Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

Blind nodded.

“And you also haven't the foggiest idea how he died?”

“I do. But I am not allowed to say.”

Ralph sighed.

“Right. So why do you suppose I ask Leaders to come here when I need information? Well, I can tell you, it's not because I enjoy listening to them brush me off with empty talk. Dismissed. You may leave.”

Blind got up. “You forgot to ask about one more person.”

“I didn't forget anything. It's just that I am no longer enjoying this conversation. I'm not in the mood to continue it. Go away.”

Blind did not go anywhere. His face clouded with apprehension, as if he knew he had to undertake a daunting task with no hope of being able to accomplish it.

There, Ralph thought with relief. He's going to ask for something, and I’ll learn what can make Blind turn himself inside out.

“What do you want to ask me for?” he said.

“Noble. For you to find out something about him. It's been a month since they've taken him, and we haven't heard anything. Where he is, or how he is.”

Ralph did not answer, trying to hide the astonishment. The nicks on the walls, painted over; the things, distributed; the funeral laments, performed—all this he had seen and heard and known about. Those who left the House were a part of this knowledge, one of the facets he was absolutely sure of. And yet what Blind had just asked for, even the mere mention of someone who was supposed to have ceased existing, to never have existed the moment he was taken from the House, blew that sureness completely out of the water.

Blind waited patiently. Ralph's cigarette suddenly burned his fingers.

“You're dismissed,” he repeated. “Go.”

“What about Noble?”

“I said you may go.”

Blind's face froze. He opened the door and disappeared. Ralph did not hear anything; Blind moved soundlessly.

Ralph remained standing, looking up at the glass panel on top of the door. The letter R , inverted back to front, oozed into the room, a warning and a caution, reminding him that he was but a part of the House.

Maybe that's the real reason for my return. To find out what happened to one of them now that he's gone where they can't reach him. And to bring them the answer... They've been waiting for me.

I don't like stories. I like moments. I like night better than day, moon better than sun, and here-and-now better than any sometime-later. I also like birds, mushrooms, the blues, peacock feathers, black cats, blue-eyed people, heraldry, astrology, criminal stories with lots of blood, and ancient epic poems where human heads can hold conversations with former friends and generally have a great time for years after they've been cut off. I like good food and good drink, sitting in a hot bath and lounging in a snowbank, wearing everything I own at once, and having everything I need close at hand. I like speed and that special ache in the pit of the stomach when you accelerate to the point of no return. I like to frighten and to be frightened, to amuse and to confound. I like writing on the walls so that no one can guess who did it, and drawing so that no one can guess what it is. I like doing my writing using a ladder or not using it, with a spray can or squeezing the paint from a tube. I like painting with a brush, with a sponge, and with my fingers. I like drawing the outline first and then filling it in completely, so that there's no empty space left. I like letters as big as myself, but I like very small ones as well. I like directing those who read them here and there by means of arrows, to other places where I also wrote something, but I also like to leave false trails and false signs. I like to tell fortunes with runes, bones, beans, lentils, and I Ching. Hot climates I like in the books and movies; in real life, rain and wind. Generally rain is what I like most of all. Spring rain, summer rain, autumn rain. Any rain, anytime. I like rereading things I've read a hundred times over. I like the sound of the harmonica, provided I'm the one playing it. I like lots of pockets, and clothes so worn that they become a kind of second skin instead of something that can be taken off. I like guardian amulets, but specific ones, so that each is responsible for something separate, not the all-inclusive kind. I like drying nettles and garlic and then adding them to anything and everything. I like covering my fingers with rubber cement and then peeling it off in front of everybody. I like sunglasses. Masks, umbrellas, old carved furniture, copper basins, checkered tablecloths, walnut shells, walnuts themselves, wicker chairs, yellowed postcards, gramophones, beads, the faces on triceratopses, yellow dandelions that are orange in the middle, melting snowmen whose carrot noses have fallen off, secret passages, fire-evacuation-route placards; I like fretting when in line at the doctor's office, and screaming all of a sudden so that everyone around feels bad, and putting my arm or leg on someone when asleep, and scratching mosquito bites, and predicting the weather, keeping small objects behind my ears, receiving letters, playing solitaire, smoking someone else's cigarettes, and rummaging in old papers and photographs. I like finding something lost so long ago that I've forgotten why I needed it in the first place. I like being really loved and being everyone's last hope, I like my own hands—they are beautiful, I like driving somewhere in the dark using a flashlight, and turning something into something completely different, gluing and attaching things to each other and then being amazed that it actually worked. I like preparing things both edible and not, mixing drinks, tastes, and scents, curing friends of the hiccups by scaring them. There's an awful lot of stuff I like.

What I don't like are clocks and watches.

All kinds.

For reasons too tedious to enumerate. So I won’t.

Today the House saw the return of Ralph. The man of mystery. A fossil of sorts, the only living witness among the counselors of times gone by. It's not that we particularly missed him, but with him it's somehow a bit more lively around here. Those who had joined the House in the last three years are picturesquely apprehensive of him, contributing to a unique aura whenever he's prowling the hallways. An aura of awe. I’ll say it straight. This man is our Darth Vader. Clad in black, horrible, and inscrutable. The only thing missing is the wheezy helmet. And as soon as he returned, things got interesting.

The one to bring in the news was Lary, naturally. At the last period. We didn't have time to discuss it, since the class had just begun, so we had to stew until the bell. But then it started coming hard and fast. Every five minutes someone else visited us with a special report on the current whereabouts of R One. I suggested pinning a map of the House on the wall and sticking flags in it marking his movements, but no one offered help in making the map. And trying to draw it alone is no easy task. I should know. Pity, though. Ralph would have felt himself flattered by such evidence of attention to his person. It was my considered opinion that, upon return, he sank into a depression and would have benefited from cheering up.

The return in question had been a foregone conclusion, but it's been foregone for such a long time now that everyone got kind of used to the way things were, and so when Ralph did indeed return we were a bit shaken up. For us it meant that we now had someone who could put out the feelers to find out what had happened to Noble. Which meant that he'd returned in the very nick of time.