Call Me Zebra(51)

So, under the sign of contradiction, subject to the push and pull of the rational and the erratic, Ludo Bembo and I continued our amorous routine. I became accustomed to his habits. He stirred sugar into his coffee for a standard five minutes until all the granules had dissolved. He chased his meals with fine liquor. Grappa. Ratafia. Limoncello. Cognac if he was in a nostalgic mood. He shaved daily. He set his hair, one curl at a time. He ironed his clothes. He scrubbed behind his ears. He smoked his pipe after sex, like a gentleman of the Old World. He knew how to light and stoke a fire. He knew how to make refined pastries. And on top of all this, he had a habit of moving his penis from one thigh to the other after sex. This balancing act lasted for a few minutes. One night, while we were lying in bed, I asked him to explain his motivations. Unlike Ludo, who believed we could ride the currents of our affair without obstacle into the future, I felt sporadically suffocated by his presence. If I didn’t have the necessary room for my thoughts to roam around in the Matrix of Literature (something I could not exercise in his presence), those very thoughts, which were wretched and soaked through and through with the fumes of death that plagued my void, threatened to poison me from the inside out. I needed to open a valve and let the stench out. So one night I confronted him. I provoked him into giving me space.

“Why do you shift your penis from thigh to thigh?” I asked.

“Because I believe in the Renaissance ideal,” he retorted. He went on to tell me that the body should always be in equilibrium, the right side a mirror image of the left—the head, shoulders, waist, and hips always in proportion. “If I tucked my penis only to the left, like most ignorant men do,” he said in a whimsical tone, “my right side would be deprived of its presence.”

I listened attentively. It was clear he was mocking me. I wouldn’t stand for it.

“I have good news and bad news,” I said, after a loaded pause. “Which do you want to hear first?”

“Good news?” he said with an uncertain air. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and sniffled.

“You have a benevolent and tender mouth”—at this, he licked his lips and smiled—“and, to a certain extent, an unruffled spirit.”

He leaned in and kissed me. His mouth was definitely tender.

“And the bad?”

“The bad news,” I delivered nonchalantly, “is that you lack imagination; your mind is as stiff as a stick. There is no need to make up anecdotes with cerebral undertones just to please me. I would prefer it if you were forthcoming about your motives regarding the placement of your penis, which are surely more limited than the explanation you offered implies, an explanation I refuse to fall for because, as you very well know, Dr. Bembo”—I had never referred to him as Dr. Bembo before, so I had no choice but to raise my voice a notch—“people don’t acquire a sense of the absurd overnight. If they did, you and I would experience more harmony.”

I could hear his anxious breathing. He sounded like a dog hyperventilating.

“Unless they are tortured and you, Dr. Bembo, have spent the night having sex, not suffering!”

He pulled away from me, crossed his arms, and looked up at the ceiling. He was sulking. There it was, that long muzzle, his signature pout. His posture was ungainly, droopy headed, sheepish. He refused to look at me.

“Silence is a weapon of mass destruction,” I said.

“Mass? There’s only one of you,” he spewed angrily.

“Only one of me!” I huffed, sitting upright. It was clear he didn’t know me at all. “What about my father, and the residue of my mother contained by my father, all of which I carry within me?”

His face dropped. It was longer than ever. It looked as elastic as dough. His eyes were tearing up.

“Nothing I say will ever please you!” he whined childishly.

I let out a dismissive grunt and almost immediately his face contracted; it hardened again. He clenched his jaw. He looked as stiff as a mummy. I took in a deep breath. I told myself to stay as fresh as lettuce, as calm as a sailboat on a smooth lake. In this way, I found my composure.

I coaxed: “Ludo Bembo, allow me to explain.” I could no longer remember what the original trigger of our argument had been, but I proceeded nonetheless. “Your realism and cold logic, your pedantry, need reinventing.” The mummy turned its neck and looked at me with the fixed round pupils of an assassin. “But even more urgently,” I continued, despite his horrifying gaze, “I suggest you edit your approach to matters of love because it’s becoming difficult to understand how, despite my gentle reminders that love is a deadly poison, you remain stubbornly prone to sentimentality and clinginess.” I suddenly remembered the origin of our conflict, his false mimicry, which greatly facilitated the delivery of a final blow: “To pretending we are like-minded!”

The mummy flew into a rage. He broke out of his cast, regained mobility, got up, dressed. “Not this again!” he yelled. With a defiant gaze, he marched out of the bedroom. Ribbons of unraveled linen dragged on the floor. I followed him out to the foyer.

“I’ll be back!” he threatened, before slamming the front door.

I considered the closed door solemnly. I was alone again and could devote myself to the miserly progression of my thoughts. I called out for the bird. Nothing happened. Taüt had disappeared again and with him my only hope of sharing a convivial moment. I was alone among Quim Monzó’s mute objects. I looked around. Each time I did this, it was as if I were seeing the apartment anew. I noticed a bronze statue of a bull that was tucked behind a stack of dusty books in a neglected corner of the foyer. The bull was preparing to charge: nostrils flared, head nobly bowed, horns alerting the heavens to the sacrifice ahead. Man, animal, insect, I concluded: We all know the ecstasy and perturbation involved in gorging and being gorged.