Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

Girls. The new Law.

In the Fourth's bathroom, Lary, perched on the edge of the toilet seat, takes out an empty compact, opens it, and starts squeezing out the pimples using the little mirror, wincing and hissing in pain. Still hissing, he dabs on some aftershave, closes the bottle, and secretes it behind the commode.

Vulture is curled up on the still-made bed in the Third's dorm. His pant leg is rolled up and the exposed knee is wrapped in a wet towel. It isn't helping.

“More music,” he growls, not opening the eyes, and Birds trip over one another to turn up the boombox volume. Elephant looks at his Leader, then toddles over to the window. There, on the windowsill, in a festive red pot, stands Louis the cactus. Vulture's favorite. Its flower hangs down forlornly, a sad shard of the desert.

“Well?” Elephant whispers to the cactus accusingly. “Can't you see? He's hurting. Help him.”

Snowflakes, barely visible, stream past the window. First snow of the year. Elephant lifts his head to admire them and forgets about Vulture.

In the First's classroom, Pheasant Gin, with a black ribbon around his arm, calls to order the “Memorial service for the dearly departed brother Ard. Ghoul.” Pheasants rustle paper sheets with suitable poems selected for the occasion and sigh, waiting for their turn to speak.

In the library Black is thumbing through the encyclopedia, the entries starting with F . Between the pages he spots a folded scrap of paper. He unfolds it. Freedom can only be found inside you, someone is telling him in slanted handwriting.

Smoker is studying a catalogue of Bosch's paintings. When he looks up he sees Tabaqui staring at him.

“Why the long face?” Jackal asks.

“Why not?”

“Listen to him,” Sphinx said.

Smoker listens.

“Why?” Jackal asks again.

He takes only what he needs.

“Sometimes it's like I don't know you guys at all.”

Tabaqui generously throws open both of his vests.

“Well, here I am! For all to see. What's not to know?”

Under the vests he has on a grubby T-shirt. With red giraffes prancing on blue background.

Dinner is over. Counselors, up on their third floor, shut the House out behind double locks and try to convince themselves it doesn't exist. Kitchen workers start their cars and roll out of the yard. The first snow, wet and sparse, becomes momentarily visible in the headlights.

At the bottom of the stairs going up to the girls' quarters, Lary, wearing the prettiest of the shirts left behind by Noble, is saying good-bye to Needle, a tall blonde girl.

“There's nothing to be scared of,” he keeps saying. “They’re nice guys, you’ll see. They are going to like you. I promise.”

Needle is shaking her head. Her bangs fall over her right eye.

“No way! I'm not going there. don't even think about it!”

Lanky Gaby stuffs the photograph of Marilyn back under the mattress and sits on top, pulling her black-stockinged legs closer under her to keep from the cold. There are three more identical pairs of stockings draped over the heater, drying. Gaby takes them one by one and puts her hand inside, trying to find two with the least number of holes, so that she can scratch together a decent-looking pair.

In the First, Pheasants, waving black ribbons, break out in a collective song, doing their best to “bravely fight back the tears at this trying hour.” Their singing is exhausting for Smoker in the Fourth, even though he does not hear it. Cards float down on the blanket—Tabaqui is playing solitaire. Sphinx is toying with the cat: he flips it over with the nose of his shoe and then deftly avoids the sharp claws. Black is lying on Humpback's bed, face to the wall. He can't be seen from below, but everyone knows he's there. He's not asleep. He is reading Humpback's poems written on the wall in crayon. He feels ashamed for doing it, like someone not averting his eyes from a private letter left open in front of them.

The lights go out. The last Log stragglers left in the corridors rush to their respective dorms. An Asian-looking girl in a wheelchair, Doll, switches on a small green flashlight on a chain and raises it above her head. Beauty walks next to her, miraculously keeping his balance even in the dark. Doll is beautiful. Petite, with a remarkably smooth, cloudless face. Logs that are running by, lips at the ready for the next piece of gossip, giggle and slam into walls, unable to look away from her.

Black has moved to his own bunk. He's trying to remember the poem that he especially liked, the one about the old man who pulled the dog out of the river. Up above him, Humpback is industriously rubbing the wall with his saliva-moistened handkerchief, erasing that very poem. Smoker sighs and tosses about in his sleep. The nightlight throws pink highlights on the bumps and folds of the rumpled blanket.

Between the bumps and folds of the rumpled blanket a white building starts to grow. It inches upward, becoming a twenty-two-story tower. The little dots of the windows light up. Smoker flies up to the fourteenth floor and peers into the window. Father, Mother, and Brother, all rigid and unmoving, creepily resembling mannequins, sit on the sofa in the living room and look back at him.

He flies inside, awkwardly flapping his arms and wagging the lower part of his body.

“There you are, sonny... Finally. Come sit with us.”

Now he's in his bed, the curtains are drawn. It's dark in the room. The floor starts to vibrate.

“What was that?”

Like a marching column, they enter in rows. Identical black-and-white magpie clothes, identical haircuts. Pheasants.

“Come on... Get up,” comes the squeaky voice of the late (he died! I remember now!) Ard. Ghoul, and the long limp noodle of his finger aims directly at the middle of Smoker's forehead. That place immediately erupts in pain, as if he got hit there. “Up!”

They must know I can’t!

Smoker doesn't move. The whiny voices around him keep repeating, “UP! GET UP! RISE AND SHINE!” until he begins to cry.

“You didn't come to my memorial service,” Ghoul hisses, screwing the tip of his finger into Smoker's aching head.

“At this trying hour!” Pheasants sing in unison. “The hour of farewells!”

Is this my memorial service now? But I'm alive!

There's a pot with a geranium on the nightstand. Smoker peers into the foliage and notices a tiny green spot on one of the leaves.

“Come here,” Sphinx's voice whispers. “Come on, don't be afraid.”

The leaf grows until it blocks out the room. Each vein in it is the size of a tree, the soft fuzz covering it is a wild meadow. Sphinx, in a green cloak with translucent wings, is swinging his legs at the edge of the emerald savanna.

“See? That was easy. No reason to be scared.”

“Is this where we are going to live now? Forever?”

The leaf trembles, echoing with distant thunder.

“What was that?”

“That? Oh, that's elephants running,” Sphinx says, waving the long antennae growing right above his eyes. “Running... running ...”

“That's right, sonny,” Father says, putting his hand on Smoker's knee. They are back on the living-room sofa, Mother and Brother are next to him. “You see, sometimes they just run through here, minding their own business.”

Smoker stares at the enormous print of an elephant's foot on the brownish carpet.

The trapdoor to the House's attic lifts up, creaking. Blind squeezes into the opening, then places the hatch back without getting off his knees. The hatch has a large iron ring on top, and nothing on the bottom—it's Blind's personal entrance. He shakes the dust out of his clothes and creeps along the attic, treading softly on the floorboards. There are five steps from the trapdoor to the chair, but somehow only four and a half the other way. He knows that the old chair with the busted seat is waiting for him in the exact same place he left it. No one else ever comes here. Just him and Arachne. She hangs in the corner—tiny, almost invisible. Pretending to be dead. Blind lowers himself onto the edge of the busted seat and takes the flute from under his sweater.