The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

  “He was this close to not dwelling anymore,” Sphinx says to the young shaved head whom they usually send forward for parleys, more often than any others. The shaved head waves his hand at him cheerfully and invitingly. Sphinx doesn’t move.

  The night snowed in the yard under a mound of trash. Among the plastic bags, bottles, and scraps, Sphinx notices a couple of garish booklets printed on cheap paper. They feature a winged angel on the cover, his hands outstretched to the readers, informing them that Sharing in the divine grace is attainable in this life, my brother (sister)! Alexander is the last person whom this creature resembles. Ruddy cheeks, golden curls, and a moronic smile. It reminds Sphinx only of Solomon when a child, and a more disgusting child Sphinx had never seen in his life. And hopes never to see again. He studies the booklet while holding it down with the toe of his sneaker.

  Humpback comes over, with a huge backpack slung over his shoulder. He looks like a pilgrim returning from faraway lands. Bronzed and dirty. His hair, sticking up and in all other directions, is full of leaves and twigs.

  “I’m moving,” he says darkly. “What kind of life is it when those guys loiter here constantly? I’ve seen them in my dreams tonight, so I’ve just about had enough.”

  Humpback sits down next to Sphinx, propping his elbows on the backpack, and peers owlishly at the windows of the House.

  “What’s with the ropes?”

  “They’re not ropes, they’re cables,” Sphinx says. “You’re not the only one to have bad dreams.”

  Humpback frowns, trying to discern the relationship between bad dreams and cables wrapped around the window bars.

  “And over there?” he says, pointing at the window of the Coffeepot. To the empty frame with soot spread around it like a palm frond.

  Sphinx looks at Humpback in surprise.

  “That’s from the fire,” he says. “Where were you yesterday evening? You mean you didn’t see anything?”

  Humpback doesn’t answer. Instead he takes out his pipe and silently fills it.

  “Tell me, who does this winged youth remind you of?” Sphinx says, kicking the battered booklet.

  “Solomon,” Humpback says after the briefest of looks. “Who else? When he was still Muffin, I mean.”

  “Me too. And they,” Sphinx says, nodding at the tents, “are sure that it looks like Alexander.”

  “It’s not funny,” Humpback says.

  “No, it’s not. And the one who thinks so most is Alexander himself.”

  Humpback turns to look at the gate, where by now four shaved heads are nodding and leering obsequiously.

  “You mean they dragged themselves over here for him?”

  “They think so. But at the same time they carry the image of Muffin with them, so I’m afraid they’re not entirely clear on who it is they need.”

  Humpback falls silent. Puffs on his pipe, sneaking sideways glances at Sphinx.

  “Why aren’t you wearing rakes?” he finally asks.

  “Rakes got damaged in the fire. We buried them yesterday, right under your oak. Don’t tell me you missed that too.”

  “I was in the Not-Here.”

  “You know, I figured as much.”

  They are both silent for the next ten minutes. The shaved heads crowded around the gates are desperately trying to attract their attention. The air smells of the coming storm. The sky is almost orange now, and the swifts are flying low. Sphinx takes his foot off the booklet, and it is immediately whisked away by a gust of wind. He starts whistling the Rain Song. The missing eyelashes and the red burns on the cheeks and forehead make him look almost festive. Like a country lad kissed by the sun. Humpback, on the other hand, is sullen.

  “What are you going to do without them? They’re not going to bother ordering a new pair for you now.”

  Sphinx nods, his eyes still closed.

  “No, they’re not. But I’m managing so far. It’s even easier in some sense. Like I’m little and helpless again, and not responsible for anything. And no one is allowed to hurt me when I’m that way. I was absolutely convinced of that before I ended up here, imagine. That no one was going to hurt me. Ever.”

  Humpback coughs and looks at Sphinx askance.

  “You mean you returned to your Outsides childhood?”

  Sphinx laughs.

  “Almost. Or it’s rather like senility. A person can only be saying farewell to everything around him for so long. Waking up, going to sleep, and even in his dreams. To every face, every object, every smell. You just can’t do it. The day comes when it gets so exhausting that you simply stop feeling. Anything, at all. And then on top of everything else you lose your prosthetics. Say the solemn farewell to them too, and realize that this was the last straw. That it’s time to start saying hello to at least something. And since you can’t actually do anything, you say hello to your own self. The long-ago, helpless self. Whom everyone helped and no one dared to hurt. Cool, isn’t it?”

  Humpback shakes his head.

  “I don’t think I like your attitude. It smells of the nuthouse, it really does. The way I see it, it’s better to just grieve inside, quietly, than laugh over things that aren’t funny at all. More normal, I mean.”

  Sphinx laughs.

  “There’s no such thing as normal here anymore. But don’t worry, it’ll pass. By the way, why are your fingers bandaged? Were you banging in nails, from Here to Not-Here?”

  Humpback looks at his hands. The left thumb and the right index finger are bandaged. Thickly and sloppily. The bandages are black with dirt and barely holding together. Humpback, slightly embarrassed, begins to unwrap them.

  “Oh, that . . . It’s nothing. Just bites. There’s this little tot . . .”

  He tears off the bandages and studies the wounds. Sphinx leans in to look as well, and when he straightens up the look in his eyes makes Humpback shrink back.

  “You are going straight to the Sepulcher,” Sphinx says icily. “Or rather running. No shower, no changing. No visiting the guys. The backpack you can leave right inside the door. Go.”

  Humpback springs up and stuffs the pipe back in his pocket, swearing when it burns him. Straightens out the straps of the backpack clumsily and heaves it over his shoulder.

  “You mean like this? Barefoot?” he says, but meets Sphinx’s stare coming the other way again, nods and departs hastily, muttering under his breath.

  Sphinx continues to sit motionlessly for a while longer, then gets up and slowly shuffles toward the House. The first drop of rain pecks him on the forehead when he’s already on the steps. He turns to look at the shaved heads, to see if they are leaving yet, and to his surprise sees Red in front of them, on this side of the fence. Rat Leader is talking them up, smiling from ear to ear, all effortless charm. In cutaway jeans, barefoot, and shirtless, but with the bow tie around his neck and a bowler on his head. According to his, that is, Rats’, standards, he is dressed for the occasion. The shaved heads are apparently of a different opinion. It is possible they take the Alpha Rat for a village idiot. Sphinx cannot distinguish the expressions on their faces from this distance, but he’s learned in the past three days that those expressions never change. They listen to Red, clinging to each other tightly, and no one is hanging on the fence anymore. Are they confused? Astonished?

  Without a pause in his smiling and blabbering, Red pulls off his glasses. The enchanted zombies immediately take a step forward and get stuck to the fence. Sphinx, filled with contradictory emotions, rushes inside. No, he’s not second-guessing Blind’s decision to send down to them an angel that’s so different from the one they were looking for. He himself was ready to do anything he could to make them go away. Still, he pities them a little. The poor, deluded, poisoned strangers.

  There’s a cat huddle by the trash can on the landing between the first and second floors. Smoker is also there. On the wall next to him, a charcoal portrait. A grotesquely scowling, ugly face that nevertheless looks very much like Vulture. Sphinx stops to look at it, and
a gaggle of Logs thunders by on the way down, motivated by Jackal barking commands at their backs.

  “Atten-tion! Squad A, search the yard. Squad B, reinforce the door defenses!”

  Tabaqui notices Vulture’s portrait and puts on the brakes.

  “Yechh!” he says. “Sickening!”

  Logs, pushing, shoving, and clattering, throng around for a look. Smoker, scandalized, smears the drawing with the palm of his hand, but even in the resulting blob, Great Bird is still easily recognizable.

  “Tut, tut,” Tabaqui sighs. “Total disregard for the exalted stature of a Leader, imagine that! Sphinx, I sincerely hope that you shall explain it all to him thoroughly, because I have a much more important task ahead of me at the moment.” He points at Logs. “There. Volunteers. We’re going to reinforce the approaches to the House. Lock ’em down so tight not even a mouse could sneak in!”

  The volunteers stand to attention. Horse has a huge padlock in his hands. Monkey is carrying a bunch of wires, probably the remains of the alarm system.

  “At ease,” Sphinx says. “It’s just that there’s rain about to start out there.”

  Logs exchange excited glances and cascade down the steps, hooting and hollering.

  “Quiet! Distance at two paces!” Tabaqui shrieks, rolling down the ramp.

  It does become quiet for a spell. Then the door is thunderously thrown open and slammed shut again. Mona, dawdling around the trash can, instantly sprints down and catches the plastic bag blown in by the gust of wind. While she’s busy disemboweling it, as if it were alive and could be therefore killed, Red saunters past Sphinx and Smoker, whistling, but not before saying to her, “Thanks, babe!” There’s so much genuine gratitude in his voice that Smoker’s eyes open wide, and they become almost round when Red, not slowing down and not even taking a good look at the wall, sweeps off the bowler and pays a bow to the dirty spot that had recently been Vulture’s portrait.

  “I thought this was a secluded spot,” Smoker says glumly. “I thought I could just sit here in peace.”

  “Just sit and just draw,” Sphinx clarifies. “Never draw anyone’s portraits on the walls, Smoker,” he continues sternly. “This is not done. Or were you aiming to start a rumor that you’re putting a hex on Vulture?”

  Smoker, deathly pale, shakes his head vigorously.

  “Then don’t do this again. And if you are looking for seclusion, keep away from the stairs.”

  Sphinx climbs up to the second floor to the accompaniment of the rustling that signifies the hurried and thorough destruction of the portrait.

  The model for that portrait is sitting in the flesh in their dorm, playing solitaire. He has on a gorgeous brocade vest with golden buttons, there’s a gold earring in his ear, and so many rings on his fingers that they barely bend. Next to him on the pillow are two chocolate bars. Great Bird always endeavors to make any visit an occasion by means of small offerings. For him, leaving the Nest for the twenty-step voyage down the hallway is reason enough to decorate himself and come bearing gifts.

  “The weather, apparently, promises to be stunning,” Vulture says, sweeping the cards off the blanket.

  His sour face sorely clashes with the festive attire.

  Sphinx sits across from him.

  “Where’s everybody? Was it empty here when you came in?”

  “Almost,” Vulture says tactfully.

  Sphinx realizes that the “almost” is in fact Smoker, so discombobulated by the encounter with Great Bird that he needed to flush it out by covering the walls of the House with nasty caricatures. It saddens him that without the rakes he can no longer make coffee for the two of them, and also that Vulture is nervous and seems to be preparing to ask him for something but can’t muster enough courage, but most of all that Vulture has dressed up and brought chocolate, trying to conceal the purpose of his visit.

  “I wanted to pass a warning to Blind,” Vulture says. “My Birdies, numbering two, say they saw Solomon last night. I thought Blind might want to be apprised of that.”

  “He returned? In secret?” Sphinx says, surprised.

  Vulture’s shoulders twitch.

  “I do not know. Perhaps. Birdies’ tales are generally not to be trusted. However, they did see him independently and their descriptions seem to match. They say he looks fairly bedraggled.”

  The news of the raggedy runaway Rat sneaking around the House at night does nothing to cheer up Sphinx, but nothing to scare him either.

  “Sad story, if you think about it,” he says. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

  The patter of the raindrops against the ledge quickens. The room is darkened. Sphinx gets up and goes to the window. Where the clouds haven’t consumed the sky yet, it is still orange. The yard is flooded with otherworldly light, and Logs, ecstatic at this sudden gift of nature, jump about in the rain. Mustang with Jackal aboard does loops around and between them. Sphinx knows that Tabaqui’s expression is incredibly smug now, making Logs suspect that he was somehow involved in the weather changing.

  “Now tell me what it is you really came here for,” Sphinx says, turning around.

  Bird has closed his eyes and turned to stone, the way only true birds of prey can. His amber-colored raiment seems to glow in the dusk.

  “Sphinx, you are my only hope,” he says calmly and evenly.

  The disconnect between his words and the way they have been said is disturbing.

  “What happened?” Sphinx says.

  “What happened, happened long ago. Only yesterday for me, but long ago for everyone else. We all need miracles, Sphinx. Some of them are possible and some are not, so we choose to pursue the possible. But then, after you’ve chosen, it turns out that you are not strong enough to achieve even that. Do you understand what I am talking about?”

  Sphinx does. He would have preferred not to.

  “Jackal is a close friend to you,” Vulture says softly. His words are almost drowned in the rustling of rain and the clamor from below. “Ask him for me. He will not refuse if you are the one asking.”

  Sphinx comes back to the bed and sits down next to Vulture, to avoid looking in his face.

  “He will,” Sphinx says. “Trust me, a thing like that he will refuse. He’ll pretend to not understand what I’m asking. He’ll just be Jackal. The thing is, he wouldn’t even be pretending, not really, because that which distributes return tickets is not Tabaqui at all. And he—it—is an expert in handling situations like that, has been since way before you and I were born. And . . . I swear, there’s no way of reaching it from here. Only from the Other Side.”

  Vulture sags, resting his chin on his hand. He has already accepted defeat, but still says, “You are not that easy to refuse when you ask for something.” What he wants the most at this moment is to end this unpleasant conversation, leave Sphinx, and grieve alone, privately. That’s what he wants. But he perseveres.

  “Neither are you,” Sphinx says sadly. “Which is why I’ll do what you asked.”

  “But he will refuse.”

  “But he will refuse.”

  Vulture’s devilish yellow eyes stare at Sphinx.

  “In that case,” he forces himself to say. “If you are so sure about that . . . Do not concern yourself. I believe you. If it were this easy, it wouldn’t be a miracle. But, you know . . . Sometimes I feel, or rather I used to feel, that it was me who it was supposed to have happened to. Max and I . . .”

  Noble chooses this moment to wheel into the dorm, and Sphinx is almost ready to kill him for the unfortunate timing, but Vulture continues as if nothing had happened.

  “We were too much of a single person for one of us to remain alive after the other went away. We were not simply close, we were one. After what happened to him, I figured that since one half of me stayed on, and kept staying on, then at least the life I was leading should have some meaning. Which it would, except for my utter worthlessness. I remain a mere Jumper even after all the poison I have forced into myself. On the Other Side the events
control me, not I them.”

  Noble is frozen near the door. He is looking down at the floor as he listens to Vulture. Sphinx glances in his direction and is filled with compassion. Judging by Noble’s expression, he is unlikely to fully appreciate the fact that Vulture has just accepted him into the closest circle, made him one of those worthy of listening to his innermost secrets. Likely as not he thinks that Vulture simply didn’t notice him.

  “And the worst thing is,” Vulture says. “The worst thing is, if it were him instead of me, he would have succeeded where I have failed. He was so much stronger.”

  The rain picks up, drowning the screams in the yard below. Beyond the window it’s a uniformly gray curtain. Drops ricochet off the ledge, the windowsill is already soaking wet, and there’s soon going to be a puddle on the floor. Sphinx wishes to simply watch all of this unfold. Or stick halfway out of the window, under the streaking, streaming wetness, and breathe it in. Washing off the pain that’s not his own.

  “So I keep thinking,” Vulture sighs. “How did it happen that the one who died was the wrong one?”

  The canteen is in a festive mood. The atmosphere is cheerful, noisy, and squelching. The floor is covered in dirt and crisscrossed by the trails of rubber wheels. Those who got a dose of the rain showed up either wrapped in towels or, if they came up directly from the yard, simply soaking wet. Rats have their boombox blaring at full blast, and their table features a likeness of Iggy Pop cut out from a magazine and glued onto cardboard, at the place of honor in the middle. A patron saint, as it were. It is also his voice that’s screaming from the speakers. Birds strut with black towels on their heads and warm themselves by means of sipping from mysterious bottles that they pass around under the table.

  The table of the Fourth is more soulful than merry. Lary, in a striped turban fashioned from towels, slurps his soup with the pinkie of the hand holding the spoon sticking daintily out. Smoker scratches industriously in the infamous notebook, shielding it from prying eyes. Tubby is busy chewing on the napkin. Tabaqui, swaddled in a bath sheet from head to toe, occupies a chair while Mustang is drying next to him, and judging by its look it has a lot of drying still ahead of it.