The Gray House

No, he wasn’t called Shark for nothing. He was precisely that. A blotchy, slit-mouthed fish with eyes looking in different directions. It was getting old, and the hunting was not what it once had been, which is why it was entertained by chasing after minnows like me. Of course he knew. He had even just been about to tell me, but then decided not to. Just to make me squirm. He overdid it, though, because the group didn’t really matter. They all hated Pheasants. Suddenly it came to me that this might not be so bad after all. I now had a chance to escape. The First threw me out and the others were going to do the same, whether right away or not. If I really applied myself I could make it as quick as possible. Think about how much time and effort I’d spent trying to become a good Pheasant. Convincing another group that I didn’t belong there would be much easier. Besides, they were all sure of it already. It was even conceivable that Shark thought so himself. This was me being expelled in a roundabout way. And afterward he could say that I wouldn’t fit in anywhere, no matter how hard they tried. Because heaven forbid any blame would attach to Pheasants.

This calmed me down. Shark caught that moment of enlightenment and didn’t like it.

“Go,” he said with visible disgust. “Go pack your things. I am coming tomorrow at half past eight. Personally.”

As I was closing the door to the principal’s office behind me, I knew that he was going to be late tomorrow. An hour, maybe even two. I could see right through him now, him and his petty shark pleasures.

“The students just call it Home, succinctly combining in this word everything that our school means to them—family, comfort, care, and understanding.” This was what it said in the promotional booklet. I was planning to frame it and put it on the wall once I was out of there. Black frame. Maybe even gilded. It was quite a piece of work, that booklet. Not a word of truth in it, but also not a word that was a direct lie. I don’t know who had written it but he was a genius, in a sense. It was House, though, not Home. But we did succinctly combine a lot of stuff into this word. And it was quite possible that a Pheasant really was comfortable here. And that other Pheasants were a family to him. There are no Pheasants in the Outsides, so I could not say for sure, but if there were, the House would be the place they would all fervently seek out. But there aren’t any, and I had a suspicion that they were created by the House itself, which meant that before getting here they all might have been normal people. A very disconcerting thought.

But back to the booklet, page three: “More than a hundred years of history and lovingly preserved tradition” are all present and accounted for. One look at the House is enough to realize that it started falling apart in the last century. There were also bricked-in fireplaces with a complex network of flues. When it was windy the walls moaned like in a medieval castle. Total immersion in history. Oh, and traditions, it’s certainly right about those. The absurdity that is the House was definitely a product of several generations of not-quite-right people. Those who followed needed only to “lovingly preserve” and reinforce.

“A massive library.” There was one. Game room, swimming pool, movie screen . . . all there, but each “there” came with its own little “except,” and then it turned out that actually using those luxuries would be impossible, dangerous, or unpleasant. The game room belonged to Bandar-Logs. That meant no Pheasants allowed. The library was the card players’. You could wheel up there and take out a book, but you were unlikely to want to return it. Swimming pool? Under construction for the past couple of years. “And it is going to be at least two years more, the roof is leaking,” as the Little Pigs had kindly clarified. Oh, they had been very kind for a while. Answering questions, showing and explaining. They were sure that they lived full and interesting lives in an uncommonly wondrous place. This had me completely floored. I shouldn’t have tried to convince them otherwise, I guess. Then maybe we’d still be friends. But as it was, the kindness was soon over, together with the budding friendships, and the three almost identical signatures appeared at the bottom of the letter demanding my transfer. They had still managed to teach me a lot. Almost everything I knew about the House I had learned from them. The life of a Pheasant was not conducive to new information. To anything new, really. Life in the First was rationed minute by minute.

In the canteen, think about food. In the classroom, think about learning. At the doctor, think about health. Shared fears, of catching a cold. Shared dreams, of a mutton chop for dinner. Uniform possessions, nothing extraneous. Every gesture automatic. Four parts to the day, divided by meals—breakfast, lunch, dinner. Movies once a week, on Saturdays. Assemblies on Mondays.

“Should we?”