The Gray House

THE SOOT OF THE STREETS

SHARDS

The Wheeler’s Entertainment Manual

Racing club. Heartily recommended for any wheeler seeking excitement. Wheelchair races over hard terrain. Scheduled competition dates. Seasonally awarded cup, “The Silver Whee.”

Cooking club. Weekends, Biology room. If you can cook something, anything, you’re welcome to join. If you can’t but would like to learn, you’re especially welcome. Note: ingredients usually not provided.

Poetry society. If you can string together a couple of lines, you’re in. If you can’t manage even that, do not despair. Your ability to listen will be enough. Preferably with appreciation. Note: if you can’t do appreciation, find yourself another place. Poets are touchy!

Enthusiastic bodybuilders. Advantage—the only prerequisite to join is athletic trunks. Disadvantage—you guessed it: they’re enthusiastic!

Card players. This one is members-only, with very strict entry requirements. If you’re not in yet, forget it.

Also:

—Astrologers, Cof., every Wednesday;

—Swap, Tuesdays, first floor;

—Billiards, game room, anytime;

—Guitarists, laundry, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday;

—Novelists, Cof., every Saturday and Sunday;

—Contacters, every month on Friday the 13th, Crossroads at night.

WHILE JUMPERS AND STRIDERS DO NOT REALLY EXIST!

Have a nice time.

—JACKAL’S ADVICE COLUMN, Blume, vol. 22

“Stop it,” Smoker says. “No one can know those things.”

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

Sphinx smiles at Jackal and nods. Jackal smiles at Sphinx and nods. They’re both grinning, making Smoker want to throw up. He again feels that everyone here has conspired to torture him.

“Don’t ask, then,” Sphinx offers. “Keep quiet and be happy.”

“Would you like it better if I were a mute?”

Sphinx jumps up.

“Let’s go. We’ll have a stroll. Smell the soot of the streets. You look a bit pale.”

Smoker reluctantly climbs off the bed.

“What do you mean, soot of the streets? Is that another joke?”

“Why is it that you never listen when people tell you things?” Sphinx asks on the way. “Even when they’re answering your questions?”

Smoker is trying to keep up.

“Listen? To who? Tabaqui?”

The hallway allows them to squeeze through the gauntlet of compassionate chuckles. The walls shout at them: KILL YOUR INNER CUCKOO! ENTER THE NEXT LOOP!

“Tabaqui would be a good start. He answers questions better than any of us. Tries to, at least.”

Smoker slows down.

“Are you serious?”

“Absolutely.”

Smoker reddens if his eyes accidentally fall on girls. Sphinx strides widely and purposefully toward some unseen goal, and Smoker recalls the mysterious soot of the streets, about which he never got an explanation.

“Are we really going outside?”

“What do you think?”

“Damn! Stop brushing me off with those what-do-you-thinks! I don’t! I don’t think! Would it kill you to actually say something when you open your mouth, for a change?”

Smoker cringes, scared by his sudden outburst and also by Sphinx’s face, which is suddenly level with his own.

“Smoker,” Sphinx says. “Do you like crawling on the floor?”

Smoker shakes his head in desperation.

“Somehow that’s what I thought too,” Sphinx says, straightening up and bumping the wheelchair away with his knee. “In which case, please behave yourself and don’t raise your voice at me. I can understand that it’s fascinating stuff: probing the limits of Sphinx’s patience. I am often fascinated with this myself. But not today. I’m not in the mood. So let’s get one thing straight . . .”

He resumes the stride without finishing the sentence, and what the thing is that should get straight remains a mystery.

Smoker wheels after him, even though he’s not sure he should. It seems that Sphinx is already regretting the company. On the other hand, he hasn’t told Smoker to stay back either. Upon reflection, Smoker decides that he should go forward, as if nothing has happened. He loses sight of Sphinx near the stairway, but when he drives down the ramp to the first-floor landing he discovers him standing there, waiting.

“No offense, Smoker. When I ask you what you think, it always has only one purpose: I would really like to make you think. Let’s go back to the beginning. Was I serious when I told you that it’s better to listen to Tabaqui than not to listen to him?”

“Come on. That was not really a question.”

Sphinx peers into the trash can full of cigarette butts.

“Do you like this smell, Smoker? The one emanating from this vessel? I doubt it. Even taking your nick into consideration that would be a . . . perversion.”

“Why do you ask, then?”

Sphinx kicks the can and sniffs at the air.

“How about the soot of the streets? Answer me this one, and I’ll answer yours. Did you think I was taking you into the Outsides? That I regularly take strolls there at night, when I’m in a bad mood, and that this time I decided to take you with me? Dressed like this?”

Smoker takes out a pack of cigarettes.

“I was just wondering what it was that you called the soot of the streets. Was that so wrong?”

“But you didn’t ask it that way. You asked if we were going outside.”

“Why are you picking at my words? You understood perfectly well what I meant.”

Sphinx kicks the can again.

“Smoker. This is really bad. When your questions are more stupid than you are. And when they are much more stupid, it’s even worse. Like the contents of this trash can. You don’t like its smell. And I don’t like the smell of dead words. You wouldn’t try to turn this over and shake out the butts and the spit on my head? But you’re willing to bury me in rotted empty words without a second thought. Without a first thought, in fact.”

Smoker, pale and frightened, teases a cigarette in his fingers. “All right, I’m getting on your nerves. You could just say so. I won’t be asking any more questions, then.”

“Ask about things you don’t know.”

“Right. Mother Ann, for example. And get answers that I can’t understand. Very enlightening.”

“Tabaqui tried to tell you. It’s not his fault that you were determined not to believe a single word.”

“Because it was perfect nonsense. Why is it that his trash is fine with you, Sphinx? How come his words don’t feel dead to you? He’s constantly running his mouth. If every word he said were a cigarette butt, the House would be buried under them. It would be one huge mountain of butts.”

Sphinx sighs.

“Only for someone who doesn’t know how to listen. Learn to listen, Smoker, and you’ll see how much easier your life becomes. Jackal can teach you a thing or two about that. Pay attention to what he says. To the way he frames his questions. He takes only what he needs. And as for running his mouth . . . Yes, he does that. And yes, he likes to embellish the truth. But in that avalanche of words there is always the answer, somewhere in the middle. Which means it’s not empty words anymore. Yes, listening to Tabaqui takes a knack. But it’s definitely not impossible. Others seem to manage.”

Smoker looks at Sphinx indignantly.

“Sphinx, don’t make Tabaqui this great guru figure. Please! Just admit that he’s of a privileged class. That he can get away with things others can’t.”

Sphinx nods.

“He is of a privileged class. And he can get away with things others can’t. Happy now? I didn’t think so. What is it you actually want?”

Smoker doesn’t answer. Sphinx leaves the landing and starts down the first-floor corridor. Smoker follows him a few feet behind. He’s so hurt he can’t speak. He drives along and thinks about how hard the black sheep have it. How no one likes them.

“Maybe I’m spoiled,” Sphinx says, not turning his head. “By Alexander. His wordless understanding. Or even Noble, who was too proud to ask questions. Maybe I’m biased, or simply irritated. But I also see you behaving very strangely, Smoker. Like there’s something I am supposed to ask forgiveness for. From you.”

Smoker catches up with him.

“Is it true you used to beat Noble, forcing him to crawl?”

Sphinx stops.

“It is a truth. Black’s truth.”

“But did it happen?”

“It did.”

The first-floor corridor—lantern-like lights, linoleum crisscrossed by wheelchair tracks. Someone is torturing the piano in the lecture hall. Hounds yip in the changing room. Sphinx takes a quick look inside all the doors they’re passing. He’s looking for Blind, and he keeps thinking: Is it possible that Smoker doesn’t see how like a street this place is? Doesn’t smell the soot in the air, doesn’t feel the snow falling invisibly?

They meet Blind at the very end of the corridor. He is knocking the stuffing out of a vending machine, hoping to get back the coin it swallowed.

“Thirsty?” Sphinx asks.

“Not anymore.”

One last punch, and the machine spits out a paper cup. Blind picks it up.

“Nine,” he says. “Nor a drop to drink, in any of them.”

“Blind, this machine has been dispensing nothing but empty cups for the past hundred years.”

Next to them Bubble, from the Third, is roaring down the highway, slamming into the oncoming cars and shaking the game console.

“You wouldn’t happen to have met Red in these parts?”

“What happened to your voice?” Blind inquires. “You sound hoarse.”

“Safeguarding the pack’s property from long-legged sluts,” Sphinx says darkly.

“Oh? Gaby has been?”

Sphinx is overcome with a burning desire to kick Blind. Shatter his ankle, make the dear Leader lame for a while. A long while.

“She has,” he manages, restraining himself. “And I sincerely hope that she won’t again. That you are going to take care of that.”

Blind listens intently, head to one side, then steps behind the machine, taking his legs out of Sphinx’s reach.

“My bad,” he says. “I shall be more careful next time. Who’s that with you? Smoker?”

“Yeah. I took him out for a walk.”

“He’s uneasy, isn’t he,” Blind says indifferently. “Didn’t I tell you? Black damaged him.”

Smoker, mute with indignation, looks up at them both. Two shameless, self-absorbed bastards discussing him as if he weren’t here. Bubble’s screen switches off, the machine squeaks the first few measures of the Marche Funèbre at him. He listens to it bare-headed.

In the lecture hall, pimply Laurus pushes the stool away from the piano and dabs his forehead with a handkerchief.

“Now do something less boring,” the audience demands.

Laurus smiles haughtily at no one in particular. These people know nothing about real jazz, and there’s no use in trying to explain. The wheelers in collars burst out in applause. They applaud the smile, not the music.

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

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

“Whose?” someone asks probingly.

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

“Nobody’s,” he mutters distractedly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How did you get to know all that?”

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

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

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

“That’s where Tabaqui got it from.”

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

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

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

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

Sphinx appears before them.

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

Red sits up straighter.

“Looks like you found me.”

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

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

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

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

“I’ve already talked to Blind.”

Red takes a clownish bow.

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

“Cut it out,” Sphinx says.

“Cutting it out right now!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How do you know what they look like?”

“I happen to have a certain insight.”

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

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

Sphinx looks at Smoker with sudden interest.

“Strange games you have, Smoker. Uncommon.”

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

Girls. The new Law.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why the long face?” Jackal asks.

“Why not?”

“Listen to him,” Sphinx said.

Smoker listens.

“Why?” Jackal asks again.

He takes only what he needs.

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

Tabaqui generously throws open both of his vests.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What was that?”

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

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

They must know I can’t!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The leaf trembles, echoing with distant thunder.

“What was that?”

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

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

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

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

“Listen, Arachne,” he says into space. “This is for you only.”

It’s quiet. The attic is the quietest place in the world. Then the sound streaming from under Blind’s fingers, plangent and trembling, fills it up. Blind does not know yet what he wants. It has to be a kind of web. Arachne’s webbed trap—enormous and all-encompassing for her, imperceptible for everyone else. Something that is at the same time the snare, the House, and the entire world. Blind plays. He has the whole night ahead of him. He follows familiar tunes. Humpback makes them beautiful, but Blind leaves them dry and frayed at the edges. He can only make beautiful things that are fully his own. Chasing that feeling, he does not notice the steps of the night going past, it walks through the attic and through him, dragging his songs away. Arachne grows bigger and bigger. She fills the corner and spills out from it; the silver web envelops the attic. Blind and Arachne, now enormous, are in the center of it.

Arachne trembles, and her trap trembles with her, the translucent spider harp strung from the ceiling to the floor. Blind senses its vibration, hears its chiming, Arachne’s innumerable eyes burrow into his face and hands, burning them, and he smiles. He knows that he’s doing it right. Not completely yet, but very close.

The two of them play together. Then they are three, the wind joining in with the song of the flues. Then four, welcoming a cat’s gray shadow.

Blind cuts the song short. Arachne shrinks back into the dusty corner, no bigger than a fingernail again. The cat flees into the crack in the floor. Only the wind, completely unhinged, continues wailing, rattling the flues, knocking on the skylight, tugging at the window frames . . . The glass erupts and tumbles inside, coating the floorboards in snowy dust.

Blind, barefoot, calmly walks over the shards to the window. He thrusts his arm through the middle of the ring of glass knives, takes a handful of snow from the roof—it’s soft and fluffy under the hardened crust—and drinks it.

“I am drinking the clouds and the frozen rain. The soot of the streets and the sparrow’s footsteps. What are you having, Arachne?”

Arachne is silent. The wind flees, recedes, inconsolable. The cat, overflowing with the song, flies down through the building, a furry arrow. Its double, one floor below it, crosses the hallway, tumbles down the steps, halts, and starts to clean the paws and the chest. The cat aims lower and lower, reaches the landing saturated with the scent of other cats—and is reunited with its double. Three rounds of the cat dance follow, the all-knowing noses touch, the stories get told: one about the adventures of the trash can in the night, the other about the spider concerto. Then it is the running, paw to paw and rib cage to rib cage, past the dark screen of the switched-off television, past the sleeping bodies, until finally they take a turn into an opened door, into stuffy darkness where their master is sitting, cradling another cat in her lap. Their vaults onto the master’s sharp shoulders are mirror images of each other. The coats mingle and flow into a single furry blanket.