Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

How beautiful it is! Small pink flowers run along the border of the bowl; a golden puddle of melted butter occupies its center. The oatmeal is already starting to acquire a tender crust, but obviously is still warm. Not too hot, not too cold, just right. I am mesmerized by it, consumed by the desire to attack it, to chomp and smack my lips and lick the bowl clean, slurp in the milk, and then fall asleep right there. It's funny, the more vividly I imagine all this, the hungrier I get. My legs are about to give under me. I am this close to fainting. Noble stares at me in surprise.

“Hi,” I say tersely, not able to peel myself away from the sight of the bowl. “How are things?”

Yeah. I'm clearly babbling. What things? That was a stupid question. But I had to say something, hadn't I?

Noble grimaces.

“What things? What are you talking about?”

I am silent. A sullen, hopeless silence. The oatmeal is getting cold. Noble frowns. “Are you hungry, by any chance?”

How polite and thoughtful of him.

“Purely by chance—very much so!”

“In that case ...”

But I'm already not listening. I fall upon the oatmeal like a hawk and exterminate it. Apparently I make use of a spoon, because when the meal is finished I notice it stuck in the grip of my right rake. The wrong way around, so it's a mystery how I managed to eat the whole thing with the thin end. But that's not important. I miraculously avoid being suffocated, I still tremble with the now-satisfied craving, and I can gratefully lower myself down on the edge of the bed.

“Noble. Thank you. I know it may sound corny, but you have just saved my life.”

Noble's chin quivers.

“I noticed. I'm sorry, but it was rather obvious.”

I too begin to appreciate the humor of the situation. The putative savior and bringer of consolation showed up bruised, stared at oatmeal with crazy eyes, and then devoured it as soon as he got half an invitation. Inhaled a sick man's lunch.

“Oh. I guess that wasn't very nice,” I admit.

Noble bursts out laughing. I join him. We laugh until tears come, loudly and hysterically. A pair of mental cases. I'm afraid the oatmeal might ask to get out. But the merriment switches off just as abruptly as it started. Noble darkens.

An uncomfortable silence. Exactly what I was dreading all along. There is a wall growing between us. And an iron door with a crest on it—over three stripes bright red, a two-headed overgrown lizard rampant.

“Who was that bastard?” Noble begins, and his tone is painting the fourth stripe: Prone to violence, represents danger to himself and others, requires strict isolation.

“It was Black,” I interrupt hurriedly before a fifth or, heaven forbid, sixth stripe becomes visible. “And don't look at me like that. It's my fault too. I should have smelled a rat when he suddenly was so eager to be left with you. If it's any consolation, I have just about sent him to his grave.”

“And he, you,” Noble scoffs.

“He'd wish.”

Silence again. It would've been better if he'd swear and curse. He's exceedingly good with the meaningful silences. Long ones, too. So we just sit there, and the silence envelops us in a suffocating cloud. It's laced with something strange, though. Noble is more confused than angry. It might be the result of the treatment he's getting, but then again it might not.

“What's going to happen to me?” he asks, just as I lose the last shreds of hope for our conversation.

“I don't know. It depends.”

That's not entirely honest, but I can't just lay it all out. That there's practically no hope. Noble is still shocked, as if I did tell it like it was.

“Shit,” he says. “Of all the stupid, stupid things.”

My own uselessness is devouring me. Soon there will be only bones left. A familiar feeling, one I've had too often ever since Wolf died. Then it turned out that I could get used to living with it. Now I’ll have to drag myself through all of that again. Endlessly repeating to myself that it could have been worse. That at least Noble is alive.

“Listen,” he says, “have you ever used River?”

“No. didn't even try. Not River, not White Rainbow, and not Seven Steps.”

Noble looks at me oddly. He is dying to tell me something and at the same time is afraid of doing it.

“Would you believe it if I told you that I ended up in some godforsaken place and spent at least four months there?”

He asks me and looks away. His fingers are teasing the edge of the blanket, his lips are contorted in a grin, as if I have already started clucking in protest, made a sign of the cross with the rakes and fainted.

Would I? I examine him closer—and only now see that which I should have seen right away, were it not for the oatmeal. He looks older. Gone are the last traces of baby fat, the formerly soft cheeks have been chiseled out. His entire face looks sharper. Looking at him, it's not at all certain that he's not twenty yet. This indeterminability of age, the principal feature of a Jumper, is staring at me so blatantly that it's all I can do not to swear out loud. You had to be someone like Black not to notice it.

My emotions are apparently on open display. His grin becomes even more self-deprecating.

“Yeah, just what I thought. Now you too think I've gone loopy.”

“No, I think that I have. That I'm completely off my game. Damn, not to recognize a Jumper from two paces! What an idiot!”

He blinks in confusion.

“Sphinx? What's going on?”

I get a hold of myself. What the hell did I come here for? To demolish someone's dinner? To parade my exhaustion around, not notice anything, and then, after being shoved face-first into it, to fly off the handle? He trusted his innermost secret to me, and this is how I repay him?

I close my eyes. These are things you're not supposed to talk about. But I've already ruined just about everything, and this is the price I have to pay.

“The landscape looked kind of abandoned,” I begin hurriedly, with my eyes still closed, “a cracked blacktop, fields on both sides, houses here and there. Most of them boarded up. Nothing really memorable... except maybe the diner. More or less on the side of the road. I think it's the first inhabited place for about every other Jumper. There are some who bump straight into the gas station, but not many.”

My head starts spinning. Very slightly, but it's still a warning sign.

“I'm sorry. I'm not supposed to talk about this. I don't know what happened to you afterward and where you ended up, but the beginning of the road to the Underside of the House is the same for everyone. Almost everyone. Am I close?”

I unscrew my eyes and see Noble's eyes occupying half of his face. A sleepwalker who's suddenly been woken up. Now would be the perfect time for Jan to come back and see this insane look. I turn around to check if the door has just opened.

“Noble. Enough. Get yourself together. I never said anything. Leave the blanket alone, count to a hundred. I don't know, have some milk. Jan is coming soon. If you keep staring like that they’re going to pump you full of drugs and pack you off in a straitjacket.”

Noble nods spasmodically. I can see he's desperately trying to follow my advice. Maybe even the “count to a hundred” thing. His face assumes this faraway look. He gets as far as eighty-six, by my estimates.

“But you said you've never had anything like that!” Noble blurts out. “How could you know?”

“See, Noble. The House is a weird place,” I say. “Here people have identical hallucinations. Or at least they start identically. And it's not necessary to swallow or chew anything to get them. You know, I think that if any of the concoctions that the so-called experts are conjuring up here were to be brought into the Outsides and given to someone there, nothing would happen. Maybe a stomachache, but that's all. Hard to be sure, of course, but that's what I think. I could be wrong.”