Call Me Zebra(41)

I drifted down La Rambla. Saplings had sprouted on the lower branches of the plane trees, but beneath the fresh leaves, the sycamores’ trunks looked sickly; a hairy white fungus had invaded the bark. I wondered if it was an infestation, if the bottom halves of the trees were diseased. I wanted to return to my cave, where I could descend beneath the world’s duplicitous facade, slip beneath its mask, its surface currents, and there, in quiet solitude, boldly look through literature into the eye of the lie of life. But instead I walked to the Boqueria.

It was time to meet Ludo Bembo.



When I arrived at the vegetable stalls near the Boqueria, Ludo Bembo was already there. He had his back to me, and he was kissing another woman. It was late enough in the day for the vegetable sellers to have abandoned their stalls, leaving behind a few wilted eggplants, some cardboard boxes, overripe bananas. I sat on one of the boxes and watched. As soon as Ludo moved his head, the woman’s face came into view. She was a few years older than I was, closer in age to Ludo, and her skin was in the pink of health. She had large bright eyes and long, curly chestnut-colored hair that fanned open behind her neck. Her lips were tightly sealed. Ludo had his arms up and he was pushing her back. He was exuding discomfort. He managed to detach himself. From this, I deduced that the kiss they’d exchanged wasn’t inviting or sensual; it was dry and apologetic and final.

I looked the woman up and down. She looked arrogant. She held her chin up and cast him a glacial gaze. She was wearing black heels, tight jeans, and a red button-down shirt that signaled a punitive character, a rigid kind of sexuality. Her outfit was a warning. That shirt, in conjunction with her scrupulous, cold gaze, seemed to say: I will draw your blood. I felt sorry for Ludo Bembo. What was he—a man with a poetic past and predisposed to a lyrical future—doing with that Tentacle of Ice?

The situation was pitiful. It was clear that Ludo was in the process of dismissing her; or, rather, given her demanding demeanor, he was in the process of gently removing himself from her presence. She was the woman he had slept with the night before. I was sure of it. I imagined her spreading her long legs to receive him. I imagined him climbing on top of her. I briefly wondered if he had yanked her hair before climaxing, and then I ambled into the market, confident that from now on Ludo Bembo would be entangled with me.

To kill time until Ludo was freed, I walked between the stalls. Only a few vendors remained open. I paused here and there to inspect the food on display: squid (black, glossy, covered in ink), minuscule sand dabs, red shrimp, rock lobsters (their claws limp), eels (displayed on piles of shaved ice), salted cod (whole, diced, cut into strips), sardines, monkfish (cross-eyed, with flat, stupid heads), barnacles, anchovies, trout, crayfish, oysters, clams, mussels, prawns, wine and cava, piles of almonds, walnuts, cashews, bins full of candy, rows of gummies designed like fruit (watermelons, cherries, slices of melon). I hadn’t eaten anything substantial in days. I felt weak, drained, worthless. And then I heard my name.

It was Ludo Bembo. He had come into the market to look for me. He arrived panting, breathless. His curls were bouncing on his head. He said, “I saw you walk in.”

“Are you returning from the March on Rome?” I posed, with a brute manner.

His eyes went blank.

“I wasn’t alive back then,” he said a bit stiffly, once he had recovered from his shock. He paused for a second to catch his breath. “And besides, I’m not a fascist; that’s a very offensive thing for you to be implying,” he intoned, drawing his shoulders back. He was carrying a messenger bag. It looked heavy. He swapped the bag to his opposite shoulder. His muscles tensed, and I realized that, despite his thin frame, he was robust, firm in his manners, developed in the right places. A man who knew how to desire and be desired.

A pigeon fluttered down from the rafters and landed between our feet. I thought it looked like Mussolini—it was pink and black, and had nervous little eyes—but I didn’t say a thing. I bit my tongue. Ludo was looking down at the bird affectionately. I made a mental note: Ludo Bembo refuses to discuss fascism but is willing to smile at the Mussolini bird. Then I remembered his indifference toward the dead swallow that had dropped out of the sky at the airport and concluded that he wasn’t so much apathetic toward birds but rather uneasy around the subject of death. Perhaps, I reflected, when it came to death, he would always look like a tide had dragged him out of the shallows; he would always struggle to keep his head above water. His inadequacy in the face of the abyss, I deduced, must have subconsciously contributed to his attraction to me, Dame of the Void. A dark chuckle squeezed out from between my lips, and Ludo looked at me, simultaneously captivated and perturbed. He had no idea what was headed his way.

“What’s in there?” I asked, pointing at his bag, smiling, offering him an olive branch.

“In here? Notebooks, documents. I was in the archives.” He gave a sigh. “It’s so poorly organized. It’s exhausting being in there.”

I imagined the Tentacle of Ice wrapping herself around him. I couldn’t contain myself any longer.

“Are you referring to your friend’s vaginal archives?”

“What?” I watched his eyebrows float to the center of his face, then drift apart again. The words had just poured out of my mouth. To my surprise, he caught on rather quickly. “Oh,” he said. “No, don’t worry about her.”

“I don’t worry about anyone,” I said curtly, cutting him off.