Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

“What?”

“I said I could explain,” Black repeated. “If you'd like.”

I said that I would. And tried to recall what I'd been asking about.

Black sat up and pulled off his glasses.

No one ever sat on Black's bed except him. Nor lay down on, fell onto, put his feet on top of, or threw dirty socks over. Nobody put anything on it at all. That bed, always crisp, perfectly tucked and turned, seemed thoroughly out of place here. As did Black himself. As if at any moment he could sail away on it headed for some distant shores. To where his species lived in its natural habitat.

“It's simple, really. See this bed?”

Black pointed at Humpback's bunk over his head. The upper section that would have stayed behind even if the lower part did set sail.

I said that of course I did.

“What do you think would happen if you were to be hung off of its side? So that you only held on to it with your hands, like on a high bar?”

“I'd fall down,” I said.

“And before you fell down?”

I couldn't quite catch what kind of answer he was expecting. I earnestly traced the sequence of events in my head.

“I'd hang there. And then fall down. Hang for a while and crash.”

“What if you were to be hung like that daily?”

It dawned on me a little.

“Are you saying I'd hang for a bit longer every day?”

“Good job! Smart boy.”

Black bit on the pencil again and went back to his notebook.

“But I'd only need to fall down once, and then there wouldn't be anyone to hang anymore. I'm not a cat, after all.”

“That's exactly what Noble thought. Once upon a time.”

Noble threw away the magazine and stared at Black. It was a withering stare.

“How about enough?” he said.

I realized with a shudder that the picture Black drew for me was, like trashy movies liked to point out in the credits, based on actual events.

“But that's impossible,” I said. “That's torture!”

“And that's what Noble used to think too. He's still touchy about the subject, as you can see.”

“I thought I asked you to shut the hell up.”

Noble's look would have been quite enough for me to shut up immediately if I'd been in Black's place. But I wasn't him. He was him.

“Chill, will you,” he said to Noble. “don't ruin your complexion.”

What happened next almost made me believe half the tales told the night before.

Noble swept to the edge of the bed. From there he probably got to the floor, but I wasn't sure. Black managed to sit up. And even to take off the glasses. But when he stood up he already had Noble hanging on his shoulders. Then he was trying to peel off Noble while Noble was trying to throttle his opponent. It was a grisly sight.

The snarling figure made up of two figures stumbled awkwardly around on the floor, bumped into furniture, upended the nightstand, and crashed on the bed, burying a screaming Jackal.

Then they rolled over to my side. I pressed farther into the bars of the headboard, petrified. Two faces, contorted... breathing heavily... saliva... so close. Too close. Tabaqui went on wailing. One more roll, I thought with resignation, and it's good-bye Smoker . They'd break every bone in my body.

They didn't roll. Black managed to shake off Noble and spring up on the bed. His boots shuffled on the covers under my nose, then he jumped off and I finally could breathe easier.

It was unclear who emerged victorious. Noble, curled up in a ball by the bars, looked lousy. Black, wiping blood off his face and neck with the bottom of his shirt, wasn't much better. Judging by that last throw, he'd won. But judging by the speed of his retreat from the bed, he wasn't quite sure that he had.

Not-quite-crushed Tabaqui fared best of all. He was sitting on two pillows and cursing so elaborately that it immediately put my mind at ease regarding him.

“You should be exterminated, you and your ilk,” Black said when Tabaqui paused for a moment. “Like rabid dogs.”

“Bastard!” Noble answered. “Pigface!”

Black spat out a broken tooth into his hand. Studied it for a while, dropped it, and made for the door.

A multitude of pill bottles had tumbled out of the overturned nightstand. Black slipped on one of them just as he was going out and almost fell. This slightly cheered up Noble. Very slightly.

When Sphinx, Alexander, and Blind came back, it was their turn to roll around on the pill bottles. Threading his way between them, Humpback deposited Tubby in his pen and said that we obviously hadn't been bored.

“Bored?” Tabaqui exclaimed. “You guys completely missed the best thing ever! It was epic, if I say so myself! The battle of Hector and Achilles! I’ll be damned!”

Sphinx examined the trashed bed strewn with broken glass, then looked at Noble and said that he could definitely observe the battlefield and the body of Hector left on it, but couldn't quite determine the whereabouts of Achilles.

“And that's how it's going to be for a while,” Tabaqui explained. “He's somewhere out there. Quenching gushers of blood.”

“Got it,” Sphinx sighed. “We’ll keep that in mind.” He offloaded Nanette to the windowsill. “Good thing we hadn't left the bird with you.”

The next hour I spent crawling under the beds, collecting the bottles and vials. Tabaqui pretended to help me. His fervor regarding the fight was wearing really thin. In my opinion, Noble and Black resembled animals more than heroes of antiquity. The whole deal was disgusting.

“Let me tell you, dearest, the heroes of antiquity were not much better,” Jackal said. “Worse, in fact,” he added thoughtfully, as if refreshing Homer in his mind.

I decided to crawl away before he started to quote his favorite passages from the Iliad . Because I had a sneaking suspicion about which ones would turn out to be among the favorites.

After we tidied up the room, Blind palpated Noble and declared that he had a cracked rib.

The Sepulcher was out of the question. Noble allowed himself to be swaddled in elastic bandages and sat hugging a pillow, pissed off as he could be. He informed us that the bandage was restricting his airflow, while the rib prevented him from lying down, and that he was now doomed to sleepless nights of oxygen deprivation.

Tabaqui assured him that he would never abandon a friend in need. And he immediately didn't. He sang to Noble. He played the harmonica for him. He bucked him up with disgusting concoctions complete with floating chilies, of which he himself liberally partook as well, so that Noble wouldn't feel singled out. There wasn't a living soul capable of getting any sleep under Tabaqui's tender ministrations.

When Black returned, he was running a fever. Tabaqui sounded the alarm. He said that this was a clear sign of infection taking hold in Black's bloodstream, and that Black was soon to tread in the valley of death.

Black was serenaded and plied with drink as well.

At three in the morning they started singing in harmony.

Accompanied by their horrible singing, I dozed off. When I woke up I saw Humpback, naked, standing on the bed armed with a broom. He was holding it as if it were a bayonet aimed at an invisible foe. He looked like a complete nutcase. If I were to find myself alone in the room with him, this would have scared me witless. But Jackal was right next to me, while Alexander and Lary, swearing softly, milled in the space between the beds, moving the nightstand for some reason. Their appearance wasn't a big improvement on Humpback's. They were both in their briefs and in rubber boots. Lary's boots alone were a sight, what with the pointed toes curled upward.

The wide-open windows let in the blackness of the night, and the door into the hallway was also thrown open and even prevented from closing by a stack of books. A breeze was wafting through the room.