Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

In that world Death came to people wearing one of the two disguises, that of a young man or a young woman.

The woman was pale with black hair. The man's hair was red. The woman was sad, the man merry. That's how it's always been in that world, since the beginning of time.

Some people were afraid of them. Others awaited them eagerly. They were mentioned in prayers, asked to postpone or hasten the end. Their images were on playing cards and old engravings. Very few thought about how many of them there were. It was agreed that Death was one, just in two different personifications. Night and day. Light and shadow.

In fact, there were many of them. They were almost godlike, possessing innumerable wondrous abilities, and unbearably lonely. Sometimes they would flee to other worlds, to meet their own deaths. Some of them would even be born in other worlds. They were always born dead there, coming to life only later. Those of them that could. These refugees from different worlds were no longer true emissaries of Death. Their abilities were not as sharp. In time they became almost harmless, and could only bring death in a dream.

Here is how you can tell them. They have beautiful voices, they dance well, and they know everyone's secrets. They are also lazy, never losing themselves in the pursuit of a single goal. The women don't know how to laugh, and the men don't know how to cry. They hide their eyes, sleep a lot, and never eat eggs, because in their world they hatched from one.

Once upon a time and ever since then there lives a curious little old man. He lives in a secret place. This place is very hard to find, and to find the old man in it is even harder. He has many houses, or maybe it's the same house that only looks different for anyone entering it. Sometimes it stands in the middle of an orchard, sometimes it is in an empty field, sometimes on the bank of a river, and it almost never looks the same, only very rarely. It could even be that there is no house at all, that the old man is holed up in a single room of a huge project. And there were times when he chose to live in the hollow of a dead tree.

That's why finding him is so difficult. No one who visited him can describe his dwelling to anyone else, or point out the way and explain how to reach it. There are many who would like to meet him, but only those who seek tirelessly and have the knowledge of invisible ways and passages, of secret signs and prophetic dreams, can ever hope to come to the right place. But even when they reach it they often have to leave empty-handed, because the old man is grumpy, obstinate, and does not like giving out presents.

The old man's houses all look different from the outside, but very similar on the inside. They are crammed with things. Sometimes there are so many that the old man can barely find a place for himself among them. But this way everything he needs is always close to hand. It would be impossible to imagine something that he does not have.

He keeps music inside conchs, skulls of small animals, and fruit seeds. He puts smells in the bean pods and nutshells. Dreams, in empty gourds. Memories, in cabinets and perfume bottles. He also has hooks of every shape and ropes of every thickness, clay pots of any size, except large ones, and jugs, also small but very elaborate. Whistles, flutes and fifes, buttons and buckles, jack-in-the-boxes, precious jewels and stones that only he knows the value of, spices, seeds and roots, old maps marked with locations of sunken treasure, flasks, earrings, horseshoes, playing cards and tarot cards, figurines made out of wood, gold and ivory, crumbly pieces of meteorites, bird feathers, baubles, bangles and beads, bells, eggs being kept warm, insects encased in amber, and also some toys. And most of these objects are usually more than what they seem.

But those who come to the old man do not want spices, jewels, myrrh, or frankincense. They all want gears from busted watches. The old man loathes parting with those.

Some of the guests get snared by the inventive traps the old man keeps around the house. Others he lets through and refuses himself, for varying reasons. He has a list of questions, and if you do not answer each and every one of them you will not get your present, this he ensures firmly and gleefully.

The unluckiest guests of the house find only the old man's mummified corpse. It lies in the cardboard box that the stereo system came in, in the company of withered flowers, carved nutshells, and faded postcards. Some bury him before leaving, others dump him out of the box and beat up the body, venting their disappointment, and then there are those who remain in the house, waiting for who knows what—another old man instead of this one, a replacement, so to speak, since this one seems to be dead? Sooner or later they too leave empty-handed. The old man can be a mummy for however long he wants. It doesn't bother him at all.

There are plenty of legends and rumors about him. People tell tales of him in places near, far, and very, very far. The oldest of those depict him as sitting on top of a mountain with two skeins of wool, black and white. He winds up one of them and unspools the other, turning day into night and night back into day. The later tales say that he eternally spins an enormous wheel, divided into a summer half and a winter half, and the summer side of it is red while the winter side is white as snow. There are other stories. But all of them end the same way, in bestowing of gifts. Everyone who meets the old man receives a present from him, and it's those gifts that people desire when they go out in search of him.

The lucky visitors receive gears from broken watches. The luckiest of all, an egret feather. The first gift means one thing while the second means quite another. Everyone asks for the first and no one asks for the second, because no one knows that this gift even exists. It is not mentioned in any tales or legends. The watch gear can be lost, exchanged, or given away. The feather disappears if it ever leaves the possession of its owner, so it cannot belong to anyone else.

It is not easy to get the old man to part with a watch gear, the feathers he gives out extremely rarely, and no one ever receives anything else. Almost never. There was only one time when he was asked for a dream. A very peculiar dream, one that explained how to see other people's dreams. A small boy asked for it, and took with him a gourd stoppered with henbane. Some years later the same boy, now grown, came again with an even stranger request. The old man was intrigued. Out of the eggs he had, he chose the most beautiful, green with white speckles.

“They are very delicate,” he warned. “Be careful. Keep it warm near your heart, and when she hatches, let her out into a stream, but make sure there aren't any predatory fish around. In forty days she will be grown.”

“What will she be in twenty days?” the boy asked.

He was an odd boy, and the old man was slightly apprehensive about the fate of the creature inside the egg, but he liked giving unusual gifts, and the boy was the only one in many, many years to want something other than what everyone always wanted. With him the old man wasn't bored.

And boredom is the one thing that the old man hates. From time to time, tired of the monotony of the gifts he gives to others, he makes a present to himself. The simplest things, really. Nothing valuable or extraordinary, but it's always nice to receive an unexpected, unusual present. Especially if you then forget that you received it from yourself.

Humpback retold the old familiar tale of the Pied Piper. Changed some details, that's all. I didn't remember it all too well, but I am pretty sure it didn't used to say there that he only led away the smallest children, three and younger. “Pure of mind and desires.” It sounded rather strange. Because it's not clear how it would be possible to lead away kids who, for example, can't even walk yet.