Call Me Zebra(86)
“A gift,” I said, giving each person a piece of bread and a carton of Don Simon.
Again, the cathedral bells tolled; their peal cut through time, through stone, through the entire atmosphere. We had been there a good while. The sky was beginning to take on a purplish hue, and there was a terrible chill in the air. I lifted The Hung Mallard and pulled out the four retractable glass panels I had added to the suitcase, each adorned with a map of the coordinates of my life—Iran, Turkey, Catalonia, America—and then unfolded the side tables. On these, I placed the typewriter and the telephone. I showed everyone the gas mask. It was a huge success. I handed it to Mercè, forcing her to expose her face momentarily—pale cheeked, red nosed—and told her to pass it around. Ludo, despite his stoic demeanor, no longer looked like he was going to bolt. Agatha clapped with childish ebullience when it was her turn to hold the gas mask. She slipped it over her head and looked each of us in the eye through those rounded glass panels. Then she removed it, and sweetly declared, “It smells terrible in there!”
“That’s the whole point!” I said. “We have to rub our noses in the accumulated shit of history, in the pile of ruins. It’s our job and burden as Pilgrims of the Void to blast open the gates of life and let the nonsense of death through. In order to apprehend totality,” I declared with sagacity and resolve, “we have to annihilate the notion that life and death are two antagonistic blocks. That divide,” I persevered, taking a more populist approach, “is the source of our pain. We must go deep into our pain,” I insisted passionately. “Deep into it and come out the other side.”
“How?” Mercè asked, almost choking on her spit, fingers trembling over her face.
“Believe it or not,” I said, “it all comes down to the relationship between exile and ambling about, which Ludo so dutifully outlined for us.” I looked straight at him.
To my surprise, he winked at me. It may have been the wine—Ludo was halfway through his carton—but he was finally looking at me, smitten. I could tell he felt a part of something. His shoulders had relaxed. His curls had recovered their bounce. I winked back at him, and he let out a hot groan.
After that, I picked up a loose branch. It made for an excellent walking stick. I used it to point at the various maps in the retractable vitrines. It was time to introduce myself. “I am Zebra, Dame of the Void,” I said, tracing the path of my exile from Iran to the New World. “And my father, Abbas Abbas Hosseini, was my companion as I wandered in exile after my mother’s death. It is his life’s labor I honor by oiling the archival machine of my mind through a devotion to rigorous reading, dictation, memorization, and dramatizations of read materials.” I moved across the maps in reverse order, folding the path of my exile over itself, and concluded somewhat wistfully: “Let it be known that landscape and literature are entwined like the helix of DNA. And we,” I said, rehabilitating my tone, adopting a more convincing timbre, “are going to embark on collective Pilgrimages of the Corridor of Exile across these territories!” I pointed my stick at the Alt Empordà and then raised it to point beyond those flat fertile fields to the craggy range of the Pre-Pyrenees. “Why?” I asked rhetorically. “In order to retrace the path of the writers of exile who lived in or passed through these regions, stretching from Barcelona to Portbou, and transcribe their literature in situ on this typewriter.”
I pointed at the writing machine with my walking stick. I scanned the pilgrims’ faces, some of which were aglow, others swirling with confusion, their eyebrows stitched and foreheads pleated. Ludo, as usual, felt the need to set himself apart. He was mesmerized, perplexed, turned on.
“And why, you might ask, should we, the Pilgrims of the Void, focus on the literature produced by exiles? Because exiled poets objectify and lend dignity to a condition designed to deny dignity,” I said, citing Said. “By transcribing the literature of such writers, we will be restoring dignity not only to literature but also to ourselves; not to mention the fact that we will be retroactively restoring dignity to those great writers of the past. An act of posthumous salvation,” I said somberly, looking at Remedios, who was so entranced she had stopped fiddling with the oozing rash on her neck.
“Enough,” I finally said. “Enough. None of this means anything if we don’t put it into practice.” The collection of eyes staring at me all widened in unison. I told them I’d prepared an icebreaker, a bonding activity for the future Pilgrims of the Void. “I am going to read two quotes to you and you are going to provide your personal interpretation within seconds of hearing the quote. I want gut-level responses!” I declared fiercely.
A few of them shuffled around to get their blood moving. It was getting colder by the minute. The night air was being drawn over our heads like a dome. I persevered, rubbing my hands against each other and then holding them one at a time against Taüt’s feathery body. We had to remain close to the ruins of Josep Pla’s childhood school. We had to breathe in his fumes, allow them to alter our consciousness.
QUOTE #1
TITLE: Bleak House
CHAPTER: “In Fashion”
AUTHOR: Charles Dickens
ORIGINAL TRANSCRIBER: Charles Dickens