ridiculously unfair and prejudiced.

  Smoker lifts his head lazily.

  “Oh, really? I don’t think so.”

  I open my mouth to present him with the authoritative proof of my point, and this is where Alexander enters. Seeing him sends my thoughts and words scattering, screaming.

  Alexander sits down on the bed and smiles at us. He’s wearing the whitest pants and a white T-shirt. His freshly washed hair is brushed back. This is the first time since the day I’ve first seen him that he put on anything brighter than the color of a dirty mop. Or bared his forehead.

  “What? Why are you staring like that?” he asks, shifting nervously back and forth on the edge of the bed.

  “You’re a vision in white, Alexander,” I say. “Like a snowflake. What’s happening to you? Talk to me.”

  He doesn’t really look like a snowflake. Rather a white knitting needle. Because today’s clothes fit him normally, while everything else until now hung like a sack. This fact is no less strange than the others. Like here’s someone who’s been hiding in a dark corner somewhere all his life, and suddenly shot out of there howling, dressed to the nines. On the other hand, if he’s shooting out it means he really needs to, and that’s that.

  “Looks nice, actually,” I say, “just unusual. I promise I’ll get right on getting used to it.”

  Noble’s already awake. He’s endured the shock stoically, as he has both the strawberry and the pantsless youth..

  “Play something on the harmonica,” he says.

  I can take a hint. He’s trying to get me to stop talking. But that’s part of being a true friend to your friends, not refusing a request even when it’s directed at shutting you up. So I take out the harmonica and play. Noble crawls closer to the bed rail, spreads himself across it, pulls out the guitar, and positions it on his belly.

  It is easier for the harmonica to follow the guitar than the other way around. So at first we keep bungling it, unable to get in sync, hissing and swearing, but then it starts to take shape, and we’re happy with that, even though the sound is nothing special. In these matters the process itself is what’s important, just as in the packing, so we sink deeper and deeper into it and get thoroughly stuck. It’s not long before I feel a Howl coming up. I’m guessing Noble does too. He starts to hum and whistle. Things like that wind me up enormously, me and my Howl voices.

  I tamp them down until I can’t anymore, and when that moment comes I drop the soaking-wet harmonica, screw up my eyes tightly, and screech, “Gangway down to the water! Circle the wagons! Artillery ready! Fire!”

  Thus bringing our cooperative music making to an abrupt end. In the ringing silence that follows the Howl, I open my eyes and see Sphinx sitting on the nightstand.

  “Again,” he says.

  “Again,” I agree sadly.

  Screams of all sorts have taken residence inside me lately. Some days, after an exhausting whirl around the House observing this and that, I’m overwhelmed by the desire to bark in a manly voice, “Women and children
to the shelters!” What women? What children? The subconscious would not be pushed and is silent. It just wants to herd everyone into a shelter, and that’s it. I think it’s the first response area of the genetic memory. Or take the “artillery,” for example. Every time I hear it I immediately imagine these ancient catapults. With a depressing regularity. Generally when I need to scream I scream, I don’t bottle it in. Better to have a nice scream or two and be done with it than to be constantly on the edge. Except my screams make the pack nervous. They can’t seem to get accustomed to it.

  “Whoever heard of a gangway being lowered to the water?” Noble asks in a dying whisper. He’s slightly on the greenish side, due to him being too close when I blew up.

  “Exactly!” I say indignantly. “The subconscious really went rogue. And really needed to lower it in that fashion. And to circle all the wagons. Or we’d all be screwed.”

  “And did you lower it?” Sphinx inquires.

  “I did.”

  “Wagons duly circled?”

  “They are.”

  “Thank goodness. We can relax until the next time.”

  I wipe off the harmonica. An exceptionally stifling day. No air at all. Noble is prostrate under the guitar. He peeled off the lewd boy but left the strawberry, a scarlet patch over his eye. Smoker is still waiting for news from the ceiling. Alexander has split.

  “Hey,” I say to Sphinx. “Have you seen Alexander and his amazing snow-white coat? Clean as a whistle and white as a daisy?”

  He nods.

  “And how do you like it?”

  “I think he looks nice.”

  “He even slicked back his hair. He’s behaving in an unusual manner. To say nothing of the fact that he always hated white. Pointedly so. So quit pretending that you don’t understand what I mean.”

  “Could it be he’s trying to convey the message that he’s sick of cleaning up everybody’s messes?” Smoker offers without taking his eyes off the ceiling.

  There’s that prosecutorial voice again. Implying an entire sea of issues that he chooses to leave untouched for the time being. Fortunately for us.

  “No one’s making him do that,” I say. “Never has.”

  Smoker smirks, without even a glance in my direction.

  So I did lie on the second point, of course, but that was out of simple forgetfulness, not malice. This is not the first time today that I want to throttle Smoker. If this keeps up it’ll become a recurring theme.

  “I had made him do that,” Sphinx says. “And I had made Noble, too. And Lary, when it comes to that. Only you got skipped over. For some reason.”

  “I wonder why,” Smoker says smoothly.

  “Me too. And Alexander’s image refresh does give us an opportunity to remedy that. How about today’s your turn to clean?”

  Smoker finally deigns to turn over, bestowing his surly visage on us. On Sphinx, more accurately. Looks at him with a sort of perverted longing.

  “Sure. If you can make me,” Smoker says. “The same way you made all of them back then. So that even Tabaqui would say that it never happened.”

  A breathtakingly rude remark, so much so that my nose starts itching, and the areas of the brain responsible for talking and acting are telegraphing up new Howls, along the lines of “Traitors against the wall!” and “Take no prisoners!” I barely manage to subdue them.

  Sphinx is looking straight at Smoker, and it’s unclear if he’s going to kill him right now or simply laugh. Just looking. He at Smoker, and Smoker back at him. The silence seems to drip in huge heavy drops.

  “Goodness,” Noble says reverentially. “So much drama.”

  I can’t hold on to an inappropriate and somewhat oily snigger, and it escapes.

  Sphinx switches off the headlights and then puts them back on, directed at us. That’s the way the man blinks, what of it? The eyes are cheerful and a bit on the impish side. He would have laughed. Most likely. But on a day as hot as this one you can’t be sure of anything.

  Alexander reappears and sits on his bed this time.

  “Hello, polar explorer,” I say to him. “You’ve almost caused a conflict here. If there’s one thing we hate, it’s for things to be left unsaid. So if this is some sort of protest, just say so. Otherwise we have Smoker here speaking for you, and we’ve already learned by and by that he has a dust allergy.”

  Alexander always looks terminally earnest. You almost start believing everything he says even before he’s said it. It is therefore a blessing that he says so little, because listening to really honest words is somewhat tiring.

  “I hate the color white,” he says.

  This tires me instantly and very deeply. The mental effort of it, I mean.

  Alexander looks at us, obviously expecting that we’ve already understood everything, but since our faces display a profound lack of understanding, he adds, “I dreamed I was a dragon. I hovered above a city and singed its streets with the fire of my breathing. The city was empty, because of me there. And I . . . it scared me.”

  I pull at the earring hard. It hurts, but also clears the mind. Both when I’m drunk and in cases like this, when I see things. Things like scarlet-winged lizards flitting between charred houses. Lizards that look like bonfires. Alexander said nothing about the color red, but I know. And I also know that when your true color is ripping you apart from the inside you can swathe yourself in a dozen layers of white, or black, and it won’t help a single bit. It’s like trying to mop a waterfall with a tissue.

  “The white shirt isn’t going to save you,” Sphinx says, putting my thoughts into words.

  Alexander’s stare is unblinking. I imagine that in another moment all the bones in his face are going to be exposed, and then the only thing for me to do would be to count them and go kill myself quietly. They’re almost out already. The bones, the gray skin, and the swampy puddles of the eyes, with tadpoles for pupils.

  “But it wouldn’t hurt either,” he says uncertainly. “Besides, who knows?”

  Sphinx doesn’t argue. Neither do I. Noble dives behind a magazine. Smoker yawns ostentatiously.

  “It’s time, Sphinx. Time for you to bust the glass for us. Can’t you see what’s going on? Time to fly. This one’s already taking wing”—I nod at Alexander—“and the others are champing at the bit.”

  “Bust it yourself,” Sphinx says. “I am not ten anymore. I forgot how it’s done.”

  These words are the last straw. It’s as if this was the only hope I was holding on to. Even though it started as an old, half-forgotten in-joke.

  “When I had a nightmare once and told about it, Sphinx said he was going to bite me if I didn’t shut up,” Smoker says casually. “I remember it very well.”

  “I do too.” Sphinx nods. “I also remember that I promised it to Noble, not to you. You have a very selective memory, Smoker. It skews the events. Presents them in an unflattering light.”

  “What if I dreamed I was a flying hippo?”

  “It would mean you ate something nasty at dinner.”

  “Why then for Alexander it has to mean that he needs to dress in white?”

  “I don’t know,” Sphinx says. He climbs down from the nightstand and sits on the floor, leaning his bald pate against the bed. “And I’ve never said it had to mean that, if you noticed.”

  Smoker laughs.

  “Now this was a beautiful explanation. Exhaustive and succinct. I finally understand everything.”

  His laugh is not exactly sane, but not completely mad either. Equal parts of both. He’s got a lot of laughing to do if he hopes to catch Noble in his best years, but it still grates. We all of us urgently need a breath of fresh air. While it’s still around. Because it’s quite possible that it won’t be around for long.

  I put on the dark glasses, plunging the world into shadow, and ask Alexander to help me with strapping my backpack to Mustang.

  As I drive up to the Crossroads I remember:

  The Amadán-na-Breena changes his shape every two da
ys. Sometimes he comes like a youngster, and then he’ll come like the worst of beasts, trying to give the touch he used to be. I heard it said of late he was shot, but I think myself it would be hard to shoot him.

  I cross the Crossroads, mumbling this canonical nonsense, and come to a stop at the back wall. Between the stand with the busted television and the wall there’s a tall mirror, so dusty that many think it’s facing the wrong side out. Girls do divination with it sometimes. Rub small areas with their fingers and look at what’s reflected in them. In a tiny spot of the mirror even a fragment of your own face seems portentous.

  I clear a small patch too. It’s been a long, long time since I looked myself in the eye. You’d think that experiments like this should not be attempted when depressed. But I suddenly realized that the days have been flying by too fast, so fast I might not get another chance to see myself in the divination mirror.

  First I make a small circle above my eyes, from there trace a line down toward the nose, and finally my double is peeking out from the neat window like from a hole in the wall. Hasn’t aged a day. The same fourteen-year-old mug. I’m sure I’ll still have it on the day they bury me. I rub out the side spaces for the ears, and push the hair off them so they come out better. The double resembles Mickey Mouse now. A very sinister Mickey Mouse. It hits me square on: I’m old. The mirror still reflects the same me as five years ago, but something’s missing on the inside. And it shows. The familiar prankster isn’t there. If you think about it, it’s been bloody ages since I did something amusing. Brought pox on all houses. I can’t even remember the last time I got beat up.

  “Hey, you,” I say to my double. “What’s this? You’re not growing up, by any chance? Drop it, or it’s over between us.”

  The reflected Tabaqui bugs out his eyes. Scared, or mocking me. One or the other.

  “What is it that’s written on their mugs? It says there: Graduation’s nigh! The sky is falling! We’re all gonna die!” I whisper. “And what does yours say? The exact same thing. Who the heck are you and what have you done to the guy who was there before?”