Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

Moor's curly-haired head starts turning. Grasshopper shrinks away from the door and flies down the hall like the wind. He is the only one among the walking juniors who is barred from Moor's rooms. Numbers 15, 14, 13. Others can enter, but not he. In the Moor's room one can serve—carrying this and that, boiling water, shining shoes, or washing dishes. Or slicing bologna for sandwiches that Purple One consumes in enormous quantities, one after another. This is the price of socializing with the seniors. For those who fail at their duties, Moor keeps a belt somewhere in his wheelchair. This belt features prominently in the juniors' nightmares. Moor's belt, Moor himself, and his voice—the rasping wheeze of Livid Monster. The boys curse Purple One when returning from his rooms and parade the welts his belt left on their hands.

Grasshopper secretly envies them. Their wounds, their stories, and their complaints—everything that unites them in their hatred of Moor. It's their adventure, their experience. He's not a part of it.

Grasshopper slows down. Now he's crossing into Skull's domain. These three rooms equalize Grasshopper with the rest of the boys—they are just as barred from here as he is. They also sneak through on their tiptoes. They've never been there, but they know everything about how the rooms look inside. They know that one doesn't have any beds at all, just the mattresses that are stacked in two enormous piles every morning. Then the wheelers while away the hours playing checkers on top of those mountains. The floors are sticky in there, and the windowsills are crowded with rows and rows of empty bottles. Everyone sits on thin red straw mats. Skull lives in this room. The narrow-eyed predator, the owner of the soul-deadening nick, warrior, Leader, and living legend. The idol of each and every junior, the hero of all their games, the unattainable ideal.

There's also the Eleventh, with a real bamboo hut in the middle. With the star attraction—Lame's hookah. With Babe the old cockatoo, who can swear in three different languages. The boys know the exact time to go past the open door to catch a glimpse of hunchbacked Lame blowing bubbles in his transparent water crock.

And then the third room, the one with the messages on the door. Where Ancient lives with his box of amulets and the two fish in the tank. Ancient, who can't stand bright light. This room is more mysterious than the other two because its door is always closed. Grasshopper sees Ancient's room in his mind as he goes past; it's easy for him because he's been in there and seen it for himself. He presses his chin against the amulet under the shirt, regretting that he can never tell anyone what happened to him behind this door. Ancient's gift brings him closer to the seniors. Power that is equal to Skull's; he carries it in secret, hidden from the world. Every day it becomes harder and harder to keep believing in it. He walks on, and the mystery walks with him, and also his pride and his doubt.

There are also two more packs of walking juniors in the House. They have their own dorms, and Grasshopper tries to avoid those.

The Singings pack is in a state of permanent cold war with the Stuffagers. Actual fights are rare, but both packs watch their sides of the hallway closely to warn the enemies away.

The inhabitants of the Cursed room are not bothered with that. Their room is considered the worst since it is the only one on this floor with the windows looking out. Outcasts live there. Those who were banished from the other packs. There are four of them. Sometimes Grasshopper thinks that this is what Sportsman is driving at. To force the Cursed status on him. So he never goes near that room. The mightiest amulet in the world would be powerless to turn him into a second Skull were he to become one of them.

For Grasshopper, the House resembles a gigantic beehive. Each dorm is a cell, and each cell a separate world. There are also empty cells—classrooms and playrooms, the canteen and locker rooms, but they are not shining at night with the honey-amber light from their windows, so they are not real, in a sense.

Sometimes he stays outside in the yard late into the evening, on purpose, to count the living cells in the coming darkness and to think about them. This always leaves a melancholy taste in his soul, because only four such cells exist for him behind the blazing windows in the entire enormous hive of a building. Four little worlds that are accessible to him: Elk's room, Ancient's room, and the two rooms of the Stuffage. This thought makes him a bit depressed. He knows all too well that Stuffage is not his home, never will be his home. He doesn't want to escape from the darkness in it or to unwind after classes, and there's no one waiting for him there if he's late. Stuffage is a place in itself. For many it is home. They cordon off their beds, mark them with signs of their presence the way dogs mark their territory with urine. They pin up pictures over the headboards, make shelves out of old crates, and throw their things on them. For them the beds are private fortresses, bearing the imprints of their owners. His bed is bare and anonymous, and he never feels completely safe, whether lying down or sitting up in it.

Each window means a room, with people living inside. For them that room is home. For every one of them except me. My room is not my home, because there are too many strangers in it. People who do not like me. Who do not care whether I come back there or not. But the House is so big. Surely there must be a place in it for someone who does not like to fight? For two someones. This thought cheered him up. He felt like he'd stumbled upon something important. Found a way out. All he needed was a room of his own, a room without Sportsman, Whiner and Crybaby, and Siamese, and the rest of them. Naturally, there still would be more people living in it besides Blind and himself. A lot more, actually. Because all the living quarters in the House were accounted for. Every little nook capable of providing a bit of privacy was taken over by the seniors. Which meant that he needed a dorm. And a dorm meant at least ten people. If only he could find them... Even four would do! Then they could occupy the room where Rabbit, Bubble, and Crook slept. They only spent the nights there. Switch places with them and have it for themselves. That would be really cool!

Grasshopper sighs. He knows those are just idle dreams. Even if he and Blind did move into an empty dorm, it would still remain a part of Stuffage. And if anyone, say Humpback, decided to join them, Sportsman never would permit that. The place where three of his Pack sleep would be as much a part of Stuffage as the sleepers—a part of the Pack. Come to think of it, he might not allow even the two of them to leave. Isn't there anything we can do, anything at all?

Thirty-four days after his first visit, Grasshopper once again stands before the door of the Tenth. He has on a green sweater over his shirt, boots instead of sneakers, and a zipped corduroy jacket instead of a blazer. His lips are moving as he reads the messages again. This helps him calm down. He moves closer to the door and raps on it softly with the tip of his boot. Then, without waiting for an answer, just like Blind did back then, he brings his heel down on the handle, opens the door, and enters. The smoky gloom falls on him like a stuffy tent.

The mysterious shiny world of the seniors smells. The room looks exactly the same as it did a month ago. Time stopped here, got tangled in the invisible net, caught in the glint on the bottoms of the bottles under the bed, precipitated in the bedpans, settled on the wings of the insects pinned to the walls. The butterflies, so pretty in the sunlight, are uniformly black in the eternal dusk of the room, resembling nothing so much as winged cockroaches. The boy's breath is shallow; he is trying to tame his fear. The fish tank still glows green, the smoke still curls in the air. The striped mattress is still in the same place.