Arachne is silent. The wind flees, recedes, inconsolable. The cat, overflowing with the song, flies down through the building, a furry arrow. Its double, one floor below it, crosses the hallway, tumbles down the steps, halts, and starts to clean the paws and the chest. The cat aims lower and lower, reaches the landing saturated with the scent of other cats—and is reunited with its double. Three rounds of the cat dance follow, the all-knowing noses touch, the stories get told: one about the adventures of the trash can in the night, the other about the spider concerto. Then it is the running, paw to paw and rib cage to rib cage, past the dark screen of the switched-off television, past the sleeping bodies, until finally they take a turn into an opened door, into stuffy darkness where their master is sitting, cradling another cat in her lap. Their vaults onto the master’s sharp shoulders are mirror images of each other. The coats mingle and flow into a single furry blanket.
THE HOUSE
INTERLUDE
The wind rattled the glass. The roof dripped water. Blind heard the faint tinkling and then Beauty’s sigh as he snuggled in the puddle he’d just made without waking up. Stinker’s nose whistled softly. Blind stalked past the beds, clutching the sneakers wrapped in the blanket to his chest. Siamese, side by side in their bed, lay in the exact same pose, down to the clenched fists. Wolf, on the top bunk, hugged the guitar. When he tossed and turned in his sleep, the strings thrummed. The room was full of phantoms. Blind heard them all. Each one was like a clear song to him.
Sleeping Beauty was dwarfed by the snowcapped mountain of the enormous juice maker. It worked continuously, spewing forth multicolored cascades smelling of fruit. The torrents whirled around Beauty’s bed, ushering it into the orange ocean, and the meager puddle of urine was lost in that kingdom of juice, utterly insignificant.
Over Magician’s bed a masked man rustled his star-studded cape, the master of top hats and swimsuit-clad women sawn in half. The squalls of applause from the unseen audience made the other ghosts startle.
Elephant slept silently, like a small hill under the stars. There was a whispering susurration from the top bunks: Humpback’s parents dropped in for a visit, faceless figures in bright clothes. Blind never listened to their conversations. Up there were only them and Wolf’s nightmares: dark labyrinthine corridors, sucking him further and further into their emptiness, and the heavy steps thundering behind. Wolf whined, and the guitar, anchored to the headboard, answered softly, soothing him.
Blind passed the phantom of the juice maker and stopped. From the direction of Grasshopper’s bed came the velvet drawl of that senior girl: “Listen to me. When you grow up you’re going to be like Skull. I know, for I am Witch.”
Blind took a step forward, stumbled over someone’s shoe, and the dream phantoms vanished, spooked by the noise. He pushed the door and found himself in the anteroom. The floor was cold against his heels. He put on the sneakers and went out into the hallway.
He walked lightly in his rumpled clothes, trailing the edge of the blanket after him like a cape blotting out his footprints. Stopping in one particular place, he plucked a piece of wet, crumbly plaster off the wall and ate it. Then another one, unable to resist. His dirty face was now spotted white. He walked past senior dorms and classrooms, went up the stairs and through the counselors’ hallway, dry and clean; walls here didn’t have cracks, were not a source of plaster. A television droned behind one of the doors, and Blind lingered, listening to it. At last he came to Elk’s door. Pushed down the handle gently, assuming a savage crouch, ready to bolt at the slightest sound. The door opened, and he entered, feeling the way ahead with his hand to prevent himself from banging into the bathroom door, but it was securely closed. He quietly crossed to the bedroom door and leaned against it, taking in the silence and the barely audible breathing of the one sleeping inside. Blind listened, at first standing up, then squatting down. He was listening to the soft song that was whispering to him: “He is fine, he is sleeping, his sleep is dreamless.” Then he spread the blanket and lay down by the door, a watcher, a protector of that sleep. No one knew about this, and no one was supposed to know. He was oblivious to the sliver of light under the door, of course, but his sleep was mindful, and when there was a cough and a groan of bedsprings on the other side of the door he shot up like a dog hearing someone’s footsteps. The sound of a match being lit, the rustle of pages. Blind listened.
