The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

  “Drop it, please,” Humpback hisses. “Leave it alone. It was long ago, and it ended long ago. Silly to still be talking about it now.”

  “We wouldn’t be talking about it now if it really had ended,” Black says glumly. “Look at Sphinx. You see something that’s ended? I see something that’s only beginning. He’s pissed off like it was yesterday he got beat up. Any one of us would have given an arm to be in his place even for a moment. But he’s the one pissed!”

  At this moment the mental dusting off of the childhood pictures arrives at Blind, and I freeze uncertainly. I have a reasonably good idea what Blind’s jealousy looks like. Why didn’t I see any traces of it back then? Why Black, why Humpback even, but not him?

  “Was Blind present at that event?”

  “Oh jeez.” Black leans back in the chair and bares his teeth. “Blind! You can rest easy as far as he’s concerned. Gods and jealousy don’t mix. It’s a completely separate disorder.”

  “What was it you just said?”

  “Look, we’re going to come to blows over this,” Humpback says desperately. “It’s all right for you, you’re used to it, but how’s that my fault? I’m going to sit somewhere else.”

  I shake my head.

  “No, you’re right. We should drop it. I have made my few steps away and looked at it from there. Thank you, Black. It was indeed useful, albeit a tad painful.”

  After that we’re silent.

  Black is darker than a storm cloud, his meat hooks folded over his chest. Humpback is ruffled and miserable, like a raven that’s been ambushed by a bird catcher. I shudder to think how I look.

  Counselor Godmother recites some sort of schedule. Minutes pass before I’m able to figure out what it’s about, and all that time I’m fleeing the image of Elk that keeps catching up with me. Twice every year, at these all-hands meetings, he stood approximately where Godmother is now standing and made short announcements, smiling with his eyes. The same kinds of announcements she’s making. Someone’s achievements or setbacks, someone’s health progressing or not. The physicals calendar. Except unlike with Godmother, everyone listened to him no matter what he was saying. Every single one of us in the audience. With bated breath. Because he was born the Catcher of Little Souls. You could grow up, free yourself, but even those who had gone into the Outsides long ago carried traces of his glances, his touches, may still be carrying them for all I know. Did a man like that have a right to be wrong? He least of all, not with all the hungry, yearning eyes on him. He had no right to make mistakes, to have favorites, or to die.

  Godmother reads the list of those who have been prescribed vitamin shots. Then another list, much longer, of those whose body-mass index is not simply low, but shamelessly so. That marks the end of the ceremonies. The departing throngs file past us, walking and riding, rattling the chairs as they go. Up on the podium they cover the lectern and the portable screen that they’d hauled out for some reason. Then we’re alone.

  Humpback, Black, and I. We seem to have already said everything that needed to be said, and it’s not entirely clear what we’re waiting for and why none of us left with the others. I mean, I understand why Humpback hasn’t, he’s busy being a lightning rod, but why do Black and I keep sitting here like we’re stuck? Humpback waits, frets, tries to pretend he’s dozed off. Black and I are still silent. Finally Humpback’s patience snaps.

  “How about we get going?” he asks plaintively. “Everyone’s left already.”

  Tacking between the upended chairs and avoiding the shoals of spit and cigarette butts, we reach the hallway. Huge blue letters stretch along the wall: GOOD NIGHT SWEET TEACHERS! The dot on the exclamation mark drips like a tear.

  “Was it really painful? What I told you about Elk?” Black says, keeping pace.

  “Not too much. It certainly explained a lot. I could have guessed myself, if only I’d given it enough thought. When you’re little you imagine the grown-ups to be these flawless beings. And then you learn that it isn’t so.”

  “Sometimes you learn it not only about the grown-ups,” Black mumbles to himself, without elaborating who or what he means. “I guess you took my bodybuilders off the wall?” he asks suddenly, changing the subject abruptly, and I remember that it used to drive me nuts, this habit of his—jumping suddenly from one subject to the next, as if someone switched him off and then back on, but tuned to a different station.

  “No, why?” Humpback says, surprised. “Still there, where you left them. Why would we want to take them off?”

  “Revenge, Humpback. Revenge,” I cut in eagerly. “Not only take them off, but also stomp on them and rip them to little pieces. Like you need such simple things explained?”

  “Sphinx, sometimes I really want to smack you one,” Black says. “So much that I have to grab myself by the arms.”

  We go around a chair that someone sneaked out of the lecture hall but abandoned on the way. Black stops.

  “There’s one thing I need to tell you. If you promise not to laugh. It’s about getting out.”

  Humpback shrinks and hunches down, tightly gripping his backpack, as if preparing to fight someone who is about to push him into the Outsides.

  Black bites his lip, trying to muster the courage. Looks at the walls, then up, then down at the floor, and finally at me.

  “Whatever,” he says. “I guess you can laugh if you want. I happen to know where to get a van. Used, but in decent shape. And also I know how to drive. Learned it recently. Because I had an opportunity.”

  We gape at him silently.

  “Yes, I know it’s bullshit,” he says quickly. “You don’t have to tell me. I’m not a baby. What I just said sounds funny to me too, but I had to say it. I don’t care if you die laughing now. I’m only asking you to keep it in mind, OK? That’s all.”

  He turns around and walks away, more runs away, eager to put as much distance between us as he can, as if pushed by the imagined tide of our laughter at his back.

  “Black, we’re not laughing,” I call after him.

  He waves his hand without turning around and disappears up the stairs. A panicked retreat, there are no other words for it. Humpback and I exchange puzzled glances.

  “Now this is something,” Humpback says. “There was this one guy in the entire House who dreamed about getting to the Outsides, and look what happened to him.”

  “Good-bye, bull terriers in checkered vests,” I sigh. “There won’t be much space in the van, even without them.”

  “Stop it,” Humpback says. “It’s not funny. That’s why he ran away, because he didn’t want to hear the lame jokes.”

  “I would never tell them with him around. I’m not laughing, Humpback. How can I laugh at things like that? It’s Tabaqui’s kite, the one that he says the seniors used to fly away, except Black seems to have mastered the art of driving it.”

  Humpback shakes his head.

  “Don’t do it with me around either. Don’t laugh. Don’t say anything. At all.”

  He kicks away the chair, even though it would have been easier to step around it, and plows ahead, shoving his hands into his pockets with such force that I imagine hearing the sound of the lining being ripped. Terminally upset, either by Black’s words or by my reaction to them.

  I follow him, turning this sad fairy tale over and over in my head. The one Black is trying so hard to believe. The magical mystery van. The children of the House rushing toward dawn, in a stolen car with Black at the helm, tearing down the highway, exuberantly belting out road songs. In the real world this trip is going to last for about an hour, tops. Pity. Because this fantasy is even more beautiful than having the seniors depart to the hidden world beyond the clouds by means of a kite. More beautiful and more touching exactly for the fact that it was invented by Black, the staunchest realist.

  When we return to the dorm, only Ginger and Smoker are left there, sitting at the opposite corners of the bed and annoying each other. The tension is palpable enough for Humpback to imme
diately get out of the way and hide on his top bunk. I go to sit between those two, doing my best to disrupt their line of sight. Oh well, that’s fair, now it’s my turn to be the lightning rod. Even though Tabaqui is so much better at it than I am.

  Ginger smokes, studying the smoldering end of her cigarette intently. Smoker peers now at her dirty sneakers, now at the ash she’s shaking all over the place—a Pheasant to the core, all but writing notes about it in a diary. Ginger’s irritation barely registers, but Smoker’s is throwing sparks all the way across the room. My presence interferes with his indignation, so he shifts on the bed to better see her—dirty-uncouth-repellent, but something else too, more personal, I can’t quite put my finger on it. Did she tell him off or pour soda in his precious sneakers while we were out? He’s blushing every time he looks at her, gazes away but then looks again, almost forcing himself, and I become more and more curious. What was it she managed to do? I am clearly not cut out for the role of the lightning rod, so I rejoice when Jackal returns, whistling something cheerful and out of tune.

  “There we go,” he says after climbing up to join us. “Gaby is shouting to the four winds that she’s pregnant, can you imagine that?”

  “By Blind, of course,” Ginger says. She doesn’t seem too excited.

  “Not at all! She never said that. None of the ‘Long live the young dauphin,’ not even a peep. Supposedly by Red or by Viking. Something indeterminate with a pronounced Rattish slant.”

  “She’s lying,” Ginger concludes, throws away the cigarette, and walks over to Tubby’s box. Fishes him, still sleepy, out of there, puts him on her back, bending double under the weight, and walks out. Tubby burbles something incoherent but looks generally content.

  “Hey, where are you taking the Insensible?” Jackal asks, astonished.

  “For a walk,” comes Ginger’s voice from the anteroom, then the outer door slams, and it’s quiet again.

  “Aww,” Jackal sighs. “And we were doing so well.”

  We weren’t doing well at all, but Tabaqui’s optimism stores are inexhaustible, and no one takes the bait.

  “What an incongruous person,” Smoker says.

  He probably needs someone to argue with him. Or maybe he said it just to say something.

  “Who is? Ginger?” Tabaqui wonders. “Why?”

  “No reason. There’s just something missing in her. Many things, actually.”

  Tabaqui fiddles with the tuning knob on the boombox and says, “If only you knew how many things you yourself are missing, you’d be a lot more reticent, but since you are not of that kind, do us a favor and elaborate.”

  Smoker jumps at the opportunity.

  “She’s abrupt,” he says. “Coarse. Unfeminine. The way she behaves would be appropriate for a twelve-year-old, but she’s not twelve, not by a long shot.”

  “Oh wow!” Humpback exclaims, leaning down from his bunk.

  Seemingly encouraged by his interest, Smoker adds, “She’s also messy. Hopelessly so.”

  “Ooh, ooh.” Tabaqui sways, puckering his lips like a nervous chimp. “You’re talking such nonsense, Smoker. Can’t you hear it yourself?”

  “She spends her nights in a room with six guys. Walks around the bathroom naked and doesn’t even bother to close the door. And supposedly she sleeps with Noble, except I wouldn’t be surprised if she does it with Blind as well, and I don’t know who else . . .”

  Humpback tosses a pillow at Smoker, and Tabaqui immediately jumps on top of it, pushing it down as if he wants to squash Smoker flat. Tamps it thoroughly, lifts it for a bit, making sure Smoker is still breathing, and quickly covers him again. As they are shutting up Smoker in this unorthodox fashion I catch the image of Ginger that has so stunned and infuriated him. A flash—the spare boyish figure. Dark nipples on pink skin over protruding ribs, red tuft of pubic hair. Arms, legs, and almost nothing between them. She’s looking at me, or rather at Smoker, a faraway, completely impassive look. One arm is twisted, and there’s a reddish sore below her elbow. She licks it. Then lowers her arm, not even attempting to cover herself, and walks inside the shower stall. That walk is imprinted on Smoker’s retinas in a sequence of narrow snapshots, one sliding over the next. That’s what was making him blush so painfully. I understand. It’s not what he’s seen that hurt him, but the reaction to his appearance. Or rather the absence of a reaction. It is indeed unpleasant, to be looked at like you’re not even there, like you’re an empty space. This would be discomfiting even to someone much more balanced.

  “She’s like an animal,” Smoker says, pushing off the pillow. “Completely shameless.”

  “Horror of horrors,” Tabaqui fumes. “Humpback, all our efforts were for naught. He is irredeemable. He can only be exterminated.”

  “They’re taking him away this Saturday,” Humpback reminds him from above. “You keep forgetting.”

  “I do not. This thought is the only thing that keeps me sane. This one and a handful of others, similarly cheerful.” Tabaqui looks up and inquires plaintively, “Tell me, how is it any of his damn business who she does and doesn’t sleep with? When even Noble keeps out of it?”

  “That’s the kind of cantankerous creature he is,” Humpback says as his head disappears over the edge.

  Smoker is hugging Humpback’s pillow. The narrow frames with the naked girl walking away unspool before him rapidly, replacing each other as they fall. The last one is the slammed door of the shower stall.

  I go out to the yard, to look for Ginger.

  There’s this place where the walls of two buildings meet, a nook overgrown with weeds. The beginning of summer usually means stinging nettles up to the knees, but on the other hand they cover up the trash, making it temporarily invisible. Presumably the most private place in the whole House, because neither of the walls has any windows.

  They’re there. Sitting in front of a small fire. Ginger made it in the old spot, the blackened, charred scrap of earth marked with a stone circle. This is where seniors always had their fires. It used to be much cozier back then, with chaises and old crates for chairs. No trace of them now. Could be they burned them all.

  Tubby sits on top of Ginger’s coat, staring into the fire and droning softly. When the burning branches crackle he startles and grabs his cheeks. Such a cute girlish gesture, half fright, half delight. Ginger is whispering something to him. I can’t make it out. I come up to them and sit down. She just continues her monologue as if I’m not there.

  “The important thing was to grab a space somewhere in the back, so they wouldn’t shoo you off, and look. Only look, without listening. That’s important. Because they would sing, play the guitar, bake potatoes in the fire, and so on, and it was very distracting, all that romantic stuff people do when they get together and want to prove to themselves that they’re having a blast. I liked to look at the fire, that’s all. This one time someone snatched a burning stick out of it and wrote something on the wall with the blazing end. I was almost blinded. A word that’s shedding fire. The burning letters of God. All that was left of them the next day was the black outline of a common swearword and a sooty smear, but still it had been a miracle, and I witnessed it.”

  She throws a sizable chunk of dry wood on the fire. Sparks fly in the air, reflecting in Tubby’s bugged-out beady eyes.

  “Also I would come here to have a good cry,” Ginger says. “Once a week, like clockwork.”

  “So would I,” I say. “Until I found out that just about every other inhabitant of the House came here too for the exact same purpose.”

  She smiles. The smile transforms her into a completely different person, unfamiliar now, but one that I seem to have known a long, long time ago.

  “Yeah,” she says. “I always bumped into one or another of them and had to close my eyes and pretend it didn’t happen. The most freaking private place in the whole House!”

  “There are no private places in the House.”

  “There sure weren’t back then.”

  S
he opens the backpack and takes out a pack of sandwiches—“Oh, by the way, I’ve got . . .”—and freezes, watching Tubby. He crawls closer to the fire, eyeing it intently, and there’s a wood chip gripped tightly in his clumsy paw. He’s angling to throw it in, a very complicated matter requiring a great deal of effort and concentration. We observe him swaying as he stretches his arm and even his lips forward and carefully drops the chip. And immediately shrinks away in fear, as if the tiny chip would cause the fire to flare up to the skies. It doesn’t flare. Tubby looks sideways at me, then at Ginger, and resumes his monotonous droning, now signifying joy and complete agreement with the world.

  The wind is blowing smoke straight at me. I shut my eyes tightly and roll over closer to Tubby. Sit down on the edge of the coat and put my rake over his pudgy shoulders. Then we watch the fire dying down. Ginger settles on Tubby’s other side.

  “I’m not giving him the sandwich,” she says.

  I voice agreement. Of course we shouldn’t give Tubby any sandwiches. Nothing exists for him now except the fire. Anything we can give to him will immediately end up in it, because no dinner can possibly approach the happiness of feeding another, especially if that other is Fire, a powerful deity of whose actual power Tubby is only dimly aware.

  So that he wouldn’t get upset because of the fire dying, Ginger tells him about the embers. How they’re beautiful too—“like little red stars,” she says, and Tubby nods, affirming the similarity.

  “I’ll make you another fire tomorrow, just like this one,” Ginger promises.

  “Why are you doing this?” I ask. “He might get used to it.”

  Ginger doesn’t answer. So let him, I hear in her silence. I will bring him here every night, and make fires for him. Let him feed wood chips to them and sing. It’s no use thinking about the time when I won’t be able to, when there won’t be any “here.” That’s the last thing I want to think about right now.

  “Haven’t you tamed enough people, Gingie?” I say.

  There’s nothing but tenderness in my question, I understand her too well. I understand how it must be impossible—not taming when you love being loved, when you acquire little brothers for whom you are then responsible to the end of your days, when you turn into a seagull, when you write love letters on the walls addressed to someone who never would be able to see them. When, despite your complete certainty that you’re ugly, someone still manages to fall in love with you, when you pick up stray dogs and cats and chicks who fell out of their nests, and make fires for those who didn’t ask you to do that.