The Gray House

THE HOUSE

INTERLUDE

The House sits on the outskirts of town. The neighborhood is called the Comb. The long buildings of the projects here are arranged in jagged rows, with empty cement squares between them—the intended playgrounds for the young Combers. The teeth of the comb are white, they stare with many eyes, and they all look just the same. In places where they haven’t sprouted yet there are the fenced vacant lots. The piles of debris from the houses already knocked down, nesting grounds for rats and stray dogs, are much more appealing to the young Combers than their own backyards, the spaces between the teeth.

In the no-man’s-land between the two worlds—that of the teeth and of the dumps—is the House. They call it Gray House. It is old, closer in age to the dumps, the graveyards of its contemporaries. It stands alone, as the other houses shun it, and it doesn’t look like a tooth, since it is not struggling upward. Three stories high, facing the highway, it too has a backyard—a narrow rectangle cordoned off by chicken wire. It was white when built. It has since become gray, and yellowish from the other side, toward the back. It is bristling with aerials, it is strewn with cables, it is raining down plaster and weeping from the cracks. Additions and sheds cling to it, along with doghouses and garbage bins, all of it in the back. The facade is bare and somber, just the way it is supposed to be.

Nobody likes Gray House. No one would admit it openly, but the inhabitants of the Comb would rather not have it next to them. They would rather it didn’t exist at all.

They approached the House on a hot August day, at the hour that chases away the shadows. A woman and a boy. The street was deserted; the sun had burned everyone away. The meager trees along the sidewalk failed to protect from its rays, as did the walls of the buildings—the melting white teeth in the blindingly blue sky. The pavement gave way under the feet. The woman’s heels left small dimples in it, and the neat sequence of them followed her like the tracks of a very unusual animal.

They moved slowly: the boy because he was tired, and the woman because of the weight of the suitcase. They both wore white, both were fair-haired and seemed slightly taller than one would expect: the boy, incongruous with his age, the woman, with her femininity. She was beautiful, used to being the center of attention, but there was no one to gawk at her now, and she was glad of it. The suitcase had put a kink in her step, her white suit was crinkled from the long bus ride, her makeup blotchy from the heat. She countered all that with a proudly held head and a straight back, determined not to show how tired she was.

The boy was as like her as a smaller specimen of the human race can be like a bigger one. His hair was so fair it sometimes seemed tinged with red, he was lanky and a bit gangling, and the eyes looking out at the world were the same shade of green as his mother’s. He also carried himself in the same upright manner. A white blazer was hugging his shoulders, a peculiar choice in this weather. He was dragging his feet, catching the sneakers against each other, and kept his eyes half-closed so that he could see only the bubbling gray pavement and the marks being left on it by his mother’s shoes. He was thinking that even if he lost sight of her he’d still be able to find her by following the trail of those silly punctures.

The woman stopped.

The House loomed over them, bordered by emptiness on both sides, an ugly gray breach in the dazzling rows of the Comb.

“This must be the place.”

The woman lowered the suitcase to the ground, took off the sunglasses, and studied the sign on the door.

“See? We got here in no time at all. No need to take a taxi, right?”

The boy nodded indifferently. He could have pointed out that it was quite a long walk, but instead he said, “Look, Mom, it must be cold to the touch. The sun can’t touch it. Weird, huh?”

“Nonsense, dear,” the mother brushed him off. “The sun touches everything within its reach. It’s just darker than the other houses, so it looks cooler. I am going to step inside for a minute, and you just wait for me here. All right?”

She heaved the suitcase up to the fourth step and leaned it against the railing, then rang the bell and stood still. The boy sat down at the bottom of the stairs and looked away. He turned back around at the sound of the lock but could only catch a glimpse of the white skirt disappearing behind the door. The door clicked shut and he was alone.

The boy rose from the steps, went and put his cheek against the wall.

“It is cold,” he said. “It’s not within the sun’s reach.”

He ran a little distance off and looked at the House from there. Then glanced guiltily back at the stairs, shrugged, and started walking along the wall. He reached the end of it, looked back one more time, and turned the corner.

Another wall. He ran the length of it and stopped.

Around the next corner he saw a backyard behind a chain-link fence. It was empty and dull and just as scorching as everything around it. The House itself, however, was completely different from this side. Colorful and cheery, as if it had decided to show another face to the boy, a face that was smiling. That was not for everyone.

The boy came up against the fence, to look at that face closer and maybe even guess who was painted on the walls. He saw a rickety structure made from cardboard boxes. A playhouse covered with twigs. Its roof was decorated with a flag, now limp in the still air, and the cardboard walls were hung with pretend weapons and small bells. The hut was inhabited. He could hear voices and noises from it. Several bricks surrounded a pile of black ashes near the entrance.

They are allowed to build fires . . .

He pressed against the fence, not noticing that it was imprinting a rusty lattice on his shirt and blazer. He did not know who “they” were, but it was obvious that “they” couldn’t be that old. He looked and looked until he himself was noticed through the roughly cut-out window.

“Who are you?” a slightly hoarse child’s voice inquired, and then a bandana-wrapped head appeared in the hut’s doorframe. “Go away. This is not a place for strangers.”

“Why not?” the boy asked, intrigued.

The hut swayed and let out two inhabitants. The third stayed inside by the window. Three faces, brown and painted, were staring at him through the fence.

“He is not from those,” one said to the other, nodding at the teeth of the high-rises. “He’s not from around here. Look at him, just staring.”

“We came by bus,” the boy in the blazer explained. “And then we walked.”

“So just keep walking,” came the advice from beyond the fence.

He stepped back. He wasn’t offended. These were strange boys. There was something not quite right about them. He wanted to understand what it was.

They, in their turn, were studying and discussing him openly.

“He must be from the North Pole,” said the little one with the round head. “Look at that coat. What a moron.”

“Moron yourself,” the other said. “He’s got no arms, that’s why he’s wearing it. They’re leaving him with us. See?”

They exchanged glances and started giggling. The one inside the hut laughed so hard that it started swaying.

The boy in the blazer took some more steps away from them.

They continued laughing.

“Staying with us, with us!”

He turned on his heel and ran, squaring his shoulders awkwardly to prevent the blazer from flying off.

He rounded the corner and crashed straight into someone who grabbed him.

“Hey, careful! What’s the matter?”

The boy shook his head. “Nothing. I’m sorry. I need to be over there. Please let me go.”

But the man didn’t.

“Come with me,” he said. “Your mother is in my office. I was already starting to worry about what I would have to tell her if I couldn’t find you.”

The man belonged to the cool house. He had blue eyes and gray hair and a hooked nose, and he squinted the way people who wear glasses usually do. They went up the steps, and the man from the House picked up the suitcase. The door was ajar. He stepped aside for the boy to come in.

“Those . . . in the hut. Do they live here?” the boy asked.

“They do,” the blue-eyed man said eagerly. “Have you met already?”

The boy did not answer.

He stepped inside, the House man followed him, and the door clicked shut behind them.

They lived in a room with shelves and shelves of toys, the boy and the man. The boy slept on the sofa, hugging a stuffed crocodile; the man, on a camp bed he had set up next to it. When he was alone, the boy would go out on the balcony, lie on an air mattress, and look down through the railing at the boys playing. He would sometimes stand up so they could see him too. The boys would raise their heads and smile at him. But they never asked him to join them down there. He was secretly hoping for the invitation, but it never came. Disappointed, he’d lie back again and look down from under the brim of a straw hat, taking in the high voices from below. Sometimes he’d close his eyes and imagine himself dozing off on a beach, lulled by the soft swishing of the surf. The boys’ voices morphed into seagull cries. The sun was turning his legs brown. The idleness bored him.

In the evenings they would sit on the carpet, the boy and the blue-eyed man whose name was Elk, sit and listen to music and talk. They had a creaking record player and records in tattered sleeves, and the boy would study the sleeves like paintings, trying to match the images on them to the music they contained. He was never able to. The summer nights walked in through the open window. They didn’t turn on the lights so as not to attract mosquitoes. Once the boy saw what looked like a rag cross the deep blue velvet of the sky. It turned out to be a bat, a mouse skeleton in a torn cape. After that he would always position himself so he could see the sky from where he was sitting.

“Why do you call yourself Elk?” the boy asked.

He was thinking of those elk who roamed the forests, with their horns lacy like oak leaves. And of deer, who were relatives to the elk but had very different horns. He’d thought about that for a long time before mustering enough courage to ask.

“It’s my nick,” Elk explained. “A nickname. Everyone who lives in the House has a nick, that’s just the way it is here.”

“I live here too now, do I have one?”

“Not yet. But you will. When they all come back and you move to one of the dorms, you’ll get a nick.”

“What will it be?”

“I don’t know. A good one, I hope. If you’re lucky.”

The boy thought about possible names for himself but couldn’t come up with anything. It all rested with them, those who were coming back. He wanted them to come back sooner.

“Why aren’t they inviting me?” the boy asked. “Do they think I can’t play with them? Or is it that they don’t like me?”

“No,” Elk said. “You’re just new in the House. They need some time to get used to you being here. This always happens at first. Have patience.”

“How much time?” the boy asked.

“Looks like you’re really bored,” Elk said.

The next day, when Elk came, he was not alone. With him was another boy, who never went out into the yard and had never before shown himself.

“I brought you a friend,” Elk said. “He is going to live here with you, so you are not alone anymore. This is Blind. You two can do whatever you want—play, go crazy, break furniture. Just try not to fight and not to complain to me about each other. The room is all yours.”

Blind never played with him, because he didn’t know how. He did attend to the boy dutifully: woke him up in the morning, washed his face, combed his hair. Listened to his stories, almost never saying anything back in reply, and shadowed his every step. Not because he wanted to. He assumed that this was what Elk wanted of him. Elk’s wishes were his command. Elk had only to ask, and he would have jumped off the balcony. Or the roof. Or pushed someone else off it. The armless boy was afraid of that. Elk was much more afraid. Blind was already grown up inside. A little grown-up hermit. He had long hair and a frog-like mouth always covered in red sores. He was pale as a ghost and extremely thin. He was nine. Elk was his god.

Blind’s memory was full of noises, smells, and murmurs. It did not go very deep—Blind remembered nothing of his early childhood. Almost nothing. About the only thing he could fish out was the interminable sitting on the potty. There were many little boys there, and they all sat in a row on identical tin potties. The memory was a sad one and it smelled bad. He calculated later that they were forced to sit like that for no less than half an hour each time. Many of them managed to do their thing early, but they still had to remain sitting, waiting for the others. This was discipline, and they’d been receiving discipline since birth. He also remembered the yard. They walked there, each holding on to the clothes of the one in front but still tripping and falling. At the beginning and the end of this chain walked the grown-ups. If anyone stopped or deviated from the prescribed direction, a loud voice from above would restore order. His world consisted then of two types of voices. One type brought guidance from above. Another was closer and more intelligible; such voices belonged to those like himself. He did not like them either. Sometimes the loud voices disappeared. If they went missing for a long time, he and others like him would start running, jumping, falling, and bloodying their noses, and it would immediately become clear that the yard was much smaller than it seemed when they walked around it in lockstep. It became cramped, and its surface hardened and scraped their knees.

From a later time he remembered the fights. Frequent fights, for no particular reason. It could start with someone bumping someone else, and that they were doing all the time. They shoved him, he shoved back—not on purpose, it just happened—and then it was that after the first accidental shove came another, enough to knock him off his feet, or a blow that made a part of him hurt. He had decided to strike first, without waiting for the blows. Sometimes the voices from above would get angry at this, and he would be taken to another room. A punishment place. There were no tables, no chairs, no beds, just the walls. Also the ceiling, but he did not know about it then. He was not afraid of the room. Others would cry when they were locked in it. He never cried. He liked being alone. He didn’t care if there were people around him or not. When he was tired he would lie down on the floor and sleep. When he was hungry he would take stashed bread crusts out of his pockets. If they kept him in this room for a long time, he would peel plaster from the walls and eat it. He liked eating it even more than bread, but the grown-ups got angry when they caught him at it, so he only allowed himself to do it when they left him alone.

He soon realized that they didn’t like him. He was often singled out, punished more frequently than the other children and for things he hadn’t done. He did not understand the reasons for it, but he was not surprised or angered. Nothing ever surprised him. Nothing good could ever come from the grown-ups. He established that the grown-ups were unfair, and he accepted it. When he learned to distinguish between men and women, he recognized that women behaved worse toward him than men, but left that fact without an explanation as well, just acknowledging it in the same way he acknowledged everything that surrounded him.

Then he realized he was short and weak. That was when the voices of other children started coming to him from a little higher up and their blows started hurting much worse. At about the same time, he found out that some other children could see. He did not understand what that meant. He knew that the grown-ups had some enormous advantage that allowed them to move freely beyond the boundaries of his world, but he always assumed that it had to do with their height and strength. What this “seeing” was, he could not grasp. And even when he did learn how it worked he still could not imagine it. For him “to see” meant only “to have better aim.” The blows from the sighted were more painful.

Once he figured out that the stronger and the sighted had this advantage, he endeavored to become better at it himself. This was important for him. He did his best, and they started fearing him. Blind quickly understood the reason for this fear. The children were afraid not of his strength, which he did not have anyway, but of the way he carried himself. Of his calmness and unconcerned manner. Of how he was not afraid of anything. When someone hit him, he never cried, he would just get up and leave. When he hit someone, that someone usually cried, scared by his serenity. He discovered where to hit so that it hurt. This scared them too.

As he grew older, the world seemed to resent him more and more. The resentment manifested itself differently with children than with grown-ups, but eventually it grew into the wall of loneliness that surrounded him on all sides. Until Elk. The man who talked to him alone, not to him as one of many. Blind could not know that Elk had been summoned because of him. He thought that Elk picked him out from the others and loved him more than them. Elk strolled into his life as if it were his own room and upended it, rearranged and filled with himself. With his words, his laughter, his soft hands and warm voice. He brought with him many things that were unknown and unknowable to Blind, because no one cared what Blind knew and didn’t know. Blind’s world was limited to a couple of rooms and the yard. When other children, accompanied by the grown-ups, happily left its confines, he always stayed behind. Into the meager four corners of this world stormed Elk, filled it to the brim and made it limitless and boundless. And Blind gave his heart and soul, his whole self, to Elk forevermore.

Some would not understand or accept this, some would not even notice, but not Elk. He understood everything, and when it was time for him to go he knew he had to take Blind with him.

Blind never expected that. He knew that sooner or later Elk would have to leave, that he’d be left alone again, and that it would be terrifying. But he never imagined it could be otherwise. Then the miracle happened.

His memory preserved that day in the smallest detail, with all its smells and sounds and the warmth of the sun’s rays on his face. They were walking, Blind holding Elk’s hand, gripping it with all his strength, his heart fluttering like a wounded bird. They walked and walked. The sun shined, the pebbles crunched underfoot, the trucks rumbled in the distance. Never before had he walked this far. Then they climbed into a car and he had to let go of Elk’s hand, so he grabbed the side of his jacket instead.

This was how they came to the House. There were a lot of children here too, and all of them were sighted. Now he knew what that really meant—that all of them had something he couldn’t have. But this no longer worried him. The only important thing was the presence of Elk, the man whom he loved and who loved him.

And then it turned out that the House was alive, that it too could love. Its love was unlike anything else. It was a little scary at times, but never terrifying. Elk was god, so it followed that the place where he lived could not be a common place. It also could not cause any real harm. Elk never showed that he knew the true nature of the House; he would feign ignorance, and Blind guessed that it was a great secret that never should be spoken about. Not even with Elk himself. So he loved the House silently, loved it like no one had ever loved it before. He liked the scent of it, he liked that there was plenty of wet plaster for him to peel off the walls and eat, he liked the large yard and the captivatingly long hallways. He liked how long the traces of those who passed by hung in the air, he liked the crevices in the walls of the House, all its nooks and abandoned rooms, all its ghosts and open roads. He could do anything he wanted here. His every step had always been controlled by the grown-ups. The new place lacked that, and he was even a little uncomfortable at first, but he got used to it surprisingly quickly.

Elk, the blue-eyed catcher of little souls, went out to the porch and looked at the sky. The scorching flame was being extinguished on the horizon, but the coming evening did not promise any respite from the heat.

The boy sitting on the porch had a black eye and was also looking at the sky.

“What happened?” Elk asked.

The boy grimaced.

“He said I was supposed to learn how to fight. What for? He is always silent, like he’s deaf or something. So why doesn’t he just stay silent, because when he speaks it’s even worse. I used to think how it was so sad that he never said anything. Now I think it was better that way. I don’t need his fighting lessons. He punched me in the eye for some reason. I guess he’s jealous that I can see and he can’t.”

Elk thrust his hands in his pockets and swayed back and forth on his heels.

“Does it hurt?”

“No.”

The boy stood up and leaned over the railing, hanging down halfway into the yard.

“I’m sick of him. Sometimes it’s like he’s not right in the head. He’s weird.”

“That’s exactly what he says about you,” Elk said, holding back a smile, intently watching the dejected figure on the railing. “Do you still remember the deal we had?”

The boy pushed his feet off the floorboards and started swinging.

“I remember. No complaining, no sulking, and no grumbling. But I am not complaining and I am not sulking. I just went out for a bit of fresh air.” He stopped swinging and looked up. “Elk, look! It’s beautiful. The red sky. And the trees are black, like the sky burned them.”

“Let’s go in,” Elk said. “It’s even more beautiful from the balcony. Here you’re a mosquito buffet.”

The boy reluctantly peeled himself off the railing and followed Elk.

“And poor little Blind can’t see any of it,” he said with barely disguised glee. “I guess that could make him a bit edgy.”

“So describe it to him,” Elk said and opened the door. “He would very much like to hear about what he can’t see.”

“Yeah.” The boy nodded. “Sure. And then he can punch me in the other eye, so that we both can’t see, equally. He would very much like that too.”

Two boys on the balcony were lying head to head on an air mattress amid a sea of stale popcorn and cookie crumbs. The boy in a straw hat, with the empty sleeves of the shirt tucked under his stomach, was droning in a monotone, not taking his eyes from the vivid colors of the mattress cover.

“So they are white and they move, and the edges are like somebody was tearing them or chewing them a bit. Pinkish on the bottom. Pink is kind of like red, only lighter. And they move very, very slowly, and you have to look at them for a long time to notice. There aren’t that many of them now. And when there’s more of them then it’s not sunny anymore, and then when they turn dark they make everything dark too, and it might even rain.”

The long-haired boy lifted his head and frowned.

“Don’t talk about things that aren’t. Describe what is now.”

“All right,” the boy in the hat agreed and turned over on his back. “So they’re white, and pink on the bottom, and they float slowly, and it’s all blue around them.”

He squinted through his sun-bleached eyelashes at the smooth blue expanse of the sky, untouched by even a single cloud, and continued with a smile.

“It’s so blue under them, and above them too. They are like fluffy white sheep. It’s too bad you can’t see how beautiful they are.”

The House was empty. Or it seemed empty. Cleaners crossed its hallways every morning, leaving behind glossy trails of floor polish. Fat flies threw themselves against windowpanes in the empty dorms. Three boys, tanned almost to the point of blackness, lived in the cardboard hut in the yard. Cats went out for night hunts; they slept all through the day, curled in fuzzy balls. The House was empty, but still someone cleaned it, someone prepared the food and put it on the trays. Unseen hands swept away the dirt and aired out the stuffy rooms. The inhabitants of the cardboard hut came running into the House for water and sandwiches, leaving behind candy wrappers, blobs of gum, and dirty footprints. They were trying their best but there were too few of them, and the House was too big. The sound of their feet faded away, their cries were lost in the emptiness within the walls, and they ran back to their little encampment as soon as they could, away from the dead faceless rooms, all identical and smelling of polish. The invisible hands quickly erased the signs of their visit. There was only one room that remained alive. Those living in it were not afraid of the uninhabited House.

The boy didn’t quite know what scared him on the first day when they returned. What woke him up was the din of their presence. He opened his eyes and realized that the House was full of people, that the silence—the sultry summer silence, so familiar to him now after this past month—was gone. The House creaked, slammed its doors, and rattled its windows, it was tossing musical snippets to itself through the walls, it was bubbling with life.

He pushed away the blanket and ran out on the balcony.

The yard was brimming with people. They milled around the two red-and-blue buses, they laughed, smoked, and lugged their bulging backpacks and bags from place to place. They were colorful, tanned, rowdy, and they smelled of the sea. The yard sizzled under the burning sky. He crouched down, pressed his forehead against the railing, and simply looked at them. He wanted to join them, become a part of their charmed grown-up life. He was aching to rush down—and still he didn’t move. Besides, someone would have to dress him first. Finally he tore his eyes off them and went back to the room.

“Can you hear that?” Blind, sitting on the floor by the door, asked him. “Hear how much noise they’re making?”

Blind held the boy’s shorts for him. The boy quickly thrust his legs through the openings, one, then the other. Blind did the zipper.

“You don’t like them?” the boy asked, watching his sneakers being laced.

“Why should I?” Blind pushed the boy’s foot off his knee and put the other one in its place. “Why should I like them?”

The boy was barely able to wait for his blazer and refused the comb. His fair hair, grown out during the summer, remained disheveled.

“Come on, I’m going!” he blurted out. Then he ran, his feet unsteady from anticipation. The corridor, then the stairs, then the first floor. The door was being kept ajar by a striped bag. He ran out into the yard and froze.

He was surrounded by faces. The faces were unfamiliar, alien, they cut like knives. The voices—shrill, frightening. He was scared. These were not the people he’d rushed to meet. They too were browned by the sun, they laughed, they were dappled with patches of color, but they were all wrong.

He lowered himself onto the step, keeping his catlike gaze on them. A shiver ran down his spine. So that’s how they are, he thought bitterly. They are all assembled from little pieces. And I am one of them. I am just like them. Or will be soon. We are in a zoo. And the fence is for keeping us all in.

There was one in a wheelchair, white like a marble statue, with snowy hair and a haggard look, and another one, nearly purple, bloated as a week-old corpse and almost as scary. This one also could not walk, and he was surrounded by girls pushing his wheelchair. The girls laughed and joked, and each had a flaw; they too were glued together from pieces. He looked at them and wanted to cry.

A tall girl with black hair, dressed in a pink shirt, came near him and stopped.

“A newbie,” she said. The irises of her eyes were so dark they became indistinguishable from the blackness of the pupils.

“Yeah,” he agreed sadly.

“Do you have a nick?”

He shook his head.

“Then you shall be Grasshopper.” She touched his shoulder. “Your legs have little springs inside.”

She saw me racing down the stairs, he thought, blushing.

“There’s the one you are looking for,” she added and pointed toward one of the buses.

The boy looked and saw Elk standing there with a man in black trousers and a black turtleneck. Relieved, he smiled at the girl.

“Thank you,” he said. “You are right, I was looking for him.”

She shrugged.

“It was an easy guess. All squirts always do. And you are a very green squirt. Remember your nick and your godmother. I am Witch.”

She went up the steps and into the House. Grasshopper observed her very thoroughly but could not distinguish the little pieces.

I have a nick now, he thought and ran to meet Elk.

The soft hand descended on his shoulder; he pressed against Elk and purred contentedly. The man in black was looking sarcastically from under the bushy eyebrows.

“What’s this, Elk? Another trusting soul? When did that happen?”

Elk frowned but did not answer.

“Joking,” the man in black said. “I’m sorry, old man. It was just a joke.”

He strolled off.

“Who was that?” Grasshopper asked quietly.

“One of the counselors. He went to the resort with the guys,” Elk said distractedly. “Black Ralph. Also R One.”

“Are there others like him? Two, Three, and Four?”

“No. There aren’t any. It’s just that he’s called that for some reason.”

“He’s got a silly face,” Grasshopper said. “If I were him I’d grow a beard to hide behind.”

Elk laughed.

“You know what?” the boy said, brushing his cheek against Elk’s hand. “I too have a nick now. Wanna guess? I bet you’d never guess.”

“Wouldn’t even try. Something to do with flying?”

“Almost. Grasshopper.” He jerked his head up, searching Elk’s face. “Is it a good one?”

“Yes,” Elk said, mussing his hair. “You can count yourself lucky.”

Grasshopper scrunched his nose, all peeling from the sun.

“That’s what I thought too.”

He looked at the glued-together people around them. There were fewer now, most had gone inside the House.

“Aren’t you glad they’re back? You won’t be so lonely now.”

There was uncertainty in Elk’s voice.

“I don’t like them,” Grasshopper said honestly. “They’re old and ugly and broken. It all looked different from above, and from down here it’s all messed up.”

“None of them is even eighteen yet,” Elk countered, visibly offended. “And why do you say they’re ugly? That’s not fair.”

“They’re freaks. Especially that one.” He nodded at the purple one. “It’s like he drowned long ago. You know?”

“That’s Moor. Remember that nick.”

Elk took a suitcase out of the pile and turned toward the House. Grasshopper kept close to him, silent as a shadow and just as unavoidable. They passed the purple one. His malicious little eyes were lost in the flowing, melting face. Grasshopper felt their gaze on his back and picked up the pace, as if spooked by it.

Did he hear what I said about him? Stupid! He’s going to remember me now, me and my words.

Three of the able-bodied were smoking by the entrance. One of them, closely cropped and tall, with a fierce expression on his face, gave Elk a nod. Elk stopped. So did Grasshopper.

Around the neck of the fierce-faced, on a twisted chain, hung a monkey skull. Delicate, yellowed, with pointy teeth. The boy was mesmerized by the grown-up toy. There was some kind of mystery attached to it. Something was built into it that made the empty eye sockets glow mysteriously, even wetly. The skull seemed alive. Touching it was the only way to learn its secret, examining it closer, putting one’s finger into the holes. But to look at it without understanding was just as fascinating. He did not catch what Elk and the owner of the trinket said to each other, but as he was entering the door he heard Elk say, “That was Skull. Remember him too.”

Moor, Skull, and Witch the godmother, Grasshopper repeated to himself, flying up the stairs. I must remember these three, and that unpleasant counselor in need of a beard, and the white man in the wheelchair, even though no one told me anything about him, and the day when I got a nick.

The rooms were changing before his eyes. The taupe walls plastered with posters, the striped mattresses piled with clothes. Every bed was claimed by someone and immediately turned into a dump. Rough-sided pinecones, multicolored swimming trunks, shells and shards of coral, cups, socks, amulets, apples and apple cores. Each room acquired individuality, became different from the others.

He wandered around, awash in smells, tripped over the gutted bags and backpacks, slunk around the corners absorbing the changes. No one paid him any attention. They all had their own concerns.

There was something like a hut being built from thin planks in one of the dorms. He sat there for a while, waiting to see the result, then got bored and moved to another room. They were constructing something there too. To avoid being trampled, Grasshopper sat on a low stool by the door. The seniors were laughing, needling each other, tossing around bags and sacks, drinking something out of paper cups, then just crumpling and dropping them. The floor was strewn with the cardboard concertinas. They flattened easily and smelled of lemons. Grasshopper furtively guided them under the stool with his feet. Then a scrawny counselor with unkempt hair, resembling Lennon in his rimless glasses, came into the dorm and dragged Grasshopper out of his lair.

“You’re new,” he mumbled indistinctly, chewing on a toothpick. “Why aren’t you in your dorm?”

The myopic eyes behind the glasses scurried like black mites.

“I don’t have a dorm yet,” said Grasshopper, trying to wrench his shoulder from the bony fingers gripping it.

The grip tightened.

“In which case you should find out where you are supposed to be at the moment. For a start,” said the bespectacled counselor, spitting out the toothpick. “I think you will be in the Sixth. They have a spare bed. Let’s go.”

The counselor marched him out into the corridor. Grasshopper almost had to run to keep up with his strides. The counselor kept tugging him impatiently by the collar.

Dorm number six was located at the very end of the hallway. It was smaller than the seniors’ rooms and looked gloomier because of the canvas shades over the windows. The unpacking was in full swing here as well, but the boys were his own age. Maybe a little younger or older, but only by a little. They mostly sat on the beds busily rummaging through their bags. As soon as the counselor entered, they put the bags aside and stood up.

“New one for you,” he said. “You are to show and explain everything to him.”

He produced a fresh toothpick and shoved it into his mouth.

“Understood?”

The boys all nodded.

The counselor nodded as well and left without looking back.

Without saying a word they surrounded him and stared at the flopping sleeves of his blazer. Grasshopper realized that they already knew everything. They had odd looks on their faces. Indifferent and mocking at the same time, as if his deformity amused them.

“You’re a newbie,” one of them, skinny and bug eyed, informed him. “We’re going to beat you up now. And you’re going to snivel and cry for your mommy. That’s what always happens.”

He took a step back.

They laughed. His back was pressed against the door. They approached, smiling and winking at each other.

They too were glued together.