Мариам Петросян: The Gray House

The First's counselor looked more or less like the whole group would look were they not masquerading as teenagers for some reason. Like the hag sitting inside every one of them, waiting for the next funeral. Decay, gold teeth, and failing eyes. At least he wore it all out in the open.

“The administration has been made aware already,” he said, looking like a doctor giving a patient the news of an incurable disease.

He continued to sigh and nod and look at me pityingly until I started feeling like a corpse, and not a very fresh one. Once assured of the proper effect, Homer left, snuffling and groaning as he went.

I'd visited the principal's office twice before. Once when I had just come in and once when I was submitting a painting for the exposition with the idiotic theme of “I Love the World.” It was the result of three days' work and I titled it The Tree of Life . Only when you stepped back a couple of feet from the painting could you discern that the Tree was teeming with skulls and hordes of maggots. Up close, they looked kind of like pears in among the crooked boughs. Just as I'd expected, no one inside the House noticed anything wrong. My dark sense of humor was apparently only discovered at the exposition itself, but I've never found out how it was received. Actually, it was not even a joke. My love for the world at the time looked more or less the way it did in the painting.

During my first visit to the principal's office, the worms had already started wriggling inside the worldly love, though we weren't quite ready for the skulls yet. The office was clean but still somehow untidy. It was obviously not the hub of the House, the place everything flows in or out of. More like a guards' shack at the gates. A rag doll in a festooned dress had been sitting on the sofa in the corner. It was the size of a three-year-old. Memos and notes, stuck with pushpins—on the walls, the blinds, the sofa, everywhere. But most of all I was struck by the enormous fire extinguisher over the principal's desk. It was so mesmerizing that I could not quite pay attention to the principal himself. Anyone who chose to sit under that antique fiery zeppelin must be somewhat counting on that. The only thing you could think about was that monstrosity crashing down and flattening him right there in front of your eyes. There was no space left in your head for anything else. Not a bad way of becoming invisible.

The principal was talking of the school policies then. Of the way forward. “We prefer tempering those who have already been forged.” Something like that. I wasn't listening too closely. Because of the fire extinguisher. It was getting on my nerves. Everything else was as well. The doll, and the notes. Maybe he's an amnesiac, I kept thinking, so this is just his way of reminding himself of everything. And when I'm gone he's going to write me up and pin that information somewhere close.

When I tried to tune in for a while, he was just getting to the alumni. The ones who “did well for themselves.” Those were the faces in the framed photos on both sides of the fire extinguisher. Irritable and mundane, all possessing trophies or diplomas that they paraded sourly before the camera. Even a photograph of some headstones would have been more fun. Perhaps they should put at least one of those up there, considering the school's mission.

It was very different this time. The fire extinguisher was still there, as were the notes on every available surface, but something had changed in the office. Something not directly related to the furniture and the missing doll. Shark was sitting under the extinguisher and going through papers. Shriveled, mottled, and shaggy, like a lichen-covered stump. His eyebrows, also shaggy and mottled, fell over his eyes like filthy icicles. There was a file in front of him. I glimpsed my own photo between two sheets of paper and realized that the file was full of me. My grades, performance reviews, snapshots from different years—all the parts of a person that could be distilled onto paper. I was partially on the desk, bound in cardboard, and partially sitting before him. If there were any difference between the flat me on the desk and the three-dimensional me in the chair, it was the red sneakers. They were no longer just footwear. They were who I was. My bravery and my folly, a bit faded after three days but still bright and beautiful like fire.

“It must have been something really serious for the boys to lose all patience with you.” Shark waved a piece of paper at me. “I've got this letter here. Fifteen signatures. What's this supposed to mean?”

I shrugged. It meant whatever it meant. I wasn't about to explain about the sneakers to him. That would be ridiculous.

“Yours is the model group.” The mottled icicles drooped, obscuring the eyes. “I really like that group. I cannot ignore their request, especially seeing as this is the first time they've asked such a thing. So, what do you have to say for yourself?”

I wanted to say that I was going to be happy to be rid of them as well, but decided not to. What good would my lonely voice be against fifteen of Shark's exemplary pets? Instead of offering pleas and explanations, I just studied the surroundings.

The pictures of the “well for themselves” were even more disgusting than I remembered. I imagined my own pitted, crumbling mug among them, with paintings behind me, one more hideous than the next. “He was dubbed the next Giger when he was just thirteen.” It made me sick.

“Well?” Shark waved his spread-out fingers in front of me. “Are you asleep? I am asking if you understand that I have to undertake certain actions.”

“Of course. I'm sorry.”

That was the only thing that came to mind.

“Me too. Very sorry,” Shark growled, snapping my file shut. “Sorry that you were so brainless as to manage to lose the trust of the whole group at once. Get out and get your things.”

Something jumped inside me, like a toy ball on a string.

“Where are you sending me?”

He was enjoying my fear immensely. He basked in it for a while. Shuffled things around, inspected his fingernails, lit a cigarette.

“Where do you think? Another group, of course.”

I smiled. “You must be joking.”

It would be easier to drop a live horse into any other House group than somebody from the First. The horse would have a better chance of fitting in, size and manure notwithstanding.

I should've kept my mouth shut, but still I blurted out, “No one would have me. I'm a Pheasant.”

“I've had enough of this!” Shark spat out the cigarette and smashed his fist on the desk. “What's this Pheasant stuff? Who invented all that crap?”

The papers scurried from under his fist, and the cigarette butt missed the ashtray.

I was so scared that I yelled back at him, even louder, “How should I know why they call us that? Ask those who started it! You think it's easy, remembering all those idiotic nicks? You think anyone explained to me what they mean?”

“don't you dare raise your voice in my office!” he screamed back, leaning over the desk.

I glanced at the fire extinguisher and immediately looked back.

It was still hanging there.

Shark followed the direction of my gaze and suddenly whispered, as if taking me into confidence, “It won’t. The bolts are this thick.”

Then he showed me his disgusting thumb. This was so unexpected that I was stunned. I just sat there ogling him like an idiot. He was smirking. It dawned on me that he was simply bullying me. I hadn't been living in the House long enough to easily address everyone by their nicknames. You had to be pretty open minded to call someone Sniffle or Piddler to their face and not feel like a complete jerk. Now I was being told that the administration did not approve of it either. What for? Just to have a good yell and see how I'd react? And then I realized what had changed in the office since my first visit. It was Shark himself. The unassuming body hiding under the fire extinguisher had turned into a real shark. Into exactly what his name was. The nicks were given for a reason.