Call Me Zebra(72)

Fernando refused to speak while he was working, and often he refused to speak even after he was done, especially if the expression on Agatha’s bust didn’t correspond to the expression he had intended. The only time he spoke was when he had a grave vision; that’s how he referred to his dreams, as grave visions. One night, he dreamt that a balding, acned child with torn overalls and an ancient expression lived in their bedroom, a dark room at the back of the apartment with a small window that overlooked the courtyard next door.

“What’s the child’s name?” I asked, standing in the kitchen with Taüt on my shoulder. I had begun to feed him directly from my mouth. It was the only way the bird would eat. I chewed a piece of bread and then extended my tongue to the bird, who quickly retrieved the masticated clump.

“His name is Fernando,” Fernando said.

“Fernando?” I swabbed my mouth with my finger to get rid of the remaining bread. I hated it when it got stuck to my gums.

“Fernando,” he insisted.

That was it. From that day on, there were two Fernandos living in the house: the flesh-and-bone Fernando, the adult sculptor, and the child-ghost Fernando who, according to the first Fernando, had suffered a terrible and frightening death. To help the child heal, Agatha placed bowls of salt around their bedroom.

“Salt absorbs negative energy,” she said. “The bigger the crystals, the more they absorb.”

I told her there was no need to explain the obvious. Agatha worked in a health-food store selling macrobiotic products, incense, herbal infusions, salt lamps, teas. Later that day, she returned from work with a gift for me: a bag of Himalayan salts, which she insisted I put under my pillow in order to eliminate the residue of Bernadette. I told her I live for residue, though perhaps not Bernadette’s, a comment that caused Ludo to roll his eyes from across the living room, where he was seated, legs elegantly crossed, on the sofa.



Ludo’s mood, which had initially been generous, perhaps even exuberant, had soured over the last few weeks. He had become consistently petulant and unforgiving, stern and hard t0 read. I didn’t know how to approach him. I didn’t know what to think. I had no idea what he did with his days. Sure, he taught a few classes at the university, but he would often leave in the morning and come back at night, exhausted, shut down, gassy, and disgruntled, unwilling to have sex.

I had to work on him every evening, tune him up. This was his home, his hearth. Instead of him coming and going in Quim Monzó’s apartment, being pushed out by the putrid fumes of my past that would rise at random to pay me a visit, demanding my attention, here it was I who was subjected to Ludo’s whims. Here, his manners seemed strange, mysterious, ethereal. If I approached him with questions, he would answer some but not others. Certain topics, I had come to observe, he avoided altogether: anything having to do with death, illness, the injustices the powerful minority assailed against the abject majority. There were days when his dismal temperament caused me to feel visible and invisible in rapid succession, as if I were constantly appearing and disappearing from the stage of life. This experience hooked a familiar sensation out of my past and replayed it until I felt obliterated: the awareness of finding myself in a dark wood, lost. I felt yanked around by his ups and downs. I felt dizzy. I couldn’t tell if I was ascending or descending humanity’s abysmal pits.

At times, I would think: What is my part in this? Whose hand had failed to remove the thorn from the other’s foot? But then I would remember that it was his job, as a privileged member of the Pyramid of Exile, to help me. After all, he was gulping down all the oxygen available from whatever small opening existed at the top. He could even squeeze his way out to interact with others or, I was sure, to have sex with the Tentacle of Ice. This was a pernicious thought that had wormed its way into my brain, and I couldn’t figure out how to exterminate it. After all, in addition to spending most of his time outside of the apartment, he seemed to have lost interest in having sex with me. What else was I to conclude? The Tentacle, a nonexile par excellence, likely offered him a much simpler exchange. I imagined her letting him off the hook, encouraging him to deny his pain, rewarding him for leading an unexamined life.

One night I left Taüt in my room, which resembled a prisoner’s cell, shut the door behind me, and walked over to Ludo’s. I was naked. I let myself in without knocking. He was reading a book in Occitan. I couldn’t make out the title. I saw my figure reflected in a mirror on his wall. I looked thin and brittle, but I was more resolved than ever. My eyes were shining with the fixed purpose of a rebel; I was preparing to express my whole fragmentary self in a wild deluge. Ludo lay his book down to rest on his chest.

“You shouldn’t walk around naked. There are other people living in this apartment, you know.”

I could see his penis rising in his pants.

“Don’t be so resentful,” I said, kneeling on his bed. I examined his head of precise curls. I reached over and removed his glasses. His pupils dilated as his eyes adjusted to seeing without them. He looked lost and helpless.

“Is it easier if you can’t see me clearly?” I teased, gently placing my hand on his bulging organ.

“You’ve worn me down,” he said. “I can’t make sense of your moods; they exhaust me.” He removed my hand as he said it.

My moods? I thought. I was appalled, but I didn’t want to get into it. Instead, I said, “According to Scheler, resentment is an autointoxication—the evil secretion, in a sealed vessel, of prolonged impotence.”