Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

The girls have discarded the blankets. Fly's own speckled sweater is peeking out from under Noble's gray one. She tugs on both, admiring her reflection in the wardrobe's polished door, and cheerfully displays her teeth. Lary, putting on boots, heaps praise on her belt buckle that I completely failed to notice. Alexander rolls up the blanket formerly known as tablecloth. Sphinx and Blind are also going out, while Noble, who wheeled off into a corner to give everyone some space, watches Ginger from over there like a predator stalking its prey with a penetrating, unblinking stare.

I emerge fully, loath to miss even the smallest detail. But there isn't anything to miss anymore: the guests are leaving, the evening morphed into the night, and the radio DJs are cheerfully greeting the insomniacs—in short, the predawn stupefaction is right around the corner. The saddest of all moods. Few are those who could gabble through the night with unrelenting intensity, like me, for example. Ginger is still wearing my socks and doesn't seem to want to take them off before heading out, which means there's a possibility of her coming back. On the other hand, she could always send them over with someone else.

“Bye,” she and Fly say to me, Noble, and Alexander.

Everyone else is planning to walk them home. With flashlights.

“Bye, Jonathan,” I reply. “Come again.”

She nods uncertainly and steals a sideways glance at Blind. Blind, of course, is not aware of that, but, honestly, he might have guessed. The others dutifully hold off inviting her back for a few seconds, giving him first dibs. When they do, they invite Fly as well. Lary, giggling, tells her to bring Gaby along. Idiot, that one.

Finally they file out. The whole crowd, leaving behind me, Alexander, Smoker, and also Noble. Ginger's departure takes the sparkliness and fieriness out of him, leaving him dull and sullen.

I climb on the bed and start tidying it up. Spread out the plastic bag, shake the ashtrays out over it, add the half-eaten pieces of this and that, peel the gum blobs off the railing. Make a pile out of the textbooks and notes. Once the mess is localized and pushed to the edge, I create a burrow near the headboard and dive in. It's warm and cozy here. Alexander's broom swishes softly. Noble is completely quiet. I condense a cloud of drowsy fog around myself, a small one, to make it even cozier, and start remembering.

Jonathan. The ghost haunting our room. Probably the only case in the entire history of the House when a room had its own ghost. We were extremely proud. Countless times we had discussed the gifts he was leaving us, trying to decipher who he was. Countless times we had invented more and more elaborate snares and traps, only to come up empty again and again. Which served as irrefutable proof of his nonhuman nature. At first we had suspected our neighbors from next door. Then, the seniors. But neither could possibly know about our traps and snares, while Jonathan somehow evaded them all. Having despaired of catching him, we set to uncovering his identity through his handwriting. We diligently collected samples for comparison by stealing homework left in the staff room to be graded. We accumulated a sizable pile and were just about to destroy the evidence when a janitor stumbled upon it and told the administration on us.

I shuffle through the memories of that time. Funny how no one had even considered to snatch a girl's notebook. Because, quite obviously, Jonathan was male. One thing we couldn't grasp, though: Why hadn't he chosen a more inventive nick? Why a simple name? Once the hopes of catching him had evaporated, we started leaving notes for him.

Why Jonathan?

In lieu of an answer, we received a skinny book about a seagull. We had collectively read it aloud, as was our custom back then. Because of Blind, because of Beauty, who could barely put letters together, and because of Elephant, who didn't even come as far as the letters. So it was an obvious solution. Naturally, Wolf was best at reading, so he'd get the longest chapters. For some reason everyone agreed that I was the worst. We learned about Jonathan Livingston Seagull, but that hadn't really helped us in figuring out the identity of our mysterious visitor. The book hadn't been checked out of the library, so it didn't have a card we could examine for clues, and pointedly dropping the word seagull around did not lead us to its supposed owner. Among seniors almost everyone had read the book; among juniors we were the only ones.

Are you a seagull? was our question to Jonathan in the next letter. Jonathan maintained his silence, leaving us instead a suspicious brownish feather. We kept the feather and showed it to anyone who had even a passing familiarity with ornithology. The scholars concluded that the feather did not belong to a seagull, but whose it was they couldn't say.

I remember all of this and many other things besides, fall asleep, wake up again, remember some more, and suddenly it strikes me that I have missed a chance to unravel one of the mysteries that had so tormented us when we were kids. How did she know in advance about all of our traps? The fact that Jonathan turned out to be Ginger doesn't explain anything at all. The more I think about it the more it bugs me that I didn't think to ask. Now I have to wait until the next time she comes. And what if she never comes again? This thought strips the sleepiness clean off. I toss and turn, I sigh, I call myself stupid. Well, all right, so I did a stupid thing. But what about the others, the supposedly smart ones, huh? No one thought to ask about what's most important! Unless... Unless they did. Of course! I shake myself up, peek out of the burrow, and look around.

Asleep. All of them, snuffling shamelessly. Smoker on the other end, Sphinx to the left of me, while Noble is nowhere to be seen. There's a lonely silhouette on the windowsill, though, gazing at the stars. Very romantic. Must be him.

I kick Sphinx in the ribs.

“Hey! Hey, wake up! I need to ask something, quick.”

“Tabaqui! You bastard!” Sphinx shakes his bald head sleepily. “Never in my life have I met anyone half as nasty as you. What is it now?”

“Have you by any chance thought to ask how she managed to evade all our traps? You know, the most important and fascinating thing?”

“I have,” Sphinx grumbles and lowers his head back on the pillow. “But I'm not telling. Not until you mend your dirty ways.”

“Sphinx, please! Pretty please! Or I won't be able to sleep... Tell me ...” I keep jostling him gently in sync with my entreaties. “Sphinx, tell me ...”

He sits up again.

“Damn it, Tabaqui! I would have told you everything when we came back, except you were asleep, and I respected that, by the way. And this is the gratitude I get ...”

“I wasn't asleep!”

I indignantly crawl out.

“See that? I'm fully dressed. Wouldn't I be in pajamas if I were really asleep?”

“I see. So what I was supposed to do is dig up your nest and check if you're dressed or wearing pajamas?”

“Yes, you were! Especially considering that I wasn't asleep at all. I was thinking.”

Blind sits up on his mattress on the floor.

“Just tell him, Sphinx. He's going to chew us all up by morning if you don't.”

“She got it from Elephant,” Sphinx says reluctantly. “That's all there is to it. And in return she allowed him to touch her hair.”

I remember now. Every time Elephant saw Ginger he would try to reach for her hair, huffing, “Want! Want!” Something of an unusually vivid color in a place where other people don't have anything interesting—that's all he saw. And more than anything in the world Elephant liked to touch unusual things: soap bubbles, cats’ tails, burning matches.