The Gray House

When Grasshopper looked at him, Skull seemed to radiate an invisible halo. It was not apparent to the eye, but it separated him from the background, made him brighter. Like they do with light in old movies. And the fact that he was just sitting there, lost in the sea of mere mortals, only strengthened the effect. The sun beat down on him, but he became only more bronzed and handsome with each passing day. His skin did begin to peel, but only later, and you couldn’t tell from a distance anyway.

Next to Skull, but under an umbrella, sat Lame. He was wearing his green blazer, and Babe the cockatoo was sitting on his shoulder. He wasn’t paying much attention to the game, probably finding it not entertaining enough. Babe was watching for both of them, though, becoming very agitated and pulling feathers out of its own breast. On the third day there was a bald spot the size of a coin, and after a week it grew to the size of a hand. Grasshopper waited to see how this would end. Was the bird going completely naked, or was it planning to leave something? Babe stopped when it plucked its belly clean.

Ancient never went out into the yard. He couldn’t stand direct sunlight. Witch was a frequent guest, though. Witch, Grasshopper’s godmother, whose one glance could curse a person to the very end of his days. Witch always put on a wide-brimmed black hat so that out of her entire face only her mouth remained visible. And still people shunned her. Witch’s occult powers made them nervous.

Grasshopper observed the seniors until the heat and the noise made him sleepy. Then he closed his eyes and sailed off, along with his crate and with Blind sitting next to him, into the blue sea. The yard became a beach, the spectators turned into quarrelsome seagulls, and then the ghost of the Other House took shape among the sand dunes and imaginary palm trees, took shape and became closer and closer every day.

Two weeks of the volleyball fever turned the denizens of the House into sunburned savages. Even counselors took to wandering the hallways in T-shirts with lighthearted slogans. The principal, swept along by the general spirit of freedom, barricaded himself in his office and cut his phone cord. There was a feeling in the air of the upcoming exodus, which Grasshopper felt as all-enveloping edginess.

Then the day came when a modest sheet of paper appeared on the board, proclaiming the date of the departure, in exactly one week, and also warning about “one piece of luggage per person.” The volleyball was immediately tossed aside. The announcement concerning the bag limit was made every year, and was therefore traditionally taken as a personal affront and an infringement of basic rights. Naturally, every infringement required pushback. And push back they did. The seniors acquired bags the size of trunks. The juniors had to improvise, sewing additional pockets and elastic bands to their old ones. The pockets held on tentatively, looked ugly, and didn’t really add any capacity. Which is why both Stuffagers and Poxies spent their entire days packing and unpacking, in search of the precise formula for the contents of a bag before it finally burst at the seams.

This was a deeply engaging and tense activity. The boots were having their stiff fronts forcibly softened. The clothes got pieces hacked off with scissors. Everything that could not possibly be carried along was hidden and then relocated endlessly between secret places. The bags were sat on, in order to more thoroughly flatten everything that was already in them, because there were always more things that simply had to go inside. Elephant wanted to take his potted begonia. Beauty needed the juice maker; Wolf, the guitar; Humpback, the hamster; and all the useful appliances Stinker was declaring necessary just “for the road” wouldn’t have fit in ten suitcases. Grasshopper wandered among the heaps of clothing strewn on the floor and commiserated with everybody in turns. He tried helping, but soon came to the conclusion that his own methods of packing did not suit anybody but himself. His handful of shirts, shorts, and socks added up to a meager pile that took barely half of his own bag, and he turned the rest over to Stinker and Humpback, who’d run out of space in theirs.

Blind did not pack. Once again, he wasn’t going anywhere because Elk was staying at the House. The boys’ laments dashed against his cold smirk.

Uneasy with his own idleness and bored by the commotion in the room, Grasshopper fled into the hallways, but the virus of insanity already had taken hold there too. New roller skates and recreational wheelchairs tested, rubber boats and mattresses inflated, and even tents pitched—a mystery, considering the certainty of having a roof over their heads where they were going.

The wall calendar slowly filled with fat crosses over the days that remained. Stuffagers walked around in diving masks and rubber fins.