Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

Found on the walls:

“Brothers and Sisters, stop fooling around. IT is near.” Know-it-all.

“Cleansing campaign tonight. Presence mandatory, except for those on the third loop and above.” The Inside Man.

Alexander stashed a pile of cups and pans under his bed. But not before spending a whole hour scrubbing and washing them.

“Might be useful,” he said when I peeked under the bed for the third time.

“Useful where?” I said.

“Anywhere, I think,” Alexander said and pulled the cover lower to hide his treasure.

Even though graduation is never discussed (apart from the bus and those Jerichonies), the inevitability of it is in the air. Girls, for example, cry often. Their eyes are red and swollen, at least from what I notice on the three girls I see every day. Mermaid lives in our room and Ginger sometimes spends the night. Needle comes in the evenings to borrow the coffeemaker for Logs. And they're all really touchy, so that I'm afraid to say even one word to them. Ginger especially. Everywhere she goes she drags this ancient teddy bear with her, with one glass eye and a shirt button in place of the other. If you jostle it you’ll get a cloud of brownish dust, and it smells so old that it is immediately clear that this must have been her great-grandmother's favorite toy, and even back then it was already the way it is now. This nightmarish teddy always ends up lying next to me, and if I ask her to put it somewhere else she gets this miserable look, like I've just deeply offended her.

The House is in mourning, on the occasion of the repairs that they were threatening us with for as long as I can remember. Stepladders everywhere, and the plasterers are hard at work scraping the drawings and the messages off the walls. People apparently can't stand such a blatant violation of their living space and have retreated to the rooms. The wave started from the hospital wing and is slowly rolling toward the Crossroads. I ventured out to have a look. don't know what it looks like, but definitely not like our corridor. The walls are all dirty and feel somehow injured, covered in great gouges. If they thought this would make the atmosphere brighter, it didn't. It's even more depressing than before.

“Blood! Revenge and blood!” Tabaqui screams at regular intervals. Just as I finally calm down and start thinking about something.

Everyone's busy packing. They drag the backpacks out into the hallways and back to the rooms, take everything out and put it back in. Whoever it is, you can be sure that they're packing. The weather is hotter and hotter.

“The War with the Girls” means Jackal wheeling in shouting “It's them! Again!” Everyone jumps up and then sits down and returns to whatever they've been doing. In the meantime a group of surly maidens storms the Coffeepot and occupies it for the next two hours, only to vacate it afterward in the same belligerent fashion. It's not entirely clear why they call it “war,” and why the guys insist on hiding in the dorms and ceding the hallways to the girls, and then sulk that the hallways have been forcibly taken from them. I have a strong suspicion that this is yet another invention of those who don't know how to amuse themselves. Like Lary and Jackal, who seem to require nonstop excitement of the scary variety.

The plasterers have scrubbed and smoothed the walls and moved to the first floor. The stepladders and the protective plastic remain, though. They say that the painters arrive tomorrow.

Logs struck their camp temporarily. Lary's back in the dorm. Logs spend their days out in the yard now, because the new hallways creep them out, and they're already out of habit of being inside a room.

“I'm out to hunt,” Tabaqui says, maneuvering his way out of the room in the morning. Every day the footboard of Mustang acquires one more weight, but the backpack is gaining bulk faster. Tabaqui clanks and rattles as he drives, like a hardware shop on wheels.

“He's like the White Knight,” Noble says. “Tumbling down every couple of feet. It's only a question of time before he hurts himself.”

“His luck seems to be holding so far,” Sphinx counters. “You're not suggesting we take that backpack off him? That would be equal to at least two invasions of Jerichonies.”

“Of course not,” Noble says in a frightened voice. “Better to go on the bus than that.”

“What is that bus?” I ask Lary after breakfast. “You know, the one they keep talking about.”

He yawns widely, like a crocodile, and stares at me dumbly.

“What bus? There is no bus, what's gotten into you? Where would they find it? It's just people talking stuff. Someone's joke. And now here you are spreading it around.”

“But you're spreading it around too. You talk about it all the time.”

“Me?” He takes offense for some reason. “I never did. Why would I? I've got enough problems as it is.”

“You mean you don't care. Whatever happens, you’re content.”

Lary darkens.

“Of course I am. I mean, why not. If they tell me ‘Here's the bus, get in,’ I will.”

“Get in the imaginary bus?” I attempt to clarify.

“If that's what they tell me, yeah.”

Lary looks around stealthily and leans over to me. The squint in his left eye is really horrible.

“The questions you're asking, Smoker... Strange questions,” he says in a low whisper. “I don't like them, all right? Why don't you just go on your way. I've got some business here. I have no time for you now, all right?”

Found on the walls:

“Through unrelenting meditation discovered the Law of Non-action. Inquiries welcome, the Sixth from 3:00 to 3:05.” Big Brother.

Ratling Whitebelly comes up to me and timidly asks that I write about him “in that notebook you have.”

“Why?” I wonder.

“So that I'm there too.”

A beseeching look, chocolate smears on his cheeks. He looks at least five years younger than everyone else.

“Listen, how old are you, anyway?” I say.

“Sixteen,” Whitebelly says, darkening. “So?”

“Why do you need to be in my diary? The truth, please.”

“This is my first loop,” he says in a flat voice. “I need to anchor myself everywhere I can, or I’ll get thrown out.”

“Where?” I am almost wailing now. “Thrown out where?”

Whitebelly looks at me in abject horror and backs away. I drive at him, but I don't think he understands that my intention is to apologize, so he turns around and legs it away without looking back, ignoring all my shouts of “Wait!” and “Hey!”

Sphinx says that if I continue driving around scaring the kids I'm going to get it from him personally.

“It was he who scared me, not the other way around.”

In the morning there's some unusual activity by the window, and it wakes me up. I open my eyes and see them all crowding there, discussing something. Arguing loudly.

“I'm telling you, it's Solomon and Don! They have returned!” Jackal screams. “With a posse of like-minded avengers! You’ll see!”

“And I think they are from the nearby houses,” Lary suggests. “Came to demand the House be demolished right now. Because they’re tired of waiting.”

“It might be someone's parents,” Ginger frets. “Only parents can pull something like this.”

“You think our grandmothers could be down there too?” Blind says, visibly worried. He is also there at the window, but isn't peeking out, of course.