Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

“Of course. Everyone keeps telling me about blood work, but they never did any tests other than the one after which they made me stay. And why couldn't they go back and recheck that first one? That's what I don't understand.”

I suddenly grew very agitated. Because it dawned on me that R One, being my counselor, might have gotten an insight, been told something that no one was telling me.

“There's nothing wrong with you,” he said. “You’re perfectly healthy.”

I gawked at him.

“You're here on my orders,” he said. “I asked them to hold you in for a while.”

I still didn't ask anything. I guess I was too surprised. By the way he was saying that. He was very calm when admitting to these things. To making me think who knows what. I'd been preparing to die because of what he did.

“I had a call from your father,” R One said. “He said that you'd asked not to be taken away. That you wanted to stay until graduation. When did you talk to him?”

“The night after the meeting. I used the phone in the staff room. Someone showed me how to get inside.”

He just nodded, as if he knew that already without my explanations.

“So, you're curious about the graduation?” he said. “You'd like to see it for yourself?”

I didn't answer. I try not to answer stupid questions. If I didn't want to stay, I wouldn't be calling home asking not to be taken away.

Ralph turned the left side of his face to me for the first time in this visit, and I saw that he had a huge shiner there. It cheered me up that somebody had given him a good one. A sincere one. Broke the skin on the cheekbone, even.

“I am also curious about the graduation,” he said. “I'd like to have some more information about what's going on in the House. At this particular moment.”

It finally dawned on me what he was driving at. I didn't let on, though. I made a quizzical face, as if I didn't understand.

He was looking straight at me, and he had these eyes like it wasn't him who had said what he'd just said. Honest and earnest. You'd never guess that a man with eyes like that would be trying to make you into a snitch.

“Stop the charade,” he said. “You got my meaning.”

“Was it the previous snitching candidate who scratched you?”

He felt the shiner with his finger and said that he didn't want to quarrel with me. That was how he put it.

“I also don't want to quarrel with anyone. So why don't you tell me up front what's going to happen to me if I refuse? So that I know.”

I was sure he'd tell me that I was going to be stuck here in the Sepulcher until graduation. That really was worse than being sent home, because it was much more dull. But apart from that, he didn't have anything else with which to threaten me.

He stood up. Took a thick notebook out of his package, put it on my bed, and went over to the window. Looked out, then came back.

“Nothing is going to happen to you,” he said. “Either way you’ll be discharged tomorrow.”

I couldn't understand what the catch was. That didn't sound threatening at all.

“What would be the point of me agreeing to snitch, then?” I said. “For the sheer joy of it?”

He was silent for a while. Then sat back on the chair. Took the notebook and thumbed through it. It was completely blank.

“I'm not very good at stories,” he said. “But I'd like to tell you the story of the last graduation. And the one before that. If, after hearing them, you still refuse to help me, I'm not going to insist. You’ll go back to the Fourth and try to forget we ever had this conversation.”

He didn't ask if I agreed to listen. Simply started to talk. Without going into detail, pointedly detached and tedious, but it made what he was talking about even scarier. Like an article in the paper—no emotions, just facts.

“Is that true?” I said when he finished.

I already knew that it was. It was all true. I saw Blind kill Pompey. I saw Red on the night when they tried to kill him. And I saw how everyone reacted, or rather did not react, in both cases. I knew that no one in the House called Blind a murderer, because no one thought of him that way. Except me. No one stopped talking to him, no one felt uneasy being next to him. I made myself look like an idiot when I refused to put on his shirt the night of the murder. A lot of things that were beyond the pale for me, they took completely in stride. So yes, I believed that those who had been here before them, who were a bit like them, really could massacre each other in the grand finale of their Great Game. I haven't abandoned that word, just acknowledged that the Game is not a game, that it is for real, and a “for real” ending for it would probably look something like what Ralph described.

“It is true,” he said.

And then asked if I kept a diary.

Everyone kept a diary in the First. Reading them must have been even more of a chore than writing in them.

I said that I still had my old diary, but I only used it for drawing.

“You can draw in this,” he said. “Except you’ll have to write some too. No one would be surprised when they see that you picked up the diary again in the Sepulcher. It can be pretty boring in here.”

“But I haven't agreed yet,” I said.

“No?” He felt his cheekbone again. “And here's me thinking that I was reasonably persuasive.”

I took his notebook.

I am sitting in my old place, between Tabaqui and Noble. The lights are out, the boombox is moaning on the other end of the bed, and everyone's silent. That's how it's been for two hours already. Maybe that's a silent Fairy Tale Night. How would I know? Or are they all simply enjoying the music? It's better not to ask questions, because either you're one with the pack and know everything about everything, or you aren't and you don't, in which case you're just getting on everyone's nerves.

So I am dutifully listening to the music, admiring the blinking red lights of the boombox, and smoking. I've already smoked more this evening than in all of my days in the Sepulcher combined.

One of the indistinct shadows slinking around the bed sits down next to me.

“How are you feeling, Smoker?”

It's Blind. Unusually courteous.

“All right. I mean, pretty good,” I say.

“What happened to you, exactly? If you don't mind, of course.”

I do, that's the problem.

“My parents asked them to run a full checkup on me,” I say. “Since classes are over and there's going to be no exams. And I had this low blood count, so ...”

At that moment someone switches on the lights. When I open my eyes, everything I was planning to say goes right out of my head.

Because this is my first good look at Blind after my return from the Sepulcher and he looks like someone enthusiastically took a sander to him. To his cheeks, his chin, his neck. In short, it's me who should be asking how he's feeling, not the other way around. Which I don't, of course. I collect the tattered remains of my thoughts and pick up the story about the blood count, but Blind gets up in the middle of the sentence and leaves. As in leaves the room. If he didn't care about getting an answer, why ask at all? Or is it that he suddenly remembered he was contagious? I light up again, to calm the nerves.

Noble closes his eyes as he yawns and doesn't open them again. The yawn bounces off him and goes around the room, alighting on the faces. When it reaches me it multiplies, spawning an entire clutch. Must be the nerves. I yawn and I yawn, until my eyes start to water. Through the curtain of tears I look at Sphinx. He's down on the floor, sitting propped up against the door of the wardrobe. For him to inquire about my health would be too much of a bother. But he is, in fact, looking back at me. With that faraway look that Humpback calls “fuzzy.” When you're the target of the “fuzzy” there's always the feeling of a draft somewhere. You're just lying there, smoking, and there's all this cold air streaming over you mercilessly.