The Gray House

SMOKER

VISITING THE CAGE

I felt like a corpse the entire day after Fairy Tale Night, and only started showing signs of life late in the afternoon. And it came in stages. First I mustered enough strength to wheel down to the bathroom and meet a sinister red-eyed monster there, who then turned out to be myself. I had to do something with him, so I decided washing him would be a good start.

Alexander helped me undress. I wouldn’t have managed. My hands shook as if I had been drinking for thirty years straight. I refused to believe that one single bender was capable of reducing me to such a sorry state. After parting with my pajamas—they were so saturated with pine scent and alcohol that I easily could have used them to scare away mosquitoes—I went to sit in the shower and then returned to the dorm.

It was around six. I still wasn’t able to divine precise time without the aid of a watch. I clambered onto the bed somehow, took a pad from under the pillow, and started drawing whatever. The backpacks and bags on the bed rail, all in a row. Tabaqui’s head, peeking out of the blanket cocoon he’d wrapped himself in. Noble, yawning.

The backpacks came out the best. Tabaqui was almost completely hidden, and Noble turned away as soon as he noticed that I was trying to draw him. So I crosshatched the backpacks, filling them with volume and increasing their hanginess, put the shadows underneath, and had started to fill in the patterns when Tabaqui crawled over and all but lay on top of the pad, clogging the line of sight from me to just about everything else.

“Why have you stopped drawing?” he asked with surprise when I put the pad back.

“Your head is in the way,” I said honestly. “Also I don’t like people pushing my arm.”

Tabaqui decided to take offense. He rolled over and turned his back to me. I knew by now that he could not remain offended for long, and I ignored it. But I didn’t want to draw anymore. I wanted to eat.

“Anything edible left?” I asked.

Noble nodded at the nightstand.

“Sandwiches. There must still be a couple in there. Help yourself.”

The throw draped over the bed was never quite pulled taut. It always bulged and rippled in impassable folds. To crawl over them was excruciating. I tried. Tabaqui said that I looked like an unfaithful wife whom a sultan ordered rolled into a carpet before drowning.

Noble helped me untangle myself—an outstretched hand—presented the packet of sandwiches—a heave to the nightstand—and returned to his corner—another heave. About two paces for someone with working legs. And he managed not to upset anything, not to bump into anyone, and naturally didn’t get snarled along the way. Since only yesterday night Noble had done the same thing in total darkness, on the bed crammed with bodies, this shouldn’t have been a surprise. But this time he never deigned to part with his magazine, which, somehow, he continued reading, which meant that one of his arms was otherwise engaged! I was astonished. It wasn’t simply that I felt inferior next to him. I was ready to burst into tears.

It wasn’t enough for the man to be offensively beautiful and to pull off these impossible feats, no, he had to do it without even noticing! Honestly, had he been preening about, showing off his superiority, he would have been easier to tolerate.

Noble was gnawing at his finger and flipping through the magazine, his face permanently screwed into a disgusted grimace that indicated whatever he was reading was complete trash. He was floating someplace he did not particularly want to be, but could not force himself to descend back down to the godforsaken real world. Even if it was only to look where he was crawling and ascertain whether he was taking what he wanted from the nightstand.

“Noble,” I said, “sometimes I get this impression that you’re just faking it.”

He glanced at me distractedly.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that you’re not really a wheeler at all.”

He shrugged and went back to his magazine. “Everyone’s entitled to their impressions.” He didn’t say it out loud, but sometimes it wasn’t necessary to actually say something for it to be understood.

“Could it be that you really are heir to the dragons?” I said. “That you’re actually flying all this time, and we just can’t see it?”

“Want an explanation?” someone interjected suddenly.

I looked around.

It was Black. He was lying on his bed with a notepad under his chin, chewing on a pencil. Looking like a large sheep dog with a thin bone in its teeth.

In the time I’d been living in the Fourth, I had already gotten used to two of its inhabitants always being silent. Alexander and Black. Theirs were different silences, though. Alexander was silent like a mute, while Black was silent with a message. I really should keep my mouth shut, or something along those lines. So used was I to his silence that I drew a complete blank when Black suddenly spoke. I even dropped my sandwich. Which naturally landed butter-down. And egg-down as well.

“What?”

“I said I could explain,” Black repeated. “If you’d like.”

I said that I would. And tried to recall what I’d been asking about.

Black sat up and pulled off his glasses.

No one ever sat on Black’s bed except him. Nor lay down on, fell onto, put his feet on top of, or threw dirty socks over. Nobody put anything on it at all. That bed, always crisp, perfectly tucked and turned, seemed thoroughly out of place here. As did Black himself. As if at any moment he could sail away on it headed for some distant shores. To where his species lived in its natural habitat.

“It’s simple, really. See this bed?”

Black pointed at Humpback’s bunk over his head. The upper section that would have stayed behind even if the lower part did set sail.

I said that of course I did.

“What do you think would happen if you were to be hung off of its side? So that you only held on to it with your hands, like on a high bar?”

“I’d fall down,” I said.

“And before you fell down?”

I couldn’t quite catch what kind of answer he was expecting. I earnestly traced the sequence of events in my head.

“I’d hang there. And then fall down. Hang for a while and crash.”

“What if you were to be hung like that daily?”

It dawned on me a little.

“Are you saying I’d hang for a bit longer every day?”

“Good job! Smart boy.”

Black bit on the pencil again and went back to his notebook.

“But I’d only need to fall down once, and then there wouldn’t be anyone to hang anymore. I’m not a cat, after all.”

“That’s exactly what Noble thought. Once upon a time.”

Noble threw away the magazine and stared at Black. It was a withering stare.

“How about enough?” he said.

I realized with a shudder that the picture Black drew for me was, like trashy movies liked to point out in the credits, based on actual events.

“But that’s impossible,” I said. “That’s torture!”

“And that’s what Noble used to think too. He’s still touchy about the subject, as you can see.”

“I thought I asked you to shut the hell up.”

Noble’s look would have been quite enough for me to shut up immediately if I’d been in Black’s place. But I wasn’t him. He was him.

“Chill, will you,” he said to Noble. “Don’t ruin your complexion.”

What happened next almost made me believe half the tales told the night before.

Noble swept to the edge of the bed. From there he probably got to the floor, but I wasn’t sure. Black managed to sit up. And even to take off the glasses. But when he stood up he already had Noble hanging on his shoulders. Then he was trying to peel off Noble while Noble was trying to throttle his opponent. It was a grisly sight.

The snarling figure made up of two figures stumbled awkwardly around on the floor, bumped into furniture, upended the nightstand, and crashed on the bed, burying a screaming Jackal.

Then they rolled over to my side. I pressed farther into the bars of the headboard, petrified. Two faces, contorted . . . breathing heavily . . . saliva . . . so close. Too close. Tabaqui went on wailing. One more roll, I thought with resignation, and it’s good-bye Smoker. They’d break every bone in my body.

They didn’t roll. Black managed to shake off Noble and spring up on the bed. His boots shuffled on the covers under my nose, then he jumped off and I finally could breathe easier.

It was unclear who emerged victorious. Noble, curled up in a ball by the bars, looked lousy. Black, wiping blood off his face and neck with the bottom of his shirt, wasn’t much better. Judging by that last throw, he’d won. But judging by the speed of his retreat from the bed, he wasn’t quite sure that he had.

Not-quite-crushed Tabaqui fared best of all. He was sitting on two pillows and cursing so elaborately that it immediately put my mind at ease regarding him.

“You should be exterminated, you and your ilk,” Black said when Tabaqui paused for a moment. “Like rabid dogs.”

“Bastard!” Noble answered. “Pigface!”

Black spat out a broken tooth into his hand. Studied it for a while, dropped it, and made for the door.

A multitude of pill bottles had tumbled out of the overturned nightstand. Black slipped on one of them just as he was going out and almost fell. This slightly cheered up Noble. Very slightly.

When Sphinx, Alexander, and Blind came back, it was their turn to roll around on the pill bottles. Threading his way between them, Humpback deposited Tubby in his pen and said that we obviously hadn’t been bored.

“Bored?” Tabaqui exclaimed. “You guys completely missed the best thing ever! It was epic, if I say so myself! The battle of Hector and Achilles! I’ll be damned!”

Sphinx examined the trashed bed strewn with broken glass, then looked at Noble and said that he could definitely observe the battlefield and the body of Hector left on it, but couldn’t quite determine the whereabouts of Achilles.

“And that’s how it’s going to be for a while,” Tabaqui explained. “He’s somewhere out there. Quenching gushers of blood.”

“Got it,” Sphinx sighed. “We’ll keep that in mind.” He offloaded Nanette to the windowsill. “Good thing we hadn’t left the bird with you.”

The next hour I spent crawling under the beds, collecting the bottles and vials. Tabaqui pretended to help me. His fervor regarding the fight was wearing really thin. In my opinion, Noble and Black resembled animals more than heroes of antiquity. The whole deal was disgusting.

“Let me tell you, dearest, the heroes of antiquity were not much better,” Jackal said. “Worse, in fact,” he added thoughtfully, as if refreshing Homer in his mind.

I decided to crawl away before he started to quote his favorite passages from the Iliad. Because I had a sneaking suspicion about which ones would turn out to be among the favorites.

After we tidied up the room, Blind palpated Noble and declared that he had a cracked rib.

The Sepulcher was out of the question. Noble allowed himself to be swaddled in elastic bandages and sat hugging a pillow, pissed off as he could be. He informed us that the bandage was restricting his airflow, while the rib prevented him from lying down, and that he was now doomed to sleepless nights of oxygen deprivation.

Tabaqui assured him that he would never abandon a friend in need. And he immediately didn’t. He sang to Noble. He played the harmonica for him. He bucked him up with disgusting concoctions complete with floating chilies, of which he himself liberally partook as well, so that Noble wouldn’t feel singled out. There wasn’t a living soul capable of getting any sleep under Tabaqui’s tender ministrations.

When Black returned, he was running a fever. Tabaqui sounded the alarm. He said that this was a clear sign of infection taking hold in Black’s bloodstream, and that Black was soon to tread in the valley of death.

Black was serenaded and plied with drink as well.

At three in the morning they started singing in harmony.

Accompanied by their horrible singing, I dozed off. When I woke up I saw Humpback, naked, standing on the bed armed with a broom. He was holding it as if it were a bayonet aimed at an invisible foe. He looked like a complete nutcase. If I were to find myself alone in the room with him, this would have scared me witless. But Jackal was right next to me, while Alexander and Lary, swearing softly, milled in the space between the beds, moving the nightstand for some reason. Their appearance wasn’t a big improvement on Humpback’s. They were both in their briefs and in rubber boots. Lary’s boots alone were a sight, what with the pointed toes curled upward.

The wide-open windows let in the blackness of the night, and the door into the hallway was also thrown open and even prevented from closing by a stack of books. A breeze was wafting through the room.

“There it is!” Lary whispered. “We got it now. Humpback, ready with the broom!”

Humpback stopped fidgeting, stood at attention, and said, also in a very firm whisper, that this might cause it harm.

“Sissy,” Lary groaned.

They jerked the nightstand away. Lary dove into the opening between it and the wall with surprising agility, and seemed to hurt himself quite badly. Humpback dropped the broom. Alexander jumped up on the bed.

This convinced me beyond any doubt that all of them had gone temporarily insane. Tabaqui lifted the broom off me and handed it back to Humpback. He then said sweetly, “We’re hunting a rat. I hope you were not too inconvenienced?”

I wasn’t, but I did not particularly want to observe the extermination, either. I’d loathed stuff like that since I was a baby, be it rats or spiders. People around me seemed to get a kick out of this attitude for some reason.

“Freaking wimps,” Lary said from behind the nightstand. “Totally useless.”

Humpback and Alexander blinked. Humpback indistinctly repeated something to the effect of being afraid to hurt it.

I started putting on clothes.

“Where are you headed?” Tabaqui asked incredulously.

“I thought I’d go for a spin.”

“A spin where? It’s dark in the hallways.”

I’d completely forgotten that, but rallied and said I’d take a flashlight.

“You can’t. There’s been an increase in activity by maniacs and people with split personalities. Your flashlight would draw their attention.”

I looked around.

“Where’s Noble?”

“Now he is in fact out there.” Tabaqui nodded. “But he’s among his own kind, where you have no place.”

I decided not to press him on that “own kind” remark.

“What about Sphinx?”

“He’s with Tubby, grazing in the bathroom. To save the kid the aggravation.”

Humpback and Lary conferred and started tossing empty bottles under the bed. Black, shiny with sweat and looking unhealthy, inquired from his bunk whether he might be allowed to die in peace.

“They barge in from the yard,” Tabaqui chirped. “As soon as it turns to winter, they just swarm the House. While the cats, they come later. They like to roam while the roaming’s good. So you see, in the meantime there’s this disconnect.”

The poor rat, having had enough of the bottle barrage, darted to the center of the room and crouched in front of the open door. It definitely wasn’t thinking straight, because it didn’t even try to escape.

Lary tossed the floor-cleaning rag on top of it. Humpback stormed the resulting bump with a hoarse wail, grabbed it, and pitched it out into the corridor. Then he kicked the door closed. The books that were keeping it open went flying.

“Cool!” Lary screamed and hugged Humpback.

“There,” Tabaqui said, satisfied. “See, that didn’t take long at all.”

I was just grateful that picking up the empty bottles off the floor wasn’t going to be my responsibility. And also that the rat survived.

“Do you think it suffered much when I threw it like that?” Humpback asked.

“Come on, it was fine. It was inside a rag,” Lary said, obviously unconcerned for the rat’s well-being.

Tabaqui assured Humpback that the rat was completely content, both in flight and upon landing. Black again asked if he could now get his final rest.

That’s when Blind came in, holding the rag that formerly held the rat.

“Are you guys mental?” he asked.

“You mean it hit you?” Tabaqui said, trembling with anticipation.

“It hit me.”

“And were you surprised?”

“We both were.”

Blind threw the rag away and flopped on the bed. He was barefoot and frazzled, his sweater was tied around the neck, debris was clinging to his wet legs, soot covered his fingers, and he smelled funny. Of damp, and what seemed like fresh grass. There was also a thin ring of dirt around his mouth. I thought that the place he’d come from wasn’t a normal place. That it maybe had something to do with the basilisk eggshells. I also tried to figure out which type in the Jackal’s classification he fit into—maniacs or those with split personalities. I wasn’t too sure at the moment.

Then Sphinx returned, with Tubby clinging to his back. He sat next to Blind and stared at him. Then he spoke.

“Wipe your mug. Were you eating dirt again?”

“It wasn’t dirt,” Blind said blissfully, using his sleeve.

More of a maniac, I decided.

Tubby slid off Sphinx, rolled to my side, and started tugging at my pajama buttons, trying to tear them off. Alexander was busy making tea.

“It’s going to be light soon,” Humpback said. “How about we get some sleep?”

That wasn’t to be. Half an hour later Noble came back. The dawn-welcoming elf clad in elastic bandages. Also in someone’s beret, with some trinket around his neck and even more drunk than several hours prior. He unloaded crumpled wads of cash out of his pockets and picked a quarrel with me over my foot accidentally slipping under his pillow. He said many hurtful things about my legs, made a show of changing the pillowcase, and scrambled off again.

Once he wheeled out, I suddenly realized what his new adornment was. It was Black’s tooth on a silver chain.

And the next night I spent in quarantine. In this small room all covered in foam rubber. And in cheery chintz, yellow with blue flowers, over it. There was a commode, half recessed in the wall, masquerading as a trash bin with a hinged top. Also upholstered in foam rubber and chintz. And finally, a frosted white lamp on the ceiling. Nothing else. A perfect place for sleeping and contemplation. I wish I could have sought refuge there during my first year in the House. Like once a week. But I didn’t know it was this good. The House dwellers had long appropriated this resort for their needs, and there were only two ways to get in. Either as a punishment for some transgression, or by cajoling permission from the Sepulcher. I didn’t know about the second option. And of course I had no idea that a visit to the Cage could be regifted, which was exactly what Tabaqui had done.

Physicals were a weekly occurrence for about half of all House denizens and a monthly one for everyone else. When I was still with the Pheasants, we also had the so-called A-list, comprising those who went in every day. Six Pheasants qualified for it, and the rest all dreamed of joining them. A-list meant a less strict daily routine, the right to a nap in the afternoon, and a separate meal schedule complete with low-calorie salads and vitamin drinks. Every physical was a solemn event, so it was important to enter all your health concerns on a special notepad. I had used mine, dutifully divided into days and hours, for doodles, so they had taken it off me.

Today was the first time I’d been for a physical with the Fourth. While we were waiting for our turn, Lary created an installation from used gum, crowned by a fresh cigarette butt in the middle, on the wall of the hospital wing. Tabaqui spent the time drawing horrific black and white stripes and polygons on his face.

“It’s our duty to entertain the Spiders,” he explained. “Their lives are pointless, they have lousy jobs, so inventive KISS-style makeup is sure to raise their spirits.”

The KISS-style makeup did not raise anyone’s spirits. It did arouse suspicions, though. Tabaqui was thoroughly scrubbed in the treatment room to make sure he wasn’t trying to conceal some skin ailment. Finally, all pink, squeaky clean, and literally wet behind the ears, he wheeled out of the treatment room waving a white scrap of paper resembling a store receipt.

“How about this?” he boasted, parading the scrap in front of us. “That’s respect, that is! Here, in the Sepulcher, I’m a VIP!”

“Whatever do you want with it?” Noble asked. “It hasn’t even been a week since the last time.”

“It’s a present for Smoker,” Jackal explained. “I happen to enjoy giving out presents every once in a while.”

“Are you sure he’s going to like it?” Noble said doubtfully.

“Just let him try not to!”

I listened to them without any clue as to what they were talking about. One thing was clear: I was supposed to be overjoyed about something that Tabaqui was planning to give me. So as he wheeled to me and shoved his scrap in my hands, I endeavored to look happy. I must have succeeded. At least Tabaqui was pleased.

“Smoker is ecstatic,” he said to Noble. “And you thought he wouldn’t be able to appreciate it. You’re just a poor judge of character, that’s all.”

And he took off toward the exit in his Mustang. I folded the gift and followed. At the landing, the one they called “Antesepulchral,” I put on the brakes and tried to decipher the scribbles on the paper. All the rest had wheeled or walked ahead. The writing, which I failed to understand, looked like a sloppily made out prescription. I was ready to give up and go back to the Sepulcher to ask Spiders what it said. Could it be some sort of confirmation of my former Pheasant privileges, put down on paper for some reason? Then Black mounted nearby. He didn’t even ask if I was happy or not. I must have looked like I still wasn’t able to make heads or tails of my present.

He just took the paper and said, “It’s a quarantine referral.”

He’s joking was my first thought. My second was that Tabaqui had played a dirty trick on me.

“Just as I thought. You’re clueless,” Black sighed. “Listen, I understand it’s none of my business and all, but are you always grabbing whatever people shove at you?”

“No, I’m not usually,” I said. “But Tabaqui said it was a present.”

“Tabaqui’s presents especially must be X-rayed before you even think of touching them,” Black explained. “Right, just be more careful next time.”

He returned the scrap and turned toward the stairs.

“Hey!” I called out, panicked. “Black, wait!”

“What?”

He stopped, slightly annoyed, as if this idle chat was keeping him from something important.

“Why would Tabaqui do this to me? Is it something I’ve done?”

Black stared ahead sullenly, chewing his gum, and cogitated.

“Why would he? Well, he happens to think that it’s great to end up in the Cage. Pleasant.”

“What’s so pleasant about it?” I said angrily.

If Pheasants were to be believed, the quarantine was a kind of solitary cell for the most dangerous miscreants. And, on certain subjects, I did tend to believe them.

“What’s pleasant?” Black’s habit of slowly repeating the question he’d just been asked could drive anyone with less patience completely crazy. “Well, it’s so quiet, you see. There isn’t anyone else in there and it’s very quiet. Soundproofed. It really is kind of nice. I, for one, like it there.”

“Look,” I said quickly. “Since you like it . . . how about I give this to you and you can go to that quarantine place instead of me?”

Black shook his head.

“Won’t work. It specifies a wheeler. You can swap with Noble, though. Or with Tabaqui himself.”

He left, and I stayed back, very puzzled. On the way to the dorm I deliberated my course of action: injure Jackal terribly or go sit in quarantine? All signs pointed to the second choice. Suffer for a bit and then just forget the whole thing. I somehow was certain that Tabaqui never forgot and never forgave. I had no idea where this certainty came from, but by the time I reached the doors of the Fourth I was convinced that I had no business refusing this present. If Tabaqui was sure he was doing me a favor, who was I to disagree?

And sure of it he was. Beaming and businesslike, he was darning the sleeve of a denim jacket—the special Cage jacket, as he explained, for those being sent “over there.” I was to put it on without delay, because otherwise I might miss the opportunity to do that, and also just in case.

It turned out to be so heavy as to make me think it was lined with lead. Tabaqui let me hold it but snatched it right back, spread it out on the bed, and began the performance entitled “Secrets of the Enlightened.” Alexander, Lary, and Humpback all crowded around, observing with interest. I felt like a child who was being packed off to a costume party by his entire family.

The jacket was in fact two jackets. The lining was so thick that it could be a separate garment on its own. It fastened to the shell with concealed zippers and buttons and could be taken out completely. Jackal explained the sequence twice. The shell contained the principal hidden pockets. Two tins with cigarettes, one in each shoulder pad. Boxes of pills in the elbows. “This is headache, this is insomnia, this is diarrhea,” Jackal rattled off rapidly, “and here are the instructions. All color-coded.” Two lighters and two ashtrays in the bottom, one of each on the left and on the right. “Because there are some people, you know, who like to stub out the cigarettes directly on the floor, which is a bit of a fire hazard in that place.”

“In fact, you should cut down on smoking there,” Humpback jumped in. “Or you’ll suffocate. No ventilation at all.”

“There is that hole in the ceiling,” Noble countered. “Besides, it’s not like he’s going to smoke a pipe.”

“Pipe smoke is much less toxic,” Humpback said, taking the bait. “Yes, there’s more of it, but at least it doesn’t stink.”

“Depends on who you ask.”

“Quiet!” Tabaqui snapped. “This is vitally important information, and I would thank you to not interrupt with your petty squabbles.”

The lining went back in, concealing the stashes.

“Now . . . ,” Tabaqui said, raising his finger. “The second layer. All nice and legal. Observe closely, and whatever you think is extraneous we can remove. Although, to be honest, there is nothing extraneous here.”

The legal layer consisted of a Walkman with ten cassettes, a chocolate bar, a notepad of Jackal’s poetry, a packet of nuts, a pocket chess set, spare batteries, a deck of cards, a harmonica, and four horribly dog-eared paperbacks. It was little wonder that I found it hard to breathe once I donned the jacket. And even though it was Tabaqui who offered to get rid of anything extraneous, he was extremely critical when I said I’d like to leave behind the harmonica and the cards.

“I can’t play the harmonica,” I tried to explain.

“Exactly! This is the time to learn.”

“And I don’t do solitaire.”

“I’ll give you a guide!”

Sphinx jumped off the windowsill and joined us. Humpback extracted two stale rolls from the left pocket of the jacket. Tabaqui observed them sadly.

“They haven’t been there for that long. They’re still quite digestible.”

“Tabaqui, enough,” Noble said. “Who is going to the Cage, you or Smoker?”

“He is!” Tabaqui exclaimed. “Except he is a complete novice, and should listen to the wisdom of his more experienced packmates!”

From the breast pocket I excavated a stack of word puzzles, another notebook, and a pen.

“That would be mine,” Noble said and put out his arm. “You can leave it, it’s fine.”

I gratefully handed the wad to him and turned my attention to the books.

“The Poetry of Scandinavia,” I read on the cover.

“If you’re not into it, I’ll take that,” Humpback said eagerly.

It dawned on me that each of them contributed to the jacket when it was their turn to sit in quarantine. That’s how it became so heavy. Everything that they considered useful was in there.

Now it was Lary’s turn to astonish me. He was swaying indifferently back and forth on the heels of his monstrous boots while the jacket was being gutted, and then suddenly offered, “I have never been there, not once. I have this, you know . . . claustrophobia. I can’t even go in the elevators.”

I was so stunned I didn’t know what to say. It was the first time Lary had talked to me. I mean, not really, but the first time he addressed me as a human. As an equal.

“Oh,” I managed. “I see.”

“I’m afraid of it,” he continued in a whisper, drawing closer. “People tell things. But you’re cool. You’re on top of it.”

“Hey!” Tabaqui said. “Stop this defeatist nonsense on the eve of the departure. This is going to be rest and recuperation. Lary, leave him alone, take your morbid look somewhere else!”

Lary shuffled away obediently. Tabaqui continued his lecture. He said that there actually were two quarantine rooms. The blue one and the yellow one. And that the blue one was not for the faint of heart, but did wonders for the soul, while the yellow one was just pure bliss all around.

“The blue one makes you depressed, and the yellow stinks of urine, because the flush always gets stuck,” Sphinx said. “And they are both only blissful if you dream of being alone. Was that ever your dream, Smoker?”

“I think it is now,” I huffed, weighed down by the miracle jacket. I couldn’t even bend my arms, because of the stashes in the elbows. “Are they . . . coming for me soon?”

They did come fairly soon.

They were already wheeling me out like a motionless dummy when there came another surprise, this time from Alexander. He ran to me and handed me a flashlight.

“They say that the lights are completely out at night. Here, take this, in case you need to find something in the dark.”

I couldn’t bend my arms, but my fingers were in perfect working order, so I grabbed the flashlight. And I had a second to look into Alexander’s eyes. They were the color of strong tea. And they were speckled.

I also had time to say “See you” to the rest of them. To Jackal, who was waving to me sentimentally. To Lary, milling at the door. To Noble, who nodded from the bed. To Sphinx, sitting on the headboard. To Humpback. To everyone.

Cases, as they were called, were stationed on the first floor, two per shift. They lugged heavy stuff, if there was any to be lugged, transported the wheelers if it was suspected that the wheeler in question might object to his transportation, swept the yard, fixed this and that, and from time to time traversed the hallways with grim determination, carrying empty stretchers, for some reason. Also guarded the front door, instead of the actual guard, who was guarding the door to the third floor. But mostly they drank. Cases figured prominently in most of the local jokes, even those told by Pheasants.

The one accompanying me was too decrepit even for jokes. An old drunk with trembling hands and an unsteady gait. I was very concerned with the way he breathed. I couldn’t shake off the mental picture in which he keeled over before delivering me to where I needed to go, and then I would be stuck right there in this impossible jacket until they figured out the circumstances of his demise.

We crossed the third-floor hallway. In the tiny anteroom between two identical doors, he told me to turn out my pockets.

“Sorry,” I said earnestly. “I can’t bend my arms. You’ll have to do it yourself.”

Case decided I was trying to trick him.

“I wasn’t born yesterday, my boy,” he said reproachfully. “I’m too old to play these games with you. Come on, let’s go.”

And so I escaped being searched. As soon as the lock clicked shut behind me, I left the confines of the jacket and stretched out on the foam floor, relishing my new freedom. I was just lying there looking up into the ceiling.

It was not until about half an hour later that I suddenly understood: I was completely alone. And it was going to be this way for a while. Tabaqui really did give me a present. I just didn’t know enough to appreciate it at the time.

I was about to doze off but then remembered what Alexander said about the lights and willed myself to action. I needed to prepare. I wasn’t sure I could handle the extraction of the stashes from the jacket in the dark, even with the aid of a flashlight. I sat up, pulled the jacket toward me, and began disassembling it. Everything I took out I sorted into piles. I wasn’t even halfway through this when I needed a smoke, so I had to just shake the remaining stuff out and take care of the lining. There must have been a hundred different places I had to unfasten. I finally got to the cigarettes, folded the jacket into a cushion, put it under my back, and lit up.

The Poetry of Scandinavia, Dashiell Hammett’s The Glass Key, The Annotated Book of Ecclesiastes, Moby-Dick. All four extremely worn, with pages falling out. Shaking The Glass Key also produced Jackal’s notes on it and a withered slice of salami. Moby-Dick had a library stamp informing me that Black had checked out the book two years ago. The plastic cover bulged with paper scraps and also contained two photographs. I took out the photographs.

One was of Wolf. He was the guy who died at the beginning of last summer. I’d only been in the House for a month then, so I didn’t remember much about him. Skinny, frazzled, a frowning stare. An unlit cigarette in one hand, the other on the strings of a guitar. Rather grave face, as if he knew what was going to happen soon, although I guess we all have photos that could be used for the “he knew” purposes if needed—just because a person refused to smile. And this particular photograph was designed to be funny. A baby bird was sitting on Wolf’s head, and this must have seemed amusing to the person behind the camera. You couldn’t see the bird all too well, though. The corner of a striped blanket hanging from the upper bunk was in the way. I figured that Wolf must have been sitting on the common bed and that Lary, as usual, had not made his, and that it was summer. After a more careful examination I recognized the bird as Nanette. Still a chick. I shivered.

They found Nanette sometime in early June, which meant that the guy in the photo had only a little time ahead of him before dying under mysterious circumstances. But that wasn’t really important for me. Not that he died, or the way he died. It was the way he looked. He was home. He had a home and he was in it. I was never going to be like that in the Fourth. Not until I’d lived there for many years.

Wolf had been a part of the Fourth, but no one ever mentioned him while I was there. There wasn’t anything in the room that was said to have been his. I’d forgotten all about him, to be honest. Pheasants were really fussy about their deceased, and I had gotten used to such treatment. Two photographs in black frames hanging in the classroom. Two cups behind the glass doors of the cabinet in the dorm, never to be taken out. Two towel hooks in the bathroom, eternally empty. The dead of the First lived in its rooms alongside the living. They were quoted, recalled fondly, their parents continued to receive the collective holiday greeting cards. I’d never seen either of them, but I knew all about their likes and dislikes. Whereas Wolf had never existed, never was in the Fourth. This photograph was the first and so far the only trace of him that I had seen.

I took out another cigarette. Started flipping the pages of The Glass Key to shake off the mood, and fell into it without even noticing. Caught myself finishing the fourth cigarette and decided that I smoked too much. Took stock of my reserves. I still had sixteen left. I thought that if someone were to come in right now, to bring in lunch, for example, he’d immediately know that I’d been smoking. And would take away everything. So I left three cigarettes out, preemptive sacrifices to a possible search, shoved the rest back into the jacket, and more or less covered the stashes with the lining. Then I tidied up a bit, spread out the jacket again under myself, and took out the second photo.

A bunch of kids on the steps of the back porch. Standing, sitting, hanging off the railing. It must have been a hot day. Faces in splotches of sun and shade.

I managed to recognize most of the faces. First of them—Black, of course. The heavy gaze, the blond bangs, the square jaw. All there. He looked a bit less imposing and a bit more round faced, and, if anything, even more morose than now.

Then I found Humpback, Elephant from the Third, and Rabbit from the Sixth. Rabbit hadn’t changed at all. Humpback was disguised by motorcycle goggles and was hugging a crossbow. Elephant towered above everyone, a smiling mountain, like a scaled Kewpie doll, with a rubber giraffe peeking out of the pocket of his overalls.

This was turning out to be an exciting activity.

The next one was Blind. He was barefoot, crouching in the corner of the shot so that half of his head was out of the frame. The top button of his shirt came down almost to his navel, and his hair hung lower than the end of his nose. If he were to stand up, the hem of the checkered shirt would have fallen below his knees. I thought it strange that the counselors allowed him to go around the House dressed like that.

I looked for Sphinx but couldn’t locate him.

There was Beauty, a tender angel; he was playing dead, draped over the railing. And Solomon, from the Second. Not yet the fat Rat he became, but already quite a plump young of the species.

Then I saw Lary and laughed out loud, choking on smoke. Awkward, big-eared, spindly Lary. He was standing with one leg proudly set apart, displaying the knee scraped myriad times, and no one, not even the sunniest romantic, would dare drone about “happy childhood” looking at this picture, because it was clearly impossible to have both a happy childhood and a nose like his. An owner of a matching nose, and bugged-out eyes to boot, was standing next to Lary. Obviously Horse from the Third. Of all the people in the photograph, Lary’s visage took the cake. I even felt something resembling tenderness toward him. Cruel was the life of little Bandar-Logs. And that made them grow up hostile. And suffering from claustrophobia. And stuttering. Because no one loved them. Because they weren’t smart, they weren’t handsome, they weren’t even cute. Lary and Horse were the last ones I could recognize. And Sphinx was still nowhere to be seen.

The two identical fair-haired guys in identical striped vests kept tormenting me. And a boy in front, with a perfectly spherical head, also was somehow familiar. I kept turning the picture this way and that, trying to match the faces to various inhabitants of the House, but wasn’t able to place five of them. Finally I grew tired of this and just looked at the picture.

It was a wild, ragtag gang. Dirty, shaggy. They all probably had worms. You couldn’t make them behave no matter how you tried, but at least no one was making a face. They wanted to look presentable, even though they could probably guess it wasn’t working.

Protective amulets and all that other crap worn around the neck was all the rage, even back then. I counted sixteen pouches, plus talons, teeth, and bones, in bunches and separately; bolts, nuts, nails, rabbit feet, and a wide assortment of tails. Lary and Horse preferred their protection shiny and clanking. Elephant was bedecked in little bells, while the blond twins wore keys. My gaze registered those keys and it finally dawned on me.

I closed my eyes for a second and looked again.

Of course! The cold, round, staring eyes, the hooked noses . . . Little Vultures! So alike that I wouldn’t even venture to guess which of them was the real one.

I wondered where the second one went. Immediately came a thought that even one was plenty, but I chased it away, ashamed, as I remembered the perpetual mourning of the Third.

It could be that Birds were not in mourning for Vulture’s lost twin. That they just liked black. Honestly, I didn’t really want to know. But in any case, Vulture had no twin brother in the House anymore, and thinking that it was good that he didn’t was a foul thing to do.

I put the photograph back and took out the first one again. Looked at it. Then lay back and stared at the ceiling.

The dead inhabited every room in the House. Hidden in every closet was its own decomposing unmentionable skeleton. When the ghosts ran out of space, they moved out into the hallways. Then came the protective sigils on the doors and amulets around the necks, to ward off the uninvited guests, while at the same time the resident spirits were welcomed and flattered, consulted and listened to, serenaded with songs and stories. And they talked back. With scribbles in soap and toothpaste on the bathroom mirrors. With purple-hued drawings on the walls. Also with night whispers, right in the ears of the chosen, while they were taking a shower or bravely catching some sleep on the Crossroads sofa.

The unholy mess of Pheasant stories, superstitions, House proverbs, and silly sayings chased itself around in my head, becoming more and more weird as it went. When I finally tamped it down, I realized with surprise that I seemed to know the House a bit better. A tiny little bit. At least, I understood some things I was never able to before. The passion of the House dwellers for tall tales of all kinds did not spring out of nothing. It was their way of coping, molding their grief into superstitions. Which in turn morphed into traditions, and traditions were really easy to accept. Especially when you’re a child. Had I come here seven years ago, I too might have considered talking to ghosts an everyday affair. I’d sit right there on Black’s old photos, with a crude bow, or a sling in my pocket, proudly displaying an amulet against poltergeists that I’d fortuitously acquired in exchange for some rare stamps. I’d avoid some specific places at some specific times and still go there on a dare. It might have led to a stutter, who knows, but at least my life never would have been boring, unlike the one I actually had, the one that hadn’t been spent here. I was a little bitter that this untamed childhood had passed me by. Yes, it didn’t have any open spaces in it, no rivers or forests or abandoned cemeteries, but neither did my real one. I would have learned all of the House’s rules and regulations, and how to tell ridiculous stories, to play guitar, to decipher the scribbles on the walls, to read fortunes in chicken bones, to remember all the former nicks of all the old-timers. And maybe, just maybe, to love this crumbling building, which I now would never be able to. The longer I thought about this the sadder I felt. I took out the last sacrificial cigarette, lit it, and sat there tracing the tendrils of smoke floating up toward the lamp and dissolving in its light.