Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

I wasn't doing anything for them. Almost nothing. Even though miracles were as necessary for them as air and water, and there I was, silent, simply living among them, and all I wished was to really become one of them.

I secretly gave them bits and pieces of miracles—so small that you could pass them around, stuff them in a pocket and then pretend there was nothing there, nothing at all. I was good at it. Until one of them discovered my secret. It was inevitable. They all had a keen sense of smell, the Tube and the venom of the multitudes on the outside never dulled it. And I was careless. Little Jackal knew that Alexander was not like anyone else. Blind suspected something. And Wolf... It's funny and sad at the same time: he was the one I feared the least of all, and the one to whom I gave more of the forbidden miracles. The burning substance that clung to my hands when I passed them over his spine tried to poison me in the time it took to carry it to the sink. My palms swelled with his pain, and I was grateful for it. Gratitude and love, those were their lessons for me, and I came to expect those from them. Foolish. Sphinx knew what he was doing when he warned me that day: “There are to be no miracles. None, you hear?”

If two are placed within the stuffy, soft-walled limits of the Cage, they are at the same time close and alone. Too many hours to spend this way, in closeness and isolation. And... “I’m not stupid, Alexander, I can feel it. Wolves can always feel things like that.” And “don't you trust me, goddamn it? Aren't we friends?” I should have heard that, should have remembered the toothless grin and the gray mane of that other one who so loved to pepper his speech with “damn it.” I should have locked myself with a million locks there and then, as soon as I was given that warning, but I'd forgotten my previous lives. The warmth of this life melted my resolve, and I talked to him the same way I talked to Sphinx, offering myself to him, but he wasn't Sphinx, not even close, I realized it right there, in the stifling confines of the Cage, when he bared his crooked fangs and smiled: “You're mine now!” I realized that the trap had sprung, that it was already too late. I was chained again; not an angel this time but rather a demon, because that was what he needed, and I always morphed into whatever was needed, with only one exception. “Hey, quit whining! It's not like I want a lot from you!” I cried and hugged his knees, I crawled at his feet like the least of the shaved heads, I screamed with the pain of the reincarnation. “What are you bawling about? I'm not hurting you, I'm not doing anything to you, leave my feet alone, you miserable weirdo!” I fled into the corner, but he pulled me out again, he shook me and slapped my cheeks with cold, detached curiosity. Of course I knew what he wanted. Wolf's innermost wish was no secret from anyone. “I don't want him dead, understand? I'm not a murderer. Let him just walk away. Leave the House, go into the Outsides and never return. Got that?” The walls like pillows in flowery chintz, white lights, his sweaty face and angry hands... And “Stop the hysterics! What's so scary about what I'm asking?” What he was asking was hideous, but I couldn't find the words to explain why. It's better to kill someone than to make him a slave to your desires. Wolf didn't know that.

Are curses becoming a demon? Of course. But I didn't do anything. I resolved to remain Alexander until the last possible moment, until I couldn't anymore. Knowing that tomorrow the end would come, Gray House would learn the truth, and then I'd be torn apart by the seekers of miracles. Alexander would be no more. Someone else would take his place, and there would be a different House, without Sphinx, without Tabaqui, where I would be completely alone, like a gutted insect slapped between two pieces of glass to be studied through the thick lenses of a microscope. “I’ll tell everyone about you, miracle worker, every Pheasant will know, every stray dog. They’re going to tear you to pieces, understand?” I crawled away and lay on the floor. My head was swimming, needles pricked in my hands, I was burning up. My answer, my refusal, I buried deep inside my soul, along with the coming fall out of a window—or maybe off the roof, the roof was even better—and the broken rusty chain that could never again be used to bind me, forever and ever amen... Then the deliverance came, I freed myself of myself and roared away, through walls and ceilings, through clouds and rain, into the burning blackness of space.

For two days after that he left me alone, did not remind me. But I was tired of the fear. It all happened by itself. My curse pierced him in the night, and he did not wake up. I ran away from my sin, I locked myself in the bathroom, I prayed and cried. I went looking for the way up into the attic. I didn't find it, neither the attic nor the way to get there. Then I went down to the yard and climbed up the fire escape. I stood at the edge of the roof when the sun came up, bathing the world in gold and turquoise, and the swifts jetted overhead with joyous noise, and still I stood there, unable to make myself jump. It turned out to be harder, much harder than I thought. I was all swollen with tears, I swayed and pleaded with the wind to help me, but it was too feeble for that. Then I heard a horrified scream—I imagined it was Sphinx—and my legs pushed me on their own accord. I took a step, slipped, scrambled for purchase on the rounded edge of the steel plate, fell, and grabbed it with my hands. And immediately realized that I was not going to let go. No matter what. Not if I had to hang like that for a long time, not if I got tired, not even by accident. I hung there and cried. Then I pulled myself up and lay flat on the roof, legs still dangling. The palms of my hands were on fire, there was blood on them, and also something was trickling down my leg and pooling in my shoe. I knew that I was forever a coward, and I hated myself. The sun was beating down on me. The edge of the roof dug under my ribs. One of the girls saw me out of the window of their wing, I heard her shouting and pulled farther up, so I was fully on the roof. But I could not get up and climb down. This was how the two long-limbed Spiders found me. They grabbed me and took me with them.

Later I tried doing it again, in a different way, but it didn't work the second time either... Blind came to visit me in the Sepulcher. He had on this one-size-fits-all white gown; it would have fit two more of him easily. He climbed on the bed, sat there cross-legged, and listened to my silence.

“Why?” he asked.

“There is a great sin on me,” I said. “I cannot be redeemed.”

After Wolf I knew better than to trust them. I waited. What would this one say? The one hiding inside himself. Not nice at all, the way Wolf had seemed. Quite the opposite. It could have been anything. He could turn into Sphinx. I remembered the oath I gave him and then broke: “If you want to stay with us ...” If he did that, I'd have to go away. Or he could turn into Wolf and make a razor blade out of me. I never told him who it was that I was supposed to forever tether to a post beyond the House gates. He could have decided he owed me something, and I didn't want that.

“Come back,” he said. “No one is going to find out.”

“Why?” I said. “And how do I pay for it?”

“Stupid,” Blind said. And left.

So I went back. Life goes on, and my sin is still on me. While I live, it will be thus. I have no way to atone. Ghosts constantly stream through these walls, but only one of them bares his fangs at me. He is everywhere. On the windowsill when I pull away the curtain, waiting for me in the shower, even at the bottom of the bath when I am about to climb in, looking at me with burning eyes from underwater. I am almost used to it now, and don't go to pieces anymore every time we meet. I go to bed later than before and rise earlier, to make sure my nights are dreamless—because in the dreams he can do whatever he wants with me. I'm tired of him, and he of me, but we cannot get rid of each other. The pills help, but only for a while.