The Gray House полностью

A cardboard monkey on a string hung from the palm branch over Grasshopper’s head. He looked at it. Then looked back at the seniors. The speakers on the walls hissed idly. There, in the distance, among the clouds of smoke behind the counter, Gibbon wiped his hands on the bar towel and changed the record. Grasshopper buried his chin in his knees and closed his eyes. This was not the song. But he believed. Believed that if he sat here quietly, not going anywhere, they’d put the song back on.

The windows darkened gradually. Most of the tables were already occupied. The seniors’ voices droned in the background, dissolving into one rustling stream. This song danced, clanking the tin cans and squeaking from time to time. It was like a conga line of cheerful people, wiggling their hips, stomping in the sand, and shaking tambourines.

Grasshopper took in the smells of coffee and smoke. Could it be that coffee was the potion that made you a grown-up? That if you drank it you became an adult? That’s what Grasshopper thought. Life had its own laws, they were innate, not invented, and one of them was about coffee and those who drank it. First they let you have coffee. Then, as a result, they stop insisting that you go to bed at a certain hour. No one actually lets you smoke, but there’s not letting and then there’s not letting. Which is why there aren’t any seniors who don’t smoke, and only one junior who does. Seniors who smoke and drink coffee become very excitable, and next thing you know they’re allowed to turn a lecture hall into a bar and not sleep at night. And to skip breakfast. And it all started with coffee.

Grasshopper, still with chin between knees, closed his eyes drowsily. The cardboard monkey swung on its cord. Someone tossed a beer can in the air and caught it again. A web of cracks ran down the windowpane. Rain. The rumble of thunder crowded out the music. Those at the tables laughed and looked at the windows. Gibbon wiped down the counter.

Grasshopper waited patiently.

The dancing people were still drumming and singing, relentlessly vivacious, alien—to the rain, the dusk, the faces at the tables. Only the smell of coffee was in tune with them, and the fake palm. Why is it that no one hears how out of place it is here? Them and their sunny songs? Finally, with the last shake of the hips and the last rattle of the tambourines, the dancers departed, to Grasshopper’s relief, leaving behind only an empty rustle, like the crackling of a dying fire. That soft sound was soon drowned out, as the rain took over.

Gibbon changed the record again. A guitar lick, overlaid on the rain. Grasshopper perked up and raised his head. The voice he recognized immediately, as soon as it came in. It was a different song, but the voice was the same voice that had screamed at him from the basement. Grasshopper sat up straight. The voice whispered and moaned over the tables and the heads of the seniors. The setting sun pushed aside the streaming water and the low clouds, and the room turned to purple and gold. It didn’t matter that this wasn’t the song. Grasshopper was sure that he knew this one too, had always known it. Knew it like he knew himself, like something that always had been, that he and everyone else needed in order to simply go on existing. This was the café, not the basement, but the voice kept on calling. Inviting to come with it, out into the wall of the rain. Where? No one could know. And there was no need to break the glass this time. Just step out through it, parting it like water, then through the rain, and up from there. The tables dissolved in the music, leaving only the checkered puzzle of the tablecloths. Time stopped. Rain beat out the drum solo on the faces and hands. Then the purple faded, the gold melted. Only Grasshopper’s hair still flamed in the dark corner.

That song came to an end, but the voice on the record had others. More magic for those who knew how to listen. Grasshopper listened until Gibbon changed the record, and it had a different voice, one that couldn’t make him recognize it. The heads of the seniors resumed their swaying, the fingers busied themselves with glasses and ashtrays. A cat with a glossy back slinked under the tables, mewling pitifully, and got a cigarette and a mint thrown down for its troubles. Grasshopper sighed. This new song didn’t even have coffee people in it. It didn’t have anything. Only a shrill woman.

Two girls wearing bright-red lipstick wheeled away from their table. One of them picked up the cat and cradled it. Someone turned the light on, and there was a short burst of switches clicking. Lights under green umbrella shades were coming on everywhere. The woman was singing about being dumped. Two songs in a row now.