The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

  Sphinx would approach them carefully. He’d know better than anyone else where that wall had been, but now it would be right here. With all the creatures that inhabited it, great and small. The wolf with the sawlike teeth crowding his jaws, the yellow giraffe resembling a tower crane, the zebra looking more like a stripy camel, the spotted goblin, the green dinosaur, the faded outline of a seagull. As he looks closer, he’d see that in among the familiar drawings there would be others, also familiar but that never were next to them—the white bull swaying uncertainly on spindly legs, the dragon with the blue stone for an eye . . . and moreover, those that were familiar but actually had never been drawn—one more dragon, fiery scarlet, and a fish with a small bell tied to its tail. The bell would be real.

  Sphinx would pluck it off the fish’s tail and hide it in the pocket of his coat. Then press his forehead against the wall. He’d stand like that for a while, listening to the silence surrounding him, until the silence became absolute, because it would start snowing. Coming down in an avalanche of enormous flakes, and Sphinx, blinded by them, would stumble around the ruins in search of the crack in the fence that would lead him out.

  On his way back to the dorm, jostled by the bus ride, striding along the snowy street, he would think about the bell secreted in his pocket, fighting the urge to take it out and confirm that it really exists. Then he’d feel a prickly sensation in the other pocket, stop and pull out a white feather, so long that it would be impossible to put back without breaking it. He’d have to stick it in his hat, hoping against hope that it didn’t look too outrageous.

  He’d meet his neighbor on the stairs, a morose bespectacled girl. She would say that someone was waiting for him.

  “This tiny slip of a girl, with gorgeous hair,” the neighbor would add, eyeing the feather suspiciously. And of course, she would be immensely surprised when the untamed loner, the standoffish recluse in prosthetics, jumps at her and kisses her right there on the stairs, like a drunken reveler.

  “And a feather in his hat!” she’d stress every time she tells the story. “Red nose, crazy eyes, and this huge feather!”

  She would never admit that her neighbor seemed to her at that moment the most beautiful man in the world.

  VOICES FROM THE OUTSIDES

  Smoker

  I still get asked about those events from time to time. Less frequently now compared to twenty or even fifteen years ago. But many do remember. It’s amazing how many. They remember that I had something to do with that story and imagine that it somehow influenced my soul and my paintings.

  I have met with quite a few of the former occupants of the House since graduation. Some have done pretty well for themselves and others barely scrape by. There are probably also those who are in pretty dire straits, but since they are not in the habit of attending my personal shows, I can’t vouch for their existence. Of those who remained in the town, I know six. They meet regularly to wallow in memories, but I’ve never felt the need to join their company. There are none among them whom I’d really like to see. I actually see very few people, apart from Black.

  I collected news clippings about the Sleepers for a while, but then abandoned the whole thing. It was too painful, thinking about them, imagining them. Easier to deal with the living or with the truly dead.

  Horse

  No, we none of us went to visit them. What’s the point? Not even Red. First it was because we were lying low, and then there was too much to do. But I never wanted to anyway. We knew about them, I mean, who was where and stuff, but going there—no, that didn’t happen.

  Black

  Honestly? I don’t care about the Sleepers. I’m not even going to pretend that I’m grieving for them. It was their own choice, their decision, and the last thing I would do is drag myself over there clutching a bunch of carnations, drowning in snot around the corpses. Because let’s face it, corpses is what they are. Living corpses who don’t give a damn about any emotions coming from me. What would I be busting my tail for, then?

  Red

  I do visit them from time to time. No flowers, of course. Why shouldn’t I? I even got myself a special permit. I didn’t do it before because I didn’t want to blow the cover on our guys, because naturally the “dormice” were under constant surveillance. Now that no one cares, I can do it. And I don’t consider it to be perverted or anything. There’s nothing scary about them. They don’t wither, they don’t waste away, they don’t look like corpses at all. Besides, it’s always fun to visit with old friends. I don’t tell the guys about this. They might think themselves obliged to accompany me and start hating themselves for not wanting to. Nobody needs that.

  Smoker

  Lary and Needle moved to the suburbs. He is now a part owner of the repair shop where he started back then as a grease monkey. She’s keeping the house. They have two kids, the eldest daughter got married recently. I was at the wedding, gave the newlyweds a picture. Not one of mine, though. Mine are not everyone’s cup of tea. It was amusing to follow the expression on the bride’s little face as the present was being unwrapped, and to note the look of relief when they could finally see it.

  Lary and I never talk about the Sleepers or the vanished. We keep a knowing, competent, friendly silence about the subject if we happen to meet. But we do discuss other Outsides-mates, and he always has some exciting new piece of information for me because he tries to keep up with what’s happening as much as he can. Horse and he are still very close, even though Horse is still living with the commune (the sect, let’s be honest here) founded by the passengers of the bus and the Devout. It’s a royal pain to drive all the way there, but Lary performs the pilgrimage at least every month. “In honor of past friendships,” he says.

  Needle

  I’ve never said anything against old friends. Never told my husband he couldn’t see someone he wanted to. But those trips are very hard on him. He’s not himself for days afterward, almost as if he’s ill, or something bad happens to him there. I am a mother. It’s my duty to think about the children first. I surely don’t want people blabbing around them that their father lived in that place, you know what I mean? I come from there myself, and I’m not ashamed to admit it, but it doesn’t mean such things should be discussed with strangers. Nobody could say that I am not like everyone else. I am a normal woman, and that’s exactly what the children need—normal, regular parents. And as for that commune . . . excuse me, but it is not a place where I would ever go myself, not that my opinion matters, of course. And they are not the people with whom I would want to have anything in common.

  Hybrid

  Oh for Pete’s sake, we didn’t do nothing! It’s just that Red took it into his head that we should support the Sleepers. Those who were going completely unclaimed, at least. With no relatives. Because who knows, right? So we passed a plate around. We weren’t doing too bad at the time, so we could’ve swung it ourselves, but we thought that maybe some of the guys would like to chip in. Nothing sinister. And then Needle made it look like we came to rob them. Of their last shirt, like. They’re pretty well off, you know. And we helped them with everything we had in the very beginning, when they didn’t know squat about how the Outsides worked. Two stupid kids in love! Right, whatever. Lary came afterward, with all kinds of excuses, brought a couple of coins. We never took anything from them. Imagine if she barged in right after him and demanded we give all of it back!

  Smoker

  I saw Red at the opening night of my latest exhibition. He lives in the same commune as Horse, and is considered a person of authority. Kind of like a respected elder. At first the whole affair was being run by the old night guard who had joined the fugitives after the graduation, but he’s been long dead, leaving behind only his collection of broken clocks, so now Red is the big man there.

  He looks like an aging rock star, fairly washed out but still deadly. Hair halfway down his back, a tattoo on his forehead, a necklace of dangerous-looking claws. He generated way more interest than my paintin
gs ever could. All the photos from the exhibition featured Red, from different angles, and the paintings only ended up in a shot because he happened to be staring at them. The poor photographers just couldn’t keep their lenses off him, and I totally understand them.

  Red’s got eight children (he swears that they’re all from his wife), four dogs, two horses, and a flock of sheep. He showed me pictures of all of them except the latter, and it would have been a nicely satisfying day had he not picked a fight with my manager. It was a messy, juicy scandal, and there were too many reporters hanging around to let it go to waste. Red was raring to go, calling Black a traitor and a renegade, and it took no small effort to shut him down, and an even bigger one to explain to the curious what these two possibly could have had in common with each other.

  Black

  I know many people consider me a traitor. So what? I couldn’t just stand by and watch that shyster pull for his side at our expense day after day. I should have smelled it from the start. Two former Leaders in one place. But I thought I had it under control. I had the numbers, six of mine against three Rats. But then some of them went away, some things changed, and before I knew it Red was already on top, and it was too late to roll it back. He’s made a neat little profit for himself, I’m sure. It wasn’t an easy time for the commune, but we would’ve gotten our stuff together even without his financial shenanigans. Hard work and a steady hand, that’s all we needed.

  Smoker

  Red was the only one to try and talk to me about the Sleepers. After the fight we holed up in the bar across from the exhibition hall. Holding an ice pack to his shiner, he told me with a significant smirk that there were fewer Sleepers now. A lot fewer.

  “How’s that?” I said. “They woke up?”

  “No. They vanished. The first couple of cases they wrote about, but since then mum’s the word. Don’t you read the papers?”

  I don’t read papers and I don’t watch TV, but I decided not to elaborate on that. It wasn’t a pleasant topic even by itself, and Red’s smugness only added to it. The whole thing reminded me of that time when I asked a lot of questions and received no answers, until it almost drove me crazy. So I didn’t ask. Not about who vanished, not about where they went. Red was obviously expecting my questions, and when he realized he wasn’t getting any, he soured and quickly left. I haven’t seen him since.

  Red

  If you ask me, he’s gotten too bigheaded. All those exhibitions, reporters. I mean, he’s a nice guy, but a bit too jumpy for my taste. “Devoted to his Art,” Old Man would’ve said.

  I like him, I respect him, I value him and so on, but he’s not getting out in the fresh air enough. And there’s no air in his pictures either.

  Smoker

  I see Sphinx only rarely. He’s a child psychologist now, working in a boarding school for the blind and legally blind. Or maybe not anymore. An exceedingly strange person. Never misses my exhibitions. Visits the Sleepers. Tags along with my father when he goes fishing.

  He can show up tanned in the middle of the winter and bring a yellow-blue butterfly in a glass case as a present. His wife is a bit of a mystery—one day she’s there with him, the next day she isn’t anywhere, and her disappearances can last for months. He’s got the most unusual dog in the world—a German shepherd guide dog that is trained to train other German shepherd guide dogs. I have inquired specifically with people who know about these things and they all say that it simply cannot exist. He also keeps an owl. And collects antique musical instruments.

  In the last ten years he twice received inheritances from some murky sources. For some reason he doesn’t think it at all strange. He didn’t even try to find out who those people were. I have no idea how he spent all that money, all I know is that it didn’t make him a penny richer.

  They are very tight with my father. I suspect it’s at his prompting Sphinx comes to visit me at the low points in my life, to frolic in the fields of compassionate psychology. I dutifully pretend that it’s helping me. Except when I don’t.

  Smoker’s Father

  I decided then that I was going to stick with the guy until he gets his feet under him. When we first met he was going through a very rough patch. I don’t know how many years it took me to figure out that I needed him way more than he needed me. We’d just go fishing. Or to the movies. Listen to the music of my youth, look at the photographs of my girlfriends, talk about my son. Only later did it dawn on me who was humoring whom. I don’t know how he did it. That’s just the way he is, always giving more than he receives. He understood that I desperately wanted to take care of someone, and did the one thing that Eric never had—gave me the permission. With him I feel like a real father. And a friend. I quit drinking, I’m a vegetarian now, I dropped thirty pounds and twenty years. Now you tell me, which one of us was saving the other?

  Horse

  Sphinx came exactly three times. First when they’d just sniffed us out, you know, “established the whereabouts of a group of the former boarding-school students who had disappeared without a trace” and so on. Like it wasn’t us who allowed them to. We decided to legalize our status, that’s all. We finally were of age and no longer afraid of parents swooping in. We had just one house for all of us, and one barn. We ate whatever came our way, slept in our clothes to save on heating, and worked. Day and night, like we were obsessed. He was here for a couple of hours. Said hello to everyone, sat down to dinner with us, and left. Some were imagining he came to stay, but not me. I saw that he only needed to make sure we were all right. And he didn’t want to upset Black. Because Black was panicked, even if he didn’t show it. The second visit was six, maybe seven years later, I can’t say for sure. That time he was with us a while. Maybe because Black was no longer here. But it was still clear he wasn’t staying. I asked him, joking like, when he was moving in. “To do what? Farm with prosthetics or mooch off your work?” he said. And the third time that thing happened.

  Red

  I always knew Sphinx had one good turn in him. That he didn’t stay back just because. I remembered that he’d received something from Jackal that no one else had, before or since. If anyone were to get Tabaqui to hand him something that none of us common folk could even dream of, it was Sphinx, no doubt about that. It was also clear that he was going to use that present sooner or later, and I thought that’s when I’d get to know what it was. But it took so long to finally happen that by that time, I’d almost forgotten how much I wanted to find out.

  Smoker

  It was my second show that made me famous. So much fuss, I’ve never been able to replicate it since. On the one hand, it hurts that the later works remain underappreciated, but on the other it’s more important that I know them to be stronger. I’m not ashamed of the earlier paintings, but when you’re twenty-two you tend to bare your soul a little too eagerly, and also amateurishly at times. It makes you somehow uneasy, looking at them afterward. Uneasy at yourself, and at the fact that it’s exactly the amateurishness that gets people so excited. I am wiser now, and so are my paintings. The only detail that keeps reappearing again and again, dragging over from the old times, is the stuffed bear. I still can’t get rid of it. It just learned to hide better, that’s all. On the latest canvases it’s been painted over. It’s not visible. But it is still there, lurking under the layers of paint. Probably one day I may be able to leave it behind, even though for me it has long become something of a spooky talisman, an insurance policy, guaranteeing long life for the paintings.

  Smoker’s Father

  He liked those of Eric’s paintings that I didn’t understand at all. For example, the works of his stripy period, as I call it. Circles within circles with triangles encroaching on them, all that geometry. All in black and white. Even the infamous teddy bear morphed into a pile of triangles. Sphinx stood in front of one of them for forty minutes, I’m not kidding.

  It was on the day after the opening. We always went when the crowds thinned out. I walked around the collection once,
twice. When after the third loop I found him still stuck in front of the same picture, he turned to me and said, “You know, Smoker took more of the House with him than he thinks.”

  The painting was of those same tired black-and-white circles. Edge to edge. It looked like nothing so much as a dartboard, complete with a dart stuck in it.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I guess I just don’t get modern art. Especially of this kind.”

  “Time does not flow like a river. A river that you can’t enter twice,” Sphinx said. “It is more like circles on the surface of the water. That’s a quote, I didn’t invent that.”

  He raised his gloved artificial hand and pointed at the dart in the middle of the target.

  “And if into those circles you drop something, say, a feather, like it is here, it would generate its own circles, you see? Small, weak ones, almost invisible . . . But they will expand and intersect with the large ones.”

  I tried to visualize what he was talking about. I felt like Winnie-the-Pooh, a Bear of Very Little Brain. I probably even started to smell of moldy stuffing.

  “So you think that is what it is?” I said, staring at what stubbornly refused to become anything but a dartboard.

  He nodded. His face was lit up by inspiration, like some insane prophet’s. At times like that I always get a sneaking suspicion I’m being hypnotized.

  “If you were this feather, where in the past would you have wanted to drop? What would you change?”

  This got me depressed. What would I change in my own past if I could? Everything, for a start. But I doubt that anything good could come out of it anyway.

  “I’d have to be dropping nonstop,” I said. “There are too many places.”

  “You’ve got one shot,” he insisted. “One single shot.”

  “Then I wouldn’t bother. My life can’t be changed in one shot.”

  He switched off the mesmerism.

  “You don’t understand,” he said, turning away. “Your life can’t be changed, period. It’s already half-lived. The only thing you could do is go to a different loop. Where you would not be the exact same you.”