The papers wrote about the old swindler who’d managed to enchant scores of people. The Tube proclaimed it, so it must have been true. It was not true: he was just a dirty old man who lost his mind. But the Tube never lies, it is beyond suspicion, so they took me to the god’s house, to rinse the traces of Gramps’s sins out of me with holy water. They washed me and christened me, but still the letters kept coming, and the crazies with shaved heads kept stalking me and falling headfirst onto the pavement, grabbing me not by the hem of the toga, as before, but by the bottom of my sweater or coat pockets, tearing them clean off, and “Oh god, I am so tired of this! The coat was brand new! It cost us a fortune! We should not let him out of the house. Disgrace for the entire family!” So—curtains drawn again, lights always on, the Tube humming constantly, the shaved heads stumbling around outside the house, sniffing the walls, scratching at them, seeking the angel that became a kind of addiction for them. Therefore, what they were seeking had to be removed. Didn’t matter where to, otherwise it was simply dangerous; after all, “they urinate down by the elevator, the neighbors are furious, and that incessant knocking in the night, and the phone calls, intolerable, simply intolerable!” And so, my mother’s house exchanged for the House. This exchange followed a prayer. The only genuine one out of thousands. The only one where I asked something for myself. I wasn’t even sure what exactly it was I asked. But it was answered, or it just might have been a coincidence, even though I happen to know that there are no coincidences, and I entered Gray House. The place that existed for me and those like me. Those not needed or, if they are, needed for all the wrong reasons.
Once I saw it, I immediately understood that this was it, the thing I’d been asking for. The writing was on the wall. Literally. It read: WELCOME, ALL YOU ABORTED, YOU PREEMIES AND POSTIES! ALL YOU DROPPED, THROWN OUT, FLIGHTLESS! WELCOME, CHILDREN OF THE WEEDS! I knew how to read, even though those in the mother’s house claimed otherwise. I entered, believing that I was given according to my prayer. Entered as Alexander, shedding both the Angel and the Moron, both of them forever, because “If you want to stay with us, there are going to be no miracles. None, you hear? Not bad ones, not good ones, and not even indifferent ones.” I said yes and, under the all-seeing gaze of those green eyes, became Alexander, as far from The Great as could be, the eternal shadow, the ever-ready pair of hands. I tried. I really tried, even though saying yes was much easier than always remembering that I had. The gray walls of the House talked to me through the graffiti: “Tired of being a slave yet, freckle-face?” No, I wasn’t, not at all, it was not slavery; besides, what do you know about being a slave? You just know the word, and you have this picture of a black man picking cotton. Uncle Tom, Uncle Sam, whatever. Have you ever seen those with shaved heads being led by the invisible rings in their noses? Have you ever heard about an angel in chains? Are you familiar with lemon-scented mornings, with chanting at dawn? Or the miracle of the exploding Prophet of the Holy Tube? Or the cat that decided to taste freedom, the least miracle in God’s quiver of miracles; I did not enchant it, however much everyone was sure that I did, it was simply a miracle, given to it not by me but through me . . .
