The Gray House

The glochids of the Opuntioideae easily detach from the plant and lodge in the skin, causing irritation. The tender white prickles of some Mammillaria and the silvery threads of the Cephalocereus, the Old-Man Cactus . . .

“I think they’ve all had a hand,” I say. “It’s not a diary anymore, it’s a yearbook.”

I flip to the empty pages and notice some strange marks, tiny holes punched through and arranged in rows.

“And someone bit on it here,” I say. “Or maybe not. At least the back portion was definitely gnawed by Tubby.”

Alexander looks closer and then feels the holes with his finger.

“This is Braille,” he explains. “Blind wrote you something. He has this tool, like a thing with a nail in it . . .”

“Oh,” I say. “A remembrance. I’m going to read it in my old age, when I lose my sight and learn to read Braille. Cool.”

“Listen,” Alexander sighs. “Can I just give you another notebook? Almost like this one. Tubby spoiled the cover too.”

“I don’t need another one. I’ll manage,” I say. “I’m sorry for all the grumbling. It’s not like you had anything to do with it.”

He shrugs.

“As you wish. We could place it under a stack of books, then. Straighten out the pages a little.”

Alexander brings some glue and we mend the bedraggled cover the best we can. Then we put all the books we could find in the room on top of the notebook. Then Alexander makes some tea. Tea is not the best thing to be drinking when it’s so hot out. In the Sepulcher I was getting it cold-brewed and with ice, but it’s time I forgot about life in the Sepulcher.

Alexander shows me Tubby’s bag. It’s a toddler backpack, and it overflows with little balls of chewed paper.

“Food for the fire,” Alexander says. “He’s been saving them for a while.”

Then he says that I should tear out the page with Blind’s message.

“Why?” I say. “How is it better or worse than Tabaqui’s?”

“But you have no idea what he’s written there,” Alexander persists. “And for whom.”

“What do you mean, for whom?”

Alexander’s gaze goes right through me. It’s directed somewhere above the bridge of my nose. He shrugs.

“You know . . .”

I break into a cold sweat from the hints he seems to be dropping.

“Nobody reads Braille here in the House, do they?”

He shrugs again.

“Some people do. Ralph, for one.”

He looks away tactfully.

I’m silent. It’s stifling in the room. The sun is melting the glass in the windows. Alexander is not looking at me and I am not looking at him. I know what I am ashamed of, but I don’t understand why he should be ashamed as well. Why he should look guilty.

“Thanks,” I say. “You’re right. That’s what I’ll do. Tear it out.”

He nods.

Smoker’s diary (excerpts)

It might seem that nothing much changed in the House. The lights-out and morning bells keep getting ignored just as before. The pack spent half the night feverishly discussing the subject of “Jerichonies,” whatever they are, that are supposed to “presage the end,” and then shortly before dawn Tabaqui woke up everyone with a scream: “Here he is, I’ve got him!” When they switched on the lamp he was sitting under the table, flashlight in hand, surrounded by the shards of a smashed flowerpot.

Mermaid is knitting a rug, or something similar. It looks like a chessboard. Every night before going to bed she puts it up on the wall and then sleeps under it. According to her, this kind of netting protects from bad dreams. According to Sphinx, it steals the dreams and makes intractable tangles out of them.

Humpback is still living up in the oak. Lary spends his nights on the first floor. Logs created something like a tent city down there and are “keeping watch.” That is, they discuss their pocketknives all day and paint on the nearby walls all night.