Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

“Do not invoke His name in vain, you despicable person.”

Sphinx stared at me for a while longer, shaking his head, then slid down on the bed and switched off, like a busted light. Tabaqui took special care to climb out of the nest and pull the blanket over him, then sniffed at him thoroughly and, apparently satisfied, crawled back into his pillows.

When the morning rituals began, two hours later, we weren't able to rouse Sphinx. He never acknowledged the gentle patting or calling him by name, and when someone tried to shake him he snarled that this someone was going to have his head bitten off, so Humpback decided to leave him alone.

The morning turned out lousy. It was gray and wet all the way through, like a slippery cap of some mushroom in the forest. On days like this all the door handles resist harder than usual, all food scratches the mouth, the early birds are disgustingly perky and are not letting anyone lounge in bed, while the night owls are miserable and snap at every other word. Sphinx, usually the first among the disgusting early birds, was out of commission for the time being, and so his role in terrorizing the inhabitants was taken up by Humpback, who jetted around like crazy, imitated a rooster, rang a handbell, tooted on his flute, poked the sleepers with chair legs, and dumped clothes on them.

Lary, moaning and groaning, dangled his feet in tattered socks from his bunk. Tabaqui was already chomping on something that was dripping all over the blanket. Blind, in his acid-green shirt, was smoking in the open window. I dug deeper and deeper under the blanket, fully aware that I wouldn't be allowed to continue sleeping.

The boombox wailed “Oh! Darling” by The Beatles. Tabaqui was singing along in a falsetto voice, right in my ear. He even lifted the blanket to make sure he aimed correctly. It was useless. I crawled out.

While turning the wheelchair around by the window, I looked out. The wires of the fence weren't there. The houses and streets all had disappeared. It was completely quiet. Even Nanette's kin had scrambled somewhere. Blind turned his sharp face toward me. The mist in his gray eyes very much resembled the one outside the window.

“Backs of mice?” he said.

“Rather big blobs of cotton wool,” I said. “Or maybe clouds.”

At this he nodded and turned away.

At breakfast we were given boiled water to drink. It was supposed to ward off colds. Another one of the administration's pet ideas. There was no music after we came back, and no card playing. Everyone was catching up on more sleep. Now even the yard itself disappeared, and the gray clouds (or was it really backs of mice?) came up to the windows.

They brought Noble in after lunch.

“He's coming,” Lary announced, bursting in with the clatter of a wild mustang. “And those... Shark and the others ...”

The others turned out to be two livid-faced Cases and, surprisingly, Homer.

They wheeled Noble in, installed him on the bed, and clustered around. Noble was sleepy and grumpy, dressed in the hospital gown—one of those things that rob faces and bodies of individuality, making everyone look the same. Alexander took his clothes out of the closet. Noble was changing into them while the principal's retinue stood there and gawked.

“You are his comrades, you could have helped,” Homer said.

“I can handle this,” Noble said curtly, sliding into his jeans.

“Such a nervous boy,” Homer said, aghast. “Nervous and abrupt.”

“If only that was the worst of it,” Shark replied, his eyes darting around the room, looking for traces of criminal behavior.

By some miracle we didn't even have a single ashtray out, so all his efforts were wasted.

“You have thirty minutes to pack,” he said. “And none of your tricks. Leave nothing behind, you're not coming back here.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Noble said.

Homer's eyes rolled back in his head, and he seemingly stopped breathing. Tabaqui giggled. Shark swung around so fiercely that I shrunk back.

“One more peep out of any of you and you’ll regret the day you were born,” he hissed.

There were no more peeps out of anyone. Homer left, still unable to come to terms with the shock he'd just suffered, while Shark remained to observe Humpback and Alexander pack Noble's stuff. It all fit in two bags. One of the Cases took them away. Noble climbed in his wheelchair and looked at us. He hadn't uttered a single word during all of this, apart from what he'd said to Shark. And had he restrained himself, Shark might have given us the opportunity to say our good-byes in private. The other Case grabbed the handles of Noble's wheelchair, and, for some reason, Alexander placed Humpback's jacket on Noble's knees. It was a heavy leather jacket, originally black but currently black and white, because it was first worn out until it became white and then blackened back with dirt and soot. This monster, bedecked in badges and touched up with paint here and there, was dubbed “dinosaur skin.” Tabaqui claimed that it was bulletproof. But Noble seemed delighted.

“Thanks,” he said, looking at Humpback.

This was where the levee broke. The Case had to jump out of the way.

When Noble was wheeled out, he resembled a scarecrow. He had on Alexander's sweater, a veteran of many a general cleanup; Tabaqui's craziest vest; Lary's belt with the monkey-head buckle; Sphinx's fingerless glove on his left hand; and Blind's seashell on a string around his neck. Also there was Nanette's feather behind his ear and Tubby's bib in his pocket. I had nothing I could give him except cigarettes, so I gave him a pack, but then remembered about the amulet, the one allegedly containing basilisk eggshell, and handed it over to him as well.

No one went out to see Noble off.

The heat descended on the House, and with it came volleyball fever and vacations. The inhabitants of the House discarded it like a tired shell and hatched out into the sun—anyone who could walk or ride, yell and watch, and especially those who could run and hit the ball. The House was utilized for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and sleep, but the locus of the civic activity moved to the yard, where the opening of the volleyball season was proudly celebrated.

The court was bisected by the net and framed by the chairs and benches. Those had all been bristling with warning signs since early morning, and by the time breakfast was over there was nowhere to sit or escape from the sun. The elite spectator spots were shielded by a canopy. Everyone else had to make do with parasols.

The walking boys would rush to claim the crate seats right after breakfast. The Stuffage gang, the Singings from the Nesting, the unfortunates of the Cursed room. Sometimes fights broke out for the best spots. The junior wheelers came out later, together with seniors, secure in the knowledge that the counselors would take care of their seating arrangements. The walking weren't thus privileged, so they had to wage war for every crate. On the other hand, once the game began they were promptly shooed away, sent to bring water, lemonade, and cigarettes, only to find their places taken up when they returned. They then had to settle down directly on the dirt, but even there they had no respite from demands, since someone soon was parched from shouting too much, another needed sunglasses to cover blinded eyes, and everybody was continually thirsty. For the walking juniors, the games consisted mostly of running errands. Surprisingly, they seemed to enjoy this. They enjoyed everything that had to do with the seniors' entertainment. The sun, the ball flying up to the heavens, the sunglasses on every face, and the general air of screaming insanity.

Poxy Sissies were the last to make their appearance in the yard. They therefore had to contend with the worst seats, in the very back, but that did not bother them in the slightest. They were hardly interested either in the game itself or in those seniors who flitted around the court accompanied by the fittest among the counselors. They had their own delights. Blind practiced discerning the fortunes of the teams based on the shouts from the crowd. Beauty gnawed on his fingers and dreamed of catching the ball if it happened to fly in their direction. Magician absorbed the applause and the catcalls, imagining himself on stage. Grasshopper studied the seniors.