The Gray House

“Let’s go in,” Elk said. “It’s even more beautiful from the balcony. Here you’re a mosquito buffet.”

The boy reluctantly peeled himself off the railing and followed Elk.

“And poor little Blind can’t see any of it,” he said with barely disguised glee. “I guess that could make him a bit edgy.”

“So describe it to him,” Elk said and opened the door. “He would very much like to hear about what he can’t see.”

“Yeah.” The boy nodded. “Sure. And then he can punch me in the other eye, so that we both can’t see, equally. He would very much like that too.”

Two boys on the balcony were lying head to head on an air mattress amid a sea of stale popcorn and cookie crumbs. The boy in a straw hat, with the empty sleeves of the shirt tucked under his stomach, was droning in a monotone, not taking his eyes from the vivid colors of the mattress cover.

“So they are white and they move, and the edges are like somebody was tearing them or chewing them a bit. Pinkish on the bottom. Pink is kind of like red, only lighter. And they move very, very slowly, and you have to look at them for a long time to notice. There aren’t that many of them now. And when there’s more of them then it’s not sunny anymore, and then when they turn dark they make everything dark too, and it might even rain.”

The long-haired boy lifted his head and frowned.

“Don’t talk about things that aren’t. Describe what is now.”

“All right,” the boy in the hat agreed and turned over on his back. “So they’re white, and pink on the bottom, and they float slowly, and it’s all blue around them.”

He squinted through his sun-bleached eyelashes at the smooth blue expanse of the sky, untouched by even a single cloud, and continued with a smile.

“It’s so blue under them, and above them too. They are like fluffy white sheep. It’s too bad you can’t see how beautiful they are.”

The House was empty. Or it seemed empty. Cleaners crossed its hallways every morning, leaving behind glossy trails of floor polish. Fat flies threw themselves against windowpanes in the empty dorms. Three boys, tanned almost to the point of blackness, lived in the cardboard hut in the yard. Cats went out for night hunts; they slept all through the day, curled in fuzzy balls. The House was empty, but still someone cleaned it, someone prepared the food and put it on the trays. Unseen hands swept away the dirt and aired out the stuffy rooms. The inhabitants of the cardboard hut came running into the House for water and sandwiches, leaving behind candy wrappers, blobs of gum, and dirty footprints. They were trying their best but there were too few of them, and the House was too big. The sound of their feet faded away, their cries were lost in the emptiness within the walls, and they ran back to their little encampment as soon as they could, away from the dead faceless rooms, all identical and smelling of polish. The invisible hands quickly erased the signs of their visit. There was only one room that remained alive. Those living in it were not afraid of the uninhabited House.

The boy didn’t quite know what scared him on the first day when they returned. What woke him up was the din of their presence. He opened his eyes and realized that the House was full of people, that the silence—the sultry summer silence, so familiar to him now after this past month—was gone. The House creaked, slammed its doors, and rattled its windows, it was tossing musical snippets to itself through the walls, it was bubbling with life.

He pushed away the blanket and ran out on the balcony.

The yard was brimming with people. They milled around the two red-and-blue buses, they laughed, smoked, and lugged their bulging backpacks and bags from place to place. They were colorful, tanned, rowdy, and they smelled of the sea. The yard sizzled under the burning sky. He crouched down, pressed his forehead against the railing, and simply looked at them. He wanted to join them, become a part of their charmed grown-up life. He was aching to rush down—and still he didn’t move. Besides, someone would have to dress him first. Finally he tore his eyes off them and went back to the room.

“Can you hear that?” Blind, sitting on the floor by the door, asked him. “Hear how much noise they’re making?”

Blind held the boy’s shorts for him. The boy quickly thrust his legs through the openings, one, then the other. Blind did the zipper.

“You don’t like them?” the boy asked, watching his sneakers being laced.

“Why should I?” Blind pushed the boy’s foot off his knee and put the other one in its place. “Why should I like them?”

The boy was barely able to wait for his blazer and refused the comb. His fair hair, grown out during the summer, remained disheveled.

“Come on, I’m going!” he blurted out. Then he ran, his feet unsteady from anticipation. The corridor, then the stairs, then the first floor. The door was being kept ajar by a striped bag. He ran out into the yard and froze.