Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

Horse pulled at his lip a couple of times.

“Damn it, Lary,” he said angrily, “you have no right to think that way! How can you be so... unpatriotic? If I were you I would never allow myself to do that.”

Lary stared at Horse.

“Are you serious? What's patriotism got to do with it? There’re ten of us and more than twenty of them. Can you, like, count?”

“Sometimes one warrior is worth ten,” Horse said loftily.

Lary looked at him pityingly.

“Can you count?” he asked again.

Horse didn't answer. He dug in his pockets, produced a piece of candy, and handed it to Lary. A gust of wind threw a handful of dry leaves through the open window. Horse picked up one and examined it, scratching his nose.

“Autumn,” he declared, scrunching the leaf. “It's a long way until next summer. Pompey may not be one of the old ones, but you and I both know—”

“That nothing really scary can happen before the last summer,” finished Lary with a faint smile. “Well, Horse, that's about the only thing keeping me afloat. Or I would've gone crazy by now.”

Horse brushed the remains of the leaf off his palm.

“So hold on to that,” he said plaintively.

The Fourth does not have a TV, starched doilies, white towels, numbered cups, watches, wall calendars, painted slogans, or any space on the walls. The walls are decorated from top to bottom with murals, shelves, and cubbyholes, and hung with bags and backpacks, pictures and posters, clothes, pans, light fixtures, and strings of garlic, chili peppers, and dried mushrooms and berries. It resembles a landfill that is trying to climb up to the ceiling. Some of its tendrils already have gained purchase there and now flutter in the drafts, rustling and clanking softly, or just hang out.

The dump is mirrored on the bottom by the giant bed, assembled from four regular ones. It is, at the same time, sleeping area, common room, and continuation of the floor for anyone who would like to cut through. I am assigned a personal zone on its surface. The other occupants are Noble, Tabaqui, Sphinx, and sometimes Blind, so my spot is tiny. To actually sleep on it requires special skills that I have not yet acquired. Those sleeping in the Fourth are routinely stepped or crawled over, or used as flat surfaces for cups and ashtrays or as convenient props for reading materials. The boombox and three lightbulbs out of a dozen are on continuously, and at any time of night someone is smoking, reading, drinking tea or coffee, taking a shower, looking for clean underwear, listening to music, or just prowling around the room. After the Pheasant “lights out” at twenty-two hundred exactly, this kind of daily routine is quite an adjustment, but I am trying to fit in. Life in the Fourth is worth any discomfort. Here everyone does whatever he wants whenever he wants, and for exactly however long he needs. There is, in fact, no counselor here. The inhabitants of the Fourth are living in a fairy tale. But it takes coming in from the First to appreciate that.

In the last three days I learned to:

— play poker

— play checkers

— sleep sitting up

— eat in the middle of the night

— bake potatoes on a hotplate

— smoke someone else's cigarettes

— never ask what time it is.

I was still unable to:

— make coffee without it boiling over

— play the harmonica

— crawl in a way that does not make everyone else cringe

— stop asking stupid questions.

The fairy tale was somewhat spoiled by Lary the Bandar-Log. He could not get over my arrival in the Fourth. He was annoyed by everything. By me sitting, lying down, speaking, not speaking, eating, and especially moving around. Just one look at me made him wince in disgust.

For a couple of days he confined himself to calling me a moron and a chickenshit, then decided to break my nose for allegedly sitting on his socks. There were no socks under me, of course, but the morning was spent in explaining to various teachers the circumstances of my unfortunate fall while transferring to my wheelchair. Not one of them believed a single word of it.

The First had a ball at breakfast examining my appearance. The suspicious pill given to me by Jackal did nothing for the pain but made me so horribly drowsy that I had to skip the last class. I thought that a shower would perk me up but got only as far as the bathroom before falling asleep. Someone apparently dragged me back to the dorm.

I dreamed of Homer. With an expression of utter disgust on his face, he was whacking me with a slipper. Then I dreamed that I was a fox being smoked out of its hole by evil hunters. Just as they grabbed a hold of my tail, I woke up.

I opened my eyes and saw the corners of several pillows forming a tent over my head. There was a small hole left between them, and in it I could see a yellow kite on the ceiling looking down at me. It was capable of doing that because it had a face painted on it. Clouds of vanilla-scented smoke wafted about. I figured that those fox-themed nightmares had a foundation in reality.

I flattened the nearest pillow that was obscuring my view and saw Sphinx. He was sitting next to me, moodily studying the chessboard. There were very few pieces left on it. Most of them were now strewn around, and some were definitely under me, since I felt something small and hard poking me in several places.

“Give it up, Sphinx,” said the voice of Jackal. “It's a draw if I ever saw one. You have to learn to accept the facts as they are. To maintain dignity while at the same time bowing to the inevitable.”

“As soon as I need your advice I’ll let you know,” Sphinx said.

I dabbed at my nose. It wasn't as painful as before. Apparently the pill did work after all.

“Hey, Smoker's awake! I saw his eyes blink!” An extremely grimy little paw patted me on the cheek. “The Pheasantkind has some pluck left in it yet. Who said he was dead?”

“I don't think anyone did, except you.” Sphinx leaned over me and inspected the damage. “Nobody dies over this.”

“Oh, I don't know,” countered invisible Tabaqui. “Pheasants, even former ones, are capable of anything. What motivates their life? What causes their death? Only they themselves know the secret.”

I sat up, tired of being a bedridden patient and a topic of discussion. I couldn't quite sit straight, but my field of vision expanded significantly.

Tabaqui was clad in an orange turban, fastened with a safety pin, and a green dressing gown that looked like it could cover him twice over. He was sitting on a stack of pillows and smoking a pipe. The vanilla smoke that had tormented the fox in my dream was emanating from him. Sphinx, ramrod-straight and serene, was meditating over the board. His sharp knees were poking out of the holes ripped in his jeans. He had only one prosthetic arm attached, and his tattered shirt was exposing its workings, so he resembled a half-assembled mannequin. I could also distinguish someone's figure on the windowsill behind the drapes.

“I dreamed I was a fox,” I said, fanning away the cloying smoke. “I was being smoked out of my den when I woke up.”

Tabaqui transferred the pipe to the other hand and waved his index finger.

“When dealing with a dream the most important thing is to wake up in time. You seem to have managed, and I am happy for you, baby.”

And he launched into one of his bizarre, mournful songs with endlessly repeating choruses that made my skin crawl. They usually extolled the virtues of wind or rain, but this one was about smoke, rippling over the ashes of some burned-out building.

The figure behind the drapes twitched and pulled the fabric tighter to try and shield itself from Jackal's dirges. The hasty movements betrayed it as Noble.