Мариам Петросян: The Gray House

The departure from the dorm was organized three-in-a-row, as usual, so as to be able to take positions in front of the sinks without jostling and wash hands before the meal. I did not fall in. This was duly noted, with knowing glances all around.

I began shaking at the table. I was feeling the Pheasants' stares on me. Which way would they turn once they'd had enough? But they couldn't turn away. Or maybe they really didn't know where I was being transferred.

Time stretched out into eternity.

Mashed potatoes. Carrot fritters. The fork with a bent tine. The lady in the white apron pushing the food cart, plates clanking as she goes. White walls. Deep arches of the windows.

I like the canteen. It's the oldest place in the House. Or, rather, the least changed. Windows, walls, and the cracked tiles were quite probably the same as seventy years ago. And the tiled hearth, taking up one of the walls, with the locked cast-iron door. It's beautiful. The only place where the exhortations stop, where you could tune out, look at the other groups, and imagine yourself being a non-Pheasant. That was my favorite game once. Right after I arrived. Then it got boring. And now it occurred to me that I could play it for real, that it wouldn't be a game anymore.

Mashed potatoes and carrot fritters. Tea. Bread. Butter. Our table is in black and white. White shirts, black pants. White plates on black trays. Black trays on white tablecloth. The only colors are in the faces and hair.

The next table belongs to the Second. It's the rowdiest and the most colorful. Dyed mullets, sunglasses, and beads. Thumping earphones. Rats, a cross between punks and clowns. There's no tablecloth, no knives, and the forks are chained to the table. If a day passes without one of them pitching a fit, trying to tear off his fork and stab his neighbor with it, for a Rat that day is wasted. This is purely for show. Everyone in the Second always carries a switchblade or a razor, so all that fuss with the forks is just a way of showing respect for traditions. A little entertainment for the benefit of the dining public. At the head of the table sits Red. Enormous green shades, shaved head, a rose on the cheek, and a constant stupid smirk. Rat Leader. The second one already, that I've seen. Rat Leaders don't last long.

The Third has its own show. They all wear huge bibs with kiddy designs and always lug around the pots with their favorite plants. Considering their perpetual mourning and sour countenance, this also looks like a circus, albeit a sinister one. Probably only Birds themselves are entertained by it. They grow flowers in their room, do embroidery and cross-stitching, they are the quietest and politest after us, but to even think that I might end up among them is horrifying. When I was still playing my favorite game I always skipped them over.

I suddenly have a vision, so palpably ghastly I can almost touch it.

I see myself in the dank and gloomy dorm of the Third. Ivy-covered windows let in very little light. Plants and more plants, in pots and tubs. The center of the room is occupied by the crumbling fireplace.

Birds are wielding needles, all in a row on low stools. On the mantelpiece sits Vulture, seemingly mummified and clad in moth-ridden ermine robes. He is puffing on a hookah and sending clouds of smoke our way.

From time to time one Bird or another gets up and demonstrates his handiwork to Vulture. I feel sick. Both from the heat and from the fact that my stitching looks hideous. The threads are all tangled, bunched, and tattered, I can't even find my needle in that mess, but I know that sooner or later it is going to be my turn to go and present it, and I am deathly afraid. One careless movement and my elbow upends a pot standing nearby, it jumps off and breaks into pieces. The enormous geranium falls down, clods of earth and shards of pottery everywhere.

In the middle of the carnage on the floor—a very white, very clean human skull. The lower jaw is missing. Everyone freezes. They look at me, then at the skull. I hear a disgusting cackle.

“Why yes, Smoker, you are exactly right,” Vulture says, hopping down from the mantelpiece to hobble toward me. “That's our previous transfer, may he rest in peace!”

He laughs, demonstrating his unnaturally sharp, almost sharklike teeth ...

Here I snapped out of it, because I felt my real self in the center of attention, not of Birds but of my own dear Pheasants. They were watching me with great interest. Vulture's sharp-toothed rictus withered down to Gin's lopsided grin, turning my stomach. I bent down to my fritter, hating them so much I nearly threw up. My daydream was just that, a dream. The real scavengers were sitting right here, scanning my face in search of traces of sweat, wetting their lips in anticipation. I suddenly realized that I would rather become a Bird, right this moment. Wear black, learn embroidering, dig up a hundred skulls hidden in flower pots. Anything, just to leave the First. What really upset me was that these feelings could also look from the outside like a panic attack. “That's it,” I told myself, “no more games. Wait until tomorrow. Only thirteen hours left.”

Once, when I was smoking in the teachers' bathroom, flinching at every sound, Sphinx came in there. I was so spooked I threw away the cigarette.

“Look at that, a Pheasant smoking!” Sphinx said, staring at the cigarette butt at his feet, starting to get soggy on the damp tiles. “Wouldn't have believed it if someone told me.”

Then he laughed. Gangling, bald, armless. Eyes as green as grass. Broken nose, sarcastic mouth, always lifted at the corners. Black-gloved prosthetics.

“Got any more smokes?”

I nodded, astonished. He had actually addressed me. No one talked to Pheasants. It just was not done. I almost expected he was going to say next, “Mind if I have one?” but no such luck.

“That's nice” was all he said.

And then he left.

I hadn't assumed for a second he'd say anything to anyone about this. I was wrong.

When people started calling me Smoker a couple of days later, I did not put two and two together at first. He was not the only one who knew. The Little Pigs enlightened me again. Turns out, Sphinx had given me a new nick. Became my godfather. The House nearly collapsed, because that had never happened before. No one had ever christened a Pheasant. Much less someone like Sphinx. Above him there was only Blind, and above Blind there was only the roof and the swallows’ nests.

All this made me a kind of celebrity among non-Pheasants and made all Pheasants hate me, without exception. The new nick sounded to them slightly worse than Jack the Ripper. It annoyed them. It marred their image. But they could not undo it. They didn't have the authority.

I decided not to imagine myself in the Fourth. My snitch of a godfather was there, along with crazy Noble, who'd knocked out one of my teeth when I accidentally locked wheels with him. Also Tabaqui the Jackal, who once sprayed me with some stinky crap from a canister marked Danger , and Lary the Bandar-Log, who coordinated all assaults of Logs on Pheasants. Imagining myself among them didn't help. I had enough trouble as it was.

I finished the soggy fritter. Drank my tea. Ate the bread and butter. Sketched out in my head two separate plans for running away. They were both utterly unworkable, but it still cheered me up. Then dinner ended.

I didn't return to the dorm. I had a smoke in the teachers’ bathroom and went back to the canteen. The landing in front of it was usually empty. There weren't many places like that in the House. I parked the wheelchair by the window and stared at the darkening tops of the trees outside until the lights switched on in the hallway. They made the trees too dark. I wheeled away and started going back and forth in front of the notice boards. There wasn't anything else I could look at. I read them all again for the hundredth time and for the hundredth time found that they never changed. It was the ones behind the boards that changed, all right. They were made in marker, crayon, and paint, and they changed so quickly that those who wanted to leave a message had to paint over the old ones, wait for it to dry, and write on top. Some things were too important for the House denizens not to do properly. I didn't usually read the writings. There were too many of them, and most were too silly. But tonight I had nothing better to do. I parked the wheelchair alongside the boards and peeked into the space between them.