The Gray House полностью

The Bull was swaying forlornly on its slender stick legs, watching us with its human eyes and thinking about something sad. It was the most amazing bull in the whole world. It was drawn in an affectedly primitive, childish manner, and its expressiveness went straight for the heart.

“Look at it,” I whispered.

Black stepped forward and scraped the wall where it had started peeling, costing the bull half a horn.

“It’s coming off. Vulture tried putting clear varnish on top, that’s why it looks dull now.”

The image of Vulture as a custodian of wall art was such an incongruous one that I could only mutter something indistinct. The House was a strange place indeed, and every day brought me new evidence of this.

“Who painted this?”

Black looked at me funny.

“Leopard, who else? Oh yeah, I keep forgetting you haven’t been here that long. You can’t mistake his drawings for anyone else’s.” He thought for a while, then added, “Leopard was Leader of the Second. Some three years ago. Red’s third after him.”

He seemed to force that last bit out of himself, but I got the impression that the details would have been forthcoming if I started asking questions. It was strange but refreshing knowledge: that my every question would be answered concisely and exhaustively. With no equivocating, clowning around, references to Pheasants, or long discourses about the Ways of the House. I immediately decided not to abuse this, and to begin by not digging further into the topic of Leopard’s disappearance. Especially since Black’s tone of voice very strongly hinted at the answer.

“There are others,” Black continued as we went along. “Other drawings. They’re almost all around the Third now. There were even more near the Second, but those were all painted over. Still, Bull is the best. I took a couple of shots using a flash, but they didn’t work out that well. I should try again. There’s been this talk about repainting the walls for some time now. Then it’d be gone forever.”

At the door, Black fumbled in his pockets and produced a key. This was the first time I saw our dorm locked, and it sharply drove home the fact that Black and I were indeed alone. Black was fiddling with the balky lock and I was illuminating the door. All along the door’s edge the wall was covered with the repetition of the letter R. The pattern almost dissolved into a meaningless ornament, but it was still composed of that letter. I remembered that I’d seen it on the walls quite often.

“What does the letter R mean?” I asked.

“That’s our counselor,” Black said. “Ralph. He had both us and the Third.”

I’d never heard of a counselor named Ralph, so I assumed that he was no longer alive either. Like Leopard the wall painter. The House was filling up with corpses at an alarming rate in response to my every question. Even if it concerned something that might initially appear entirely innocent.

“Is he dead?” I said, expecting confirmation.

“No.”

Black pushed me in the door and clicked the wall switch, but the light in the anteroom did not come on. He swore, went a bit farther, and switched on the light inside the dorm. Coming back, he tripped over something and swore again.

“Filthy thing!” he was saying when I wheeled in, shielding my eyes from the bright light. “Slipped in, the dirty bitch!”

“What?”

“A rat, that’s what! Another one!” Black was peering under the common bed, in a demonstrably hopeless attempt to discern something there. “What do you think I tripped over just now?”

“Could be anything . . .”

“There are no anythings when your Leader’s blind.” Black straightened up, moaned, and rubbed his leg. “When was the last time you saw something thrown on the floor here? I can tell you that the last thing Blind ever tripped over was Lary’s boots. Ever since that time the boots spend each night with Lary, on his bunk.”

I giggled. Black shot me a disapproving look.

“You’re one weird guy,” he said. “This isn’t funny at all.”

He helped me climb on the bed and put the kettle on. I cleared up the strata left by Tabaqui—he seemed to regard the trip to the Sepulcher as kind of a night out, and the garments he had tried on and discarded were left covering the bed in an untidy mound. I then made myself more comfortable and asked Black where did Ralph the counselor go and why were his initials such a popular motif among the wall artists. In all honesty, I didn’t care much about all this, and was asking only to rinse out the unpleasant sediment that was brought up by the conversation concerning Sphinx. I was afraid Black might return back to that. But Black wasn’t in the mood to discuss counselors.

“He left,” he said tersely. “About six months ago. Packed his stuff one day and hightailed it out of here. I have no idea why they still write and paint his nick. Could be someone misses him.”

Black’s face showed quite clearly that if anyone did miss this mysterious R, it definitely wasn’t him.

“I see,” I mumbled thoughtfully.