“Hi,” I say tersely, not able to peel myself away from the sight of the bowl. “How are things?”
Yeah. I’m clearly babbling. What things? That was a stupid question. But I had to say something, hadn’t I?
Noble grimaces.
“What things? What are you talking about?”
I am silent. A sullen, hopeless silence. The oatmeal is getting cold. Noble frowns. “Are you hungry, by any chance?”
How polite and thoughtful of him.
“Purely by chance—very much so!”
“In that case . . .”
But I’m already not listening. I fall upon the oatmeal like a hawk and exterminate it. Apparently I make use of a spoon, because when the meal is finished I notice it stuck in the grip of my right rake. The wrong way around, so it’s a mystery how I managed to eat the whole thing with the thin end. But that’s not important. I miraculously avoid being suffocated, I still tremble with the now-satisfied craving, and I can gratefully lower myself down on the edge of the bed.
“Noble. Thank you. I know it may sound corny, but you have just saved my life.”
Noble’s chin quivers.
“I noticed. I’m sorry, but it was rather obvious.”
I too begin to appreciate the humor of the situation. The putative savior and bringer of consolation showed up bruised, stared at oatmeal with crazy eyes, and then devoured it as soon as he got half an invitation. Inhaled a sick man’s lunch.
“Oh. I guess that wasn’t very nice,” I admit.
Noble bursts out laughing. I join him. We laugh until tears come, loudly and hysterically. A pair of mental cases. I’m afraid the oatmeal might ask to get out. But the merriment switches off just as abruptly as it started. Noble darkens.
An uncomfortable silence. Exactly what I was dreading all along. There is a wall growing between us. And an iron door with a crest on it—over three stripes bright red, a two-headed overgrown lizard rampant.
“Who was that bastard?” Noble begins, and his tone is painting the fourth stripe: Prone to violence, represents danger to himself and others, requires strict isolation.
“It was Black,” I interrupt hurriedly before a fifth or, heaven forbid, sixth stripe becomes visible. “And don’t look at me like that. It’s my fault too. I should have smelled a rat when he suddenly was so eager to be left with you. If it’s any consolation, I have just about sent him to his grave.”
“And he, you,” Noble scoffs.
“He’d wish.”
Silence again. It would’ve been better if he’d swear and curse. He’s exceedingly good with the meaningful silences. Long ones, too. So we just sit there, and the silence envelops us in a suffocating cloud. It’s laced with something strange, though. Noble is more confused than angry. It might be the result of the treatment he’s getting, but then again it might not.
“What’s going to happen to me?” he asks, just as I lose the last shreds of hope for our conversation.
“I don’t know. It depends.”
That’s not entirely honest, but I can’t just lay it all out. That there’s practically no hope. Noble is still shocked, as if I did tell it like it was.
“Shit,” he says. “Of all the stupid, stupid things.”
My own uselessness is devouring me. Soon there will be only bones left. A familiar feeling, one I’ve had too often ever since Wolf died. Then it turned out that I could get used to living with it. Now I’ll have to drag myself through all of that again. Endlessly repeating to myself that it could have been worse. That at least Noble is alive.
“Listen,” he says, “have you ever used River?”
“No. Didn’t even try. Not River, not White Rainbow, and not Seven Steps.”
Noble looks at me oddly. He is dying to tell me something and at the same time is afraid of doing it.
“Would you believe it if I told you that I ended up in some godforsaken place and spent at least four months there?”
He asks me and looks away. His fingers are teasing the edge of the blanket, his lips are contorted in a grin, as if I have already started clucking in protest, made a sign of the cross with the rakes and fainted.
Would I? I examine him closer—and only now see that which I should have seen right away, were it not for the oatmeal. He looks older. Gone are the last traces of baby fat, the formerly soft cheeks have been chiseled out. His entire face looks sharper. Looking at him, it’s not at all certain that he’s not twenty yet. This indeterminability of age, the principal feature of a Jumper, is staring at me so blatantly that it’s all I can do not to swear out loud. You had to be someone like Black not to notice it.
My emotions are apparently on open display. His grin becomes even more self-deprecating.
“Yeah, just what I thought. Now you too think I’ve gone loopy.”
“No, I think that I have. That I’m completely off my game. Damn, not to recognize a Jumper from two paces! What an idiot!”
He blinks in confusion.
“Sphinx? What’s going on?”
I get a hold of myself. What the hell did I come here for? To demolish someone’s dinner? To parade my exhaustion around, not notice anything, and then, after being shoved face-first into it, to fly off the handle? He trusted his innermost secret to me, and this is how I repay him?
I close my eyes. These are things you’re not supposed to talk about. But I’ve already ruined just about everything, and this is the price I have to pay.
“The landscape looked kind of abandoned,” I begin hurriedly, with my eyes still closed, “a cracked blacktop, fields on both sides, houses here and there. Most of them boarded up. Nothing really memorable . . . except maybe the diner. More or less on the side of the road. I think it’s the first inhabited place for about every other Jumper. There are some who bump straight into the gas station, but not many.”
My head starts spinning. Very slightly, but it’s still a warning sign.
“I’m sorry. I’m not supposed to talk about this. I don’t know what happened to you afterward and where you ended up, but the beginning of the road to the Underside of the House is the same for everyone. Almost everyone. Am I close?”
I unscrew my eyes and see Noble’s eyes occupying half of his face. A sleepwalker who’s suddenly been woken up. Now would be the perfect time for Jan to come back and see this insane look. I turn around to check if the door has just opened.
“Noble. Enough. Get yourself together. I never said anything. Leave the blanket alone, count to a hundred. I don’t know, have some milk. Jan is coming soon. If you keep staring like that they’re going to pump you full of drugs and pack you off in a straitjacket.”
Noble nods spasmodically. I can see he’s desperately trying to follow my advice. Maybe even the “count to a hundred” thing. His face assumes this faraway look. He gets as far as eighty-six, by my estimates.
“But you said you’ve never had anything like that!” Noble blurts out. “How could you know?”
“See, Noble. The House is a weird place,” I say. “Here people have identical hallucinations. Or at least they start identically. And it’s not necessary to swallow or chew anything to get them. You know, I think that if any of the concoctions that the so-called experts are conjuring up here were to be brought into the Outsides and given to someone there, nothing would happen. Maybe a stomachache, but that’s all. Hard to be sure, of course, but that’s what I think. I could be wrong.”
“So I’m not crazy?” Noble recaps, in a calmer manner. “Or if I am, I’m not alone.”
“That last part looks more like it.”
This is where Janus finally comes in. Noble is carefully playing at nonchalance. I straighten up, concern and compassion incarnate. A grandma who finally got to pamper her favorite.
“How are you doing here?” Jan queries. “Fighting yet?”
We raise a unanimous protest. Jan notices the tray with the empty bowl and nods approvingly.
“You can stay just a while longer,” he tells me. “Half
an hour at most.”
Jan disappears.
Now I could stick around with Noble until tomorrow morning if I wanted to. No Spider queens are going to show up to throw me out.
“I need a cigarette,” Noble whines as soon as the door slams shut behind Janus.
I send the rake rummaging through my pocket. It gets predictably stuck in there, scratching around like a trapped insect. Useless thing. Noble pulls me toward him, frees up the unfortunate appendage, and takes out the pack. Then in the other pocket we find a lighter. I climb off the bed and sit down on the floor, with my back against the nightstand. We puff in unison. Noble’s drags are greedy; mine, despondent.
“Go on.”
The sight of my shaking bald pate must be especially depressing when viewed from above.
“Sorry. Can’t. You don’t talk about these things.”
“Yeah, figures. The House Laws, may they be forgotten. Right?”
“The Laws don’t enter into it. That’s just how it goes. Take me, for example. I’m not superstitious, but it’s quite possible that, should I choose to share my experiences with you right now, my next visit to the Underside might not end well. I wasn’t planning on dropping by over there anytime soon, but you never know. No one knows much about things like that. And where you don’t know about something, you don’t talk about it.”
We smoke in silence. The floor under me is all covered in gouges left by the wheels of the bed. The walls are tiled to about three feet from the floor, blindingly white, reflecting the light from the lamps. I acutely feel that the circumstances are inappropriate, the setting is inappropriate, and the topic is inappropriate. But there is going to be more, no doubt. Noble is too unsettled right now to put on the brakes just because I asked him to. I have no doubt that, sooner or later, this way or that, this is going to rebound on me. The small of my back is freezing, the nightstand drawer handle is digging into my spine, but I’m exhausted beyond apathy and simply unable to move.
“How do you know about the others, then?” Noble asks. “Somebody must have been talking at some point.”
Now this is called “stalking the prey.” Even though we seemed to be talking about something else, but then what else is there? I lift up my head. From here I can only see his elbow and whispery tendrils of smoke. He shakes the ash off into the oatmeal bowl. Barbaric, that is. But better than having it all over the linens. I am jealous of him. Nobody ever explained anything to me back then. No matter how I phrased my questions. No matter from what side I tried to sneak in or how artfully I disguised the interest. In my case none of that made any difference whatsoever.
“Noble, listen,” I say soothingly. “Why don’t you try answering that question yourself. You’re not Smoker, after all. Think.”
This is Blind’s approach. Boy, would he be amazed if he heard me using it. He himself switched on the meaningful silences in situations like this one. I was supposed to hear the hallowed “Think for yourself” hidden in those silences, do my own thinking and then, provided I arrived at some insight, keep it to myself. Very convenient. If it somehow fell on the Pale One to teach someone how to swim, he’d just toss the subject overboard and wait for the results. I am the only graduate of this drastic method of learning. Sometimes I feel proud of my own resilience.
While I am deep in the recollections of the good old days of my apprenticeship, Noble suddenly brightens up.
“Fairy Tale Night?”
“Precisely!”
Blind’s education system had no use for positive reinforcement, but then, I’m not him.
“Do you know what it was called before?” I add. “Night of Permitted Talking. But that would be too obvious, you see.”
“The poems . . . The songs . . . ,” Noble mumbles. “Somebody might let something slip when drunk. Tabaqui’s drunken songs do sound very weird sometimes . . .”
I turn toward him and rest my chin on the edge of his bed. This is both comfortable and risky. If I lose control, I am going to fall asleep. Noble would never forgive me if I did.
“Right,” I say drowsily. “And? You’re making great progress. You’re exactly right about being drunk. And about the songs. Also you might want to visit the poets’ assemblies some Thursday evening in the old laundry room. Sit through an hour and a half of inane wailing and figure out some interesting details in the process. Though not an experience I’d like to repeat.”
Noble cogitates for a while longer.
“I’m coming up empty,” he admits. “No more insights. Unless there are people who are even less superstitious and can talk about it openly.”
I can see that he is indeed empty. His face looks tired. I decide to take pity on him.
“The walls. Do you always read everything that’s on them? Of course not, no one does. Except those who know what to look for and where. Now you, for example, are a card player. So you know where the latest scores are displayed, right? While nonplayers would never find them in a million years.”
Noble slaps his forehead.
“Of course! I was an idiot! All those hundreds of times . . .”
Done. For the next couple of days we are going to observe our packmate glued to the walls. We’ll have to pry him off at mealtimes. This is when it hits me again that he most likely won’t have that couple of days, and the thought paralyzes me. No walls, no poets’ assemblies. I completely forgot about this while trying to affect serenity, and went over the top. The loss is already gnawing at my insides. It won’t do to show this to Noble, who is still right here.
“Do you understand what this means? That it happened to you? It’s the House taking you in. Letting you inside. Now, wherever you might be, you’re a part of it. And let me tell you, it doesn’t like its parts to be scattered. It pulls them back. So all is not lost.”
Noble makes a face and flattens the cigarette against the long-suffering bowl.
“Do you really believe what you just said? Or are you trying to make me feel better?”
“I’m trying to make myself feel better, why? But as Ancient used to say, when words have been spoken they always have a meaning, even if you didn’t mean it when you spoke them.”
He laughs and rummages in the pack for a fresh cigarette.
“I have no idea who this Ancient character is, but if he really did say all that then I guess I can feel a bit better. ‘Ancient’ sounds important. Almost like ‘Aristotle.’ You can sleep here if you like. Looking at you, I’m not entirely sure you’re going to make it to the dorm.”
Sleep in the Sepulcher? Oh well, why not. I can see Noble doesn’t want to be alone here. I get up and go sit on the other bed. There are two of them here, just for the occasion. It even has linens on it, all tucked in and ready.
“You’re right. I’m not much of a conversationalist right now. And I also doubt I’d make it all the way back.”
I stretch out on the cot, on top of the slate-colored blanket. This is indescribable bliss.
“Thank you,” I whisper with my eyes already closed. “This is the second time today you are saving my life.”
He laughs again.
“Hey, Sphinx.”
I am not quite sure if he called to me right away or if I was already asleep for some time.
“Sphinx, listen, would I be able to go to the Underside from somewhere else? Like from the Outsides?”
I climb out of the sleep, clutching at it at the same time, like at a warm blanket being pulled off.
“What? Don’t know.” My own voice sounds alien to me, muffled by the nonexistent blanket. “I don’t think anyone’s tried. There wasn’t anyone to try. Also, you know what . . . Those lands, they’re not as harmless as you might think. There are some pretty scary places too. It’s just that I figure you weren’t stuck there for more than two months.”
I continue to mumble. It is important, the thing he’s asking about, I should try to explain . . . The sleep overtakes me, throws sticky cotton wool in my face, and it’s hard to speak. I crash into it.
Into a heavy, suffocating dream, where a man with steel front teeth and a face covered in small scars calls me “little bastard,” thrashes me for the smallest of missteps, and threatens to feed me to his Doberman pinschers. He has five of them. Five scraggy, razor-faced, completely insane creatures in transport cages. My duties include feeding them and mucking out after them, and I hate them almost as much as I hate our common master. They hate me right back. I am thirteen, powerless and alone, and certain that no one is ever going to save me. It’s because of him that I learned to reach for beer when I was thirsty. There was never any water in his damn truck.
I awaken suddenly, screaming as if slapped, and jump up all covered in sweat. The hoary nightmare is still ringing in my ears with the throaty “ho-ho-ho” that makes me cringe in almost physical pain.
It’s dark, except for the nightlight above Noble’s bed. Goldenhead is hard at work over my cigarettes. He is still sitting up very straight, deep in thought. The tobacco smell has defeated the scent of the Sepulcher. No amount of airing is going to get rid of it now.
“Rise and shine,” Noble acknowledges me perfunctorily.
I lean back over the cot, still bearing the imprint of my body, over the damp spot where my head was, and wipe my forehead against the scratchy blanket. Then I go over to Noble’s side. There is an aching in my bones as if someone jumped all over me while I was sleeping. Come to think of it, that’s not far from the truth. Noble hands me a short stub of a cigarette.
“Sorry. No more left. I was bored. Here, they brought dinner.”
And they never said anything, either about the smoke or about my prostrate figure. Beauty is a horrible weapon. It even has an effect on Spider queens. Not much else does.
Noble inserts the cigarette end into my clamp, avoiding looking me in the eye.
“You were screaming. And talking. Scary stuff.”
I take a drag, scratching the itchy spot on my forehead under the tape with the rake-prong.
“It’s the Sepulcher. It gets to me. Almost always does. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep here.”