Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

“Tabaqui, stop it,” Alexander pleads. “I'm going to have a hard time sleeping tonight as it is.”

While he's drying and dressing me I take the stone out of my pocket. This time I manage to take a closer look at it, even though it's not easy with the towel scrubbing my head. It is oblong and light blue in color. Both the color and the shape seem familiar, resembling—what? I keep fiddling with it, turning it this way and that, trying to figure it out.

Alexander wraps me in a dressing gown and deposits me on the bed under the blankets. I burrow even deeper and keep thinking. The stone is warm in my hand. We go to sleep together, and the dream I have is about it and about that which it resembles.

I wake up to soft guitar chords. It's dark except for the red Chinese lantern hanging low above the bed. It gives off barely enough light. I stare at it for a long time, until I start swaying in unison with it.

Somewhere very close—Sphinx's voice. He's singing, something about “the hole in a black truck tire against brown grass.” Muffled noise on the other side of the wall, like there's a party going on. I pull off the covers and sit up. Could it be that I missed dinner? That's something that doesn't happen very often.

There's something awfully familiar about Sphinx's song. Vulture's head is nodding over the guitar's strings. And what looks like Shuffle's feet are hanging off the headboard. His right one especially is very distinctive.

“Are you awake?” Humpback whispers. “You're not ill, by any chance? You've missed dinner.”

“If I am, then chance had nothing to do with it. What's that noise?”

“Celebrating the new Law. Or have you forgotten? So we're also kind of celebrating. The old gang's here.”

I remember. Everything, including my dream. The stone in my hand is wet. Now I know exactly what it looks like. And it's a very strange coincidence.

Right now the important thing is my dream. I need to fulfill it. That's what I think.

The pale pinkish glow of the lantern. The plates of shard-like sandwiches. Glasses clinking, black wine sloshing inside. The old gang: Vulture, Shuffle, Elephant, Beauty. My hand reaches for the harmonica, but flees by itself. Not now. Need to remember... I grab the nearest sandwich and eat it.

Humpback breathes tenderly into the flute. Sways, bumps into me. Someone is chomping loudly behind my back. Irritating.

after Two-Week Retreat

The guitar passes on to Shuffle. A succession of somber chords. The sandwich suddenly comes to an end, and then another one. Now it's Vulture droning hoarsely:

When he comes to the “Cabin in the Rockies” we're interrupted by an explosion of noise from the dorms up and down the hallway. I crawl in the direction of Vulture's voice.

“Listen. Could you maybe lend me your stepladder? It's very important. And I'd like to avoid answering the question ‘Why,’ if you don't mind.”

He's pink, like everything around him that's illuminated by the lantern. Leans over, reeking of wine.

“No problem at all. Of course. It's yours, for however long you need it.”

He has a short whispered conversation with someone invisible and turns back to me.

“You drive over with Beauty. He’ll tell the boys, they’ll bring it out.”

“Thanks. I’ll call for him when I'm ready.”

I crawl over the sandwiches, legs, and bottles—and here I am on the floor, and the stone is in my pocket, and I'm dying to find out if I can accomplish what I decided to do before lights out. Everyone's making merry. I hate leaving them now, but time's a-wasting.

I put on the warmest clothes I can find. The tools I need are in the anteroom, in the boxes under the coat hangers. The bulb here is dim, but after the flashlight it's almost blinding. At first all I manage to dredge out are rags and old ossified shoes—useless crud. Shuffle's guitar perversions in the room grow even more elaborate. I fret and worry, until finally there comes out the thing I was looking for: the brush with the can of white paint and some more rags stuck to it. I take them and some other small things that might prove useful, call Beauty, and wheel into the corridor with him.

He comes inside the Third while I wait by the door. The Nest is quiet, unlike the other dorms—all clatter and wailing. The common room is full of jumping, mulleted shadows. Our Lary must also be there somewhere.

I have my warmest vest on, but I still shiver. The can, covered in dry paint drippings, I hold in my hands, and the rest—the scraper, the knife, brushes—I try to stuff in my pocket, where they collide with the remains of something edible. I shake out those. The rats who happen to run this way tonight are in for a treat.

The door of the Third opens and lets out Guppy.

“Hey,” he says. “Where do I put the stepladder?”

I show him. They bring the ladder. Guppy huffs and puffs and clanks its metallic parts, while Beauty mostly bumps into its legs. He's not much help, in short. Bubble, in pajamas and yawning, drags himself out as well.

“Damn Logs all bolted. Celebrating some crap or other,” he whines. “Now we're supposed to lug this. It's heavy, and here we are with our health condition.”

“Daddy's orders are Daddy's orders,” Dearest says. He also has on pajamas, but is holding a suspicious-looking bottle under his arm.

“How about a swig in honor of the new Law?” he offers as he wheels closer. “Everyone's so happy, wouldn't do for us not to join in.”

So while they install the stepladder, we drink some homebrew junk, made by him personally.

“Now give me a hand up,” I say.

Two more stumble out to look at them lifting me up. Bubble worries that I'm going to fall. Angel worries that I'm going to throw up right on Vulture's stepladder. At the top I can see much more clearly how dirty and spider-infested the ceiling is. The wall is dark and dirty as well. I take care of insulation—spreading Guppy's blanket under me. The top step is tiny, I have to keep the paint can balanced on my knees. To go tumbling from here, hitting all the steps on the way down, is a scary thought.

I sigh quietly, wave to the Bird throng below, and start drawing. Just as I expected, they soon grow tired of craning their necks trying to decipher my scribbles and freezing their tails off in the process, and slowly drift away. My head is spinning from the vile hooch Dearest calls tequila. What I'm drawing is the outline of a dragon standing on its hind legs. It is coming out strange: a bit like a horse and a bit like a dog. I would have done better in a more convenient spot, but this’ll have to do. I give it teeth and sharp talons on the front paws. Talons are important. Once it becomes obvious that it's a dragon I'm looking at, I crack open the can and fill it in.

Gunk, hair, and assorted debris that drowned in the can long ago—my poor dragon is now covered in all of this. When the white brush follows its jagged spine, my hand starts shaking. Time and I, we’re not exactly on the best terms, but it appears I may pull it off, even though it's too early to tell for sure. I can't sit here and wait until the dragon dries completely. With the pocket knife I start gouging out a hole for the eye.

This is hellishly difficult. The hole is almost ready, and then the can suddenly jumps off my knees and disappears below. Awful racket. It rolls around down there for a while, then finally gets stuck, and I'm still busy with the eye. The hole is already quite deep. I probe it with my finger. Now for the lilies. I scratch them into the wet surface of my dragon with the tip of the knife, the crude fleurs-de-lis, all over. Once I'm done, the dragon is no longer just any dragon, it's Noble, because lily equals Noble if you want to draw him quickly and recognizably. I sign my work.