Call Me Zebra(68)

“I’ve changed my ways,” I lied, though I knew there was a kernel of truth to it. After all, in addition to wanting to reeducate the man, I had also missed him; I had spent weeks aching bitterly because he had not grabbed my hand when I’d reached for him from the tub. And even though I couldn’t trust him due to his interference with my notebook, my life, I knew at least one of my many fractured selves wanted to.

Ludo said nothing. He sat there sulking, puckering his lips. I untied Taüt. The bird stretched his talons, first one then the other. He groomed himself with his beak. But Ludo didn’t move. He needed further persuading.

I got up and stood before him. I tried to lift his spirits the way my father had lifted mine through the interminable war. It was the only recourse I had.

“Put away your sword in its sheath,” I recited dramatically. I couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of my mouth. “Let us two go up into your bed so that, lying together in the bed of love”—I looked at the wise tree and bowed respectfully—“we may then have faith and trust in each other.”

“Why are you talking like that?” Ludo said, eyelids partially drawn.

I stood there and took in his face. Once the shock of seeing me sitting on the bench outside his door had passed, his expression had betrayed a terrible anguish. In response, I’d felt my face slacken and turn blank. My emotions went into overdrive and became indecipherable to me. I recognized the shifts—the pulleys of my mind hoisting my feelings and storing them in the recondite corners of my labyrinthine consciousness only to be extracted once I was well enough to cope with them, once they had turned as sour as spoiled milk. Ludo’s eyes grew damp, his face despairing. I heard my father’s guttural wails echo through my void. I thought of his anguish at my mother’s death. I remembered that in order to get my father to move, to do something, to lift those rocks off my mother, I had pushed everything inside me away. What choice had I had? What choice does anyone ever have? I wondered. We cannot all lose our strength at once. I watched Ludo remove his glasses and rub his eyes. I realized he was still there, awaiting a response.

“The Odyssey,” I heard myself say. “Read it and heal!”

Ludo let out a cautious laugh. He reached for my hand. Our tacit peace had been restored. Before I knew it, we were pushing open the door, leaving the drunks whistling in the background. We entered the dark vault of his building. He helped me carry the Mobile Art Gallery up the stairs.



His roommates were all standing there when he opened the door: Agatha, Fernando, and Bernadette. The first two had knowing grimaces on their faces. It was clear Ludo had filled them in on our encounters. Bernadette stood facing away from us. All I could see was the back of her head.

Ludo put down the miniature museum, looked at Bernadette, and leaned into my ear.

“An aberration,” he proclaimed impatiently before turning back to the group, and saying, “Everyone, this is Zebra and her bird, Taüt.”

“Zebra?” they asked in unison, emitting a pleasant hum.

“Yes. Zebra.”

He sounded like himself again: strong, unfazed, those dreamy eyes limpid and alert. I, too, had recovered, content to have a roof over my head.

“Thank you, Ludo,” I said. “It pleases me to hear my name echoed so many times because, as you know, I stand in possession of multiple selves.”

He rolled his eyes.

Bernadette turned around. She was as pale as chalk, and her eyes were wide and black. She seemed startled and quickly began moving along the walls sideways, with her back against the surface, like a crab. She disappeared into her room and quietly shut the door behind her.

“She has such polished cheeks,” I said.

“Yes,” Agatha answered softly. “She is very pure, very Catholic. She is probably on her knees now, conversing with the pope.”

I liked Agatha already. I looked down the hallway toward Bernadette’s door. Clay busts of Agatha’s face had been set out to dry on stone columns on either side of the corridor. I assumed they were by Fernando, who I knew to be a sculptor. Some were reproductions of her face in its current manifestation—the present Agatha, circa thirty-two years—while others were imagined versions of her face in old age, variations on a future Agatha, slightly wrinkled, cheeks sagging, eyes less willingly open. I apprehended her gentle and voluptuous figure. Agatha, I concluded, allowing my nose to guide me, is a well-turned-out person; she is delicate, obstinate, and she smells good. There were hints of vanilla and lavender wafting off her skin. No wonder Fernando was possessed by the impulse to reproduce her countenance.

“Fernando doesn’t speak English,” Agatha said kindly, perhaps in an effort to explain why he stood next to her with his brows knitted, as if he understood nothing. Then she asked: “Where are you from?”

“That is a very complicated question,” I replied, undeterred.

“I have all the time in the world,” she said, smiling.

Fernando’s gaze intensified. He had dark black eyes that shone with a disquieting force. It seemed his face was set in a permanent expression of confusion and disgust with the state of the world. A man of strict conscience, taciturn, noble, and principled to the extreme.

Agatha took me by the arm and led me down the hallway. She escorted me into a living room. The floor was covered in pink, white, and black tiles meticulously arranged in geometric patterns. The room had cracked walls that had been painted a soft yellow, a high ceiling, and a narrow stone terrace dressed with green shutters, which Agatha immediately opened, letting in a chilly breeze and the boisterous clamor of the drunks. The room had a view of Girona and the mountains that outdid the overlook. Ludo and Fernando hung behind. I could hear them whispering at the end of the corridor. I heard them open the lid to the Mobile Art Gallery. They gasped in horror. The combination of The Hung Mallard and the gas mask offered a ghastly blow.