Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

Every morning I go down to the yard to feed the stray dogs running around in the predawn hours on the other side of the fence, in the Outsides. They know I'm going to show up and wait for me there. All it takes is the secreted half of my dinner, and they are ready to talk to me about their vagabond life, and listen to me talk about mine. They live in a pack, and so do I. We have a lot to discuss. I never ask them if they know what sin is. But I suspect they do. Sometimes, very rarely, I work miracles for them: healing gashes on their paws, growing fur over burns, or conjuring a phantom of the Great White Bitch that resembles a polar bear a bit. They like to chase it along the fence. Then we go our separate ways. They leave to tend to their quarrelsome business, and I return to the House. Occasionally I meet Blind in the hallway, as he's returning from his nightly wanderings. More often on my way down to the yard, but sometimes also on the way back. I often think that if I were to come out at night he would be everywhere, in myriad different disguises, just like my ghost. But I never go out at night. I'm afraid of the dark.

I'm afraid of the dark and of my own dreams. I'm afraid of being alone and of walking into empty rooms. But most of all I'm afraid I might end up in the Cage again, this time by myself. If that were to happen most likely I'd stay there forever. Or snap and bust out of it in some nonhuman way, and that's even worse. I don't know if I'm going to burn in hell or not. Probably yes. If it exists. I can only hope that it doesn't.

By the time I pry open my eyes, the morning has already morphed into the day. Guests are gone, as are all traces of them ever having been here. Alexander sweeps out the broken glass and cigarette butts. Lary is sitting all forlorn, his head wrapped in a towel. Someone seems to have put thistles in my eyes and filled my throat with especially scratchy saliva.

“Hey,” I say in a frail voice. “What's the time?”

Alexander drops the broom and stares at me in horror.

“Must be dying,” Lary says to him, ruefully shaking his betoweled noggin.

Al gasps and runs out, forgetting to close the door behind him. I shouldn't have scared him like that. A simple recitation of the list of all the places where it hurts would have sufficed. I already regret what I said. Though it's flattering, to be capable of arousing an emotional response of this magnitude.

“And you had to choose the first day of the new Law for it,” Lary continues selfishly.

“No one chooses the day of their death,” I say.

The pack has an entire arsenal of treatments for every ailment, mostly contradictory. First Humpback dutifully pokes me in various places as prescribed by ancient Chinese wisdom. Then, following Sphinx's method, I am stuffed into a bath hot enough to cook me alive. I do not protest, because Sphinx's method knows only two variations: scalding hot or freezing cold. They fish me out, pull a sweater over my naked body, slather my back with something that feels like fire, wrap a scarf around my neck, and put socks on my feet, preceded by a thorough alcohol rub.

At this point in the course of treatment I no longer can distinguish whose method is which and try to rip off all of that stuff, but they hold me rather fast while Blind produces a jar of honey from his secret stash, a very small one, and proudly parades it before me. As if I'm still capable of being moved by such things. Then they feed it to me, and force me to wash it down with milk. I have to suffer it until I begin melting under the layers they've wrapped me in, sweating milk and coughing out cream.

Pity me, who is in favor of only one method of healing the sick: tender loving care.

Sphinx entertains me by reading from The Mahabharata . Humpback plays the flute. Lary mashes lemons with sugar in a bowl, while Blind keeps watch, preventing me from slipping away. I grow so tired of these ministrations that I manage to fall asleep inside the fiery, honey-infused cocoon, and all the sarcastic repartee regarding tormentors and torturers, ready to escape from me and enlighten the pack, remains unsaid and tickles me all through the night, insinuating itself into my sweaty dreams.

By next morning my sore throat is gone. I myself am almost gone as well. All that's left are bones and some kind of syrupy substance. At the physical everyone remarks on my perky countenance and milky scent. Mentions of milk make me want to throw up, but this detail happily passes unnoticed by Spiders. Considering the atrocious torture I've been subjected to, I came out of it remarkably well.

The days of the physicals are always on the jittery side, because you never know what the pesky Arthropods might uncover in your internals. And when they confirm that there's nothing wrong with you personally, it's time to start worrying about everyone else, and the rest of the day is taken up by recuperation of the nervous system. So those days are mostly quiet, given to apprehension and then exhaustion.

Already filtered through eight different tests and a swarm of Spiders, but still a center of attention as the weakest link in the pack's chain, I lounge on the pile of blankets with Humpback's gift, a packet of walnuts in the shells. I crack and eat them, chasing them with raisins, and a thought occurs—it's not that bad, being a convalescent. On the other hand, I'm not allowed out into the hallway, and therefore not able to look at the girls and smell for myself the new Law in action. Sphinx keeps saying that there's nothing interesting going on out there, but I don't believe him. How can he know what is or isn't going on in other places when he's right here in the dorm? Also, I'd like to check up on my dragon. I haven't had a chance to look at it properly yet. But both breakfast and lunch are served to me in bed, and even Sphinx, charged with guarding me, takes the meals without leaving his post. So I'm left with nuts and raisins. And they are about to run out.

“If you keep grumbling, I’ll invite Long Gaby,” Sphinx says threateningly. “Then you’ll have your new Law right here in all its inimitable glory.”

“I’ll have a coffee, please,” I say to Alexander, and to Sphinx I reply, “You're bluffing. You're not man enough.”

“You're this close to getting it,” he warns.

But all of that becomes irrelevant, because Long comes by herself. Without waiting for any invitation from any of us. Slams the door and saunters in with that giraffe-like gait. Plops down on Alexander's bed, crosses her legs.

“Well, hello, dudes,” she rasps.

The skirt is almost nonexistent, and we are treated to a view of the elastic on top of the black stockings and a band of white skin above it. Great legs, no argument there. Something to feast the eyes on, especially as compared to the face. Black lifts up his glasses. His eyes open so wide they're almost square. He stares at the legs and then at Sphinx.

“What the hell's that?” he says.

“ That is me, dearest,” Gaby wheezes. “Who did you think it was?”

Black blackens. He's still unaware of the whole business with the locked door, and now he's imagining things that are doubtless intriguing but unfortunately do not have anything to do with reality. He thumps the book down and rounds on Sphinx.