Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

Gibbon changed the record again. A guitar lick, overlaid on the rain. Grasshopper perked up and raised his head. The voice he recognized immediately, as soon as it came in. It was a different song, but the voice was the same voice that had screamed at him from the basement. Grasshopper sat up straight. The voice whispered and moaned over the tables and the heads of the seniors. The setting sun pushed aside the streaming water and the low clouds, and the room turned to purple and gold. It didn't matter that this wasn't the song. Grasshopper was sure that he knew this one too, had always known it. Knew it like he knew himself, like something that always had been, that he and everyone else needed in order to simply go on existing. This was the cafe, not the basement, but the voice kept on calling. Inviting to come with it, out into the wall of the rain. Where? No one could know. And there was no need to break the glass this time. Just step out through it, parting it like water, then through the rain, and up from there. The tables dissolved in the music, leaving only the checkered puzzle of the tablecloths. Time stopped. Rain beat out the drum solo on the faces and hands. Then the purple faded, the gold melted. Only Grasshopper's hair still flamed in the dark corner.

That song came to an end, but the voice on the record had others. More magic for those who knew how to listen. Grasshopper listened until Gibbon changed the record, and it had a different voice, one that couldn't make him recognize it. The heads of the seniors resumed their swaying, the fingers busied themselves with glasses and ashtrays. A cat with a glossy back slinked under the tables, mewling pitifully, and got a cigarette and a mint thrown down for its troubles. Grasshopper sighed. This new song didn't even have coffee people in it. It didn't have anything. Only a shrill woman.

Two girls wearing bright-red lipstick wheeled away from their table. One of them picked up the cat and cradled it. Someone turned the light on, and there was a short burst of switches clicking. Lights under green umbrella shades were coming on everywhere. The woman was singing about being dumped. Two songs in a row now.

Grasshopper got up, separating himself from the wall and the warm nook behind the television. The palm tree swayed. The monkey turned its empty, unpainted side to him. He threaded his way between the tables, a white streak in the cloud of smoke. An underwater kingdom of green shades and green faces. He went to the counter and asked a question.

The seniors leaned down from the mushroom stools and said, “What was that?” Gibbon, in his white apron, regarded him from above like he was something not worthy of attention.

Grasshopper repeated the question. The faces of the seniors scowled sarcastically. Gibbon took out a marker, scribbled something on a napkin, and placed it on the edge of the counter.

“Read this,” he said.

Grasshopper looked at the words.

“Led Zeppelin,” he said timidly. “Where is it led?”

The seniors sneered.

“Everywhere! It's made of lead, dummy!”

Grasshopper blushed.

“Why?”

“To better smash the windows with,” Gibbon said indifferently, and they broke out laughing again.

The laughter chased Grasshopper out, burning with shame, but not before he stashed the wad of the napkin in the grip of the prosthetic.

How did they know? Who told them?

Across the walls of the Poxy room, animals were flying. Goblin lurked in wait, ready to ambush an unwary stranger. Grasshopper sat down in front of the nightstand with the typewriter and relaxed his grip. The napkin wasn't there. The not-quite-hand could not make a proper fist. Grasshopper shut his eyes tightly, then opened them and rattled out the words that he remembered even without the aid of the napkin. Then pulled out the sheet of paper and stuffed it in his pocket. He was upset. By the zeppelin. Because he didn't understand what a zeppelin could possibly have to do with it. They were bulky and unwieldy, and they'd been extinct for a long time. And also because the seniors knew about the glass. About him breaking it.

“The most hurtful thing,” he said, “is that it was one of you who told them.”

“What?” Humpback said, leaning down from his bunk.

“Nothing,” Grasshopper said. “Whoever did it heard me.”

Beauty was wearing a paper crown with rounded edges. His smile was missing a tooth. Stinker, in a crown exactly like Beauty's, also grinned, but with inquisitive anticipation. His smile was abundantly toothy. One of the Siamese was cutting pictures out of a magazine. He raised his icy stare at Grasshopper and turned back to clicking the scissors.

“Who said what to who?” Stinker blurted out. “And who was supposed to hear?”

Humpback leaned over again.

“About the glass,” Grasshopper said. “That it was me who broke it. The seniors know.”

“It wasn't me,” Stinker protested. “I'm blameless. Never, not to a single soul!”

Siamese yawned. Humpback shifted angrily under the covers.

Elephant was fiddling bashfully with the pocket of his overalls.

“I told them. That Grasshopper... wanted to let them out. Very much. Was very upset. So I told them.”

“Who?” Stinker said, shifting the crown askew and picking at his ear. “Who did you tell?”

“Them,” Elephant said waving his hand vaguely. “That tall one. He asked. And also the other one, he was standing there too. Was that wrong? They weren't angry.”

Elephant's guileless blue gaze sought out Siamese, and his thumb moved in the direction of his mouth.

“Was that wrong?”

Siamese sighed.

“How hard did you get it?” he asked.

“I didn't,” Grasshopper said, approaching Stinker and nodding at a pocket. “Take this out, please. I wrote something, for your letters. For you to mention.”

Stinker tugged at the pocket, snatched out the sheet, and peered into the words, then brought them right under his nose and sniffed greedily.

“Wow,” he said. “I'd say... You think that would be useful to have around?”

Humpback climbed down, took the paper from Stinker, and read it too.

“Zeppelin? What's that mean?”

“I could, of course, write that a poor paralyzed baby is desperately into the lighter-than-air craft,” Stinker drawled dreamily. “No problem at all. But how can we be sure they’ll understand it correctly?”

“That's the name of the song,” Grasshopper said. “Or the band. I'm not sure. That's if Gibbon wasn't trying to pull a joke on me.”

“We’ll find out,” Stinker said, putting away the paper. “And then it's going on the list.”

Elephant trampled heavily to Grasshopper's side, right over the magazine cuttings.

“I want a crown too,” he whined, pointing at Beauty. “With pointy bits, like this one.”

Stinker handed over his crown.

Elephant quickly put his hands behind his back.

“No! Like this one. Beautiful!”

Humpback took the crown off Beauty's head and slapped it over Elephant's. He had to push it down a bit to make sure it didn't fall off. Elephant went back, beaming and holding very straight.

“No bawling this time,” Humpback said happily. “We're in luck.”

Elephant sat on the bed and felt around his head gingerly.

Tuesdays are Swap days. I haven't been down to the first since Pompey. That floor somehow ceased to attract me. You can call it cowardly, I guess, but it's more to do with waiting it out. There are bad places and there are temporarily bad places. That temporary badness can be waited out. That's what I ponder all morning. How I miss the Swap days and how enough time has passed since Pompey for the first floor to stop being a bad place.