Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

“OOH, BABY, BABY!” The song was ringing in Grasshopper's ears. The colors flashed. Orange! Green! White! Blue!

His breath was ragged in the throat, his mouth open, he was coiled like a spring.

“IT's CALLIN' ME!” Green! White!

Grasshopper gasped, turned over on his back, and kicked out with his feet as hard as he could, right at the glass. It rained shards, and then Grasshopper was lifted bodily from both sides and hauled away, but not before freeing his legs, stuck in the grating. After just a few steps he managed to spring up and run with the others, even ahead of the others, because the song continued to scream at him: “OOH! OOH! OOH!” Except now it urged them to flee. They flew up the stairs, with him still in front, and thundered down the hallway, tripping and chortling loudly. The three lame among them imagined that they were racing the wind, the two hauling the third thought that they were really fast, and even the largest one, huffing miserably behind, was sure he was running. And all of them heard the clatter of the hot pursuit on their heels. They burst into the dorm, crashed on the beds, and burrowed inside, the way lizards disappear in the sand. The suppressed laughter was trying to get out of them. Then there wasn't a stir anywhere, except for the shoes being taken off under the covers. The first shoe hit the floor, then another and another, and every time they froze and listened. But everything was quiet. No one chased after them, no one came in to check if they were really sleeping. Taming their breaths, they pretended to be asleep until they got tired of it, then slowly, one by one, climbed down from the beds and crawled to the middle of the room, the place where the invisible fire was always lit in their cave, surrounding it in a barefoot semicircle.

“What did you do that for?” Magician asked.

“They dropped me,” Stinker squeaked. “Twice! One time was on the stairs. I could have fallen to my death.”

Elephant just shuddered, sucking his thumb.

“I wanted to let them out,” Grasshopper explained. “So they could fly.”

The hands of the Poxy Sissies, dirty from the asphalt and the rusty grates, reached out to feel him.

“Hey. Are you all right?”

“It all comes from the fuzzy looking,” Humpback said. “I knew it.”

“Someone had to let them out,” Grasshopper said. “Set them free. That's what the song was about.”

He fell silent, straining to hear the song again across the two floors dividing them. But it felt different now, like someone just listening to music in the distance. No one was calling him to action.

“I'd give anything,” one of the Siamese moaned, “to be grown up now. And to be there. Like them. Why do we have to grow so slowly?”

“I saw him. Skull,” Magician bragged.

“No you didn't,” Wolf said. “You're just making it up.”

Beauty was hugging the juice maker.

“It was... It was like juice,” he said dreamily. “Like it was all covered in juice. Orange. And then strawberry. And then I don't know what kind.”

“As soon as my letters get there, we’ll have all of that too,” Stinker said. “Dancing at night. Big deal. They just guzzle beer and scream. Some entertainment. We’ll do loads better.”

“You can still hear them,” Wolf said. “Down there. Maybe they didn't even notice that busted glass. Or maybe they don't care when they're having fun like that.”

“Let's have fun too,” Humpback suggested.

“We haven't got girls,” Grasshopper said. “Or the basement. Or the record player with the stereo system. But once we get all that, we're not going to just shuffle in place. We’ll fly away.”

“Right.” Stinker nodded. “You're going to kick out the glass for us, and we’ll just soar into the sky. In white nightgowns. Like ghosts! You gave your word, so remember that.”

“No one is going to make me wear a nightgown, ever,” Humpback grumbled. “Not when I'm grown up. Just let them try ...”

Grasshopper edged along the wall, constantly stepping in the piles of sawdust. Pearlescent smoke permeated the cafe; clouds of it drifted from table to table. Music oozed from the speakers. The seniors were in conversation mode, elbows spread on the table mats, heads close together, smoke curling out of nostrils. He stole by them silently and found a corner between the switched-off television and the fake palm tree. There he crouched down and froze, letting his gaze wander among the tables.

Those actually were classroom desks with tablecloths on top. The ashtrays took over for the pencil holders. The seniors had thought up this cafe themselves, and designed all the furniture. The counter they made out of crates covered in fabric. Behind the counter, Gibbon, a long-limbed senior, tended to the sizzling, spitting coffeepots, juggled sugar bowls, cups, and spoons, poured, mixed, whipped, and arranged his creations on the waiting trays.

The audience on the slender-legged stools placed all along the counter observed him rapturously. They leaned on it, wiggled corduroy-clad bottoms on the mushroom seats, teased the half-moon coffee stains with their fingers, raided the sugar bowls. Those were the delights available to the walkers. Wheelers had to make do with the tables.

A cardboard monkey on a string hung from the palm branch over Grasshopper's head. He looked at it. Then looked back at the seniors. The speakers on the walls hissed idly. There, in the distance, among the clouds of smoke behind the counter, Gibbon wiped his hands on the bar towel and changed the record. Grasshopper buried his chin in his knees and closed his eyes. This was not the song. But he believed. Believed that if he sat here quietly, not going anywhere, they'd put the song back on.

The windows darkened gradually. Most of the tables were already occupied. The seniors' voices droned in the background, dissolving into one rustling stream. This song danced, clanking the tin cans and squeaking from time to time. It was like a conga line of cheerful people, wiggling their hips, stomping in the sand, and shaking tambourines.

Grasshopper took in the smells of coffee and smoke. Could it be that coffee was the potion that made you a grown-up? That if you drank it you became an adult? That's what Grasshopper thought. Life had its own laws, they were innate, not invented, and one of them was about coffee and those who drank it. First they let you have coffee. Then, as a result, they stop insisting that you go to bed at a certain hour. No one actually lets you smoke, but there's not letting and then there's not letting. Which is why there aren't any seniors who don't smoke, and only one junior who does. Seniors who smoke and drink coffee become very excitable, and next thing you know they're allowed to turn a lecture hall into a bar and not sleep at night. And to skip breakfast. And it all started with coffee.

Grasshopper, still with chin between knees, closed his eyes drowsily. The cardboard monkey swung on its cord. Someone tossed a beer can in the air and caught it again. A web of cracks ran down the windowpane. Rain. The rumble of thunder crowded out the music. Those at the tables laughed and looked at the windows. Gibbon wiped down the counter.

Grasshopper waited patiently.

The dancing people were still drumming and singing, relentlessly vivacious, alien—to the rain, the dusk, the faces at the tables. Only the smell of coffee was in tune with them, and the fake palm. Why is it that no one hears how out of place it is here? Them and their sunny songs? Finally, with the last shake of the hips and the last rattle of the tambourines, the dancers departed, to Grasshopper's relief, leaving behind only an empty rustle, like the crackling of a dying fire. That soft sound was soon drowned out, as the rain took over.