Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

“No reason,” he says, and sits down in the goblet-like junction, the only place here that's suitable for comfortable sitting.

He always chose that place, preferring it to all others. Anyone sitting here cannot be seen either from the ground or from the windows. This is the very heart of the tree.

Blind sees that Humpback's seclusion is a burden to him. Being alone is hard when you're accustomed to living among many, and that which he thought would bring him peace is not helping. The moon shines brightly through the night, and the air is full of tension. Humpback is part of that tension he tried to flee, he brought it with him and placed it in the branches, hoping that the silence and the tree's vitality could do something to it. Something that he himself couldn’t. Everybody's the same. Running around trying to hide everything deeper inside, then hiding themselves and their birds. Stepping back, always stepping back and smelling of fear, but keeping up appearances, smiling, joking, quarreling, eating, and procreating. And Humpback is not like them, he's bad at it, he only gets as far as the very first, overt part of any action, and that makes him even more unhappy.

The mingling aromas of vanilla and unwashed hair. The first of those he carries in a pouch of smoking tobacco around his neck.

They are silent. Humpback searches for the words to say to Blind, Blind waits for him to find them, and then Humpback walks away on a shaky branch, returns, sits down across from Blind, and starts playing. Very softly. It's almost a lullaby, but the wrong kind, there is no calm in it, no caress. Through its ostentatious tenderness Blind feels the cold breath of Humpback's loneliness. Blind waits for it to subside, to dissolve as Humpback gets carried away and forgets about his presence, but he never does.

“Happy?”

Blind reaches out.

“May I? I would like you to remember something.”

His hand accepts the flute. It's not merely warm—it's hot, like the places on the walls where someone has just written something important. The handprints are always hot, visible to the touch. The flute trembles and meanders in Blind's hand, the dead wood follows the traces left by the live wood. Blind plays the song he had heard once, the one with the wind, the spiraling leaves, and the boy in the middle of the whirlwind, protected and vulnerable at the same time. Blind plays well, this is not the first time he has played this song. He re-creates all the nuances faithfully, and he can be proud of his performance.

“What was that?” Humpback says.

“You used to play this down in the yard. Remember?”

Humpback shakes his head. They often respond like that to Blind, and only then check themselves and put their movements into words, but by that time it's already unnecessary.

“No, I don't.”

Blind plays another snippet, and Humpback's aloof silence tells him that Humpback really does not recognize his own song.

“Too many repetitions.”

Blind doesn't tell him that the repetitions are his, that they helped him weave the protective net, that it's what the magic of monotony is about, completing the circle, doubling on itself until the end becomes the beginning, building an impenetrable wall around the player. The words remain unsaid as he hands back the flute. Other people's songs have damaged Humpback, he can no longer do magic even when he lives in a tree. What he used to do so well is now but a trivial melody for him.

“The tree is not good for you,” Blind says. “And the loneliness. Come down and look for what you've lost there. You might find more than you expect to find while sitting here.”

“How would you know what I want to find sitting here? What I've already found? What makes you think you know what's going on in my head?”

Nanette crashes down on Blind's shoulder like a sack of feathers and passionately pecks him on the earlobe.

“How about you come down yourself and stop bugging me?” Humpback says, taking the bird off Blind. “Leave me alone.”

Blind distances himself from Humpback's words, his voice, Nanette's crowing, stops seeing their movements by the noise they're making, and brings up the memory of the big fish flapping its fins in a deep basin, immersing himself in that sound. Someone had done that long ago. Took a fish, put it in a basin, and placed it in the room where Blind lived. Blind spent so many hours sitting next to that basin that he can now restore those sounds inside him even in the noisiest of places, restore them and lull himself to sleep. He brings his big fish and lets it roam among the branches of the oak like a giant scaly bird, lets it splash and float in the leaves. The longer it does that, the calmer he becomes. When he touches his fingers to the bark, it is not warmer than his skin anymore, he washed it of its memory, the tree will stand untouched now for some time, like a primeval oak in the primeval forest.

Humpback quiets down also, listening to what he wrought.

Dozens of paths above them, growing thinner and thinner and breaking off into nothingness, dozens of ways, some wide, some narrow, all ending identically, but not for those who can see. The highest of them soar above the canopy, if you follow them you can feel them buckling under your weight, and if it's windy you may hear the squeaking of the invisible door as you swing on the branch over the void, inhaling the scent of the closed-off path. Blind climbs the oak when he needs to feel the Forest. When his arms and legs are restless and his head is full of words he seeks solace in sending his body up the waterspouts to the roof, up the wire fence, up the trees to the highest branches. He likes himself when he does these things. He hasn't visited the oak for a long time. He's content here, he's home, and even if Humpback turned him out now he'd still carry away something valuable. Humpback's fear and apprehension. The old song, the smell of tobacco, Nanette's excitement, and the splashing of the giant fins. And the image of the little girl, crouching, sucking on her thumb. The girl with a surprisingly heavy gaze, wearing a battered short dress stained with egg yolk and blood. Humpback is scared of her. Blind will take her with him.

“Why is it you don't ask before taking something from us?” Humpback says sharply. “Why do you never ask us?”

Blind is astonished by Humpback's perceptiveness, almost frightened by it. He leans against the gnarly branch. Always? From us? What does he always take from them, from Humpback, without asking? And why would Humpback tell him about it now, just as he realizes something is indeed being taken? He scatters Humpback's words and puts them together again, listening to the sound they make, and sees that Humpback did not mean what he assumed. He was not talking about that which Blind has taken a moment ago.

“Everyone grabs what they need wherever they can,” he says. “You included. We all take something from each other.”

Humpback's branch jerks, mirroring his move. Or maybe he thumped it angrily.

“Yes, we all do. But you, especially so. You are greedy, Blind. You take like a thief, and it's so obvious. I sometimes think that you feed on our thoughts. That there is no you, only what you've taken from us, stolen from us. And that... loot—it walks among us, it talks to us, sniffs at us, pretending that it's one of us. I feel myself emptying in your presence. I hear you saying my own words—words that I never said when you were near. Logs call you a changeling. They say you steal other people's dreams. It's supposed to be a joke, you're supposed to laugh like it's another one of their silly ideas, except I know it's true, have known it for a long time. I know you're a fake. You're tiny shards of us glued together.”

“That grew into your Leader,” Blind prompts. He's not being sarcastic or cruel. He doesn't hear conviction in Humpback's voice, only desire to hurt him. “I can assure you, Humpback, that I did once exist outside the House, without any assistance from any of you.”