Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

“Where he no longer is,” he said, in the best tradition of the Fourth.

“Thank you for that informative answer,” I said. “What are you trying to prove by this, and to whom? That's what I'd like to know.”

We were drinking hard cider, legs up on the railing. We didn't turn the lights on, so that the nightlife wouldn't get any ideas.

“All I want is to undo some mistakes made by one good man,” he said.

It sounded... normal. Like something that happens. Something that we all should be doing from time to time. Then he said that I would've done the same thing. If I'd had that chance.

When he said that, I had to work hard to bring my imagination to heel. Because why not? I've got four daughters, three of them gingers, and I know which one I love just a little bit more, and why. Even though the resemblance is mostly in my head.

“Maybe,” I said. “But this is different.”

He shrugged. I couldn't say for certain in the dark, but I think he was smiling.

“To each his own,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “But to each not the same acquaintances.”

He flinched and spilled his cider.

“Shhh,” I said. “I didn't say I blamed you. That was just envy, pure and simple. A very common phenomenon.”

We sat there silently for a while, finished what was left in the bottles, and I felt a sinister prophecy coming up.

“You're going to catch a lot of grief with this guy.”

“I know,” he said. “I know that. It's just that I wanted him to learn to love this world. Even a little. As much as I could teach him to.”

I guess it was cruel of me, because now he couldn't have changed anything even if he wanted to.

“He will learn to love you,” I said. “And for him you are going to be the whole damn world.”

He didn't say anything for so long that I realized he was afraid of the same thing. But he's a stubborn guy, and it was clear he wasn't going to back down. He’ll prove his point, to someone who would never know about it, or die trying. Funny, isn't it.

I didn't even ask about the rash on the boy. I got it. The House put its mark on him. In advance, in anticipation of losing him and before he could end up there. I didn't tell Sphinx that.

“Right. Well, good luck,” I said instead. “If you ever change your mind, you're welcome to stay. We've got loads of kids, all of them crazy. A little changeling would blend right in.”

In the morning they left. I watched them walk to the car, and I swear I couldn't decide which one I pitied more. Sphinx, I guess. He has a history of attempting the impossible. And it doesn't always work out in the end for him, not by a long shot.

That's all bullshit, and I'm sick of hearing it. I'm a grown man, not a baby who daydreams about hopping into a time machine and bringing back a small dinosaur for a pet. And if someone's half-cocked brain is coupled with a sick sense of humor, I don't see why the rest of us should sing along. I have no clue where Sphinx got that boy, and I don't give a damn. Like there's a shortage of undernourished blind orphans in the world, even if they also have black hair and white eyes. Yes, he could even be Blind's, so? No one knows where he is or what he's been up to. He could have rattled off a dozen mole rats like that. What he could never do is become a decent father.

As for Sphinx, he's just the kind of man to turn any little thing into a planetary event. Into something mysterious and idiotic. He's always been like that, since he was little. Drag in some piece of slime and go, “Ooh, look, the aliens left this!” I wouldn't be at all surprised if it turned out he stole that kid. That's his style. He even managed to steal someone else's father, and that's got to be harder to pull off.

Of course I've heard the talk. And of course it's all made up. They are rather mystically oriented, those guys from the commune. Sphinx starting those rumors himself? He never did. The kid's parents put the boy in his care for the summer, and then either the boy got used to him, or the parents decided it would be more useful to not take him back right away. It's always advisable for children like that to have as much access to a specialist as possible. Adoption? Nonsense, have you any idea how much of an effort it is now to adopt? Especially for someone like Sphinx. And I am sorry, I'm not even going to discuss kidnapping.

Eric says the boy doesn't really look like who everyone says he does. “Nothing in common.” Those were his exact words. And I believe him.

I'm seeing very few people. I have many questions, but I'm not asking them. Never. There are times when I think Black knows the answers, but just as I'm about to ask he gives me this miserable look and changes the subject so abruptly that I can't bring up the courage to say it. He's so vulnerable then, it's scary. I don't want to blow holes in the protective shell he's spent so much time and effort to build and maintain.

I have even less desire to go asking Sphinx. In his case it's the very real possibility of receiving the answers that's frightening. It's too iffy between us as it is. I like him, but I can't get over the fact that he has been given a choice. A choice I have been denied. And no matter how friendly he tries to be, his world will always be different. Not the same as Black's and mine. We can never forgive him for that.

In the room they call Stuffage, a seven-year-old boy woke up one early morning. At first he thought that it was a bad dream that made him wake up. He lay there with his eyes shut tight, trying to remember what was so disturbing that he saw, but the dream kept slipping away, not letting him catch it, until the boy got tired of chasing it.

When he opened his eyes he was astonished at the sudden change in his mood. He was usually gloomy and irritable in the mornings. But not today. This morning felt wonderful. He looked around the room with an unexpected and unfamiliar delight. Looked at the roommates, their heads buried in the pillows, at the clumsy drawings on the walls, at the pink blot of the sky in the windows thrown wide open, and finally, with a strange longing in the pit of his stomach—at the head of his brother on the other edge of the pillow. The head that was an almost exact copy of his own. The boy knew that this wondrous feeling was going to disappear soon, and in the hopes of making it linger just a while longer he shook his brother awake.

The brother opened his eyes. Round and bugging, they didn't close completely even in his sleep. That glinting sliver between the lashes, making it look as if he wasn't really asleep but just faking it, annoyed everyone. Except his twin, who had the exact same peculiarity.

“What?” the brother who just woke up whispered.

“I'm not sure,” the boy said, also in a whisper. “I’m feeling kinda strange. Kinda liking everything, very much, so much I want to cry. Do you have it too?”

The brother searched inside himself.

“No,” he said, yawning. “Not yet. Could be because I'm still sleeping.”

And he closed his eyes hurriedly.

The boy lowered his head onto his end of the pillow and tried to go back to sleep. The joy that had been overflowing inside him was not going away. He pressed his palm against his heart, as if probing it through the skin. Cradling it.

He did not know yet that this feeling would stay with him for a very long time. It would become less sharp, almost mundane, but at times would strike him again with the same unexpected force, like a soft blow, making him gasp in wonderment, filling his eyes with tears and his soul with delight. He also didn't know that he and his twin were now and forever different from each other. That he would always look older. “More corrupt,” Black Ralph would say. When the boy overheard that, he wouldn't be offended. That would be another new feature of his character—nothing much would be able to offend him anymore.