Call Me Zebra(96)

I scratched at my false mustache as I recited the lines to her.

“Don’t write this down. Did you know that Federico García Lorca, fascinated by Hitler’s mustache, said—be sure to write this down—The mustache is the tragic constant in the face of man?”

Paola typed the sentence twice.

I continued to read Dalí’s words from my notebook: “Even in the matter of mustaches, I was going to surpass Nietzsche! Mine would not be depressing, catastrophic, burdened by Wagnerian music and mist. No! It would be line-thin, imperialistic, ultra-rationalistic, and pointing towards heaven, like the vertical mysticism, like the vertical Spanish syndicates.”

I surveyed the pilgrims. In their faces, I saw the cowardice of the world. We are all victims of its fecklessness and lies, I thought, thinking of the variations of Dalí’s mustache: limp, two pronged, figure eight (infinity), lopsided (one side hanging over his mouth, the other reaching for his cheeks).

“A counsel of prudence and self-defense,” I said, quoting Nietzsche and ordering Paola to continue transcribing, “is to react as rarely as possible, and to avoid situations and relationships that would condemn one to suspend, as it were, one’s ‘freedom’ and initiative and to become a mere reagent.”

The pilgrims all nodded their heads. Their faces were flushed again. An inky life had drifted back into their veins.

“As a parable,” I recited, holding my notebook in one hand and the phone against my ear with the other so I could hear the sour winds of my childhood blowing through it, “I choose association with books. Scholars do little nowadays but thumb books. Philologists”—I thought of Ludo Bembo and the murderer Eugene Aram—“at a moderate estimate manhandle about two hundred books a day and ultimately lose their capacity to think for themselves entirely. When they thumb, they don’t think!

“Transcribe my words,” I said to Paola.

She nodded.

We are approaching the event horizon, I thought to myself smugly; a ring of light had been generated around our swirling void and it was warming up our hearts, illuminating our faces.

“The scholar is a decadent and an amateur,” I said with a feverish energy, riffing off of Nietzsche’s words, stitching my lines to his. “How is it possible for one to be a decadent and an amateur at the same time? Let me tell you: I am a dangerous thinker, a literary terrorist.

“Scholars,” I declared, thinking of Ludo, my sick hand hurting from the sting of betrayal, “would make better use of themselves raking fields. They are people who cannot think for themselves, who spend their lives thinking about other people’s thoughts. They are uninventive, square, insecure. They don’t possess a single authorial thought; all they have is the ability to say yes and no. In a world that is predominantly gray, they raise their finger and say yes and no.”

After a brief silence, I released a razor-sharp “Ha!” into the air.

“Did you get that?” I asked Paola.

“Ha!” she said.

“Ha, ha, ha,” I said.

“Ha, ha, ha,” she repeated, and we all fell back into the abyss with our false laughter; it resounded against the walls of our void. Our laughter was as loud and dark as that roaring sea, that Sea of Sunken Hopes at the bottom of which so many bodies lay dead.

We signed the paper: Manifesto of the Pilgrims of the Void.

Then we each transcribed that sheet. We took our transcriptions and taped them to Dalí’s front door. We abandoned the boat. We hiked down to Roses through the dark folds of night. At dawn, we caught the first bus back to Girona.



The following night, I dreamt I was standing on the Cap de Creus. Cap de Creus, I kept saying to myself in my dream. The words echoed back. I heard Head of Christ. I was standing on Christ’s head. It was charred, black, burned to a crisp, full of craters and holes. From that humble bowed head of his, I could see the savage coast below. The chilled water of the Mediterranean was scrubbing his cheeks with salt and foam. The sea to the east was deep, blue, brilliant; to the west, silver like aluminum foil.

Blades of rock jutted out of the water. They looked like razors. If you lean over the edge, I heard, you might be able to get a glimpse of the Cova de s’Infern. It was Ludo’s voice. I leaned over and looked at the Cave of Hell. I was so terrified of being attached to him, of losing him, that I almost slipped off the edge of the cliff.

Moments later, I woke up confused, thirsty, my mind a tangled mess. Why hadn’t I been able to say that word—love—the only word Ludo had wanted to hear? Because, I reasoned, in order to love properly, one must also be predisposed to feelings of hope; one must believe that the object of one’s love is capable of remaining alive long enough to feel loved. But could you expect that of anyone given the conditions of our sorry world? In the feeble light of morning, I reminded myself that I am an atheist relegated to a lifetime of sublime doubt, not easily inclined toward the winged pair, love and hope.

My thoughts spun dizzily. For a moment, I saw freedom close at hand. No witness, however wise, however ancient, however many times their mind had circulated this trifling earth, would dissolve my pain. Even if their eyes were as sharp as my nose. I had to gnaw on my pain alone, breaking it apart and digesting it as if it were a bone. I had to know its taste intimately. And as if that were not enough, it was my good fortune that I would have to live with its aftertaste lingering in my mouth: bitter, acerbic, sharp.