Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

Smoker, abandoned, drives around the first floor. Smelling the soot of the streets. He pointedly wheeled away from Sphinx and Blind, and is now regretting having done that. He should have stayed and listened to what else they had to say about him. Once the first angry flash subsided, Smoker began to suspect that what he had heard was meant for his benefit. And that once he left they switched to something unrelated. And that Sphinx received another confirmation that he, Smoker, doesn't know how to listen.

“To hell with you,” he says. “I don't have to listen to your stupid remarks.”

“Whose?” someone asks probingly.

Smoker raises his eyes and meets the Cheshire Cat smile beaming at him, as performed by Red.

“Nobody's,” he mutters distractedly.

He still can't get used to members of other packs engaging him in conversation. Their readiness to actually exchange words confuses him, as if he were still a Pheasant.

Angry at himself for that, he says swiftly, “Sphinx and Blind. They were talking about me right in my face, like I wasn't there. It really pissed me off.”

“Woooow,” Red drawls, his smile becoming even wider. “Lofty stuff. Not for the likes of little old me.”

Smoker winces. He's being made fun of again. But the innate respect for a Leader, albeit a total buffoon such as Red, prevents him from turning around on the spot and leaving.

Red proceeds to proffer a pack of cigarettes like it's no big deal, then flops down on the floor and lights up himself. His hair is the color of caked blood, and his lips are just as bright, so it looks like he's wearing lipstick. Chin scraped while shaving, a bundle of dried chicken bones around his neck. In a word—weird, as all Rats are, but even more so up close.

“Red,” Smoker says, surprising himself. “What do you know about Mother Ann?”

Red throws back his head. The shades flash with the reflections of the hallway lights.

“Not much,” he says and drops the ash from the cigarette right on his pants, white with the flower ornament—staggeringly dirty pants. “History is not my forte. Looks like she was the principal here at the end of the last century. Religious as all get out. Saints talking to her personally, that kind of thing. Joan of Arc gone to seed. I guess being a nun would do that to you. The hospital wing got added to the House on her watch. Before that they only had this one puny room with a nurse and two beds. Also you had to trek over to the town for every little thing. Back then the House was in the boondocks.”

“How did you get to know all that?”

Smoker is astonished at Red's knowledge. Also at the fact that he can apparently talk in a normal, human way. From what he'd observed, Rats communicated mostly in grunts.

“I have no idea,” Red says with a shrug. “Everyone kind of knows it. See, it's this way. When you want to find something here, you go dig in the old papers. There are stacks and stacks of them in the basement. If you're looking for something specific, it could be tough. The newer stuff is closer to the entrance, and the really old ones are in the cabinets by the walls.”

Smoker winces again, this time at the thought that Red—yes, Red!—could dig through musty papers in search of the House's history. Jeez! If someone were to have asked Smoker half an hour ago, he would have confidently said that Red was illiterate.

“That's where Tabaqui got it from.”

Smoker isn't asking, more stating a fact. But Red hears a question.

“Tabaqui!” he laughs. “Tabaqui got it more than everyone else put together. He was the one doing the digging. Digging, sorting, and making us read that crap. You should ask him, he’ll tell you in vivid detail.”

Smoker puffs so hard it makes him cough. Waving the smoke out of his face, he says hoarsely, “Oh, he did. Just didn't think to mention the documents.”

“Yeah, likes to play coy,” Red agrees, yawning. “That's the way he ticks.”

Sphinx appears before them.

“I was looking for you,” he says to Red.

Red sits up straighter.

“Looks like you found me.”

“You fixed up Blind with Gaby. All right, I suppose that if I don't like it, that's my problem. But I'm not going to tolerate regular raids on our room. I'm warning you, if she ever tries to show up again ...”

Red jumps up, diligently hamming up being scared. Smoker can't stop himself from laughing.

“You're going to regret it,” Sphinx concludes. “Am I clear?”

“Better than clear. But what if Blind ...”

“I've already talked to Blind.”

Red takes a clownish bow.

“I’ll do my very best. Count on me anytime. Zeal and eagerness, that's my motto, amigo!”

“Cut it out,” Sphinx says.

“Cutting it out right now!”

Smoker snorts again. Sphinx and Red seem not to notice him. Sphinx studies Red's features thoughtfully, as if trying to recall something. Red scratches himself.

“Anything else I can do for you today?” he says.

“If it's not too much trouble, could you take off the glasses?” Sphinx asks.

“Ah, catching me at my word. That's not very nice. But what the hell. don't get used to it, though.”

He turns his back to the corridor, looks around furtively, and sweeps off the glasses.

And disappears. At least, that's what Smoker sees. That Red is no longer there. Dark eyes framed by copper eyelashes stare dolefully at Sphinx, and the delicate face of their owner belongs to some stranger who cannot possibly be Red. The shaved eyebrows, the scratched chin, the sickening smirk—gone. Those eyes, the eyes of an angel, erased them, transforming the face beyond recognition. The apparition lasts all of two seconds. When Red puts the glasses back on the angel vanishes. What's left is the familiar perverted neurotic.

“Oops,” he says, licking his lips. “The fun is over.”

“Thanks,” Sphinx says, without even a trace of irony. “I missed you, Death. Really missed you.”

“Keep missing,” Red snarls. “There's no Death anymore. So let's leave the strip show for some other time.”

“Red, I'm sorry.” Smoker interrupts the conversation. “I understand it's none of my business, but these glasses really make you look ugly.”

“Why do you think I'm wearing them? To look cute, maybe? Also, why do you think everyone in the Rat Den sleeps with his head in a sleeping bag? Same reason. So that I don't have to duct-tape this fucking optical device to my face at night. Let me tell you, my exalted position does not really jibe with looking like a manga character.”

“I figured that out recently,” Smoker says. “That Leaders in the House are supposed to look like walking corpses. I wonder why.”

“Smart boy,” Red says. “You figured right. And one more thing: even for an honest-to-goodness former corpse it's not an easy job to look like one. I'm not a piece of blue cheese, you know.”

“How do you know what they look like?”

“I happen to have a certain insight.”

Red giggles, bows to Smoker, rattling the chicken bones around his neck, and departs. Disgusting red-lipped fool, despicable Rat Leader. With insights into reanimated corpses.

“You know, Sphinx,” Smoker says, looking at Red's receding back, “I used to play this game with myself: I imagined changing people's clothes. Leaders, mostly. Undressed them in my head, shaved, changed hairstyles, things like that. It was very entertaining. Except I never could get anywhere with Red. I thought that was because of the glasses. Because they obscure most of his face. But now I see that I couldn't because it is simply not him under those glasses.”

Sphinx looks at Smoker with sudden interest.

“Strange games you have, Smoker. Uncommon.”

He doesn't ask any more questions, doesn't say anything at all. He just leaves because someone called to him, but Smoker is so encouraged by this show of apparent interest that, on the way back to the dorm, his mood becomes almost sunny. Could it be that things are not as bad as he feared? That even Sphinx is capable of normal human interaction? His conversation with Red was almost friendly, after all. While rattling up in the elevator, he hears the giggling of a couple on the stairs and the wet sound of their lips separating. On the landing above them, someone's playing the guitar.