The Gray House

Anything interesting that’s happening in the House sooner or later gravitates either to the Crossroads or to the Coffeepot. If you’re not looking for something specific, the best strategy is to sit there and wait until whatever you need finds you. I’m not the only one to set up such ambushes. During the hours of the hunt, the territory of the Coffeepot is strictly divided among the people tracking this and that. We try not to infringe on each other’s turf, but stuff happens, so we’re mostly aware of what everyone else is collecting. From time to time the Coffeepot suffers from the plague of girls in search of confrontation, and then we have to depart swiftly lest we become the trophies.

We stake out the corner table by the wall, Mermaid and I, and wait. The banner on the Mustang is acid-yellow and smells of decaying sparrows. I have on the T-shirt emblazoned with pirates, as a warning, and I’m wearing sunglasses. They’re helping me cope with the sunny weather. Mermaid’s hair ensconces her and her chair in a kind of tent, cascading down to within a couple of inches of the floor. It mingles with ribbons, cords, and chains of tiny bells, and in the gaps of her vest I can see question marks. Only question marks, two dozen Whys all in a row. She is waiting too, patiently and silently, her hair drips beads of silver, and the question marks seem to flow like upturned droplets.

I very much wish myself luck now, while Mermaid is here. For her sake, not mine. My own good fortune has abandoned me lately, not surprisingly, since I’ve already caught a lot of things. It’s possible that every lucky day brought me closer to some kind of limit and now I’m bumping against it. This makes me nervous, and to calm myself down I take out the ream of paper and launch into the sixty-fifth variation on the theme of “A la recherche du Crazy Benefactor.” After the first dozen or so I stopped using the form letter, because I didn’t need to anymore, but also because something that’s been copied out is always less sincere, even when it’s exactly identical to something that’s been transcribed from memory.

Mermaid drinks her coffee and watches the door. As I fold my missive, she frowns suspiciously.

“Do you really believe something’s going to come out of this?”

“Well, to be completely honest,” I say as I put the file back into the backpack and take out an envelope, “no, not really. Things like that only happen once, if at all. The probability of history repeating itself is vanishingly small. But even the tiniest probability should not be ignored.”

“You mean it already has happened? When?”

I sigh. No one seems to be aware of the history of their own abode. And no one seems to care that they aren’t. It’s all moldy rubbish to them, they can’t spare a single minute to take a good sniff at it. Truly, not a single one among them has the capacity of becoming an archeologist, of deriving pleasure from digging and of rejoicing at the results.

“Once upon a time there lived a man,” I say. “And he was extremely rich and extremely ugly. Or maybe not exactly ugly, but afflicted with a disfiguring disease. We’ll never know now because he never posed for any pictures, and if somebody took one of him in secret he immediately would drag them into court. He lived holed up in his house, assembled a collection of antique musical instruments, and didn’t give a damn about anyone. He did write articles and send them to various magazines, signing them with the pen name ‘Tarantula,’ but they were almost never printed, because in them he mainly vented at the government and all the institutions and organizations he ever had to deal with, or, as he himself put it, ‘spit venom.’ And who’d want to print that, right? I think in ten years he only had one article accepted, and that about the antique musical instruments. All of his relatives couldn’t wait for him to croak to finally get their hands on his money. He knew that, of course, and that’s why he dug up this orphanage that was about to be shuttered because the building it was occupying was falling apart. He bought that building, financed the repairs, and endowed a trust that was supposed to maintain the orphanage after his death.”

I make a pause and with the end of my spoon trace an invisible spider on the tablecloth. As I was telling the story our table had acquired several more listeners. I don’t mind, anyone can listen if they wish.

“And he compiled a list of rules and regulations for those who were going to live in his house and receive his money. Except that it happened so long ago that many of those rules aren’t being observed anymore.”

“What were the rules?” Mermaid says impatiently. “Come on, you have to know. Tell us!”