The Gray House

“I asked you once, and I’m asking you again. Stop this,” he says. “Enough. I am tired of living in the shadow of the House. I don’t need any more of its gifts, of its worlds that turn out to be traps. I don’t want to belong to it. I don’t want anything from it. No more lives that unfold before you as if they were real, and then you find out that you’re old, your muscles have atrophied, people look at you like you’re a reanimated corpse and celebrate your ability to tell the right hand from the left. I hate this, I’m afraid of it, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, even you, but you don’t see me pleading with you to stay here!”

It’s almost completely dark now. The wan strip of light in the sky has been extinguished. Wind is walking freely in and out through the empty frame. Blind is hunched over, clutching his head.

“Why did you refuse to go there with me just now? Were you afraid I’d drag you somewhere you can’t crawl out of? Leave you there and run away?”

Sphinx nods. “Something like that. You got it. Do you mean to say you wouldn’t?”

Blind raises his head.

“I don’t know,” he says fiercely. “I might have. Except it’s not that easy. You are stronger than you think. You’d get out. There are no doors there that wouldn’t open before you. But you are choosing to stay here and live out the rest of your stupid life as an armless cripple.”

The last sentence convinces Sphinx that Blind is teetering on the edge. He’s never used those words before. Never said them out loud. Blind is having a harder and harder time holding himself together. Sphinx is having a harder and harder time observing him in this state.

“People live with this,” he says.

“Of course they do,” Blind says. “Go ahead, live with it. I hope you don’t have an occasion to regret the choice you’ve made. I could have brought you over completely. You know that. Even Noble could have done it. Think about it.”

“Noble has others to take care of.”

Sphinx stands up.

The House is looking at him through Blind’s empty, translucent eyes. The House does not want to let go of him. For a fleeting moment Sphinx imagines that there’s no Blind in the room. Only someone, something, that would stop at nothing to keep him in. He feels a cold knot in his stomach. It passes as quickly as it came, and he again sees Blind, who’d never do anything to hurt him.

“Go away,” Blind says. “I don’t want to hear you again.”

If Sphinx had arms he would have pounded his fist into the table now. Maybe it would’ve helped a little. But there are no arms. The only thing he can do is leave. Everything that needed to be said, was.

He walks out into the hallway and stops as he hears a crashing noise from behind the closed door. Blind has done what he himself couldn’t, smashed his hand against the table. Sphinx closes his eyes and stands quietly for a while, listening intently, but there are no more sounds coming from inside the Coffeepot.

SMOKER

Tabaqui told me to write in the diary that “Fairy Tale Night is coming.” We’ve just returned from the canteen, having spent more than four hours there, all told. I’ve never felt more drained in my life.

It’s not that the dorm looked especially ransacked. If anything, it was even cleaner than usual. But the probing hands had obviously rifled wherever they could, so everyone dashed to check on their secret places. I didn’t have any, which is why I unloaded myself on the bed and lay there while they ran around counting the losses. The biggest of the losses was the hotplate. That definitely got taken away. But most of the things that were then said to also have been lost were found afterward. And even though Lary kept whining that some incredibly valuable object had been stolen from him, no one believed him, because as soon as he checked his bed he perked up markedly and even spat out the metal thing he’d been sucking on all that time.

I was so tired that I thought I was going to switch off as soon as I touched the bed. But after lying there for a while I realized that I wasn’t sleepy at all. My tiredness was of the canteen, not of anything that was inside me, and our room cured me of it. Still, I couldn’t imagine that they would insist on arranging a Fairy Tale Night after a day as hard as this one. I was sure everyone could appreciate some rest.

“Go on, write,” Tabaqui said. “You’ll get to rest during the breaks.”

“What do you mean, breaks?” I said.

“This Night is going to have breaks in it. Everyone knows it’s the last one, so most probably it’ll go on till morning. Besides, we are expecting guests, so make an effort and behave yourself.”

I didn’t understand what that was about. When was the last time I didn’t behave myself with guests present?

It was an exceedingly bizarre evening. Very much resembling those evenings after which happened the nights I didn’t like to recall. When Pompey was killed, and the other one, when they cut Red and Crab was found dead.