Every house has its rules that must not be broken. Every house has its three-headed dog keeping order. Gramps; Mother; Sphinx. They all hemmed me in with proscriptions, installed barriers keeping me from myself, but only one of those worked, the one put up by Sphinx. Because that’s what I wanted. Sphinx is not to blame here. He hadn’t brought me into this world or sold me to insane relatives, and he never robbed me of my childhood or starved me half to death. All he did was give me this one rule, and he never demanded anything else. And . . . After all, it was I who wished for peace and quiet, for the new life as one of many, it was I who uttered the prayer that transported me to the House. That’s why it was not slavery. Of my other houses I talked only to Sphinx. He was the only one who knew everything. He was the invisible thread tying me to the previous lives, and at the same time teaching me to live this new one. He was not afraid of me at all—I would know, I have long learned to distinguish the fear hidden in the thin shells of human faces. Why him? I have no idea. It just happened. He did remind me of the shaved heads at first. But all he had in common with them was the bare skull. I’d never ever seen that doglike expression in his eyes. “Find your own skin, Alexander, find your own mask, talk about something, do something, never stop, you must be there every moment, people must feel you. Got it? Or you’ll disappear.” Talk about what? Do what? Where to go seeking masks I’ve never worn, for words I’ve never known? He yelled at me, then calmed down. “All right, whatever. Forget it. If you can’t think about anything, don’t. After all, that’s also a kind of mask. But when your body is present in this room, you have to be as well. Be present and busy, always, unless you want to be stared at or drawn into discussions.” And . . . Day and night, cigarette butts swept into the hand, a wet rag over the clumps of dust, a sponge over the coffee stains, a spoon into the waiting mouth, and always the eyes, more piercing than Gramps’s. Don’t look into them, never look into them. Forbidden. Taboo. And “Al, air out the room,” “Get me the pants,” “Help me into that stupid shirt,” “Bring over the wheelchair.” Splinters in the fingers, always wet, aching, bleached white by the detergent. Scrapes. Fingernails, weeping. And “Look at this guy, he’s switched off again. Hey, Alexander, what’s that you’re thinking about?” “The Conqueror’s head has left the building. Give him the mop, that’ll bring him back.” “He’s a card, that Alexander character. All he ever wants is housework.” The House walls, the House Laws, its memories, its fights, its games, its tales—that’s all well and good, calm and soothing, if it were not for the fear that’s always nearby, that only can be pushed away for a short while, very short, because sooner or later it returns, bristling with even more sharp spikes than before. It’s the fear of the inevitable end to all this, the public flaying of the new, freshly grown skin. The fear of long-legged Sphinx carrying the secret of the real me. He who has power over someone surely would wield it?
“Are you afraid of me, Alexander?”
The green eyes leave smoking holes in me. I cringe. I shout back, “Yes! Yes! I am afraid! So? Wouldn’t you be, in my place?”
“If I could be both you and myself at the same time, no, I wouldn’t. And you don’t have to either. Trust me, I want nothing from you.”
