The Gray House

TABAQUI

DAY THE FOURTH

“For, although common Snarks do no manner of harm,

Yet, I feel it my duty to say,

Some are Boojums—” The Bellman broke off in alarm,

For the Baker had fainted away.

—Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well, hello, dudes,” she rasps.

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

“What the hell’s that?” he says.

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

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

“Was this your idea?”

“Black, come on,” Sphinx sighs. “Of course not. You seem to have a very strange impression of me.”

“Whose, then? You were mentioning her just now!”

“Now that was a joke. Besides, what’s your problem? The new Law is in effect, everyone is free to invite whomever they want.”

“That’s right,” Gaby pipes in, lighting up. “Chill, man. Who knows, maybe someday it’s going to be your lucky day too.”

“Who?” Black screams, ripping off his glasses. “Who invited you?”

“Blind.” Gaby winks. “Like the boss of your boss, unless I am mistaken.”

Black sits back down. At first he seems paralyzed. Then he pulls the book back and buries himself in it. Looking right through it. Gaby puffs. I resume teasing the nuts out of the shells. Looks like a very promising development.

Sphinx’s polite comments regarding the weather and the teachers result only in Long snorting merrily and recrossing her legs, which are impossible not to look at. So I don’t fight the urge and gawk freely. Sphinx does as well. Humpback and Alexander seem to prefer studying the ceiling. Finally Gaby becomes bored just sitting there, gets up, and starts pacing about the room.

“What’s this you have here? And this? Ni-ice . . .” Boobs on the table, butt sticking out in our direction, oohing over the record stacks. “Oh, wow. Cool stuff. I think I heard this one. And the one on the B-side here is, like, the shit! I didn’t know you guys were into this.”

Humpback goes pale and cranes his neck. I become uneasy too, especially when she proceeds to shake the records out of the sleeves and turn them around, leaving dozens of paw prints on both sides.

“Look at all that dust,” Long says. “Do you wipe them, like, ever? Shame.”

She extracts a handkerchief and spits on it.

“Halt!” Sphinx screams, shooting up. “Freeze, bitch!”

Humpback, who jumped at the same time, falls back on the bed and wipes the sweat off his face.

“Would you like some nuts?” I inquire.

Long dutifully stands frozen exactly where Sphinx’s yelp caught her, and probably cogitates whether she should take offense or not.

“Bad for the teeth,” she grumbles, taking a step away from the table. “You guys are, like, jumpy. Yelling and stuff. What if I’m gonna stutter now?”

“It’s the day of the physical, you see,” I explain. “Everyone’s on edge. You might even say it’s traditional.”

Long leans against the headboard and tilts toward me. “Yeah, they tried poking me too. So? I don’t give a shit. Like I never been poked before, right? Now this one time when I got raped . . .”

I choke on the nut and cough it out on the blanket. Gaby kindly whacks me on the back with a fist. In search of a more convenient angle, she basically drapes herself over the headboard, and my perspective into the neck of her blouse becomes infinitely more fascinating. This has a terrible effect on my coughing. I almost suffocate.

“You poor thing,” Long sighs. “It’s no fun being sick, right? It’s OK. It happens. Now this one time when I got sick . . .”

“Enough,” Black says and gets up. “I’m just going for a walk. There’s got to be a limit!”

He walks out, slamming the door so hard everyone startles.

“What was that about?” Gaby says.

“Nothing, never mind,” Sphinx says hoarsely. “Busy, I guess.”

“Yeah, right. Went to sit in the john with a book, I’ll bet,” Long snorts. “Those four-eyes are all the same. What’s with the voice? Are you, like, sick too?”

“Something with the vocal cords.”

“No way,” Long marvels. “That was some shout, you know what I mean?”

“Exactly,” Sphinx agrees. “Not bad at all.”

Gaby peels herself off the headboard. The bed groans gratefully.

I blink my eyes back into focus. She shuffles to the door.

“I’m off, then. The world awaits. My regards to Blind. And to your bookworm too. You get well.”

“I’ll make sure we tell them,” I say. “You’re welcome anytime, don’t be a stranger.”

“Stranger, that’s not me,” she says. “But I guess you figured that already, am I right?”

A farewell grin framed by purple lip gloss, and she disappears. The heavily perfumed air is stifling. I thoughtfully swallow the last nut and sweep the shells together.

“What was that you just said? Welcome anytime?” Humpback says. “I’m going to remember that, Tabaqui.”

“That’s called being polite,” I explain. “It’s what you say when guests are leaving. Especially when it’s a lady.”

“I see,” Humpback says.

He goes to check on the records. On their overall condition and especially on the absence of traces of saliva polishing. I drink my coffee and flip the cards of my solitaire. This new Law looks like fun. Whatever else, it certainly brings variety.

When Black returns, Smoker starts pestering us with questions. Who was Mother Ann? It’s all Sphinx’s fault. He let it slip to Black that he, Sphinx that is, is not Mother Ann to be chasing Blind’s girlfriends out of the dorm. Honestly, that was a fib. He was never going to do the chasing himself. But Long is unlikely to come back here anytime soon if I know anything about Sphinx, and I do, believe me. Black does as well, but he’s too thick to see things that are right under his nose. Which is why we all waste so much nervous energy.

“So who was she?” Smoker asks.

Asks me, imagine that. It’s not an easy question. I can see Sphinx grinning. Easy for him. He’s not the one being questioned, so he’s not the one who has to answer.

“Well, you see,” I begin reluctantly, “she was this woman who lived here ages ago . . .”

A lousy way to start. But what else do I have? Should I have started with us inventing distractions for ourselves? With songs? Maybe Wolf’s jokes, like that snowman that we put Lary’s T-shirt on, even though we had to disassemble and rebuild it to do that? Fairy Tale Nights? It’s impossible to recall everything that has been tried at one time or another just to prevent ourselves from dying of boredom.

“About a million years back she ruled this place,” I said.

She did. As a principal.

Sepia photographs, fraying at the edges: a plump woman in a nun’s habit, hands folded over her stomach. Cheeks most likely red, palms calloused. When it got cold she’d wear fingerless mittens. Those hands had to do a lot. Tin buckets full of icy water. Shovelfuls of coal. Each dorm—or dortoir, as they were called—had either a fireplace or a stove, smoky and sooty, and every day fuel for them had to be brought up from the sheds in the yard to provide heat for everyone.

Kids in heavy hobnailed boots. Meager coats with large round buttons. Winters meant constantly chapped cheeks. “Almshouse for Deprived Children.” The House bore this unctuous Dickensian sobriquet with pride. That’s what it said on the plaque attached to the squat cast-iron gates. Every Saturday they polished it with sand, as they did everything that was supposed to shine. It was a huge plaque, for in addition to that name it also had to fit the names of the twenty-eight trustees. Each one of them had a postcard prepared and sent out every holiday, in clumsy kids’ handwriting, plus a letter from M. A. herself. With the renewed expression of true gratitude . . . Praying daily that you remain in God’s good graces. Maybe they really did give those daily prayers, who knows? Each trustee meant a small measure of joy for the inhabitants of the House, and joy was in short supply back then.

We were down in the basement, Sphinx and I, diving into the strata of crusted papers held together with wire. Some had almost disintegrated, others survived intact, but all of them, every little scrap, reeked of damp—as if they had absorbed miles and miles of swamps. It was a pleasure to dig. There was only one other person who shared this passion for clawing the House’s past out of its most secret nooks, and that was Sphinx. For the rest of them even the most precious finds from the basement were disgusting junk. But Sphinx . . .

“Oh, wow,” he whispered, holding a bundle of yellowed invoices. “Jackpot.”

We pored over them, trembling with anticipation, just to add another tiny detail to the picture that was invisible to everyone except us two.

Cloth, gray.

And the children of the House of old dressed up in gray uniforms.

Wool, skeins.

And Sisters Mary and Ursula, each on her own stool, started clicking the knitting needles, one sister per dortoir, one stool per sister, and woolen socks, hanging lower and lower, snaked out of the hands roughened by incessant washing and cooking.

Step by step, scrap by scrap, we reconstructed the House. That House. We knew how the rooms looked, knew what its occupants did, and not even M. A.’s passion for stretching the stores of apples long into the winter could hide from us. Why would she insist on that? We didn’t know. But we burrowed into the contents of that basement like two insane moles. From 1870 to the last graduating class. Throughout our research we lugged to the dorm reams of what Wolf termed “hopeless garbage,” with Lary serving as the muscle. The previous graduating class was the only part of it all that interested the pack. I compiled two scrapbooks out of the most fascinating documents, and then we cooled a bit on the whole excavation enterprise.

So now it falls on me to tell Smoker about Mother Ann. I almost have to laugh, because it’s impossible to explain without explaining what the House was back then. I continue to deliberate whether I should try, while my mouth keeps running on autopilot. At some point even I myself become curious: What’s that I’ve been babbling about all this time?

“To get on her good side you had to be very God-fearing, and know a lot of ancient texts by heart, mostly the ones that are impossible to remember, and when she was dying in her bed she made the sisters bring all the linens in the House to her room and counted and recounted them. But then she was already not right in the head. And when she died and her assistant became the principal, they said they saw the ghost of Mother Ann going from dorm to dorm, checking, counting, and rechecking, in other words, not resting in peace at all.”

Smoker blinks and frowns. It takes him some time, because he’s busy, but I notice it anyway.

“What? You don’t believe me? Sphinx, tell him!”

“It’s true,” Sphinx says. “It was exactly the way Tabaqui’s telling it.”

“How can you know that?”

“We know everything. Anything and everything that is the House!”

I deliberately don’t mention the basement, but my bragging suddenly rings true. I sense this truth and marvel at it. There. That’s what we were looking for. For everything that is the House. There comes a time in the life of everyone to start asking who their great-grandfather was and to listen to the family lore, so Sphinx and I descended into the basement and told the musty tales to ourselves. I shiver. We became too much a part of this place—and it, of us. It’s almost as though we had created it. There was nothing in the basement where it mentioned the ghost restlessly roaming the rooms looking for linens to count.

That night I finally manage to escape into the hallway. Under the pretext of going to dinner, but most likely because Sphinx got bored guarding me. No girls in sight, and my dragon looks really tiny from below, barely visible. The eye glistens, but to distinguish the details you’d have to be a giant. On the other hand, the stains from the overturned paint can are quite readily visible. One might even say eminently visible. I drive over them on purpose, to declare my involvement.

Dinner is disgusting mashed potatoes, all lumpy. A person such as I, who gorged himself on nuts and raisins all day, can only look at it with contempt. The girls are right there when I wheel back. Two of them at once. They sit on the Crossroads sofa, picking at the exposed foam rubber and flinging the pieces out the window. There’s a gaggle of Hounds assembled around them. Nothing really interesting. Besides, they’re blocking the way so I can’t move closer and hear what they’re discussing, or otherwise take part in the proceedings. I only can note that they are Succubus and Bedouinne, and that the evisceration of the sofa is being performed rather gracefully. That’s the extent of my research for tonight. Long doesn’t make another appearance either, even though I spend the rest of the evening waiting, desperately hoping that she does.