The Gray House

Once it became crystal clear that everyone else was completely bewitched, Humpback startled and translated, blinking sleepily.

“What Tabaqui is saying is that Pompey hankers after Blind’s job. I’m not sure this really came through, what with all those bats and other crap.”

“Objection!” Tabaqui said hotly. “I was acquitting myself quite eloquently, and, what’s more important, very vividly. To try and reduce this oration to a digest is criminal.”

“True,” Humpback said. “Except that Smoker might be a bit stunned, since it’s his first time, and so not really in a position to give it its due.”

Noble opened his eyes and peeked in astonishment into the jar he was hugging through all of this.

“Would it be possible,” he said, “to limit this monster next time to a certain number of words instead of sentences?”

“Of course not!” Blind said. He straightened up and snatched his hair out of Tubby’s grasp. “Just think of the many different ways one single word can be repeated.”

We all thought of it and groaned. Tabaqui inclined his head like a great actor acknowledging the applause of his audience.

At dinner I couldn’t eat properly. I was shaken up by the information about Pompey. The well-being of his bats was the last thing on my mind. I didn’t like the word coup

, not one bit. I felt myself in the middle of events about which I had only a very hazy notion, or rather no notion at all, and I liked that even less.

How does the House change Leaders? Do they fight each other? Or is it pack against pack? And if so, why is the Fourth so unruffled in the face of the coming massacre? Because there was no other way that a fight between them and the Sixth could be described.

I guess that’s the end of the peaceful life, I thought. As if my life in the Fourth was ever peaceful.

The green peas were drying out on the plate, and the meat loaf was already caked with congealed fat. I was hungry, but I still couldn’t eat. The ceiling speakers were drenching us in marching music, so anyone in the canteen wanting to have a conversation had to shout in order to be heard.

The black-and-white Pheasant table. The quiet horror of the glances examining neighbors’ plates. Half of the Pheasants were on individual meal plans, each one different, so everyone’s plate contents were always a concern. There were calories to be counted.

Rats at the next table. The explosion of color and the tide of insanity.

Then Birds, in their nightmarish bibs over black.

The Sixth was all about camaraderie. Looking at them, it would seem that the group consisted exclusively of jovial practical jokers. I wouldn’t want to find myself on the receiving end of their jokes, and their bursts of loud merriment looked suspect, but so what. They were trying their best.

The Third, Fourth, and Sixth had it tough. Rats and Pheasants were the Naughty and the Nice. Both of them overdid it to such an extent that everyone else had to squeeze in between somewhere. Birds were a bit better at it, Hounds a bit worse, and the Fourth, in addition to having no designation, was just too sparsely populated to . . . to fully participate in the game.

Once I managed to say the word

, I suddenly was free to realize that this “game” would have to include much more than just appearance. It was the right word, and, having caught it, I understood that I had been looking for it for a long time. For the word that would contain the key to everything happening in the House. All it took was the recognition of the fact that the Game encompassed everything around me.

It was too improbable that every single one of the pathetic, whining conformists would assemble in one group, while all the unhinged anarchists would go to the other. Which meant that someone somewhere must have designed this at some point. Why? Now that was a different question.

My own perspicacity was making me sweat. I wasn’t even hungry anymore.

So one day, my imagination churned, they became so frightfully bored that they compiled the script of the Game and vowed to never deviate from it under any circumstances. For everyone his role and everyone in his place. And that was the way it had gone since that time. Make-believe and following the script. Willingly for some, less so for others, but everywhere and always. And especially in the canteen, where the audience was always the biggest. No wonder some of them, Pheasants for example, eventually could allow the Game to overrule even basic human nature.

Within this structure everything started making sense, easily and beautifully. The scales had fallen from my eyes as I looked around.

Rats. Almost all of them underage, sixteen or less. Their acid-colored mullets masked teenagers in the throes of age-appropriate angst. Probably this was why they looked so natural playing at deranged instability.