Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

I rub my face, scratch my head, and yawn.

“Let's ride!” Tabaqui demands impatiently. “It's the perfect time for paying visits! Come on, get dressed! Quick!”

An untidy bundle is aimed at my head. I unwrap it. It's my shirt, crumpled, covered in brown stains and with the burn mark on the breast pocket. I put my finger through the hole; it's black when I pull it out. I decide not to change out of my sleeping T-shirt. It also isn't fresh, but at least I'm not going to look like I killed someone.

Tabaqui crawls to the edge of the bed and noisily tumbles down to the floor. Had he tried that trick in the Sepulcher he'd be put in plaster casts for a week. Arms and legs, both. To wean him off that nasty habit.

The paying of visits begins in the Coffeepot. We take the table by the window, and Tabaqui orders two coffees and some rolls. It's a sparse crowd today. Four Hounds, yawning, work on scrambled eggs.

“Do they serve stuff like that here? I thought it was only rolls,” I say, not entirely sure because I've never been a regular.

“They do now. Almost no one goes to the canteen for breakfast anymore, so Shark has authorized some stuff to be redirected here. It gets reheated, and the result is truly atrocious. I emphatically advise against it.”

“Where is everybody? Why is it so empty?”

Tabaqui extracts a cigarette from behind his ear, sniffs at it, and pulls the ashtray closer.

“Who's everybody?” he asks suspiciously.

“I mean, our guys.”

“I don't know. Look, we’ll sit here for a while, have a talk, and then go visit Humpback. Then we’ll be three of our guys.”

We drink the coffee in deathly silence. This is so unlike Tabaqui that I feel more and more awkward.

Hounds finish their reheated eggs and leave. I suddenly remember what it was I wanted to ask Tabaqui.

“Listen, where's my diary? Where did you put it yesterday?”

“Your what?” he says, looking puzzled. “Oh, the diary. Must be in the room somewhere, I guess. I didn't put it in with my stuff.”

He slaps the side of the fat backpack strapped to the back of his Mustang. The backpack is so overstuffed that it would have tipped him over if he hadn't balanced it with small weights attached to the footboards. They jangle and rattle as he goes, and must be getting in the way, but Tabaqui is ecstatic at his own ingenuity and is not planning to get rid of them. One might even think he likes the clamor.

For some reason I start talking about the Sepulcher, how bored and alone I felt there, and how I couldn't even get down from the bed and crawl around to keep myself in shape. Crawling is frowned upon in the Sepulcher. As is smoking. Or reading at night.

Tabaqui listens with apparent interest.

“Horrors,” he says when I exhaust my complaints. “I don't know if I can eat properly, now that I know all this. Or at least if I can enjoy food anymore. A scary place, that Sepulcher, I've always said that.”

I say that it's not that bad really, that it's more comfortable than a Cage, that you only get prodded and bothered during the rounds, and the rest of the day is yours to enjoy peace and quiet, but Tabaqui just repeats that he's never heard anything more horrible.

“Rounds,” he mutters. “Imagine that. Horror, pure and simple.”

“You mean you've never been in the Sepulcher?”

“No, I haven’t. And now it's unlikely I'd end up there before the end. Which is the only thing that comforts me when I think of graduation.”

Someone slaps me on the back and says that he's happy to see me. Black. Carrying a pack of milk with a straw sticking out. He sits down on the edge of our table and asks me how I'm doing.

“Great,” I say.

“Horrible!” Tabaqui counters, swaying back and forth in his Mustang. “don't listen to him, Black. He's just been telling me about all the ghastly things happening in the Sepulcher, so ghastly I wouldn't even venture to repeat them.”

Black winks at me, with the eye that Tabaqui can't see.

“And what does Sphinx say about it?”

“Sphinx didn't hear that. He wasn't here at the time.”

“No, I mean what does he say about him returning, not about the Sepulcher.”

“About Smoker returning he has so far said nothing,” Tabaqui explains readily, “which means he probably won't be saying anything about it. If he has something to say, he either says it right away or doesn't say it at all. Anyway, whatever you say or don't say, he's been returned, and that's the end of it.”

Black finishes the milk in one gulp, crumples the pack, long-tosses it in the trash bin, and says, “What I mean is, if he decides to say something after all, I'm ready to take Smoker. Anytime. Tell him that when you see him.”

He gets up from the table, smooths out the tablecloth, says “See you around,” and leaves.

“How incredibly kind of him,” Tabaqui fumes. “He's always ready to add another Hound to the eighteen he already has, but only if Sphinx starts behaving like a crotchety old maid and says something untoward. I'm so touched I'm going to cry!”

“Listen, you promised to take me to Humpback,” I remind him. “Could we go already?”

“We could,” Tabaqui mutters darkly. “Unless you are of the opinion that I am now required to pass Chief Hound's message to Sphinx while it's still steaming.”

“I am not. The message can wait.”

“Let's ride, then.”

Tabaqui takes a battered acid-green baseball cap out of his backpack, shakes it out, and shoves it down on top of his shock of unruly curls.

“I'm ready. don't leave the cigarettes, they'd be gone before we get two feet away.”

It's warmer out in the yard than inside the House. A group of fully clothed Bandar-Logs are sunning themselves, splayed theatrically against the wall. They quietly acknowledge us from under their drawn-down caps as we drive by.

“Like a firing squad's just been,” Tabaqui notes. “Except there's no blood.”

The oak gives a dense, almost purple shadow. The dappled sun plays on the gnarly trunk. Tabaqui turns off the path into the grass, stops, and rummages in his backpack.

“He's got a whole system set up,” he explains. “With every visitor having a distinct call, and a way to communicate the reason for coming over. As a hint that we shouldn't bother him too much. Because you know how it is, there's this rumor now that he can see into the future, so they started coming here in droves. Ruined the lawn. It's strange, really. All it takes is climbing up a tree, and suddenly you're a prophet.”

Not pausing for a second, Tabaqui takes out his harmonica, wipes it off, puts it to his mouth, and starts tootling the Rain Song.

I look up at the oak. From here it's hard to tell where Humpback's tent is, let alone Humpback himself. It's all vaguely canvas-y, half-hidden in the canopy. I peer at one flap, shielding my eyes from the rays piercing the mass of leaves, and imagine that those are Humpback's underpants drying on the clothesline, and somewhere higher up he has pots and pans hanging off the branches, and strings of dried acorns, and maybe right now he's working on some mysterious concoction of oak leaves, June bugs, and crow guano. While I'm picturing all that, here he comes, in the flesh, tanned almost black, shaggy and half-naked, looking very much the hermit, the whites of his eyes flashing and some trinket on a string around his neck jingling.

He sits down in a fork of two thick branches and crosses his bare legs. Not high and not low. Too high for us. A walker could probably reach him.

“Hi!” Tabaqui waves the harmonica. “See? Smoker's back. And he's staying until graduation. Who would've thought, huh?”

“Who indeed,” Humpback says.

He's only got his boxers on. The hair is cinched on the forehead by a grubby-looking cord. I don't think he'd be able to see anything otherwise. He isn't surprised by what Jackal has just told him. No wonder, since he surely spotted me before coming down.