Call Me Zebra(84)
“You look so beautiful,” I said to the part of him that contained my mother.
Taüt cocked his head. His jaw dropped open. I scratched his neck.
A moment later, everyone came home. I announced the good news. Immediately, Ludo and Agatha rolled out a birdcage—huge, ornate, rusted—that they had purchased at the antiques market as a gift for me in case Taüt ever reappeared. It was clear that Agatha had talked Ludo into making the purchase. She strode forward and pushed the cage over the uneven floor with a radiant smile on her face. He, on the other hand, proceeded sternly, a severe-looking silent man whose arm had been twisted into expressing a form of kindness he found difficult to bear. He had made it abundantly clear that he felt the bird infringed upon his rights as a human. He had entered into direct competition with that bird, and this loving exercise, pursued by Agatha, had forced him into an uncomfortable position: that of preserving the bird within our company and therefore securing the possibility of an ongoing battle between the two of them for my attention. A childish man!
They made their way around the clay busts with great care while Fernando watched from a distance. “It is all upward from here,” I said, presenting them to the new and improved Taüt.
“Oh, my childhood bracelet,” Agatha said. “It looks gorgeous on him!”
I considered telling her about my mother, but I didn’t. My mother had never met the Catalans or the Spanish, let alone Italians living in Spain. I wanted to protect her. To keep her safe from the pitying gaze of strangers.
They set the cage in my room, and together said (Ludo surely having been primed by Agatha): “Voilà!”
I knew it had all been rehearsed, but I still gave Ludo a kiss for making an effort. I squeezed his hand the way he had squeezed mine on our first night out together. I felt his muscles relax under my touch.
The pair of them, seeing me deep in thought, retreated from my room. I was alone with Taüt again. Had I ever been alone with my mother? My father had been omnipresent even in death. I looked at the cage. I cringed at the thought of putting Taüt in there. What would my mother do, trapped in that opulent prison?
I searched the house for a ball of yarn and ornamental bells. I tied one end of the yarn to the frame of the bed and the other to Taüt’s right talon, to which I also secured the bells. I let him walk freely through the apartment. He spent the evening trotting from room to room. Petita followed close behind, sniffing at the oatmeal fragrance he released along the way. She was a peaceful dog; there wasn’t a mean bone in her body.
I followed their hypnotic movements, watching as Taüt crisscrossed through the apartment, folding back over his steps, leaving behind a trail of yarn like the lines one draws between stars, like the Matrix of Literature itself. I was entranced.
Finally, with Taüt restored, the fated day, the day of the gathering of the pilgrims, arrived. I had counted my money—I was two-thirds of the way through it—and asked the baker downstairs to bake me a few loaves with three As cut into them. I bought wine as well, many cartons of Don Simon.
It was an unusually blustery spring day. I was waiting for my disciples to show up in the parking lot in the very spot where the corpse had fallen. In addition to food for thought, the signs I had distributed contained the following information: The Bureau of Spatial-Literary Investigations is searching for participants interested in embarking on the literary expedition of a lifetime. Meeting to be convened on March 17 at four p.m. in the parking lot adjacent to Calle Claveria. Participants must concede to being referred to as Pilgrims of the Void. Prerequisites include: experiences of disenfranchisement, alienation, abandonment, banishment, rejection, voluntary or involuntary exile, financial or psychic poverty (defined, in the case of the latter, as the involuntary drainage of energy through the fissures in one’s fractured consciousness, a direct consequence of the aforementioned experiences), and, last but not least, physical exile (defined as a lack of correspondence between one’s mind and body). I included the Hosseini family logo on the bottom, three As followed by our timeless motto: In this false world, we guard our lives with our deaths.
I had arrived an hour early in order to forestall eager candidates from gathering in my absence to gossip about our collective objectives. I wanted them to apprehend my ruminating figure as they advanced from a distance, which would predispose them to identify me as their leader. To keep warm, I paced around in the spot marked by the famous corpse of that butt-exposing drunkard. I could still smell the fumes of his death. Even so, I managed to admire the view: the lichen-stained roofs of the houses; the trees of Devesa Park, their branches gently swaying in the midday air; the mustard dome of the post office; the three young trees of the overlook that I had aired my feelings to months earlier; and, on the corner adjacent to Josep Pla’s childhood school, a convent with an austere facade that permanently hemmed in a group of self-loathing nuns. The school was missing a roof, and there were trees growing inside it.
Just then, a few disciples arrived. They streamed into the parking lot one at a time. First, a girl with sunken cheeks and hair parted at the center, who claimed to be devout and kissed the small silver cross hanging from her neck as she introduced herself. Her name was Remedios. She had a droopy nose and her eyes were leaking; the skin beneath them was red and worn. It was clear she was going to be a bore.
After her, a drunk by the name of Gheorghe arrived. I had seen him before. He was a friend of the dead man’s and a nemesis of Ludo’s. Ludo had a bone to pick with him because, during one of his drunken spells, Gheorghe had stood on the parking lot wall and peed on the hood of Ludo’s car. Gheorghe was chubby and bald, and his ears looked as though they had been pressed against the sides of his head. He stuttered as he spoke. He had a black mole on his chin, which was the double kind, round and fleshy; naturally, the second layer wobbled as he struggled to dispense his words.