Blind

He couldn't feel his legs beneath him; they felt alien and bent in all directions, like rubber. It was irritating. Soon he tired of digging them out of holes, pulling them out of puddles and mud, and sat down. His legs were bent the wrong way again. It was as if there were even more of them than just two. Perhaps he was transforming into something, but not yet completely. The laughter of the dog-headed ones reached him. They were far away, running giggling, their sides touching. The blind man jumped up and hobbled away, moving his six paws. Leaves stuck to them, thin and jointed, but walking was easy. He huddled in the nearest hole and lay still, waiting. The dog-headed ones rushed past. The disgusting laughter died down. The blind man carefully stuck his head out. Someone boomed from above and showered him with dust. He shook himself and counted his legs. There were two of them again. The stuffiness of the night… The blind man pulled off his sweater.

And immediately the Forest returned. He leaned over him, breathing in his ears, burying him in moss and dry leaves, hiding him, and lulling him with the quiet songs of the whistlers. The Blind Man was his favorite. The Forest even smiled at him. The Blind Man knew this. He could sense smiles from a distance. Burning, sticky and sharp-toothed, soft and fluffy. They tormented him with their fleetingness, their inaccessibility to fingers and ears. A smile cannot be caught, clasped in the palms, examined millimeter by millimeter, remembered… They slip away, they can only be guessed at. Once, when he was still little, the Elk asked him to smile. He did not understand then what was wanted of him. "Smile, baby, smile," said Moose. "The best thing about being human. You're not quite human until you can smile." "Show me," Blind Man asked. The Elk bent down, offering his face to his fingers. Blind Man pulled his hand back when he encountered wet teeth. "It's scary," he said. "Can I not do this?" The moose just sighed. Much time had passed since then, and the Blind Man had learned to smile, but he knew it didn't adorn him the way it did others. He'd come across stretched mouths in the raised pictures of his children's books, found them on the faces of toys, but none of this was something that could be captured in a voice. Listening to smiling voices, he finally understood. A smile is light. Not for everyone, but for many. And now he knew how Alice felt when the Cheshire Cat's smile hovered above her in the air, sly and toothy. The Forest smiled like that, too. From above, with a boundless, mocking smile. The blind man stood up and wandered off, tripping over roots. His foot sank into a hole. The whistler fell silent, frightened. He bent down, groped in the grass, and found it—still tiny, velvety soft, smelling like a puppy. He pressed it to his face. The whistler was breathing quietly, its heart pounding against its fingers. Ten steps ahead, an anxious whistle sounded. The baby in his arms responded with a squeak. The blind man laughed and set it down. The grass rustled. Squeaking, the whistler ran toward its mother, and soon their friendly whistles were lost in the distance. The blind man sniffed his palm to memorize the scent of the cub—an adult whistler smells different—and continued on.

The blind man could never remember exactly where—there was a lake, and there was a river flowing into it. Or perhaps there were even several rivers. The path to the Forest began in the hallway, from the bedroom doors behind which there was snoring, snoring, and whispering, from the groaning, broken parquet floor, from the indignant rats squealing and scurrying from underfoot. Now the Blind Man was ready to enter it. The intoxicating field had ended. He hesitated, inhaling the scent of wet leaves, when he heard footsteps. The forest instantly vanished. Along with the scents. Someone rustled the grass far ahead. The footsteps drew closer, and the limp of the person walking became discernible. He smelled of acetone and mint gum. The Blind Man smiled and stepped forward. "Hey, who's there?" the Vulture whispered, stepping back. A match was struck.

• Ah, it's you...
• You scared the Forest away from me.

The blind man walked, waist-deep in the coarse grass. His sneakers squelched. He'd managed to get water in them somewhere. His feet stuck to the wet rubber, and he considered taking them off altogether and continuing barefoot. But he didn't. The grass was sharp, briar-filled, and teeming with nasty slugs that, if you stepped on them, you'd never be able to wash off. There was something that resembled wet cotton wool, and something else that resembled clumps of tangled hair—and all of this lived in the intoxicating grass, eating it, crawling in it, getting drunk on its scent, being born and dying, turning into mud. And all of this was grass, if you think about it, grass and nothing more. The blind man plucked a fragile snail's shell from a tall shoot that lashed at his hand. The snails clung to the very tops of the grasses, slamming against each other like empty nuts. He put the shell in his pocket. He knew his pocket would be empty when he returned—it always was—and yet he always took something with him, simply out of habit. He threw back his head. The moon whitened his face. The Forest was very close. The blind man quickened his steps, though he knew he shouldn't rush—the Forest didn't like the impatient and could retreat. This had happened more than once: he'd sought it and not found it, felt it close to him and yet couldn't enter it. The Forest was capricious and timid; many paths led to it, and all of them were long. One could walk through a swamp, or through a field of intoxicating grass. Once, he'd found himself in the Forest from a littered wasteland littered with mountains of punctured tires, piles of iron and broken dishes, where the ground was lost under cigarette butts and shards, where he'd cut his palm on the sharp corner of something iron and lost his favorite rope bracelet. That time, the Forest itself had grabbed him, hooked him with its shaggy paws-branches, and pulled him deep within itself, into the stifling thicket of its damp interior. The forest was beautiful. It was mysterious and shaggy, hiding deep burrows and strange denizens of those burrows, it knew no sun and kept out the wind, it was home to dog-headed owls and whistlers, giant black-capped mushrooms and blood-sucking flowers.

Suddenly, he abruptly changed direction, as if remembering something important, and continued running without distraction, his nose buried in the trail, his paws rapidly moving. His thorn-filled tail signaled to the world that he was busy. The forest ended. Vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. The blind man wasn't upset and didn't bother looking for it. He stopped. Right at the edge of the light, a rectangle falling on the parquet floor. The doorway glowed yellow. Shaggy shadows darted across the tiles, muffled voices could be heard. The teachers' restroom was the gamblers' domain; they played here on Saturday and Sunday evenings. In his pack, only Lord was a gambler. The blind man stood motionless, the candlelight reflecting in his wide-open eyes. He stood there for a long time. Then he lit a cigarette and moved on. Without hiding, he walked through the illuminated space, past the bathroom doorway and the moonlit clearing of the Crossroads, past the doors to the teachers' lounge and the cafeteria. The stairs smelled of cigarette butts; he stepped on one, still warm, and slowed down. He descended the stairs. Another long, empty corridor, and at the very end, another staircase and a door to the basement. His head spun, his feet slipped on the steps, and he held on by grabbing the wall. He used a piece of wire to unlock the door and entered. The basement was dusty and stuffy. The blind man sat down on the cement floor, facing the door, rested his chin on his knees, and froze. His armpits dripped into his jeans. A cigarette butt stuck to his lips. A ringing in his ears. Three bells and a cricket. He rolled to the wall, knelt next to it, and ran his fingers along the rough surface of the bricks. Behind one of the bricks hid a void. Once, to find it, he had to count the steps from the corner. Now he found the right place immediately. The blind man carefully pulled a brick from the wall. In the resulting hole lay a newspaper roll. He rubbed his fingers, shaking off brick dust, and then dipped both hands into the hiding place. The old newspaper rustled. Pulling out the roll, he placed it on the floor and unrolled it.

He walked, lightly touching the gnarled trunks with his fingers, ears pricked up, thin, silent, merging with the trees; he walked like a part of the Forest, like its offshoot, like a werewolf, and the Forest walked with him, swaying the distant tops of its branches, shuddering and dropping dew onto the warped parquet. The blind man stopped at the edge of the forest. The enormous moon bathed him in silver. He crouched, feeling himself bathed in light, his fur rising, electrified by white magic. He pressed his ears back, closed his eyes, and howled. A drawn-out, mournful sound floated over the Forest. It was sad, but it held the Blind Man's happiness, the nearness of the moon, and the life of the night. It didn't last long, and then the Blind Man ran off into the thicket to sniff the mossy trunks, hop on damp leaves, and roll on the ground. He did this with glee, scaring away small creatures, collecting litter on his skin, leaving wolf tracks in the puddles... He chased a stupid mouse and chased it into a strange hole. He stuck his head into a hollow, and they hissed at him. He dug up someone's underground passage and devoured the occupant—fat and tasty—spit out the skin, and ran on. The moon disappeared behind the trees, but he sensed it, as if it were standing behind the door, as if it were hiding in the bushes. It was there, it was just in the way. He jumped across the stream without getting his paws wet, circled along the edge of the bank, found a puddle and lapped it up with tadpoles. The miraculously surviving frog hurled a ringing frog curse at him and hopped off to find another shelter. He stretched out on the wet sand, resting his pointed head on his paws, listening to the rustling forest and the gurgling in his stomach—then he jumped up and raced further and further down the path, because he didn't like to stay near water for long. Soon he heard the dog-heads again, but this time he didn't hide. Instead, he howled, challenging them, which they ignored and hurried away, quietly cursing. He followed their tracks for some time. He would have caught up with them if he had wanted, but this wasn't a hunt, it was a game, and he enjoyed the chase more than the catch.

The second knife killed Elk. It was neither beautiful nor comfortable to hold. An ordinary kitchen knife with traces of rust. The blind man hated it, but he couldn't bring himself to part with it. Every time he touched it, he shuddered, but at the same time, he experienced a strange, pain-numbing sense of impossibility. The pitiful piece of iron lying in his palm couldn't kill Elk. A mouse couldn't eat a mountain, a mosquito bite couldn't kill a lion, a strip of steel couldn't destroy his god.

I Alice Here is a description of the Blind Man's appearance from Mariam Petrosyan's novel "The House in Which...":

Build: Short, frail, terribly thin. A 13-year-old could fit into his pants. And his wrists are like two normal-sized wrists.

Skin: very pale - "pale as a ghost."

Hair: Long black hair, which he periodically covers his face with (sometimes he puts it in a ponytail - particularly on the Upside Down).

Eyes: colorless, silver; completely blind from birth.

Facial features: a mouth covered in red sores, reminiscent of a frog's; one of the fangs is broken; on the Upside Down, the facial features become more sharply defined.

Hands: very long and flexible fingers.

Cloth:

usually wears other people's sweaters (jumpers) and jeans with holes in the knees;

In "Empty Nests" he appears in a shabby frock coat, reminiscent of a vampire's (in The Upside Down, this frock coat has a leather sheen).

Footwear: Walks barefoot, which means his feet are always dirty.

Age: Sometimes it's hard to tell his age from his appearance - he was nine years old as a child, but in the scenes on the Upside Down he appears to be older.

Special forms: In the Upside Down, he can take the form of a wolf with six legs.

"Do you hear that?" asked the Blind Man, sitting on the floor near the door. "Do you hear how much noise they make?" The blind man held his shorts. The boy ran up and slipped his legs into the legs one by one. The blind man zipped them up. "You don't like them?" the boy asked, watching him lace up his sneakers. "Aza what?" The blind man swung his leg off his knee and put his other one on. "Why should I love them?"

The house was empty, or seemed empty. In the mornings, invisible cleaning ladies traversed the hallways, leaving behind trails of shiny polish. Flies swatted at the windowpanes in the empty bedrooms. In the yard, three boys, tanned to the point of blackness, lived in a shack made of cardboard boxes. Cats went hunting at night. During the day, they slept, curled up in fluffy balls. The house was empty, but someone cleaned it, someone prepared food and placed it on trays. Other hands swept out the trash and aired the stuffy rooms. The people who lived in the cardboard house, running into the House for sandwiches and water, left candy wrappers, wads of chewing gum, and dusty footprints on the clean floors. They tried their best, but there were too few of them, and the House was too big. The clatter of their boots died away, swallowed by the silence, their cries were muffled by the empty walls, and after each foray they hurried back to their small courtyard camp, away from the dead, faceless rooms, smelling of mastic, identical as twins. Invisible hands swept away their traces. Only one room was habitable. Its inhabitants were not alarmed by the uninhabited nature of the House.

The boy himself didn't know why he'd been so frightened that first day when they returned. The noise of their presence had awakened him. Upon awakening, he realized with surprise that the House was filled with people, that the silence—the sultry, summer silence he'd grown accustomed to over the past month—was gone. The House creaked, groaned, and whistled, slammed doors and rattled glass, chimed musical fragments through the walls, seething and seething with life. He threw off the sheet and ran out onto the balcony. The courtyard was filled with people. They crowded around two red-and-blue buses, laughing, smoking, and lugging thick backpacks and bags from one place to another. They were colorful, tanned, noisy, smelling of the sea. The hot sky roasted the courtyard. He watched them, crouched down, his forehead pressed against the railing. He wanted to be among them, an invisible part of their beautiful adult life, aching to descend—and yet he didn't move.

The boy reluctantly climbed down from the railing and followed. "Poor Blind Man doesn't see any of this," he said with quiet glee. "It's understandable why he's so nervous." "Tell him," Moose replied, opening the door. "He'll be pleased to hear about what he can't see." "Yeah," the boy nodded. "Of course. And he'll knock off my other eye so we'll be equal in everything. He'll be pleased with that, too."

Two boys lay head to head on an inflatable mattress on the balcony. The boy, wearing a straw hat and his empty shirt sleeves tucked under his stomach, muttered monotonously, not looking up from the colorful mattress: "They're white and moving, and the edges look torn or slightly bitten. They're pinkish underneath. Pink is like red, only lighter. And they move very slowly; you have to watch for a long time to see them. There are only a few of them now. And when there are a lot of them, it's not as sunny, and if there are clouds, it's completely dark, and then it might even rain..." The long-haired boy raised his head and frowned:

• Don't talk about what doesn't exist. Talk about what exists now. "Okay," the boy in the hat agreed, rolling over onto his back. Corn kernels and cookie crumbs fell from the mattress into the hollows. "So they're white, and pinkish underneath, floating quietly, and everything around them is blue." He squinted, looking through his faded eyelashes at the smooth, cloudless blue sky and, smiling, continued: "Everything is blue beneath them and above them too. And they themselves are like white lambs. It's a shame you can't see this beauty..."

The Elk was a god, and the place where he lived couldn't be just any place. But it couldn't cause him any harm, either. The Elk didn't show any knowledge of the real House, feigning ignorance, and the Blind Man guessed it was a Great Secret, one that shouldn't be spoken of aloud. Even with the Elk. So he kept silent and simply loved the House as no one had ever done before. He liked the smell of the House, liked the abundance of damp plaster that could be peeled off the walls and eaten, liked the large courtyard and the long corridors that were interesting to wander along. He liked the cracks in the House's walls, its nooks and crannies and abandoned rooms, the way the traces of those who passed through it lingered for so long, liked the friendly ghosts, and every single path the House opened before him. Here he could do whatever he wanted. Before, omnipresent adults watched his every move. This was no longer the case in the new place, and at first it felt strange, even uncomfortable, although he got used to it quickly, much faster than he expected.

Blue-Eyed Elk, the catcher of children's souls, stepped out onto the porch and looked at the sky. Scorching hot, it faded red on the horizon. The evening brought no coolness. The boy with the black eye, sitting on the porch, also looked at the sky. “What happened?” Moose asked him. The boy grimaced. "He said I should know how to fight. But why, I wonder? He's always silent, like a deaf person—so he should just keep silent. When he talks, it's impossible to be with him. I used to think, 'How bad that he's silent!' But now I think it was better. And I don't need his fights. He hit me in the eye for some reason. He's probably jealous of my eyesight..." The moose hid his hands in his trouser pockets and rocked back on his heels:

• Hurts?
• No. The boy stood up and lay down on his stomach on the railing, hanging out into the yard. "I'm just tired of him. Sometimes I think he's not quite right in the head. He's kind of weird." “He says the same thing about you,” Moose hid his smile, looking at the dejected figure on the railing.

He entered his life as if he were entering his own room, turning everything upside down, rearranging everything, and filling it with himself. With his words, his laughter, his gentle hands, and his warm voice. He brought with him much that the Blind Boy didn't know and might never have known, because no one seriously cared what the Blind Boy knew or didn't know. His world consisted of a few rooms and a yard. Other children, accompanied by adults, happily ventured beyond this world, but he always remained. Into this small, rectangular world the Elk burst, filling it entirely, making it boundless and endless, and the Blind Boy gave him his soul and heart—his whole self—for eternity. Another person would not have understood or accepted it, another person in Moose’s place might not even have noticed it, but Moose understood everything, and when the time came to leave, he knew that he would have to take Blind with him. The Blind Man hadn't counted on this. He guessed that Moose would leave sooner or later, that he would be alone again, and that it would be terrifying. But he couldn't imagine it could be any other way. And then a miracle happened. His memory preserved that day in every detail, with all the sounds and smells, with the warmth of the sun's rays on his face. They were walking somewhere, and the Blind Man held Moose's hand tightly, so tightly, and his heart fluttered like a wounded bird. He ached from too much happiness. They walked for a long time. The sun warmed them, pebbles crunched under their feet, and somewhere in the distance, cars roared past. He had never walked so long or so far before. Then they were riding in a car, where he was forced to let go of Moose's hand and clung to the hem of his jacket. So they arrived at the House, where there were also many children, but unlike the previous ones, they were all sighted. He already knew what this meant—that each of them had something he didn't. But it no longer bothered him. The main thing was that Moose was there—the man he loved and who loved him. Then it turned out that the House was alive and that it, too, could love. The House's love was unlike anything else. It was frightening at times, but never truly so.

He never expected anything good from adults. He decided they were unfair and resigned himself to it. Having learned to differentiate between men and women, he noted that women treated him worse than men, but he didn't seek an explanation for this fact either, simply accepting it as he accepted everything around him. Over time, he realized he was small and weak. He realized this when the other children's voices began to sound slightly above him, and their blows began to hurt him more. Around this time, he learned that some of the children could see. For a long time, he couldn't understand what this meant. He knew that adults possessed some great advantage that allowed them to move freely beyond his world, but he attributed this to their height and strength. The Blind Man didn't understand what "seeing" meant. And even after understanding it with his mind, he couldn't imagine it. For a long time, the concept of "sighted" was associated for him only with accuracy. Sighted people hit harder. Having realized the advantage of those who were stronger and more able to see, he began to strive to be as good. This was important to him. He tried hard—and people began to fear him. The blind man quickly realized what exactly was causing their fear. The children feared not the strength he lacked, but the way he carried himself. His calm and indifference, the fact that he feared nothing. When he was beaten, he didn't cry; he simply got up and left. When he beat someone, that person usually cried, frightened by his calm. He learned to find their sore spots; they feared that too. The older he grew, the more acutely he felt the general hostility. It manifested itself differently in children and adults, but at some point it surrounded him with a thick wall of loneliness. This continued until Moose appeared. A man who spoke to him not as one of many. The blind man couldn't know that Moose had been summoned specifically for him. He thought Moose had singled him out from the rest, loving him more deeply. He entered his life as if he were entering his own room, turned everything upside down, rearranged everything, and filled him with himself. With his words, his laughter, his gentle hands, and his warm voice.

If anyone stopped or deviated from the general route, their loud, orderly voices would ring out from above. His entire world was then divided into two sets of voices. Some commanded from above, while others were closer and more understandable, belonging to those like himself. But he didn't like them either. Sometimes the loud voices would disappear. If they disappeared for long enough, he and others like him would start running, jumping, falling, and breaking their noses, and it would immediately become clear that the courtyard wasn't as large as it appeared when walking in single file, but rather cramped and small, its surface covered with something hard that scraped his knees. Later, he remembered fights. Frequent fights, breaking out for no apparent reason. All it took was pushing someone, and where he lived, pushing was constant. They pushed him, and he pushed—not intentionally, it just happened that way—and after a while, the first accidental push would be followed by another, stronger one, making it hard to stand, or a blow that would make something hurt. Then he would start hitting people himself, without waiting to be hit. Sometimes after that, angry adult voices would be heard from above, and he would be taken to another room. To the punishment room. There were no tables, no chairs, no beds. There were only walls and a ceiling, but he didn't know about the ceiling then. He wasn't afraid of the room. Others cried when they were locked in, but he never cried. He loved solitude. He didn't care whether people were around or not. If he felt sleepy, he'd lie down on the floor and fall asleep; if he felt hungry, he'd take hidden pieces of bread from his pockets. If he was left locked in for a long time, he'd peel off plaster from the walls and chew on it. He loved plaster even more than bread, but the adults would get angry if they caught him doing this, and he'd restrain himself, only letting loose when he was alone. He realized early on that he wasn't loved. He was singled out from other children, punished more often than others, and blamed for other people's misdeeds. He didn't understand why, but he wasn't surprised or offended. He was never surprised by anything.

The next day, Moose wasn't alone. He was accompanied by a boy who never played in the yard and was never seen from the windows. "I've brought you a friend," said Moose. "He'll live with you, and you won't be lonely. This is Blind. Do whatever you want—play, go crazy, break the furniture, just try not to fight or complain about each other. The room is yours now."

The Blind Man didn't play with him because he didn't know how. He sat obediently with the boy, woke him in the mornings, washed him, and combed his hair. He listened to his stories, barely responding, and followed him around as if glued to his feet. Not because he wanted to. He simply believed that's what Moose wanted. Moose's wish was his command. If Moose asked, he would jump from the balcony or the roof. Or even throw someone else off. This terrified the armless boy. It terrified Moose even more. In his heart, the Blind Man was an adult—an adult hermit. He had long hair and a frog-like mouth covered in red sores; he was pale as a ghost and terribly thin. He was nine years old. Moose was his god.

The Blind Man's memory smelled, rang, and rustled. It carried scents and sensations. It didn't extend as far back as others'—the Blind Man didn't remember his early childhood. Almost. For example, from its deepest depths, he could only recall endless sitting on the potty. There had been many very small boys there, all sitting in a row on identical tin potties. The memory was sad and smelled foul. Later, he calculated that they were kept in this position for at least half an hour. Many managed to do everything they were supposed to, but remained sitting, waiting for the others, because that was the order, and they had been taught to observe order from the cradle. He also remembered the courtyard. Where they'd strolled, holding on to each other, but still stumbling and falling. They had to walk carefully, in a chain, holding onto the clothes of the one in front. Adults led and brought up the rear of this column.