The Gray House полностью

In lieu of an answer, we received a skinny book about a seagull. We had collectively read it aloud, as was our custom back then. Because of Blind, because of Beauty, who could barely put letters together, and because of Elephant, who didn’t even come as far as the letters. So it was an obvious solution. Naturally, Wolf was best at reading, so he’d get the longest chapters. For some reason everyone agreed that I was the worst. We learned about Jonathan Livingston Seagull, but that hadn’t really helped us in figuring out the identity of our mysterious visitor. The book hadn’t been checked out of the library, so it didn’t have a card we could examine for clues, and pointedly dropping the word seagull around did not lead us to its supposed owner. Among seniors almost everyone had read the book; among juniors we were the only ones.

Are you a seagull? was our question to Jonathan in the next letter. Jonathan maintained his silence, leaving us instead a suspicious brownish feather. We kept the feather and showed it to anyone who had even a passing familiarity with ornithology. The scholars concluded that the feather did not belong to a seagull, but whose it was they couldn’t say.

I remember all of this and many other things besides, fall asleep, wake up again, remember some more, and suddenly it strikes me that I have missed a chance to unravel one of the mysteries that had so tormented us when we were kids. How did she know in advance about all of our traps? The fact that Jonathan turned out to be Ginger doesn’t explain anything at all. The more I think about it the more it bugs me that I didn’t think to ask. Now I have to wait until the next time she comes. And what if she never comes again? This thought strips the sleepiness clean off. I toss and turn, I sigh, I call myself stupid. Well, all right, so I did a stupid thing. But what about the others, the supposedly smart ones, huh? No one thought to ask about what’s most important! Unless . . . Unless they did. Of course! I shake myself up, peek out of the burrow, and look around.

Asleep. All of them, snuffling shamelessly. Smoker on the other end, Sphinx to the left of me, while Noble is nowhere to be seen. There’s a lonely silhouette on the windowsill, though, gazing at the stars. Very romantic. Must be him.

I kick Sphinx in the ribs.

“Hey! Hey, wake up! I need to ask something, quick.”

“Tabaqui! You bastard!” Sphinx shakes his bald head sleepily. “Never in my life have I met anyone half as nasty as you. What is it now?”

“Have you by any chance thought to ask how she managed to evade all our traps? You know, the most important and fascinating thing?”

“I have,” Sphinx grumbles and lowers his head back on the pillow. “But I’m not telling. Not until you mend your dirty ways.”

“Sphinx, please! Pretty please! Or I won’t be able to sleep . . . Tell me . . .” I keep jostling him gently in sync with my entreaties. “Sphinx, tell me . . .”

He sits up again.

“Damn it, Tabaqui! I would have told you everything when we came back, except you were asleep, and I respected that, by the way. And this is the gratitude I get . . .”

“I wasn’t asleep!”

I indignantly crawl out.

“See that? I’m fully dressed. Wouldn’t I be in pajamas if I were really asleep?”

“I see. So what I was supposed to do is dig up your nest and check if you’re dressed or wearing pajamas?”

“Yes, you were! Especially considering that I wasn’t asleep at all. I was thinking.”

Blind sits up on his mattress on the floor.

“Just tell him, Sphinx. He’s going to chew us all up by morning if you don’t.”

“She got it from Elephant,” Sphinx says reluctantly. “That’s all there is to it. And in return she allowed him to touch her hair.”

I remember now. Every time Elephant saw Ginger he would try to reach for her hair, huffing, “Want! Want!” Something of an unusually vivid color in a place where other people don’t have anything interesting—that’s all he saw. And more than anything in the world Elephant liked to touch unusual things: soap bubbles, cats’ tails, burning matches.

I sigh, disappointed. What a mundane explanation for the most intractable enigma of our childhood. It would have been better not to know.

“So that’s it,” I say. “Simple and boring.”

“And for that you had to wake me up,” Sphinx says vengefully.

“Yes. The suspense would’ve killed me. And now we can all sleep in peace.”

Blind lights up, and Sphinx sidles up to him to mooch a couple of puffs. My burrow is in shambles. I have to construct a fresh one. I quietly hum a new song, stacking the pillows. Mysteries revealed, Jonathan unmasked! Now that I’ve had time to think, that’s a great thing, and the rest is small details, not worth getting upset about.

Truth is the greatest friend. Now we can sleep in peace.

Certainty came in the night. There was a knock at the door.