Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

After six long years I returned and finally learned what had come to pass that night. But it forever remained for me something remote, out of the distant past. I hadn't lived through it with the others. One of the most horrible nights of the House begins and ends for me with the crimson puddle, the half-submerged sail of the handkerchief, and my own cold and sticky socks.

When I awoke, after six years by my time and a month for everyone else, I saw a strange creature in the mirror. Bald, scrawny, much too young, staring wildly... I realized that I was going to have to start my life all over again. And cried. Because I was tired, not because I had no hair. “An unknown virus,” they explained. “You are most likely no longer contagious, but we'd like to keep you quarantined for just a while.” The days spent in the quarantine saved me. Gave me time to adapt. To get rid of some of my grown-up habits, to get used to the new skin. The Sepulcher staff dubbed me Prince Tut. The transformation from Prince Tut to Sphinx took me another six months.

Ralph is silent. An eternity passes.

“Curious,” he says. “There was blood everywhere. The floor, the walls. Even the ceiling, I think. But your memory only managed to hold one single puddle.”

“Oh, it was enough,” I assure him. “More than enough. My puddle contains the whole of that Night, and all of the days that followed.”

“And then...”

“And then nothing. I'm not telling. It's irrelevant.”

He sighs and pulls out the cigarettes again.

“All right. Anyway, thank you. You are the first to talk to me about these things at all. The first in thirteen years. I probably shouldn't be asking you any further?”

“You shouldn’t. The less talking about... these things, the better.”

“Are you trying to scare me?”

“I am,” I say. “Trying, that is. But you are too headstrong to get properly scared. That's not good. The House demands a reverent attitude. A sense of mystery. Respect and awe. It can accept you or not, shower you with gifts or rob you of everything you have, immerse you in a fairy tale or a nightmare. Kill you, make you old, give you wings... It's a powerful and fickle deity, and if there's one thing it can't stand, it's being reduced to mere words. For that it exacts payment. Now, with you duly cautioned, we can continue.”

“Risking... what?” he asks carefully.

“Your guess is as good as mine. Probably better than mine. You know much more than you think.”

That seems to annoy him.

“Would you stop playing with words!”

Silly man.

“Oh, I don't think you've ever heard real wordplay,” I say. “There are grand masters in the House. I am not worthy of being in the same room with them.”

That's when Mermaid finally appears. Comes down from the girls’ porch and shuffles across the yard toward us. Flared jeans, crocheted vest, and impossible hair, almost down to her knees.

Ralph squints. Looks at her. Then at me. It's an odd look. One I’m very familiar with. Mermaid is sixteen, but she looks all of twelve. With her looks you'd expect her to still play with dolls and believe in Santa Claus. Which is why any adult who sees me and her together looks at me as if I'm a pervert. It rubs Mermaid the wrong way. It doesn't bother me.

She stops a fair distance from us, not wanting to interrupt. Just stands there looking at us. Those aren't the eyes of a child at all. They're too big for her small triangular face.

Ralph gets up. Gives his pockets a few slaps, checking that everything's still in place. Has the good sense not to say “So, that's your date, huh?” Mermaid lip-reads phrases like that from very far away.

“I guess that's it, then,” he says. “Thanks again. I’ll go and digest what you said.”

“Good luck,” I say. “And be careful. We can walk in circles around those mysteries, write poems and sing songs, call ourselves Jumpers or Striders, but we're not the ones who decide here. It's all being decided for us, however scary that sounds.”

Ralph is reluctant to go, aware that we are unlikely to ever return to this conversation.

“You be careful too,” he says finally, and walks away.

When he passes Mermaid he nods to her and says something. Then cuts straight across the grass, and the hunched crows jump away, grumbling about the violation of their personal space. Humans made the pavement, they should keep to it.

Mermaid runs over and plops down on the bench next to me.

“Wow. Why is it I'm so afraid of him? He's harmless!”

“Really?”

“don't laugh.” She frowns. “Yes, I know it sounds silly, but you should have heard the stories they tell about him.”

Mermaid dives into her thoughts, then shakes her head resolutely.

“Yes, it is silly. He's nice.”

I laugh.

“He said hello to me and didn't call me baby, imagine that.”

My imaginary hat is off to Ralph.

“What were you discussing for so long? I thought he'd never leave.”

“It's a secret,” I say. “A sinister mystery. Go, tell that to those who were spying on us from the windows.”

“Sure, I'm so gone,” she snorts. “They can't wait. Already waving messages to me in code and preparing the recording equipment.”

She shifts closer to me, completely unconcerned that she won't be learning the details of my conversation with Ralph, and begins wrapping my leg in her hair. Wrapping and tying each strand with knots.

“That's new. Some kind of sorcery?” I say. “It's not like I was going anywhere.”

“Tabaqui gave me this book,” Mermaid explains. “Very interesting. It's called Kama Sutra .”

“Oh boy,” I sigh.

“Says there that to attract your beloved you need to bind him with fragrant hair, adorn him with flower garlands, and wreathe him in clouds of incense. It's all described very convincingly. Oh, right, and also anoint him with aromatic oils.”

“You don't say. What does it recommend to do with the oily bodies of the suffocated beloveds, still wrapped in hair and garlands? Put them out on the porch to serve as a warning to passersby?”

“Nothing.” Mermaid shakes her head as she ties the knot on another loop under my knee. “It does not mention those weaklings at all.”

Then we just sit on the bench, or rather lie on it. Quite likely in accordance with the wisdom of ancient texts regarding the appropriate behavior for lovers. The oak shuffles from root to root and shifts so that we end up in its shadow. Of course, it might just be the sun moving in the sky. But I prefer to think it's the oak.

I fall asleep, for real this time. Mermaid's presence, her hugging my knee—it acts like a sleeping pill. She has this catlike ability to induce calm and drowsiness, and also to sleep herself in the most uncomfortable places. If only I had fingers I could have conjured sparks out of her hair, the kind cats give off when someone strokes their fur. I sleep and not sleep at the same time. I am on the bench here and now but everything else moves away—the writing on the bark, the conversation with Ralph. Everything except me, asleep, and my girl. The girl who wears my old shirts, sleeps curled up on my legs as if they were an easy chair, wraps herself in the sleeves of my jacket, disappears at the first rumble of a thunderstorm and reappears again once the sun is back out. It's her most incredible feature, that limitless capacity for empathy, for picking up someone else's mood, for dissolving into thin air when that's what is needed.

Someone's voice on the wind. I startle and open my eyes. My leg is free of hair, and Mermaid's face is looking down at me, very somber and intense. She's only like that when she's sure no one can see her.

“Every little thing wakes you up,” she says. “The tiniest peep. I don't like that. You should sleep calmly and soundly.”