Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

Tabaqui paused and then nodded proudly at Blind.

“I trust that was within the rules. Even though limiting me in this fashion was really rotten of you.”

The room was totally quiet. Even the boombox had gone silent. Even Nanette stopped stirring. It was as though, all this time, Jackal had been chanting a monumental spell putting the whole world to sleep. Noble was cradling an open jar and swaying from side to side with his eyes closed. Blind had slumped against Tubby's playpen. Humpback stared at the twisted root in his hands, evidently having no idea anymore about what he was doing with it. Their faces seemed drowsy and somehow unwell, bordering on sickly. Tubby was the only one immune to the spell. He was peacefully pulling on Blind's hair and droning softly.

Once it became crystal clear that everyone else was completely bewitched, Humpback startled and translated, blinking sleepily.

“What Tabaqui is saying is that Pompey hankers after Blind's job. I'm not sure this really came through, what with all those bats and other crap.”

“Objection!” Tabaqui said hotly. “I was acquitting myself quite eloquently, and, what's more important, very vividly. To try and reduce this oration to a digest is criminal.”

“True,” Humpback said. “Except that Smoker might be a bit stunned, since it's his first time, and so not really in a position to give it its due.”

Noble opened his eyes and peeked in astonishment into the jar he was hugging through all of this.

“Would it be possible,” he said, “to limit this monster next time to a certain number of words instead of sentences?”

“Of course not!” Blind said. He straightened up and snatched his hair out of Tubby's grasp. “Just think of the many different ways one single word can be repeated.”

We all thought of it and groaned. Tabaqui inclined his head like a great actor acknowledging the applause of his audience.

At dinner I couldn't eat properly. I was shaken up by the information about Pompey. The well-being of his bats was the last thing on my mind. I didn't like the word coup , not one bit. I felt myself in the middle of events about which I had only a very hazy notion, or rather no notion at all, and I liked that even less.

How does the House change Leaders? Do they fight each other? Or is it pack against pack? And if so, why is the Fourth so unruffled in the face of the coming massacre? Because there was no other way that a fight between them and the Sixth could be described.

I guess that's the end of the peaceful life, I thought. As if my life in the Fourth was ever peaceful.

The green peas were drying out on the plate, and the meat loaf was already caked with congealed fat. I was hungry, but I still couldn't eat. The ceiling speakers were drenching us in marching music, so anyone in the canteen wanting to have a conversation had to shout in order to be heard.

The black-and-white Pheasant table. The quiet horror of the glances examining neighbors' plates. Half of the Pheasants were on individual meal plans, each one different, so everyone's plate contents were always a concern. There were calories to be counted.

Rats at the next table. The explosion of color and the tide of insanity.

Then Birds, in their nightmarish bibs over black.

The Sixth was all about camaraderie. Looking at them, it would seem that the group consisted exclusively of jovial practical jokers. I wouldn't want to find myself on the receiving end of their jokes, and their bursts of loud merriment looked suspect, but so what. They were trying their best.

The Third, Fourth, and Sixth had it tough. Rats and Pheasants were the Naughty and the Nice. Both of them overdid it to such an extent that everyone else had to squeeze in between somewhere. Birds were a bit better at it, Hounds a bit worse, and the Fourth, in addition to having no designation, was just too sparsely populated to... to fully participate in the game.

Once I managed to say the word , I suddenly was free to realize that this “game” would have to include much more than just appearance. It was the right word, and, having caught it, I understood that I had been looking for it for a long time. For the word that would contain the key to everything happening in the House. All it took was the recognition of the fact that the Game encompassed everything around me.

It was too improbable that every single one of the pathetic, whining conformists would assemble in one group, while all the unhinged anarchists would go to the other. Which meant that someone somewhere must have designed this at some point. Why? Now that was a different question.

My own perspicacity was making me sweat. I wasn't even hungry anymore.

So one day, my imagination churned, they became so frightfully bored that they compiled the script of the Game and vowed to never deviate from it under any circumstances. For everyone his role and everyone in his place. And that was the way it had gone since that time. Make-believe and following the script. Willingly for some, less so for others, but everywhere and always. And especially in the canteen, where the audience was always the biggest. No wonder some of them, Pheasants for example, eventually could allow the Game to overrule even basic human nature.

Within this structure everything started making sense, easily and beautifully. The scales had fallen from my eyes as I looked around.

Rats. Almost all of them underage, sixteen or less. Their acid-colored mullets masked teenagers in the throes of age-appropriate angst. Probably this was why they looked so natural playing at deranged instability.

Birds. Birds made me pause a little. All right. Black is just a color. Unpleasant faces, but I probably could make my own face look like that if needed. Vulture... the House monster. I looked at him through my newly opened eyes and tried to strip away the chaff. Mourning... rings... black polish on long manicured nails... long hair and eye shadow. Throw all of that out, forget even the fact that he made his bed in a coffin, erase every trace of his nasty habits—what would you have left? A gaunt, hook-nosed fellow. An unpleasant person, to be sure, but not a monster by any stretch.

This is where I switched off temporarily, because the unpleasant person suddenly turned around and stared at me. Must have felt himself being exposed. He looked at me with those sleepy yellow eyes of his and I lost the ability to function, skewered by that stare.

Assured that I had been neutralized and was ready to be served, Vulture smiled, showcasing the unnaturally long crooked teeth. It felt like someone forcefully dragging a blade over glass.

It took me a couple of minutes to get my composure back, and even then something kept nagging at me. Like when you watch an old black-and-white movie and this creep in a ton of makeup is constantly polishing his fingernails and looking around unblinkingly, and it suddenly freaks you out and the next moment makes you ashamed for falling for his cheap tricks.

All right. That meant only that he was a very good actor. He inhabited the character. If anyone was supposed to be a Game master, it was a House Leader. It must have been they who actually invented it.

To test my theory, I decided to expose Red.

Rat Leader proved to be not particularly amenable to exposure. If you took away the green shades occupying the whole upper half of his face and the bloodred buzz cut, supposedly his natural color, what were you left with? Nothing at all. A tailor's dummy made up as a Rat would have done just as well.

That fairly took away my thunder. To cheer myself up again, I turned to Pompey.

He sort of looked a bit like Sphinx. I guess it was his height. And the bald head. Except Sphinx's was real. And Pompey left a small lick on top. Jet black and greased to a shine. He was also fatter. That is, fleshier.