Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

Chapter 1

It is recommended that any mention of the Outsides be completely avoided as a conversation topic, with the exception of situations in which it is being mentioned:

a. absent any connection to the speaker;

b. absent any connection to his interlocutor;

c. absent any connection to their mutual acquaintances.

Including the Outsides in sentences constructed in present or future tense is discouraged. Past tense is permissible, but not advisable either. Mentioning the Outsides in future tense with respect to the interlocutor constitutes a grave insult to the latter. Two people speaking to each other in those terms are engaging in a kind of perversion, acceptable only between very close packmates.

“Because you live cooped up here. In an enclosed space. don't you see? Completely engrossed in yourselves and in this place, like... like chicks still in the shell. I think that's the source of all your perversions.”

“Perversions?” Sphinx coughs, and smoke streams from his nostrils and between the teeth. “How's that?”

Smoker hesitates.

“You know... that stuff...”

“Elaborate,” Sphinx suggests. “That's a strong word, perversion . I'd like to understand what you mean by it.”

Smoker glumly picks at a bead on his sweater. This sweater, in gray and green wool, was knitted for him by Humpback. Around the collar and the sleeves he attached glass balls with black pupils, the kind people use to ward off evil eye.

“You know,” Smoker says, looking up at Sphinx. “You know perfectly well.”

“Let's say I do. Let's say I just need you to spell it out.”

Smoker looks away.

“I meant your games. The Nights, the fairy tales, the fights, the wars... I'm sorry, I just can't see that as something real. So I call it games. Even... even when they end badly.”

“Is this about Pompey again?” Sphinx scowls.

“Him too. But not only him,” Smoker adds quickly. “It could have been someone else. Well, all right, it is about him. doesn't it strike you as over the top—to cut someone down only because he wanted to be the coolest guy here? Here, in this tiny, moldy figment of a world... Sphinx, could you please not look at me that way? You know I'm right! No Leadership can possibly be worth this.”

They are alone in the canteen emptied of people. Chairs pushed away from the tables piled with dirty dishes, tablecloths spattered with sauce and sprinkled with bread crumbs. The door out into the hallway is cracked open.

Sphinx leans back in his chair.

“Smoker. Try to understand,” he says, avoiding looking directly into the flushed face of his vis-a-vis. “What for you means nothing can be everything for someone else. Why is that so hard to believe?”

“Because it's wrong! You're too smart to live like this, with your eyes always closed. To believe that the world begins and ends with this particular building.”

An elderly woman appears in the doors to the kitchen and stares at them, lips pursed. Sphinx stops rocking his chair, brings it closer to the table, and carefully places the cigarette end he was holding between his teeth on the edge of the plate.

“This is a question of freedom,” he says. “Which can be discussed until forever, breaking only for sleep, tea, and movable feasts. Would you like to do that? Tell me, if you please, who is more free: an elephant stomping across the savanna or an aphid sitting on the leaf of whatever plant they sit on?”

Smoker is mesmerized by the cigarette expiring sadly on the plate.

“That's a silly example. Neither possesses consciousness. I’m talking about people.”

“An elephant doesn't? Really?” Sphinx is surprised. “All right. Let's leave the animal world alone, if you wish. You can put out my cigarette, by the way, if it's annoying to you. Take a prisoner and a king ...”

Smoker winces. “Please! Spare me. You're not going to try and convince me that the inmate is the one who's more free? Empty words. Do you really want to identify with a prisoner? Or an aphid?”

“I am simply trying to explain ...” Sphinx looks past Smoker at the kitchen door. The washing lady just came out, resolutely pushing a wheeled cart in front of her. “But I see that I'm talking in a vacuum. You're not listening. Everyone chooses his own House. It is we who make it interesting or dull, and only then does it start working trying to change us. You can choose to agree with me or disagree. It really is your choice.”

“I can choose nothing,” Smoker fumes. “It was all chosen for me. Even before I took the first step inside. They chose the group, and that automatically made me a Pheasant. No one had asked my opinion. And if I were to go to the Second, I'd have no choice but to conform to the Rats' ways. To the idiotic image that they chose for themselves without me and long before me. Is that your idea of freedom?”

“But you didn't make a good Pheasant, did you?”

“I sure tried!”

“Not hard enough, or you would've been one by now. You decided not to. Made your choice.”

“While we're at it, it's as much your fault that I didn't as it's mine,” Smoker says hotly. “You ruined my reputation!”

Sphinx laughs. “Is that regret I hear?”

“Well, no ...” Smoker accidentally dunks his sleeve into the plate still holding the remains of dinner and pushes it away gingerly. “I don't regret that. But after all that happened, you should be the last to lecture me about freedom of choice,” he concludes feebly, rubbing the napkin over the sleeve.

Sphinx watches him with interest. “Look. You're not in the First now, and not in the Second. What's eating you? What kind of role do you think you're being forced to play?”

“Of someone exactly like all the rest of you.”

“You don't mean we're all exactly alike?”

Smoker throws away the crumpled napkin.

“You don't even see it. You don't realize how similar you are. You're so alike it's scary!”

Sphinx looks at him in mock surprise.

“We are? You don't say. Silly me, thinking that there's very little in common between me and Black. So little that it's making communication between us almost impossible. And I also notice that for some reason you decided to adopt his views regarding everything that's around us. So it's becoming more and more difficult for me to communicate with you as well.”

Smoker smiles.

“I see. A dressing-down for consorting with the black sheep.”

“Who's black sheep?” Sphinx says, amazed. “You can't mean Black, surely?”

“Exactly. The only one not sharing your own view. An undesirable.”

Sphinx laughs merrily. “Black? Very funny. There's only one question where he deviates from the majority, and that's the question of his own stature.”

“I can always talk to him about the Outsides,” Smoker counters. “To him, but to no one else.”

“True,” Sphinx says. “Of course he needs his own shtick. And if it happens to get on everyone's nerves, so much the better. But don't get suckered in. He's been here since age six. The Outsides for him is just as much of a fiction as it is for Blind. He's only ever read about it in books. Or seen it in the movies.”

“But at least he's not afraid of it.”

“Is that what he told you?” Sphinx gets up. “All right. Let's stop it here. If you could, for a moment, get unstuck from feeling tragically misunderstood, you might have some time left to understand others. If you could limit your exposure to Black it would do you a world of good. If this stern woman weren't approaching our table right now with such grim determination I could have enlightened you some more. If this door did not lead out into the corridor it would lead somewhere else ...”