Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

“No, I haven't forgotten about you.” Ancient placed the queen on the black square. “It's strange how often I've been thinking of you. Why is that, do you think?”

“Because of the amulet?”

“What's the amulet got to do with it? You don't need it. You don't need the tasks either. You're wide open. You just absorb it all.”

“I do need it.” Grasshopper swayed on his heels. “Very much. Ever since I got it, it's all been... right.”

“I'm glad for it.” Ancient shook a cigarette out of the pack. “That it came out better than all the others. And also for you.”

Grasshopper suddenly grew agitated.

“What happened with the last graduation? What was it you saw back then that you don't want to see again?”

Ancient fiddled with the cigarette, not lighting it.

“What's the point in talking about it? You’ll see it all come summer. With your own eyes.”

“I need to know now. Tell me.”

Ancient glanced at him from under the half-closed lids.

“The last time was like a sinking ship,” he said. “This time is going to be worse. But don't be afraid. Watch and remember. Then you can avoid the mistakes made by others. We are all given two graduations for a reason. One is to watch, so that you can know. The other is your own.”

“Why is it going to be worse?”

Ancient sighed.

“The House had one leader back then. Now there are two. It's the House divided. That's always bad. And in the year of graduation that's the worst thing. No more questions now. It might be that I’m simply wrong, talking nonsense. It's going to be either this way or that way or, more likely, something completely different will happen, something that neither I nor you nor anyone else can even imagine. Predictions are useless here.”

“All right,” Grasshopper said, nodding.

The look Ancient was giving him felt strange. A faraway look.

He's saying his good-byes, Grasshopper realized. It's still a long way till summer, but he's saying good-bye now. There will be no more conversations like this one.

Ancient sighed and turned to the board.

“Come closer. I am going to teach you this game.”

His fingers rushed from square to square, setting the pieces.

“Your army shall be White. Mine is Black. These are pawns. They only move forward one square. Except their first move can be two squares at once.”

Ancient looked at Grasshopper again.

“don't think about bad things now,” he said. “Empty your head of everything I've just said. Now look here ...”

He climbed out of the attic through the window and looked around. Most of all it resembled a desert. This gray, bare, parched desert, with aerials in place of cacti. Flat, except for the solitary hill of the other attic, looking tiny from up here. And the sky, all around him. Grasshopper clung to the window, afraid to venture away. Wolf winked at him and climbed out to the roof. The iron plates rattled.

He sat down, dangling his feet, and called to Grasshopper, “Come on. Put your foot on the box here.”

Grasshopper climbed up and cautiously lowered himself next to him. Once he got his breathing under control he could take in the view. They were at the very top of the House. Even higher than the roof. You could even see the Outsides from here, brightly striped, washed clean by the rains, ready for the summer. The dump surrounded by the fence, the round tops of the trees, the jagged remains of the crumbled walls—where, to their parents' utter horror, the Outsides children liked to play. He could see the bright splotches of their raincoats among the ruins even now. A boy on a bicycle rolled down the street. Grasshopper looked in the opposite direction. The street was wider on that side, and in the distance he could glimpse the same bus stop from where he'd walked with his mother on the day he first entered the House.

“If they find out I dragged you here, they're going to kill me,” Wolf said. “But this is a really good place. Do you like it here?”

“I don't know,” Grasshopper said honestly. “I have to think about it.”

He looked down again.

“I guess it's a good thinking place. Except I'm not sure if the thinking here is of good or bad things.”

“Tell me what you're thinking about, then,” Wolf said. “I’ll tell you if it's good or bad.”

Grasshopper watched a bus as it disappeared from view. Then he looked back at Wolf.

“Promise you're not going to laugh. In the place where we used to live, I mean, Mom, Grandma, and I, there was this park near our house. On one side, and on the other side this huge store, and a little farther down, the playground. The store sold mirrors. And other things too. Our house was right in the middle of all this. On the same street as the park and the mirror store. You know what I mean?”

Wolf shook his head.

“No, not really.”

“When I remember our house, I also remember all of that. The way it stood on the street, and what was around it. You see?”

“I guess so,” Wolf said, rubbing his ear. “There is nothing like that here.”

“Yeah, nothing. Worse than nothing. It's like all of this has been painted on,” Grasshopper said, nodding at the streets. “A picture.”

“And if you go out,” Wolf said thoughtfully, looking down, “you'd punch a hole in it. Tear the paper and leave a hole. What's behind it?”

“I don't know,” Grasshopper said. “That's exactly what I was thinking about.”

“Nobody knows,” Wolf said. “The only way to find out is to do it. I don't want to think about this.”

“Then it's not a good thinking place. When you don't want to think about something, but it still thinks about itself. And how does it feel to you?”

“With me it's different,” Wolf said, pulling his legs up and placing his elbows on his knees. “I like the roof. It's the House and at the same time it isn’t. Like an island in the middle of the ocean. Or like a ship. Or the edge of the world. Like you could crash straight down into outer space from here—falling, falling, never reaching the bottom. I used to play here by myself. Imagining all that: the ocean, the sky ...”

“And now?”

“And now I don't anymore. haven't been here forever.”

The rectangle of the roof glistened with glass shards. They gleamed and sparkled like diamonds. In the other corner they saw yellowed newspapers, empty bottles, and chair seats, all color leached out of them.

“Who's left all that here?” Grasshopper asked.

“don't know. Seniors, I guess. I'm not the only one who knows about this place. People come here all the time. I like it more when it's windy and raining. It's completely different from how it is now. A ship in a storm. I can run around in the rain and I know for sure that no one would gawk at me from the windows. The important thing is to be careful not to slide to the sloping part.”

Grasshopper imagined Wolf running around on the wet slippery roof and shuddered.

Wolf laughed.

“You just never tried. Look.”

He stood up, swayed, righted himself, threw back his head, and shouted into the vast blueness of the sky, “Aaa! Ooo! Yoo-hoo!”

The sky swallowed his scream. Grasshopper watched, his eyes wide in astonishment.

“Come on. don't be scared.”

Wolf helped him get up, and then they were shouting together. Grasshopper's uncertain cry was gobbled up by the sky in a flash. He shouted louder, then louder still. Suddenly it came to him: How beautiful it was to be shouting at the sky. How there was nothing in the world more beautiful than that.

He screwed his eyes tightly shut and screamed until he was hoarse. He and Wolf flopped down on the warm metal and looked at each other with insane eyes. The wind breathed into their flushed faces. The black scissors of the swallows scythed overhead. It was so quiet that they felt a ringing in their ears.