Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

“Where've you been?” Sphinx says to Blind.

The anteroom meets them with bright lights, falling mops, and shaggy heads in the doorframe. Humpback brings sleeping Tubby inside.

“There he is, our dear tubbylicious maniac!” Tabaqui's voice enthuses. “Our beloved adventurer ...”

Blind takes a detour into the bathroom. Sphinx follows him.

“Whose blood is that?”

Blind doesn't answer. But Sphinx isn't expecting him to. He lowers himself down on the edge of the low sink and observes. Blind, his face in the other sink, waits out a bout of nausea.

“The night has been going on for too long. Too long even for the Longest,” Sphinx says, mostly to himself. “I don't like them in general, and this one in particular. I think that if everyone went to bed it would end sooner. So, whose blood?”

“Red's,” Blind says darkly. “Later, OK? I feel really sick now. Our old friend Ralph just kicked the dinner out of me.”

Sphinx sways impatiently on the edge of the sink, licking a bleeding spot on his lip.

“Because of Red? Was it you who cut him?”

Blind turns his face, with two red sores in place of eyelids, in Sphinx's direction.

“don't be absurd. Because of Pompey. If I understood him correctly. He knows. Somebody snitched. He was rustling a scrap of paper all that time.”

“Why now? I mean, tonight? Has he gone mad?”

“Could be. Certainly a possibility, if you listen to his blabbering.” Blind bends down to the sink again. “Or if he hasn't cracked yet, he's going to soon. Bet you he's shaking all his watches right now, one by one, and changing the batteries in them. Trying to figure out who's punking him. Who bit the morning off and gobbled it up.”

“don't laugh, or you’ll throw up again.”

“I can’t. He ordered me not to touch them. Bleeping Solomon and Squib along with Don. Couldn't see them himself, but considers it his duty to intervene. ‘I know your Laws,’ he says. I don't know our Laws. I don't, and he does. I should've asked what he meant when he said that.”

Sphinx sighs.

“Now, correct me if I'm wrong. Solomon, Squib, and Don cut Red, and Ralph hit you because you wouldn't promise to leave them alone? Why do I get the impression there's more to it than that?”

“He punched me because he thinks I don't talk politely enough,” Blind says, straightening up.

“Do you?”

“Depends.” Blind adjusts the sweater drooping off his shoulder. “Damn, I'm going to fall out of this thing. Is this what they call cleavage?”

“It's what they call a sweater that's three sizes too big. So was it because of Solomon, or because of Pompey?”

“Because of nerves. He got cut too. So of course he's jumpy. And now those snitches... He made me wipe it all off before letting me go.”

Blind frowns and goes silent. Sphinx doesn't like the expression on his face. He climbs down from the sink and comes closer.

“Something else?”

Blind shrugs. “I'm not sure. Maybe he didn't notice. I mean... people don't usually pay too much attention to the exact composition of someone else's vomit, do they? What do you think?”

“They usually don't. Why? Was there something to pay attention to?”

“Well... Honestly? The mice didn't have enough time to get digested. And there wasn't much in there besides. That could disguise them, I mean.”

“Blind. Enough,” Sphinx says, wincing. “Spare me the details. Let's just say I hope with all my heart that Ralph wasn't looking too closely at how you redecorated his office.”

“Me too. But the silence that followed was a bit strange. I'd even say stunned.”

“How is a stunned silence different from a regular one?”

“Different shade.”

“I see,” Sphinx says. “Well, if it's the shade, we're all screwed. It means he saw. And what his thoughts on that are we’ll never know. Which is for the best.”

Blind grins.

“He that increaseth knowledge?”

“Something like that,” Sphinx says.

“This Ralph fellow sure is meddlesome. Gadding about at night... sticking his nose in other people's business. Bugging them with idiotic demands afterward. Irritating.”

Blind takes a step away from the sink, jerks the towel off the hook, and wipes his face. Sphinx studies the footprints on the tiles. Bloodred.

“Your feet could do with a washing too. Where did you manage to cut them?”

Blind runs his hand over the soles.

“I did, huh. I don't remember where. That dump on the way, probably.” He adjusts the sweater again. “Look, I'm really tired right now.”

“Why do you always put on those rags?”

Sphinx is almost shouting. Blind doesn't answer.

“Why do you walk over glass barefoot?”

No answer. Sphinx's voice drops down to a whisper.

“And why the hell don't you even feel that you're bleeding until someone tells you!”

Blind is silent.

Sphinx sighs again and walks out quietly.

The light is still on in the dorm. Noble is smoking, wrapped in the blanket on the edge of the bed. Smoker, in a hushed whisper, recounts to Lary and Humpback the horrors of finding himself inside a cat's skin. Tabaqui, his face still bearing traces of total bliss, is asleep, clutching the backpack turned inside out.

Tabaqui's tale, take four.

Afternoon tea, take three.

Jackal is alert and perky. He's already had time to doze off, wake up, provide additional details that he seems to have missed the first three times around, and start on the composition of a song worthy of the occasion. Lary and Humpback, in coats over pajamas, are crouching around the coffeemaker like trappers around a campfire.

“Some people have all the luck... Getting to see all that stuff,” Lary sighs—and launches another half hour of Tabaqui's rapid-fire gibbering. Everyone's sick of it by now, except for him and the Bandar-Log.

Blind returns, a pale emissary from the world of shadows. From head to toe, exhibit one for Jackal's gruesome fantasies. The pack studies him and his stained sweater. Mostly the sweater. Naturally. It's not often you see something like that.

Tabaqui even pauses for a while, preening himself proudly, as if to say “See what I mean? The night is full of horrors!” Like it was he who personally dunked Blind in blood and vomit. Sinister visions loom before the pack, and I suddenly notice that Smoker is nowhere to be seen. I wonder if he's been drowned in the toilet. It's been constant vigilance with him recently. He's acquired this nasty habit of methodically getting on everyone's nerves.

“What a dirty... oh-oh-oh... sweater you have,” Jackal's syrupy voice is chanting. “Where, oh, where did you manage to get it that way?”

Pale One ignores Jackal's entreaties and crashes down on the bed. Lary, shaking the remains of his sideburns, winks at Humpback. Humpback turns away.

“So,” Black says in a disgusting tone of voice. “Yet another Leader bites the dust?”

Who is he addressing, I wonder.

Tabaqui takes it to be him and immediately begins rehashing the gruesome narrative for the fifth time.

“We hear someone screaming. So I say, ‘Something happened.’ So we go looking, and you can't believe what we see ...”

Black walks out.

“It's R One running from somewhere in the direction of the stairs,” Humpback finishes the sentence. “How about enough, Tabaqui? How many more times are you going to go over this?”

Tabaqui takes offense. The way babies usually do when someone takes away their favorite toy.

Noble, still wrapped in a blanket, looks at me bright eyed.

“Want to play some chess?”

hasn't had enough playing, obviously. Half the night spent over cards doesn't count. Apparently no one needs sleep in this room except me. I don't need it either, but it's all I can do not to yell at them. Pack them away to bed, turn off the lights, and in the darkness wait for the morning to come, pretending to slumber peacefully. I don't like this night. Or any of the other nights like this, starting from the very first. The morning after that first Longest was much, much worse than the night itself. I'm lucky not to remember almost any of it. With one exception. We all have our own well-worn nightmares. Mine is the white sail. Even now, when I can remember loads and loads of bad stuff to balance it, it still is without equal. It's not that it simply keeps me up at night, no, it shakes me up and fills my throat with tears. I love Jackal dearly, but I can neither understand nor accept his fervent passion for the Longest. He did live through that first one with me. With all of us. How can he still manage to enjoy them so much? Is it possible that he doesn't remember? I walk to the door, probing Tabaqui's suspiciously selective memory for the umpteenth time. I have to find Smoker. I need to assemble them all here, in the dorm.