The Gray House полностью

“Not hard enough, or you would’ve been one by now. You decided not to. Made your choice.”

“While we’re at it, it’s as much your fault that I didn’t as it’s mine,” Smoker says hotly. “You ruined my reputation!”

Sphinx laughs. “Is that regret I hear?”

“Well, no . . .” Smoker accidentally dunks his sleeve into the plate still holding the remains of dinner and pushes it away gingerly. “I don’t regret that. But after all that happened, you should be the last to lecture me about freedom of choice,” he concludes feebly, rubbing the napkin over the sleeve.

Sphinx watches him with interest. “Look. You’re not in the First now, and not in the Second. What’s eating you? What kind of role do you think you’re being forced to play?”

“Of someone exactly like all the rest of you.”

“You don’t mean we’re all exactly alike?”

Smoker throws away the crumpled napkin.

“You don’t even see it. You don’t realize how similar you are. You’re so alike it’s scary!”

Sphinx looks at him in mock surprise.

“We are? You don’t say. Silly me, thinking that there’s very little in common between me and Black. So little that it’s making communication between us almost impossible. And I also notice that for some reason you decided to adopt his views regarding everything that’s around us. So it’s becoming more and more difficult for me to communicate with you as well.”

Smoker smiles.

“I see. A dressing-down for consorting with the black sheep.”

“Who’s black sheep?” Sphinx says, amazed. “You can’t mean Black, surely?”

“Exactly. The only one not sharing your own view. An undesirable.”

Sphinx laughs merrily. “Black? Very funny. There’s only one question where he deviates from the majority, and that’s the question of his own stature.”

“I can always talk to him about the Outsides,” Smoker counters. “To him, but to no one else.”

“True,” Sphinx says. “Of course he needs his own shtick. And if it happens to get on everyone’s nerves, so much the better. But don’t get suckered in. He’s been here since age six. The Outsides for him is just as much of a fiction as it is for Blind. He’s only ever read about it in books. Or seen it in the movies.”

“But at least he’s not afraid of it.”

“Is that what he told you?” Sphinx gets up. “All right. Let’s stop it here. If you could, for a moment, get unstuck from feeling tragically misunderstood, you might have some time left to understand others. If you could limit your exposure to Black it would do you a world of good. If this stern woman weren’t approaching our table right now with such grim determination I could have enlightened you some more. If this door did not lead out into the corridor it would lead somewhere else . . .”

He goes to the door, pushes it with his shoulder, and goes out without looking back.

Smoker, distraught, wheels after him.

Black said: “Try talking to him seriously. You’ll see him start hemming and hawing. You just haven’t had a chance to observe it. I have.”

Smoker scans the corridor for signs of Sphinx, but he’s already lost in the sea of people walking and wheeling the other way.

Was he hemming? Hawing? The sleepless night stings his eyelids, the countless cigarettes scratch at his throat.

Sphinx walks quickly. At the entrance to the hallway he stops and lets his eyes find the familiar whitish spot on the floorboards.

You should have seen it, Smoker. Seen what they had wrought when their time came. If you’d have seen that, then for the rest of your life you would’ve kept your mouth shut about the Outsides, about open and closed doors, about chicks in their shells. If only you could have seen.

“Young man!” the bitter woman in an apron calls after Smoker. “I would thank you not to smoke in the canteen ever again. And give me your name. I shall have to report you to the principal.”

Smoker turns around.

The hag is holding a tiny cigarette butt between her finger and thumb. Left there by Sphinx. Smoker regards it closely. Did she wait on purpose until I was out here, to have an opportunity to yell at me in front of the entire House? The headache comes on suddenly, gripping his head in a vise.

“Your name!” the narrow, slit-like mouth demands again.

“Raskolnikov!” Smoker shouts back.

The woman nods, satisfied, and disappears behind the door to the canteen. Smoker continues on his way, wondering whether she would have dared to threaten Sphinx in this fashion. And why nothing had been said about this in all the time the two of them were sitting inside.