The Gray House

BLIND

Blind crosses the yard that’s been imbibing the heat all day. The asphalt is warm under his bare soles, and the stubble of the lawn prickles them gently. The grass is thicker under the oak, thicker and softer. He comes up to the tree and allows his hands to enter it. The bark leaves wrinkled indentations on his palms. He climbs slowly, even though he could fly up like a cat. But it’s not his tree. Today he is merely a guest. To the right of the entrance extends a wide corridor, leading to the place where the swing was once attached, until Elephant tore it off with the yelp of “I’m flying!”—and to the left, a narrow passageway that only the thin and small-bodied could use. That branch is cooler to the touch than the others, because they all keep the traces of every ascent and descent, and Blind likes it best. He whistles as he climbs, sending up a warning.

Humpback says hi and rustles the twigs. The greeting is not welcoming, but Blind didn’t expect it to be. Humpback settled up here in the hopes of being left alone, not to entertain guests. But Nanette, rushing through the leafy thickets to meet Blind, is ecstatic. The wings brush his cheek and his shoulder is bestowed with a blob of gelatinous guano. She’s become heavier, and she smells of a fully adult bird now, that is, not exactly nice. While he and Nanette exchange pleasantries, Humpback asks what Blind is doing up in the tree.

“Nothing much, really,” Blind says. “Would you play for me?”

Humpback doesn’t answer.

Nanette flies a little way off, attacks the canopy, sings with abandon, dances above their heads, making noise and pretending she’s three birds at once. Blind wipes off his shirt. His hand becomes sticky.

“Why?” Humpback says.

His voice is different here than in the room. A confident voice, even when he’s speaking softly.

Blind takes a step forward. His face is a frozen mask, his hands bear the traces of the tree’s undulations.

“No reason,” he says, and sits down in the goblet-like junction, the only place here that’s suitable for comfortable sitting.

He always chose that place, preferring it to all others. Anyone sitting here cannot be seen either from the ground or from the windows. This is the very heart of the tree.

Blind sees that Humpback’s seclusion is a burden to him. Being alone is hard when you’re accustomed to living among many, and that which he thought would bring him peace is not helping. The moon shines brightly through the night, and the air is full of tension. Humpback is part of that tension he tried to flee, he brought it with him and placed it in the branches, hoping that the silence and the tree’s vitality could do something to it. Something that he himself couldn’t. Everybody’s the same. Running around trying to hide everything deeper inside, then hiding themselves and their birds. Stepping back, always stepping back and smelling of fear, but keeping up appearances, smiling, joking, quarreling, eating, and procreating. And Humpback is not like them, he’s bad at it, he only gets as far as the very first, overt part of any action, and that makes him even more unhappy.

The mingling aromas of vanilla and unwashed hair. The first of those he carries in a pouch of smoking tobacco around his neck.

They are silent. Humpback searches for the words to say to Blind, Blind waits for him to find them, and then Humpback walks away on a shaky branch, returns, sits down across from Blind, and starts playing. Very softly. It’s almost a lullaby, but the wrong kind, there is no calm in it, no caress. Through its ostentatious tenderness Blind feels the cold breath of Humpback’s loneliness. Blind waits for it to subside, to dissolve as Humpback gets carried away and forgets about his presence, but he never does.

“Happy?”

Blind reaches out.

“May I? I would like you to remember something.”

His hand accepts the flute. It’s not merely warm—it’s hot, like the places on the walls where someone has just written something important. The handprints are always hot, visible to the touch. The flute trembles and meanders in Blind’s hand, the dead wood follows the traces left by the live wood. Blind plays the song he had heard once, the one with the wind, the spiraling leaves, and the boy in the middle of the whirlwind, protected and vulnerable at the same time. Blind plays well, this is not the first time he has played this song. He re-creates all the nuances faithfully, and he can be proud of his performance.

“What was that?” Humpback says.

“You used to play this down in the yard. Remember?”

Humpback shakes his head. They often respond like that to Blind, and only then check themselves and put their movements into words, but by that time it’s already unnecessary.

“No, I don’t.”

Blind plays another snippet, and Humpback’s aloof silence tells him that Humpback really does not recognize his own song.

“Too many repetitions.”

Blind doesn’t tell him that the repetitions are his, that they helped him weave the protective net, that it’s what the magic of monotony is about, completing the circle, doubling on itself until the end becomes the beginning, building an impenetrable wall around the player. The words remain unsaid as he hands back the flute. Other people’s songs have damaged Humpback, he can no longer do magic even when he lives in a tree. What he used to do so well is now but a trivial melody for him.

“The tree is not good for you,” Blind says. “And the loneliness. Come down and look for what you’ve lost there. You might find more than you expect to find while sitting here.”

“How would you know what I want to find sitting here? What I’ve already found? What makes you think you know what’s going on in my head?”

Nanette crashes down on Blind’s shoulder like a sack of feathers and passionately pecks him on the earlobe.

“How about you come down yourself and stop bugging me?” Humpback says, taking the bird off Blind. “Leave me alone.”

Blind distances himself from Humpback’s words, his voice, Nanette’s crowing, stops seeing their movements by the noise they’re making, and brings up the memory of the big fish flapping its fins in a deep basin, immersing himself in that sound. Someone had done that long ago. Took a fish, put it in a basin, and placed it in the room where Blind lived. Blind spent so many hours sitting next to that basin that he can now restore those sounds inside him even in the noisiest of places, restore them and lull himself to sleep. He brings his big fish and lets it roam among the branches of the oak like a giant scaly bird, lets it splash and float in the leaves. The longer it does that, the calmer he becomes. When he touches his fingers to the bark, it is not warmer than his skin anymore, he washed it of its memory, the tree will stand untouched now for some time, like a primeval oak in the primeval forest.

Humpback quiets down also, listening to what he wrought.

Dozens of paths above them, growing thinner and thinner and breaking off into nothingness, dozens of ways, some wide, some narrow, all ending identically, but not for those who can see. The highest of them soar above the canopy, if you follow them you can feel them buckling under your weight, and if it’s windy you may hear the squeaking of the invisible door as you swing on the branch over the void, inhaling the scent of the closed-off path. Blind climbs the oak when he needs to feel the Forest. When his arms and legs are restless and his head is full of words he seeks solace in sending his body up the waterspouts to the roof, up the wire fence, up the trees to the highest branches. He likes himself when he does these things. He hasn’t visited the oak for a long time. He’s content here, he’s home, and even if Humpback turned him out now he’d still carry away something valuable. Humpback’s fear and apprehension. The old song, the smell of tobacco, Nanette’s excitement, and the splashing of the giant fins. And the image of the little girl, crouching, sucking on her thumb. The girl with a surprisingly heavy gaze, wearing a battered short dress stained with egg yolk and blood. Humpback is scared of her. Blind will take her with him.

“Why is it you don’t ask before taking something from us?” Humpback says sharply. “Why do you never ask us?”

Blind is astonished by Humpback’s perceptiveness, almost frightened by it. He leans against the gnarly branch. Always? From us? What does he always take from them, from Humpback, without asking? And why would Humpback tell him about it now, just as he realizes something is indeed being taken? He scatters Humpback’s words and puts them together again, listening to the sound they make, and sees that Humpback did not mean what he assumed. He was not talking about that which Blind has taken a moment ago.

“Everyone grabs what they need wherever they can,” he says. “You included. We all take something from each other.”

Humpback’s branch jerks, mirroring his move. Or maybe he thumped it angrily.

“Yes, we all do. But you, especially so. You are greedy, Blind. You take like a thief, and it’s so obvious. I sometimes think that you feed on our thoughts. That there is no you, only what you’ve taken from us, stolen from us. And that . . . loot—it walks among us, it talks to us, sniffs at us, pretending that it’s one of us. I feel myself emptying in your presence. I hear you saying my own words—words that I never said when you were near. Logs call you a changeling. They say you steal other people’s dreams. It’s supposed to be a joke, you’re supposed to laugh like it’s another one of their silly ideas, except I know it’s true, have known it for a long time. I know you’re a fake. You’re tiny shards of us glued together.”

“That grew into your Leader,” Blind prompts. He’s not being sarcastic or cruel. He doesn’t hear conviction in Humpback’s voice, only desire to hurt him. “I can assure you, Humpback, that I did once exist outside the House, without any assistance from any of you.”

Does Humpback smile?

Blind knows where this superstition comes from. A big part of it is his habit of quietly assuming the inflections of anyone he’s talking to. It happens by itself, almost unconsciously. By doing that he reduces the distance, makes the words easier to understand. Sometimes it makes even the thoughts easier to guess. But this habit by itself wouldn’t make Humpback want to hurt him now.

“I had my dreams,” Humpback says. “They were my own. My secret place. No one knew about it. And then you barged in and ruined it. Forced that horrible child on me. She hides all the time and then jumps out when I least expect it, and starts biting and scratching like a wolverine. You turned my dreams into nightmares. I can’t even be in a room at night anymore, I’m always expecting her to sneak in on me and tear at my face. I’m not even talking about being able to sleep. Only here, in the tree, and only for minutes at a time. I know why you did it. Because you can’t stand it when someone escapes from you! Escapes to where you have no power!”

Blind laughs.

“What makes you think that you’re the only one to have that dream? That it’s a dream at all?”

Humpback suddenly reeks of danger. The scent is so strong that Blind grabs the nearest branch, even though it’s not nearly thick enough to support him.

“If I were to push you off right now, are you going to reach the ground? Or will you evaporate on the way down?”

Humpback’s voice echoes with the sound of Blind’s fall and the twigs cracking. Or maybe it’s bones.

“I’ll grab you, and we’ll fall together.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I didn’t like the question.”

Humpback sighs heavily.

“Those aren’t dreams, Humpback. Believe me,” Blind says. “But you must have already figured that out.”

Nanette pounds the trunk with her beak, imitating a woodpecker. Blind tears off a leaf that’s been tickling his cheek and crushes it in his fingers. They become slightly sticky and bring in the smell of the Forest. It helps Blind regain his composure. You should always smell of things that surround you, that’s one of the Forest survival tricks. Becoming a part of it reduces the danger. It’s a bit like copying the inflections. Blind has long been a believer in this technique, ever since the time he devoured the walls of the House when he was little.

“If not dreams, what is it, then?” Humpback says.

“You know yourself,” Blind says indifferently.

Humpback is silent. Only his fingers move, rubbing the flute. The dappled rays of the sun are hotter now, they burn Blind’s skin where they touch it, these solar bites wandering back and forth in the feeble breeze that ruffles the leaves.

Once, long ago, on this very junction where Blind now sits, he was hit by a crossbow bolt. It didn’t pierce him, only hit and bounced off. He remembers how frightened he was. Not of the blow itself and not of the pain that followed, but because the one who did it remained invisible. He could not guess who it was, standing below with the makeshift weapon that was in vogue among the juniors, he could not even be sure it was one of his classmates and not a senior, and it’s the thought that it could have been anyone that was scarier than meeting a barrage of arrows from a noisy, arrogant, obvious adversary. Why was he remembering it now? What makes one relive an event that does not, on the surface, have anything to do with the conversation he’s having? Blind’s hand slips under his shirt, the fingers caressing the stomach in the spot where the bruise used to be.

“How much time does it take to reload a crossbow?” he says.

Humpback’s silence is more telling than would be his scream. Blind is amazed at his discovery. So it really was Humpback. Honorable and generous even at six years old. Protector of strays and bullied newbies. Blind had all the reasons to be frightened back then. The one standing under the tree with a crossbow turned out to be the one who could not have been standing there and doing what he had done. That’s where the silence comes from. Humpback is ashamed, like a grown-up would be ashamed of an evil deed.

“How much time does it take to vanish?” Humpback says stiffly. “To fade away into thin air, like you never existed?”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Nor you, mine.”

Blind spits out a strand of hair that somehow found its way into his mouth.

How can you explain something that is in the nature of things for you, and at the same time impossible and fantastic for everyone else? How can you express the knowledge, the experience that took you years to accumulate, in mere words? Yes, of late Blind finds that he is being called to do just that more and more often, but it doesn’t make the task any easier.

“When I came here I was five,” he begins. “Everything was simple then. The House was Elk’s House, and the miracles were of his making. As soon as I entered I realized that I knew more about this place than should have been possible, and that I was different here. The House opened itself before me, opened all of its dreams, its doors, its endless paths, all but the tiniest objects in it sang loudly to me when I approached. It was Elk’s House, so how could it be otherwise? At night I ate pieces of its walls, believing that this brought me closer to Elk. He was the god of this place, the god of its forests, swamps, and mysterious ways. He used to tell me, ‘The world is boundless, it opens up outside the door, and there will come a time when you’ll understand it, my boy.’ What could I have thought of those words except that we were not allowed to talk, other than in riddles, of what only the two of us knew about?”

Humpback is silent. Only his breathing betrays his presence.

“Years passed,” Blind continues, “and I realized that all that had nothing to do with him. That he was not the creator of this place, or its god, that it existed separately from him, that the secret I thought we shared belonged to me alone. Then it turned out that there were others, but it made no difference anymore. Because for me it was always about him. And he simply didn’t know. He lived his life on the Day Side, lived there and died there, and the House did not protect him. It would have protected me, because I was a part of it, but Elk wasn’t. The House is not responsible for those it didn’t let in. It isn’t responsible even for those it did, if they get lost, or get scared at the wrong moment, or don’t get scared at the right moment, and especially if they think that what they see are just dreams. Dreams where you can die and then wake up. Those like you. Thinking that the Night Side is a fairy tale. The Night Side is strewn with their skulls and bones, with the tattered remains of their clothes. Every dreamer thinks this place is his. That since he created it, nothing bad could happen to him while he’s there. Sooner or later it does happen. And one morning he doesn’t wake up.”

Humpback swallows.

“What about you?” he says. “Did you know right away that it wasn’t a dream?”

“I never had dreams before I came here,” Blind says drily. “I am not sighted, if you recall.”

Humpback shifts on his branch, sits differently. Clicks the lighter. He clicks and clicks, again and again, until there appears a cloyingly sweet, vanilla-scented cloud.

“So I’m a Jumper?” Humpback says indistinctly. The pipe gets in the way of words. He takes it out and adds, “That word always sounded funny to me.”

Blind shrugs.

“You can call yourself something else if you wish. The word is irrelevant.”

“And that little monster . . .”

“Is Godmother,” Blind says. “I had no choice but to drag her over, and it’s not my fault she turned into what she did. I’ve left her with you to wake you up.”

Humpback’s silence is so long and deep that Blind begins to suspect he’ll never talk again. There’s no more smoke, the pipe must have gone out.

“Damn,” Humpback says finally. “I know you’re not lying, but I still can’t believe it. Is it true, what they say about her and Vulture?”

“For the most part,” Blind says, getting up.

“She bites really hard.”

“I know.”

Humpback gets up too.

“You climbed up here only to tell me all this?” he says suspiciously.

“No. I climbed up here to ask you to play for me. I need a piper on the graduation night. Someone who is a Jumper and can play the flute.”

“What for?”

Judging by the tone of his voice, Humpback can guess at the answer and doesn’t like it at all.

“To lead away the Insensible.”

Blind feels the horror in Humpback’s gaze directed at him.

“A dozen of them,” he says. “I need someone they would follow. Run and drive after. Someone who is capable of walking them over. The Pied Piper. He must love children and animals. He must be one of those who always have homeless puppies and hungry kittens tagging after them. His playing needs to assure them that a warm home and tasty food await where he’s taking them.”

Humpback sits back down.

“This is crazy,” he mumbles. “Complete nonsense! Do you even understand what it is you’re babbling, Blind? I’m not the Pied Piper. He only exists in fairy tales! And I am not him! I don’t believe in all this, anyway!”

“Believing is not a requirement.”

Nanette drops some debris on Humpback’s head and caws coyly. Humpback shakes the adornments out of his hair.

“Go away,” he says. “Please.”

Blind steps down onto the next branch, but before he is able to slide down the trunk, Humpback grabs his sleeve.

“You can’t know these things about me,” he says. “You just imagine that I am the one you need.”

Blind takes the sleeve away.

“I do sometimes become a changeling,” he says. “And it’s a lot like being a dog. I’m sorry, but I happen to know for sure whom I’d follow if I were a pup. That’s about the only difference between us: I’m a little bit more of a dog than you are.”

“You’re a little bit more of a whole bunch of things,” Humpback mutters. “And a little less of a human. No space for him, with so much other stuff in there.”

“But you like dogs.”

“They’re better than humans.”

“Then I am better, too.”

“I don’t like you.”

“That’s only because I don’t eat out of your hand or wag my tail.”

Humpback is silent. Blind feels that he’s chewing on something. An oak leaf, too?

“I was not going to shoot again,” Humpback says reluctantly. “I almost threw up after the first shot anyway. They said you’d eaten the rabbit. You know, the one that disappeared from the cage. The one we looked for all over the House. Rex showed me its bones and skin. They said that you’d eaten it raw. At first I just wanted to beat you up, but then I took the crossbow and made a hunt out of it. Like in the movies . . . the dark avenger . . . all because of a rabbit!” Humpback giggles nervously. “Defender of Nature . . .”

“I didn’t eat it. Do you really think I would kill a rabbit and then keep its bones under my bed?”

“How do you know where they were?”

“I found them. I thought they were rat bones and threw them away.”

“You could be telling the truth,” Humpback sighs. “I have no way of knowing. I’m sorry I said all those things. And I lied about the song. Of course I remember it. I just hate it when people listen in on my playing. I hate it when they listen in, period. Read my poems. See my dreams. I need to have something that’s mine, where no one else can sneak in.”

He sighs again.

“How is it, when you see other people’s dreams?”

How is it? Sad. Agonizing. The dreams never speak of anything you need to know. Nothing is really the way it looks in someone’s dream. There everything is too shaky, the transitions are too fast, and if you try looking closer at a face it immediately disappears. Only by picking the tiny pieces, by noticing the barely noticeable similarities, by threading familiar paths through many, many dreams can you assemble the picture of someone’s world. You could even try looking for yourself in it. You will start spotting your own face, or rather your white mask, more and more often, until one day you look into your own eyes and see how limpid they are. I am beautiful! will be your rapturous thought, your smugness will bleed through and become visible to everyone, and they will all turn away from you, but you won’t care anymore. Your happiness will last for a spell, you’ll even begin brushing your hair. Until your next encounter with yourself, where you’ll have the deathly-white eyes of a boiled fish, and your face will be covered in disgusting pustules. You’ll shrink back in horror, and from that day you’ll hide your eyes behind long hair and dark glasses, become an outcast, believing yourself too ugly to be close to other people. Until the next dream encounter. This time you’ll have no eyes at all. You will grow resentful of those who have been seeing you as that eyeless monster, and stop visiting their dreams. Only later will you realize that everything is deceitful in the dreams of others, including your own face, and the only thing that matters is that you understand now how the dreamers look when you’re not looking at them.

Blind attempts to explain all this to Humpback but fails. Humpback doesn’t hear him. He still thinks that it must be fascinating—to see someone else’s dream. Blind says to himself that it doesn’t matter. That he didn’t climb up here to ask forgiveness. Or to persuade. Why is it important what you see when watching someone’s dream? Why would Humpback refuse to share pieces of his dreams?

“All right,” Blind says. “I’m going.”

“Wait!” There’s panic in Humpback’s voice. “I need to ask you . . . lots of things.”

Blind sits down. But not on that comfortable, chair-like branch. This one is rather like a bifurcated threshold, a place to linger awhile for those who are already halfway out the door.

Humpback’s breath is labored. He’s chasing the questions that refuse to be caught. He already knows those lots of things, all that’s been embedded in the songs, poems, sayings, and nursery rhymes. All the miracles of the House have been distilled into them, and he swallowed them whole at the age when miracles mundanely coexist with the rest of reality, so he already has the answers to most of the questions he could ask now. The longer he searches for them, the better he understands that this is so. Blind waits, stepping over the unasked questions together with Humpback. A step . . . and another . . . and another.

“What’s going to happen to her now?” Humpback asks finally. “This . . . Godmother. Will she stay there forever?”

Blind nods.

“She will. And what becomes of her there is not our concern. Not mine and not yours.”

“She’s so little!”

Blind searches his pockets for cigarettes but doesn’t find any.

“She’s tenacious,” he says.

Humpback is silent for a few seconds, evaluating this argument.

“Where is she hidden?” he asks, revulsion dripping from his words. “You know . . . The grown-up her.”

Blind sees what Humpback has just imagined. How Godmother’s chrysalis is extracted from a gym locker, and how much commotion that causes among the rest of the counselors.

“She isn’t anywhere except the Forest,” he says. “I’ve dragged her over completely.”

He cringes, already anticipating the next question. Because this is never talked about. It’s not mentioned in any poems, songs, or nursery rhymes.

“Is that possible?” comes the question.

“Yes,” Blind admits. “But it’s very hard. You can’t really do that. The House doesn’t like it and makes you pay.”

With fear, he adds silently. With the possibility of losing everything. With helplessness, banishment, and sometimes even death.

“When Ralph took me away,” he says with a shudder, “I thought that was the end of me. He said that he wasn’t returning me to the House until I told him where she’d disappeared to. Where we have hidden her. And you know . . . If I hadn’t dragged her over completely, I would have told him anything he demanded. Never in my life have I been more scared than at that moment. I ceased to exist. Turned into a nonentity.”

Blind is shaking and not noticing it. He brings the lapels of his buttonless jacket closer together over his chest. He doesn’t realize how pitiful a figure he’s cutting, and is surprised by Humpback’s hand outstretched to him.

“Don’t say it.” Humpback grips his shoulder. “I understand. I am not going to ask you to bring me over completely.”

“No,” Blind says. “There’s only one person for whom I will do that. For him I am prepared to pay the price. But no one else.”

“Try not to think about it, all right?” Humpback says.

Blind nods.

“I will find you there. And then I will bring you over. I’m allowed to do that to those who are already halfway gone. I think. I hope. But it might take time.”

“You don’t have to,” Humpback says firmly. “Not for me.”

Blind nods again and slides down the trunk. The closer he is to the ground, the cooler the air around him, as if it’s not the asphalt exhaling the heat of the day that’s waiting for him there but a sea of tall grass. When he reaches the last branch he jumps off. His fingers touch the ground and encounter small squares of cardboard. A lot of them, like someone has spilled pieces of a child’s jigsaw puzzle. It’s the questions for the Oracle. Blind picks one up and puts it in his pocket.

“Hey,” he hears a dejected voice say from above. “What do you think the Pied Piper would be playing?”

“Madrigal of Henry the VIII,” Blind answers immediately.