Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

“Is it a thick brown notebook?” he says. “I think I've seen it somewhere around.” He goes to Tubby's pen, leans over it, and says, “There you go. He's been stockpiling fuel again. Give this back, you hear? Hey! It belongs to someone else.”

Tubby responds with indistinct cooing. Alexander turns back to me, holding the diary, wipes it off and says contritely, “Looks like he tore it up a bit. Is that all right? I should have watched him better. I'm sorry. I didn't check what all that rustling was in there.”

I accept the mangled diary. The cover has been chewed, and it's missing half of the pages. Empty ones, fortunately. Tubby started from the back.

“Thanks,” I say. “I think it's still usable.”

Alexander just shrugs.

I thumb through the filled pages. There seem to be entirely too many of them. I read a random paragraph: The stems of cacti are susceptible to rot, viral infections, and infestations of the cactus moth and various aphids. The proper care for those is pruning the affected areas and spraying them with preparations containing cupric ions. Did Tabaqui unconsciously switch from Blind to cacti?

“I don't understand,” I say. “What's a viral cactus doing here?”

Alexander takes a look.

“That's Vulture's handwriting,” he explains. “I guess he chanced upon your diary yesterday and decided to put in something to remember him by. Does this upset you?”

I flip the pages, horrified. One, two, three ...

Summarizing the above-mentioned circumstances, it is fair to assert that the highly targeted nature of the said disorder does not lend itself to any explanation within the framework of conventional medical science, affecting as it does almost exclusively those who are the least suitable for integration within the society that for the purposes of this discussion may be, within certain limitations, broadly described by the controversial term “Outsides.”

Dear Smoker, Tabaqui told me to write a message for you in this notebook so that you can read it and remember me. I don't really know what to write ...

The glochids of the Opuntioideae easily detach from the plant and lodge in the skin, causing irritation. The tender white prickles of some Mammillaria and the silvery threads of the Cephalocereus, the Old-Man Cactus ...

“I think they've all had a hand,” I say. “It's not a diary anymore, it's a yearbook.”

I flip to the empty pages and notice some strange marks, tiny holes punched through and arranged in rows.

“And someone bit on it here,” I say. “Or maybe not. At least the back portion was definitely gnawed by Tubby.”

Alexander looks closer and then feels the holes with his finger.

“This is Braille,” he explains. “Blind wrote you something. He has this tool, like a thing with a nail in it ...”

“Oh,” I say. “A remembrance. I'm going to read it in my old age, when I lose my sight and learn to read Braille. Cool.”

“Listen,” Alexander sighs. “Can I just give you another notebook? Almost like this one. Tubby spoiled the cover too.”

“I don't need another one. I’ll manage,” I say. “I'm sorry for all the grumbling. It's not like you had anything to do with it.”

He shrugs.

“As you wish. We could place it under a stack of books, then. Straighten out the pages a little.”

Alexander brings some glue and we mend the bedraggled cover the best we can. Then we put all the books we could find in the room on top of the notebook. Then Alexander makes some tea. Tea is not the best thing to be drinking when it's so hot out. In the Sepulcher I was getting it cold-brewed and with ice, but it's time I forgot about life in the Sepulcher.

Alexander shows me Tubby's bag. It's a toddler backpack, and it overflows with little balls of chewed paper.

“Food for the fire,” Alexander says. “He's been saving them for a while.”

Then he says that I should tear out the page with Blind's message.

“Why?” I say. “How is it better or worse than Tabaqui's?”

“But you have no idea what he's written there,” Alexander persists. “And for whom.”

“What do you mean, for whom?”

Alexander's gaze goes right through me. It's directed somewhere above the bridge of my nose. He shrugs.

“You know ...”

I break into a cold sweat from the hints he seems to be dropping.

“Nobody reads Braille here in the House, do they?”

He shrugs again.

“Some people do. Ralph, for one.”

He looks away tactfully.

I'm silent. It's stifling in the room. The sun is melting the glass in the windows. Alexander is not looking at me and I am not looking at him. I know what I am ashamed of, but I don't understand why he should be ashamed as well. Why he should look guilty.

“Thanks,” I say. “You're right. That's what I’ll do. Tear it out.”

He nods.

It might seem that nothing much changed in the House. The lights-out and morning bells keep getting ignored just as before. The pack spent half the night feverishly discussing the subject of “Jerichonies,” whatever they are, that are supposed to “presage the end,” and then shortly before dawn Tabaqui woke up everyone with a scream: “Here he is, I've got him!” When they switched on the lamp he was sitting under the table, flashlight in hand, surrounded by the shards of a smashed flowerpot.

Mermaid is knitting a rug, or something similar. It looks like a chessboard. Every night before going to bed she puts it up on the wall and then sleeps under it. According to her, this kind of netting protects from bad dreams. According to Sphinx, it steals the dreams and makes intractable tangles out of them.

Humpback is still living up in the oak. Lary spends his nights on the first floor. Logs created something like a tent city down there and are “keeping watch.” That is, they discuss their pocketknives all day and paint on the nearby walls all night.

No one talks about graduation, except to mention some kind of bus. “When we are on the bus,” “When the bus comes for us,” or something about life on four wheels. I could never get out of them any details about this bus, or whether it even exists. Could be just a figure of speech, to avoid saying the word “Outsides.”

Since the day I failed to give Tabaqui's collection its due he only refers to me as “child” or “that youth.”

Jerichonies are these tiny creatures that are invisible under artificial light and at the same time afraid of the sun, so spotting them is an almost impossible task. There are more and more of them in the House every day, and right before graduation they will assemble in multitudes and start shouting with a great shout. And that's going to be the end of us, since the walls of the House, naturally, will fall down flat.

—Tabaqui, “Common Wisdom for the Inquisitive Youth.”

Today in the Coffeepot I asked Red, draped over the counter, what his tattoo meant. He didn't have a shirt on, and I saw this man with a dog's head on his chest. I was only looking for what Tabaqui terms “a friendly chat,” but got way more than I bargained for. He said it was Anubis, the god of the dead. “In short, the protector of all stiffs.”

Then Red lowered his head into the crook of his elbow and went all gloomy for some reason. I suspect that he wasn't quite sober. On the other hand, he only had a cup of coffee in front of him. Everyone turned to look at us. That was unpleasant, and I tried to wheel away. But Red suddenly perked up, peeled himself off the counter, and grabbed my sleeve.

“And I am his angel in the Upper World! His freaking emissary, get it?” he screamed, tugging at my clothes. Gawkers started gathering around, and then he let go of me and ran out. I think he's depressed from the overdose of green. From not taking his green glasses off.