The man exhales a coil of smoke, his face to the sky, eyes closed. The only part of him that seems alive is his chest, rising and falling. Somehow his pipe stays rigid between his lips. Boy looks at him in the darkness, peering through bushes. Yes, this is the right man. His skin is gray and his clothes are gray and his hair is turning the color of ash. The Gray Man always sits there, crouched in a flower bed, his back against a tree.
Boy approaches him. His steps are the only sound except for the bell on a donkey’s neck as it trots by. Everybody has gone home. There is not much to do near City Hall at night. The Gray Man sees him and hides his pipe behind his back. The smell of burning opium is like overripe fruit, and it always reminds Boy of the big garden and the mulberries in the summer before his mother died.
He raises a finger to his lips and tells the Gray Man that he means him no harm, that he has a proposition for him. He doesn’t tell him he is the one who accompanies Nazook when the Gray Man buys opium every week. Boy always stands back like Nazook tells him to. It was years ago now that Nazook gave him the name Taj, but he still thinks of himself as Boy because he doesn’t feel he has earned his new name. Not yet. There are many men who do not deserve the names they are given.
He looks closely at the Gray Man, who isn’t as old as he thought even though his teeth are rotting and everything about him is skinny and long and ugly. Boy decides the Gray Man should be renamed the Rat.
“How much do you pay for the opium?” he asks, even though he already knows. The Rat looks around with darting eyes. He is still hiding the pipe behind his back, but the smoke is visible as it rises. At last he tells Boy what he pays.
Boy nods. “I will sell it to you for half the cost. Same quality.”
“Why?” says the Rat.
Boy asks him if it’s true he used to work for the government. The Rat points to the building behind him. “In there. I was a clerk. A very good position.” This memory emboldens the Rat enough to bring the pipe out of hiding and inhale in front of Boy while knitting his eyebrows in a way that makes him look insane. Boy sits down beside him in the flower bed, taking care not to crush the daisies. All flowers are related to poppies, which Boy has learned to respect. “I’ll give you the best deal in the city,” he says, “if you teach me how to read and write.”
He takes a resin bead from his bag, slowly, like a jeweler producing a rare stone, and shows it to the Rat, who tries to claw it out of his hand. Boy pulls it back swiftly and says, “I’ll give you this for free if we can start now.”
The Rat bites his dirty nails. Boy is disgusted; he makes sure his own nails are always clean. From his bag, he retrieves a nail file and a book. “Use this, please,” he tells the Rat, who gently snuffs out his pipe and complies.
Boy shows him the book, which he stole a few weeks ago and has been hiding from Nazook. It’s for children, he can tell, full of colors and faces that don’t look like real people, because grown-ups think children can’t understand real faces. Boy tells the Rat they should find a place with more light. On the steps of City Hall, the Rat finishes filing and cleaning his nails. Before beginning the session, Boy tells his new teacher his name is Taj. The Rat’s name is Zalmay. Two hours later, their first lesson ends, and as Boy prepares to leave, he notices the Rat looking at City Hall with tears rolling down his sunken cheeks. Boy slips the resin into the Rat’s hand, and the man’s fingers tighten around the clump. They agree to meet again tomorrow at the same time. Boy hands him a watch he brought with him because he thought the Rat would not have one, and as his teacher straps on the cheap plastic wristband, Boy changes his mind about something. This man isn’t really the Rat, nor is he the Gray Man. But he cannot be Zalmay, because the rich man who owned the house and the garden Boy lived in when he was small was also named Zalmay. Boy chooses a name he has heard from Nazook’s father, a teacher at the university. “Good night, Socrates,” Boy says. But Socrates is already asleep against the wide trunk of a hundred-year-old tree, his sweet poison glowing in his pipe.
Boy comes every night and learns things that seem impossible to him. The earth spins, according to Socrates. At first, Boy thinks he’s lying, but it’s right there in a book that Boy can read as long as Socrates helps him. There’s more—stories of the stars and the sky, the past, faraway places. Socrates is a demanding teacher. He makes Boy recite poetry verses, slaps him on the head if he pronounces words the wrong way, and tells him about famous men who were wise and other famous men who were stupid. One day, Boy turns in his math homework and gets upset when Socrates wants him to show how he came up with the answer.
“Why does it matter, if the answer is right?”
“It matters,” Socrates says. “Otherwise, I don’t know if you understand.”
“I know how I got there,” Boy says. “I just can’t explain it.”