Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

“Can you hear that?” Blind, sitting on the floor by the door, asked him. “Hear how much noise they're making?”

Blind held the boy's shorts for him. The boy quickly thrust his legs through the openings, one, then the other. Blind did the zipper.

“You don't like them?” the boy asked, watching his sneakers being laced.

“Why should I?” Blind pushed the boy's foot off his knee and put the other one in its place. “Why should I like them?”

The boy was barely able to wait for his blazer and refused the comb. His fair hair, grown out during the summer, remained disheveled.

“Come on, I'm going!” he blurted out. Then he ran, his feet unsteady from anticipation. The corridor, then the stairs, then the first floor. The door was being kept ajar by a striped bag. He ran out into the yard and froze.

He was surrounded by faces. The faces were unfamiliar, alien, they cut like knives. The voices—shrill, frightening. He was scared. These were not the people he'd rushed to meet. They too were browned by the sun, they laughed, they were dappled with patches of color, but they were all wrong.

He lowered himself onto the step, keeping his catlike gaze on them. A shiver ran down his spine. So that's how they are, he thought bitterly. They are all assembled from little pieces. And I am one of them. I am just like them. Or will be soon. We are in a zoo. And the fence is for keeping us all in.

There was one in a wheelchair, white like a marble statue, with snowy hair and a haggard look, and another one, nearly purple, bloated as a week-old corpse and almost as scary. This one also could not walk, and he was surrounded by girls pushing his wheelchair. The girls laughed and joked, and each had a flaw; they too were glued together from pieces. He looked at them and wanted to cry.

A tall girl with black hair, dressed in a pink shirt, came near him and stopped.

“A newbie,” she said. The irises of her eyes were so dark they became indistinguishable from the blackness of the pupils.

“Yeah,” he agreed sadly.

“Do you have a nick?”

He shook his head.

“Then you shall be Grasshopper.” She touched his shoulder. “Your legs have little springs inside.”

She saw me racing down the stairs, he thought, blushing.

“There's the one you are looking for,” she added and pointed toward one of the buses.

The boy looked and saw Elk standing there with a man in black trousers and a black turtleneck. Relieved, he smiled at the girl.

“Thank you,” he said. “You are right, I was looking for him.”

She shrugged.

“It was an easy guess. All squirts always do. And you are a very green squirt. Remember your nick and your godmother. I am Witch.”

She went up the steps and into the House. Grasshopper observed her very thoroughly but could not distinguish the little pieces.

I have a nick now, he thought and ran to meet Elk.

The soft hand descended on his shoulder; he pressed against Elk and purred contentedly. The man in black was looking sarcastically from under the bushy eyebrows.

“What's this, Elk? Another trusting soul? When did that happen?”

Elk frowned but did not answer.

“Joking,” the man in black said. “I'm sorry, old man. It was just a joke.”

He strolled off.

“Who was that?” Grasshopper asked quietly.

“One of the counselors. He went to the resort with the guys,” Elk said distractedly. “Black Ralph. Also R One.”

“Are there others like him? Two, Three, and Four?”

“No. There aren't any. It's just that he's called that for some reason.”

“He's got a silly face,” Grasshopper said. “If I were him I'd grow a beard to hide behind.”

Elk laughed.

“You know what?” the boy said, brushing his cheek against Elk's hand. “I too have a nick now. Wanna guess? I bet you'd never guess.”

“Wouldn't even try. Something to do with flying?”

“Almost. Grasshopper.” He jerked his head up, searching Elk's face. “Is it a good one?”

“Yes,” Elk said, mussing his hair. “You can count yourself lucky.”

Grasshopper scrunched his nose, all peeling from the sun.

“That's what I thought too.”

He looked at the glued-together people around them. There were fewer now, most had gone inside the House.

“Aren't you glad they're back? You won't be so lonely now.”

There was uncertainty in Elk's voice.

“I don't like them,” Grasshopper said honestly. “They're old and ugly and broken. It all looked different from above, and from down here it's all messed up.”

“None of them is even eighteen yet,” Elk countered, visibly offended. “And why do you say they're ugly? That's not fair.”

“They're freaks. Especially that one.” He nodded at the purple one. “It's like he drowned long ago. You know?”

“That's Moor. Remember that nick.”

Elk took a suitcase out of the pile and turned toward the House. Grasshopper kept close to him, silent as a shadow and just as unavoidable. They passed the purple one. His malicious little eyes were lost in the flowing, melting face. Grasshopper felt their gaze on his back and picked up the pace, as if spooked by it.

Did he hear what I said about him? Stupid! He's going to remember me now, me and my words .

Three of the able-bodied were smoking by the entrance. One of them, closely cropped and tall, with a fierce expression on his face, gave Elk a nod. Elk stopped. So did Grasshopper.

Around the neck of the fierce-faced, on a twisted chain, hung a monkey skull. Delicate, yellowed, with pointy teeth. The boy was mesmerized by the grown-up toy. There was some kind of mystery attached to it. Something was built into it that made the empty eye sockets glow mysteriously, even wetly. The skull seemed alive. Touching it was the only way to learn its secret, examining it closer, putting one's finger into the holes. But to look at it without understanding was just as fascinating. He did not catch what Elk and the owner of the trinket said to each other, but as he was entering the door he heard Elk say, “That was Skull. Remember him too.”

Moor, Skull, and Witch the godmother, Grasshopper repeated to himself, flying up the stairs. I must remember these three, and that unpleasant counselor in need of a beard, and the white man in the wheelchair, even though no one told me anything about him, and the day when I got a nick .

The rooms were changing before his eyes. The taupe walls plastered with posters, the striped mattresses piled with clothes. Every bed was claimed by someone and immediately turned into a dump. Rough-sided pinecones, multicolored swimming trunks, shells and shards of coral, cups, socks, amulets, apples and apple cores. Each room acquired individuality, became different from the others.

He wandered around, awash in smells, tripped over the gutted bags and backpacks, slunk around the corners absorbing the changes. No one paid him any attention. They all had their own concerns.

There was something like a hut being built from thin planks in one of the dorms. He sat there for a while, waiting to see the result, then got bored and moved to another room. They were constructing something there too. To avoid being trampled, Grasshopper sat on a low stool by the door. The seniors were laughing, needling each other, tossing around bags and sacks, drinking something out of paper cups, then just crumpling and dropping them. The floor was strewn with the cardboard concertinas. They flattened easily and smelled of lemons. Grasshopper furtively guided them under the stool with his feet. Then a scrawny counselor with unkempt hair, resembling Lennon in his rimless glasses, came into the dorm and dragged Grasshopper out of his lair.