Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

Then those who had created the Chamber of Horrors left, and the juniors who replaced them came to hate the exposition they'd inherited, so much that it had to be dismantled. The photographs ended up on the third floor. None of the current students had ever seen them; the entire thing happened before they had come here. Ralph often wondered what they'd feel if faced with them. Astonishment? Curiosity?

The shots might as well have been taken by Martians. A comprehensive detachment. Outsides distilled. That's how it looked from their point of view. Not beautiful, not ugly, not anything at all. Even total strangers who happened to see the pictures couldn't help being vaguely disturbed.

As Ralph looked at them, he realized that if, upon exiting the House, he really would be met with this faceless, scrubbed world of empty black-and-white streets, he would have felt much worse than he did now, and how lucky it was that for him the Outsides was not like that, and how unfortunate that he could not share that knowledge, that certainty with any of them.

Raptor and Shark came bursting into the canteen together, hooting and hollering as they saw Ralph there. Godmother entered quietly and unassumingly, and took her place at the next table.

“You bastard, making me sit and wait for your notice! Do you care at all?”

Shark dragged a chair over, plopped on it, moaned, and loosened his tie.

“Then we run to your damn office and see that damn notice on the desk! You couldn't even be bothered to bring it over for me to sign! Planning to split on the sly, weren't you?”

“You said you weren't signing it.”

Shark noted Ralph's duffel under the table, made a face, and told Raptor to get some pie for him too.

“Two slices. No, one slice and some scrambled eggs. And a coffee. I urgently need sustenance.”

Raptor went over to the serving window.

Godmother pulled her chair closer to their table.

“You have surprised and disappointed us. Couldn't this public display of disapproval have been avoided?”

Ralph shrugged.

“It could. I'm just not used to being manipulated.”

She sighed.

“No one was manipulating you. Your perception of the situation is prejudiced.”

They were silent when Raptor returned with a tray. They were silent while Shark shoveled food in his mouth. Godmother's hands rested on the table, palm to palm, the pristine cuffs setting off the grubbiness of the tablecloth, which had looked perfectly clean until she appeared. Ralph knew that Godmother wasn't going to move until he finished his tea, until Shark was satiated, until Raptor stopped fidgeting. Like a statue. She didn't need to engage her hands, to shift her pose, to busy her mouth with idle conversation. She could simply wait. It was unbearable.

“You would make an excellent sniper,” Ralph said.

“Pardon?”

Shark pointed his fork at Ralph.

“Let it be noted that you haven't proposed anything. Anything! And when the people who were desperately seeking a solution made suggestions, you went on a crusade against them and then washed your hands of the whole thing! How's that fair? What is your problem with the decision to move up the date? Because I seem to have noticed it wasn't to your liking either.”

“Then you probably also noticed that I wasn't arguing with that one. I don't like it, true, but it certainly has a chance.”

“Aha!” Shark said. “So what you didn't like was not being among the elect, right?”

“Wrong. I don't care about the exact date. Especially considering that it would be fairly easy to calculate.”

“Then what precisely do you object to with regards to that proposal?”

“Its cruelty.”

He was unprepared for the indignation that flashed in Godmother's expression.

“Cruelty?” she repeated, and her voice trembled with suppressed emotion. “Do you mean to suggest that this is more cruel than what happened six years ago?”

“No. Which is why I didn't argue.”

Godmother pursed her lips. Ralph again was overwhelmed by a suspicion that this was all a performance. At this particular moment she was playing the indignation that she wasn't feeling. He didn't understand why she would need to do that, just as he didn't understand why she'd come here to persuade him to stay, now that she'd done everything in her power to make him leave. He didn't understand too much of what this woman was doing, and the sheer volume of that ignorance was starting to affect him. Shark and Raptor were so engrossed in their exchange that they forgot all about the coffee. They looked like a pair of Bandar-Logs, only older—the same naked, shameless, prying curiosity.

“The first suggestion is simply dishonest. But the second is abusive. I will not tolerate my students being abused.”

Godmother's face was a mask of equal parts weariness and disgust.

She blushes from the neck up, Ralph thought. And it makes her look older. What is she after? Power? A position on top of the pecking order? In a place where there's soon going to be no one left to peck? Or is she in such a panic over the graduation that she's honestly searching for ways out of the tight corner she's been placed in, and the methods she's employing are simply what come naturally to her?

He didn't believe any of that. Not her panic, not her sudden desire to rule the roost, and least of all her selfless, breathless service to the principal. Godmother wasn't cowardly, servile, or stupid. He did not understand her motives, and that made him vulnerable. He didn't know what he was fighting against.

“Ultimately,” Godmother said, “we shall have to rely on your judgment. If you are certain that none of your charges represent a threat to the others at the time of graduation, it is incumbent upon us to try and share your conviction, and refrain from undertaking any additional measures.”

“I have no such certainty,” Ralph said.

“Just as I expected.”

“But I am also not certain that your so-called considered measures won't make the situation worse.”

“Neither are we. We just prefer action to inaction.”

“Sometimes action is worse than inaction.”

Shark turned his head from side to side, as if tracking a tennis ball in play. Godmother lowered her glasses to the tip of her nose and pierced Ralph with a schoolmarm glance.

“Is it your position that a graduating student is irreparably harmed by the very fact of the graduation happening a few days earlier than planned?”

“Depends on the student,” Ralph said and stumbled, realizing that he'd just walked into a carefully prepared trap.

“Are you implying”—Godmother's nostrils flared in anticipation—“that there are those who will be harmed by it and those who might not?”

“You could say that.”

“But wouldn't you agree that it is precisely the person who is so ill-adapted to life outside the House that a mere change in the manner of his graduation could prove disastrous for him, that it is this person who represents a clear danger to his peers?”

Ralph was silent.

Shark smirked. Raptor avoided Ralph's gaze. Godmother reached across the table and placed her hand on Ralph's arm.

“There will be no voting,” she said firmly. “You will reach your own decision, and we will all abide by it. Who is the most dangerous? Only you, their counselor, are familiar with them well enough to answer that, to make that choice. And it therefore falls on you to guard them, to the extent possible, against grievous harm.”

That night Ralph attempted to get drunk. He was drinking alone, locked up in his office, and almost succeeded, but the desired oblivion eluded him, leaving behind only a dull headache and a sullen apathy.

Deciding to leave was simple. As he was packing and typing up the notice, he'd felt uneasy because of the suddenness of it all, but at the same time never doubted that what he was doing was right. That under the circumstances it was the only available option. Talking to Godmother had robbed him of that sureness. Deep in his heart Ralph realized that agreeing to participate in Shark and Godmother's scheme was a sellout. Betrayal of one for the benefit of many was still a betrayal.