Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

“I’ll answer. But I don't think my answer, such as it is, will satisfy you. This is a bad place. For every one of us. There are good places and bad places here. This one is bad. How it became this way is a long story.”

Janus patiently waits for me to continue.

“And since you're not going to let me see Noble anyway ...”

His forehead breaks out into a concertina of ripples.

“Are you trying to bargain?” he asks incredulously. “With me?”

“Yes, I am. Just so you know, I wrote a scholarly article once exactly on the topic that interests you, so I'm quite competent to discuss it. A long article complete with references to the classics and an inventive title, ‘Sepulcher: Outside or Inside Us.’ This, as you might have guessed, is me talking up my side. I understand it is common when bargaining.”

Janus looks at me with such sincere amazement that I almost laugh out loud.

“You've lost me,” he says. “What article? Where?”

“Just an article. In a magazine with a circulation of ten copies.”

He exhales, relieved.

“Oh. I get it. It's your own magazine. What's it about?”

“Everything. It comes out twice a year, so we're never short of topics. The authors hide behind unrecognizable pen names, and everyone writes about whatever is of interest to him. I wrote about the Sepulcher, and the next issue featured a very lively discussion in the letters to the editor. Those might be even more useful to you than the article itself.”

Janus nods. “We're haggling over two issues. A yearly subscription. It's a pig in a poke. Two pigs.”

“In exchange for one visit to one dragon. I think that's fair.”

“Nothing doing,” Janus says, clearly disappointed. “That would mean me abandoning my principles. Indulging my own petty curiosity. I'd be ashamed of myself afterward.”

“Your call.”

I sigh with relief, even though he did refuse. It's good that he did. I didn't really want him reading my creation. It revealed too much. Almost as much as Leopard's drawings. I steal a glance at them and look away. It wouldn't do to go down for the count again. I transfer my attention to Janus, do my best to keep my eyes on him. He looks around in an exaggerated manner, trying to see something that he wouldn't be able to, no matter what. Then stubs out the cigarette in the ashtray.

“You look terrible,” he says. “Go get some sleep, grab something to eat, calm down, and then come back.”

He sounds irritated. My nightmares are getting on his nerves. They must be visible to the naked eye by now.

“Go,” Janus repeats. “We're all tired. There are no classes tomorrow. I might let you see him then.”

“It doesn't work that way,” I say patiently. “I'd be happy to do exactly that, except I can’t. Until I see Noble I can neither sleep nor eat nor look my people in the eye. I can't just go back empty-handed and crash into my bed. I will have failed to do that which I was sent to do. How can you not see that?”

“You mean I have to cater to your whims now?”

“It's not a whim. You know it isn’t.”

“He needs to rest. To be away from your people. You would only exacerbate his condition if you showed up in this panicked state.”

“He’ll have plenty of rest where you're sending him. And it will exacerbate everything much more than I ever could. Do you know how we speak of those who leave the House? The same way we speak of the dead. You're not letting me talk to someone who is going to be dead soon.”

Janus climbs down from the desk. Rubs his face. A gaunt, hunched figure, looking more now like Leopard's drawing of him than I've ever seen.

“You know what?” he says. “If you spend one more minute in my office I'm going to start dreading to stay here alone. Imagining heaven knows what until I become convinced that this is indeed an evil place. I have no idea how you manage to force this on me, but I'm having a hard time fighting it.”

“I'm not forcing anything,” I say. “It's the way I feel.”

“Let's go.” He opens the door and holds it for me. “I am fond of my office and of my sanity. So the sooner you get out of here, the better for both of us.”

I get up.

“Are you going to let me see him?”

“That's where we're headed. Do you think I should ask him first if he'd like to see you?”

We're walking down the Sepulchral corridor. He's striding ahead—a slender white tower. I can barely move my feet fast enough to keep up with him. I am all wrung out like a sponge, someone could use me to wipe the floor. Sure, I've gotten what I wanted, but I have nothing left for the main event, the whole point of this enterprise. We turn a corner. Janus slows down by a long opaque cabinet, takes out a white lab coat, and throws it over to me.

“Wait here. I’ll just be a moment.”

I wait, staring at an installation of cacti in pink flowerpots hanging off a wire frame, somehow resembling a spiderweb. Another one. This blind offshoot of the main corridor, clad in the whitest linoleum, glistens under the lights, proudly presenting the essential quality of the Sepulcher—its total sterility. I could eat my dinner off it, if I wanted to. But I just lower myself down on it and lean against the wall. And try to calm my frayed nerves with a simple mantra. You are not a patient here. You're just coming through. Running through. You can leave whenever you want. Remember it and hold on.

In that long-ago article on the Sepulcher, I picked apart the very word “patient.” Dissected it, broke it down into elementary particles. And deduced that a patient is no longer a human being. That those are two mutually exclusive notions. When a person turns into a patient he relinquishes his identity. The individuality sloughs off, and the only thing that's left is an animal shell over a compound of fear, hope, pain, and sleep. There is no trace of humanity in there. The human floats somewhere outside of the boundaries of the patient, waiting patiently for the possibility of a resurrection. And there is nothing worse for a spirit than to be reduced to a mere body. That's why it is Sepulcher. A place where the spirit goes to be buried. The dread permeating these walls cannot be extinguished. When I was little I couldn't understand how this name came to be. We inherited it from the seniors, along with the horror this place instilled in them. We needed time to grow into it. A lot of time and many bitter losses. It's as if we were filling a void, a space carved out by those who came before us that somehow turned out to fit us perfectly when we filled it completely. When we understood the meaning of all the names given long before our time and went through almost all the motions that had been already played out. Even our innocent little Blume was a great-great-grandchild of an earlier incarnation; our very own baby and at the same time a reappearance of an old ghost. I'm willing to bet that if someone were to discover the archives of its predecessors, he'd find plenty of screams of rage against the Sepulcher, identical to mine.

Janus steps out and nods at the door.

“You can come in. I’ll be back to check on you in a quarter of an hour. We’ll see how your presence reflects on him. If I find that he's becoming upset, that will be the last time you are allowed anywhere near here.”

“Thank you,” I say, and enter.

The whiteness of the tiled walls is blinding. The room is tiny. Semiprivate—that is, for two. There are no windows. Noble is sitting up, blanket up to his knees, in an ugly gray gown with string ties hanging down from the collar. On the nightstand by the bed—a tray with a bowl of oatmeal and a glass of milk. The silly gown becomes him. As does everything I've ever seen him wear. Tabaqui has this theory that Goldenhead would remain beautiful even if he were to be dunked in shit. And the more benign tar and feathers would make him absolutely stunning. Someone who's not used to the visage of the Dark Elf is usually overwhelmed in his presence, buried under a mountain of insecurities. But someone who is used to it, and is also very hungry, should be able to redirect his attention to, say, a bowl of oatmeal. Which is exactly what I do.