Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

“That depends on what you saw.”

“I don't want to talk about it. For some reason. I haven't figured it out for myself yet.”

I sigh.

“None of us wants to talk about it. I thought that's what was driving you nuts.”

“No,” he says, sounding surprised. “Quite the contrary. I'd be mad if you started debating it. I think. I'm not sure. But even you haven't said anything.”

“And good for me,” I say. “Alexander wishes to sink through the floor as it is.”

Smoker nods and opens the door.

Sometimes I get this curious impression that he's one of us. Rarely, though.

I wonder what would you do if your roommate, bedmate, tablemate, and mate of every other kind suddenly woke you up in the middle of the night with a hoarse cry of “There you are! Finally I've found you!”

In the Outsides it's customary to call for paramedics in cases like that, but we're not in the Outsides, so I speedily crawl away from him, put a pillow between us, and start deliberating whether it's time to cry “Help!” yet or if it could wait for a little while longer.

“I found you,” Noble insists, tugging at the pillow. “You're not going to wiggle out this time. I know who you are.”

He looks like he's totally round the bend.

I tell him that I had no intention of wiggling, and that luckily for both of us I also happen to know who I am.

“And now that we've established who both of us are, and know everything about each other that's possible to know, what say you we get some sleep? It's dark. Everyone's sleeping. Look. So, hush-a-bye ...”

“I want to go back,” Noble says. “Back here, but earlier, and I want everything to be different. I mean, the same, but with me in it.”

“And it is very stupid of you.”

“I've made my choice.”

Amazing how they all consider these words to be a final argument. Like it's a spell against which I'm helpless. I'd have laughed if I didn't want to cry.

“Think,” I say with a sigh. “Think carefully, and come another time.”

His fingers clamp on my wrist with such force that I'm afraid it’ll break.

“No! Please!” he says. “I might not find you another time. Even once was hard enough.”

The guy's crazy, I tell you.

“Hold it!” I say. “Wake up, baby. I'm here all day, every day. There's no need to go searching.”

I push the pillow aside, sit up, and give him a slight fillip on the bridge of his nose between the eyebrows. Very lightly, in fact I barely touch him, but Noble reels back as if I whacked him with one of the weights from Mustang's footboard, and almost falls on his back. He closes his eyes. Opens them. Stares at me like he's never seen me before.

“Damn you,” he says. “You hurt me.”

“And you woke me up. Now we're even, and can go back to sleep satisfied. Sweet dreams.”

I fluff the pillow and close my eyes, painfully aware that peaceful sleep is not likely in the cards.

And I'm right. Noble doesn't back down.

“You are him,” he says. “You can't fool me.”

I sit up again.

“Of course I can fool you. Easily. Anytime I want.”

The lights of the two tiny wall lamps make his eyes look like black vortices. Windows into a bottomless blackness.

“You can't do this. I found you. I asked you. You must help me now.”

What wonderful arrogance!

For the next half hour I am busy assembling everything that's necessary into the spare backpack.

Then we crawl. Slowly, because of the need for stealth. Finally we're in the anteroom, wheelchairs and flashlights at the ready. I free Mustang of the weights, to save on clang and clatter. I don't have the master backpack with me, so there's no chance of it overturning. I'm not sleepy anymore. I'm alert and perky, and wouldn't say no to a nice snack, because the first thing that catches up with me when I'm perky is hunger, with everything else switching on later.

Noble is quiet and exceedingly polite. Very helpful and not at all annoying. And good on him, because I'm not in the mood for explanations.

The journey is short, since our destination is the classroom. A midnight visit to the beloved collection, you might say. Once inside I open the spare backpack and take out the three items I'm going to require. The chain with watch gears hanging off it. Those that live in old watches, not the modern ones with batteries inside. It goes over the neck. Also I hold a notepad in my hands and a pencil in my teeth. Now I'm ready.

Noble gnaws at his fingernails, studying the collection with a haunted look on his face, like it was me luring him out here and not the other way around. Fingers the strap with rat skulls that I have hanging on the birdcage, takes it off, and turns it this way and that.

“A delicate specimen,” I warn him, extracting the pencil from my mouth. “Possibly a hex. I wouldn't touch it if I were you.”

He hangs the skulls back. With a fleeting smile that immediately trips my hunting instincts.

“All right, what is it? What did you just understand about them? I saw it, ’fess up!”

Noble shrugs. Leans to the side, fishes the wide-brimmed black hat out of the pile of no one's things, and winds the strap around its crown. The skulls line up in a circle. Noble clicks the copper buckles that obviously were designed to be latched to this very hat and carefully places it on the seat of the chair with the stuffed crow.

There is nothing left for me to do but to gasp slowly.

What's been simply a hat has now become the most meaningful item in the entire collection.

“Wow! Thank you,” I say. “You know, I had this impression for a moment that you were going to put it on.”

Noble looks at me blankly.

“It's not my hat,” he says after a long silence.

I look at the hat. Then at him.

“Of course not,” I say.

Then open up the notepad and clear my throat.

“So. You have made your stupid choice and you don't want to think it over.”

He nods.

“You are aware that your memory is a part of you? And not an insignificant part. Those who return could become somebody quite different from who they were before. And not experience some of the things they have experienced on the previous loop. Which would make the next loop itself different as well.”

“I know,” Noble says. “You're wasting your time. I will not reconsider.”

“You are of the Forest,” I say. “It's in your blood. You shall not find rest until you join with it.”

“I know,” he says. “But she is not there.”

“Your love has consumed you. And the first thing it devours is reason, mind you. Speaking of love... Are you sure that when you become a different you, you’ll still love the same person that you love today? Absolutely sure?”

“Of course.”

And he smiles. The smile of a maniac. Or of someone in love. Which is the same thing, come to think of it. His love has eaten him alive, stripped him to the bones, and still he smiles at me. This smile overpowers all. To hell with tradition, with the rituals, and everything else, including the questionnaire. I've never neglected to go through it before. Ten questions must be asked and answered, and I've asked them of everyone, but Noble will get not a single question more. He is the Little Mermaid who came to exchange her tail for the useless legs, and gave up her voice too, and if the Sea Witch asked her for something else, anything else, she would've given it to her as well. Lovers and maniacs are all the same, they rush in where anyone else would fear to tread, and arguing with them is a fool's errand.

He has no idea what it is he's just asked for. That's his problem. He believes that his love is so strong that it’ll catch up with him on every loop. Let him believe. Who am I to tell him otherwise?