The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

  I stripped away the leather biker jacket, like the ones so beloved by Logs, and shook off the face powder. Then picked the poor bat off the collar, bearing in mind that its name was Suzy and that its days were numbered. What was left looked . . . ordinary. A handsome guy, but nothing special.

  I couldn’t understand before why a guy like Pompey would pretend he was a walking corpse. Now I knew it was all in accordance with the rules of the Game. Leaders needed to be pale and ominous. Pompey was naturally swarthy, so he must have gone through a lot of face powder to maintain the standard. The image of Pompey with the puff in his hand, putting the last touches of deathly paleness on his face, made me swoon and giggle.

  The script accounted for everything. Every detail. Which way the part in Pheasants’ hair went. How black was the underwear of a true Bird. What books were allowed for Hounds. Maybe Rats would have liked to skip the hair coloring once in a while, but they forced themselves, for those were the rules of the Game. It was even quite likely that Birds secretly loathed anything that grew, pots or no pots.

  The final insight was a very simple one. I was leading up to it through all the preceding ones, deliberately, slowly, leaving it for last, so that in the end I could place it on top flamboyantly and be done with the whole thing.

  The overthrow of Blind by Pompey—or rather, the widely advertised intention thereof—must have been a part of the Game as well. To always run the same tired script wasn’t much fun. From time to time the play needed some variety. The war declared by Pompey provided just such variety. Hound Leader scares the Logs, practices throwing knives, generally behaves “in a not entirely satisfactory manner,” to quote Jackal. The audience shivers, Log spies run between different camps with the latest dispatches. People have something to discuss. Everyone’s engaged and no one’s afraid. Except Lary, but Lary is a simpleton taking everything at face value.

  I looked around the canteen again. It was all so obvious! And so stupid!

  I wanted to laugh out loud and scream that I was onto all of them now. All of their bats, throwing knives, coups, face powders, and scorpions in oil.

  It must have somehow manifested itself on my face, because Tabaqui suddenly threw down his fork and demanded to know why the hell was I looking so smug and stupid.

  “This,” I said and stuck out my tongue at him. Just the tip. I immediately remembered how Jackal could not stand being mocked, but it was already too late.

  He went livid faster than if someone had dumped boiling water on him. Coughed the half-chewed piece of food out on his plate and asked Noble to hold him as fast as he could.

  “Did you see that? Did you see that feathered bastard disrespect my advanced age? Everyone see that? I’m going to see the color of his guts!”

  He was saying all of this between coughing fits, but it sounded deadly serious.

  Noble took the butter knife off Tabaqui and remarked that my guts being spread out on the floor of the canteen would put everybody off their food.

  “He thinks that he’s received enlightenment!” Tabaqui continued through bouts of coughing, even turning slightly blue. “That he understands it now! Is there life after death, is there life on Mars, and is the Earth round! Look at him, sitting here all bloated!”

  “He’s been kind of puffy ever since your speech,” Humpback said. “I guess he’s just not used to it all.”

  “I’m not bloated!” I protested. “I’m not bloated, I’m not puffy, and I’d appreciate it if you all left me alone!”

  “Hear, hear,” Black said from the other side of the table. “Tabaqui, why are you at his throat all of a sudden? Can’t a guy just think whatever it is he thinks in peace?”

  “Peace!” Tabaqui shrieked. “Is that what you call peace now? When one of your packmates fills up with self-importance, turns into a complete bastard, and on top of that squints at you contentedly? And I’m supposed to just shut up about this? To live alongside this disgusting mug? Not likely! If he thinks he can walk around with that kind of face, he should get himself a veil. I personally am not going to let it slide!”

  “Look, he’s just pissed off now,” Sphinx said. “See for yourself. And calm down, will you.”

  But it took quite a while for Jackal to calm down. He would chew his food looking away and then suddenly turn around, throw me a wicked stare, and turn back. It was not at all funny, even though it seemed so to Noble.

  I tried to look stone-faced while wheeling out of the canteen. I wasn’t mad at Tabaqui. Not even a bit angry. If anything, I was admiring his sharpness. Who would be happy if someone were to debunk their favorite game? Tabaqui’s reaction confirmed that I really was on to something. I just had to learn to keep it to myself.

  Black patted me on the shoulder as he passed.

  “Don’t let it get to you,” he said. “They’re all nuts, some more than others.”

  “They’re not nuts,” I blurted out. “They’re players.”

  Black gave me a surprised look.

  I couldn’t understand what was more surprising to him: my words, which he didn’t understand, or my insightfulness.

  They lived in filthy cages, and they ate raw eggs by sucking them out through cracked shells. Their ears were sharp and rough to the touch and their claws were like curved swords. No disease could ever befall them, except colds and scabies, from which they died . . .

  . . . it shined its purple eye on me and I understood that it was her, the Great Hairy, the one who lives under the beds in the places where the dust collects, the one who turns the floorboards over in search of mold. I asked her to tell me my future, but she never did that. “There is nothing more horrible than knowing what awaits us tomorrow,” she said and gave me one of her fangs in consolation . . .

  And within that castle dwelt a knight renowned throughout the land for his prowess. They called him Dragonslayer, for he had killed the last dragon, and that was no mean feat since it was very hard to find. Those who would speak ill of him maintained, however, that it wasn’t a dragon at all, just a large lizard from the Southern Realm . . .

  It looks like a small black cylinder. It cannot be seen by sunlight, and it definitely cannot be seen in the dark. One can only bump into it by accident. Every night it hums softly as it steals time . . .

  I was lying in the dark and listening. It was hot. My head was swimming from the cocktail, in which I could vaguely discern vodka, lemon juice, and something like pine-scented shampoo. The boombox, buried under the layers of blankets, was playing organ music. Everywhere around me were someone’s arms, legs, pillows, and bottles. It was the first time that I’d experienced the room with all the lights off. The stories kept coming. Some were interrupted just when they got going, others started instead, and then the earlier ones returned when I’d already lost the sequence of events, and the overlaying snippets wove themselves into fanciful patterns that were very hard to keep track of. I tried, though.

  . . . it is the hour when the bighorns venture out on the glistening paths leading down to the water, and they bellow. Trees bend from their calls. And then the hour comes when all the fools are placed in boats and sent up the moon river. It is said that the Moon takes them. The water near the shore becomes sweet and remains sweet until sunrise. Those who catch this hour and manage to drink the water turn into fools themselves . . .

  I laughed and spilled some wine on my shirt.

  “Why would anyone want to drink it,” I whispered, “if it’s so dangerous?”

  “There is none happier than a true fool,” the invisible storyteller said.

  The voice sounded like Sphinx. But I didn’t think I was distinguishing the voices correctly. I’d drunk too much, I guessed. The glass kept refilling itself, and an empty bottle was sticking in my ribs on the right side. I couldn’t be bothered to push it away.

  There aren’t too many basilisks left in the Black Forest. They have mostly gone to seed, and their gaze is rarely lethal. But if you trek farther in, where the moss covering the tree trunks
glows purple, the ones you meet there are the real ones, since they’ve never seen light. That’s why no one goes there, and of those who do, few return, and of those who return, none had seen any basilisks. So how do we know that they still exist there?

  Someone jostled me.

  “Hey, your turn. Tell us something.”

  I rubbed my face. My fingers were sticky. I licked them. The drowsy apathy was carrying me away, up the moon river. To where the bighorns were waiting.

  “I can’t,” I said honestly. “I don’t know anything that’s like these stories. I’d just spoil everything.”

  “Give me your glass, then.”

  I thrust the glass in the direction of the voice.

  “I’ll have the pine, please. But not too much. I’m already tipsy.”

  I specified the pine because I saw Tabaqui splash some of the contents from the jar with the chili peppers into the other three bottles. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to survive a sampling of the resulting brew.

  “There isn’t much left anyway. Don’t drop off, though. No sleeping on Fairy Tale Night. That would be bad manners.”

  “Do these nights happen often?”

  “Four times a year. There’s one every season. And also the Monologue Night, the Dream Night, and the Longest Night. Those are once per year. You’ve missed the first two.”

  The glass returned.

  “The Night of the Big Crash, when Humpback falls out of his aerie,” the voice continued to mumble indistinctly. “The Night of the Yellow Water, when Lary remembers his childhood . . . We should check in on him, by the way. He skipped two rounds already.”

  Someone at the foot of the bed started checking in on Lary. Judging by the sighs and moans reaching me from over there, he was fast asleep.

  “Hey you, sleepyhead. Wake up, you owe us a penalty story.”

  Lary yawned broadly, like a tiger. There was a pause.

  “There was this pretty girl who once got run over by a train . . . ,” a husky and desperate voice finally said.

  “Right, shut up. Go back to sleep.”

  Lary snorted contentedly, crashed back wherever it was they had just excavated him from, and began snoring immediately. I laughed. My shirt was clinging wetly where I’d spilled the liquor. The boombox stared at me with its red eye.

  . . . when Hairy needs to hear something she makes a hole in the wall, and when she needs to see she sends her rats to see for her. She is born of the foundation, and she is alive while the house is still standing. The older the house, the bigger and wiser its Hairy. For those she likes, she makes her domain benevolent and gentle, and for the others—the other way around. In the ancient times, people used to call her spiritus familiaris and made offerings to her. They hoped she would protect them from dark influence and the evil eye . . .

  I wondered whose story that was. I couldn’t make out the voice. I even suspected that they’d switched off the lights specifically to confuse me. And that they were now telling these tales in resonant, disguised voices for the very same reason.

  . . . because ever since the time that the knight nailed the two-headed skull up in the Grand Hall, he was beset by the dragon’s curse. The eldest sons in his line were born two-headed. Some said differently. That it wasn’t the knight who came out victorious in that long-forgotten battle, but the dragon, and that it was the lizard who lived in the castle now in the guise of a human, and that for this very reason he never allowed anything bad to be spoken about his two-headed progeny, but instead loved them more than all others . . .

  The cry of the midwife toad is terrible and can be heard from far away. If you didn’t know beforehand, it would be impossible to believe that it is just a toad crying. It buries its eggs in wet leaves and shovels earth on top of them. You can find them wherever it is the dampest, by the roots of the oldest trees. When the little basilisk is about to hatch, the shell starts to smolder. You should never pour water on it or otherwise try to extinguish the fire, as it’s a very bad omen. It must be allowed to extinguish itself. The black slivers that remain can bring luck if sewn into leather or suede and worn constantly . . .

  “I wouldn’t mind getting some of that shell,” I said, trying to chase away sleep. “Anybody here got any? Are there any basilisk hunters around?”

  Everyone laughed.

  “Or a two-headed dragon skull for you, maybe?” Tabaqui said indignantly. “That little nipper doesn’t miss a beat!”

  “No. No skull, I don’t want to fall prey to a curse,” I said.

  “But a bit of free luck would not be amiss?” the mysterious basilisk expert said.

  “It’s luck, how could it be?” I said.

  “Have it, then. But remember: you carry a part of the Forest with you now. May your desires be pure.”

  Someone’s hand brushed my hair. I lifted my head and a pouch on a string slid down my neck.

  All around me people rumbled indignantly, disapproving of my sudden fortune.

  “Outrageous!” Tabaqui shouted.

  Something bumped against the back of my head. It was small but expertly tossed. A quarter of an apple, as it turned out.

  “I’ve been living here for ages, constantly at everyone’s pleasure, entertaining day and night. I’ve become all frayed and withered, and not a single wretched creature in this place has ever offered me to try on a piece of basilisk eggshell! This is the gratitude for all my pains, for years and years of misery,” Tabaqui ranted.

  “I don’t think you’ve ever asked,” the former owner of the amulet said gently.

  The voice made me shiver slightly, and that’s how I knew it was Blind. Even though the voice was not entirely his.

  “Horse pucky!” Tabaqui exploded. “Are you saying respect must be begged and wheedled now? Justice! Where’s justice, I ask you?”

  He was either really very deeply upset, or he was playing it up brilliantly. Either way, I felt uneasy.

  “Would you like to have it for a while?” I said and reached for the string.

  “No way!” he squeaked. “An amulet belonging to someone else? You’re off your rocker, dearest! Better a cursed dragon tailbone!”

  “Speaking of dragons,” Sphinx interjected. “We got distracted. So what about those, the two-headed ones?”

  “Nothing.” A lighter clicked and I saw it was Noble lighting up. “I am the last son in the whole stupid lineage. One-headed, as you can see. We’re freaking extinct, and I’m certainly not complaining.”

  The ending of this story caught me a little off guard. I laughed.

  “Cool. So was this a curse or the dragon himself?” I said.

  The burning cigarette end zigzagged in the air.

  “I’ve no idea. I only know the tale, and that we have a two-headed lizard on our coat of arms, with a supremely idiotic expression on both of its mugs,” Noble said.

  “You’ve got a coat of arms?” I said.

  “It’s on every handkerchief and every sock,” Noble admitted with disgust. “I keep trying to lose them everywhere and they keep coming back. Would you like a sock or ten? I’ll throw in a free lighter as well. And let’s talk about something else, all right? Like what happens to those poor idiots floating in the river?”

  “Who knows?” Sphinx said. “They float. Maybe they wash ashore somewhere. Or maybe the Moon really takes them. It’s not about them, it’s about the water in the river.”

  “Moon River!” Tabaqui exclaimed. “I knew it! I knew this was about the dear old concoction!”

  I recalled the beginning of that story: Those who manage to drink the water turn into fools. I was just about to ask how come Noble didn’t turn into one when I felt his hand squeezing my elbow as a mute warning. An impossible trick, to move so quickly over a bed full of people. I was curious if he managed to shut up Jackal as well. Or did Tabaqui decide on his own to shut up? I definitely wasn’t going to ask that.

  “How about we open the windows?” someone suggested. “It’s getting stuffy.”

  T
he other end of the bed developed some movement, there were yawns and cigarettes being lit.

  “And some more water. We ran out.”

  “Let Smoker go get some. He’s not speaking anyway.”

  “He won’t make it.”

  “I’ll go,” someone suggested, jumping off the bed. “Give me the bottles.”

  I heard bottles clinking. I grappled for the one sticking in my side, passed it over, and felt that I could breathe freely again. Turned out it had been making me really miserable all this time.

  “Humpback, sing the one about the purple ghost. That’s a beautiful song.”

  “I’m not in the mood. I’ll sing the one about being caught in the act,” Humpback said.

  Someone jostled me and made me spill the wine again.

  Please don’t hurt me, I’m a little old rat,

  just a little old rat, I swear!

  Only this piece of old yellow cheese,

  and that’s the full extent of my sins,

  I swear to you, yes, I swear!

  “Wicked,” someone whispered and giggled softly.

  Only a burrow, two runs in it,

  my bedroom is at the very end.

  There are four of us hiding inside,

  I’m the oldest, Death will come for me soon.

  Please, please, don’t hurt me tonight,

  let me return, return to my hole!

  Doleful sighs in the dark.

  I fingered the pouch on the string. It was soft, worn, and sewn shut. There was something sharp inside, and it crackled where I was probing. Maybe it really was a piece of shell. Or a corn chip. My own movements felt sluggish, and my thoughts chased each other around in my head. I tried to assemble them into something halfway coherent, but I only ended up with some fuzzy snippets. Rip the pouch open . . . to see . . . Check Noble’s socks. Ask him why he didn’t want anyone to know about Moon River. At the same time I was conscious of the fact that tomorrow I wouldn’t remember much of what I was thinking tonight. Or much of anything really.