Call Me Zebra

by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi

  Fernando, eternal lover of knowledge, considered Ludo’s etymological breakdown sacred information and listened with his head hung over his muscular body, eyes closed, ears finely tuned. Remedios, Gheorghe, and Mercè seemed disenchanted; none of them had understood Ludo’s soliloquy. He took note and assumed a more casual approach: “He who walks out,” he intoned. “In other words, he who is driven out.” At this, he gazed defiantly in my direction.

  “He, she, they who walk out,” I corrected Ludo. “This,” I said, waving my hands over the area of death, “is a safe space where all the marginalized are welcome.”

  Ludo scoffed and looked away. He was in a terrible mood. He stood there looking snubbed, as stiff as a mummy. A specialty of his.

  With Agatha’s help, I had brought down the Mobile Art Gallery and left it in one of the parking spaces. It looked like a casket on wheels. There was some wine inside and the bread and, of course, Taüt. I had drilled a few breathing holes for him. I rolled the miniature museum to the center of our circle. I opened the lid and let Taüt out. He promptly climbed my arm, settled on my shoulder, and stared with such a villainous glare at the pilgrims that an icy silence ensued. To compensate for his charged presence, I distributed the bread and wine.

  “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

  TEXT: It is not a large world. Relatively even to this world of ours, which has its limits too (as your Highness shall find when you have made the tour of it, and are come to the brink of the void beyond), it is a very little speck. There is much good in it; there are many good and true people in it; it has its appointed place. But the evil of it is, that it is a world wrapped up in too much jeweller’s cotton and fine wool, and cannot hear the rushing of the larger worlds, and cannot see them as they circle round the sun. It is a deadened world, and its growth is sometimes unhealthy for want of air.

  QUOTE #2

  TITLE: “On Exactitude in Science”

  AUTHOR: Suárez Miranda, Viajes de varones prudentes (Travels of Prudent Men), Libro IV, Cap. XLV, Lérida, 1658

  ORIGINAL TRANSCRIBER: Jorge Luis Borges

  TEXT: . . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciples of Geography.

  “Reactions?” I asked, leaning into
my cane. “Thoughts?”

  Through her hand, Mercè said, “I don’t feel a connection to the second quote. For example, what is an unconscionable map?”

  Fernando leaned in. “A false map,” he said with acuity, “is an incomplete map.”

  I should have known that he, a man with the strictest of consciences who had predicted Taüt’s return, would have caught on immediately.

  “But all maps are incomplete,” Gheorghe protested ineffectually. “I had to buy so many on my way from Romania, and not even putting them all together—”

  “Bricolage!” Agatha interrupted whimsically.

  “Indeed,” I said. “Gheorghe, your thoughts on the Dickens?”

  “Ah,” he said with unexpected clarity and confidence. “That went straight to my heart. I felt the void in the depths of my heart, and when I feel that void, I don’t want to drink.” He looked at his carton and suddenly disposed of it.

  Agatha looked at him. She was beaming with delight.

  “A genius,” she said to Ludo. “A genius!” She was referring to me.

  Ludo rocked back on his heels and let out a charming little laugh. Who knew what was going on with him!

  Remedios came forward. She said, “I prefer to live with a view to the afterlife. Why focus on the darkness of the present when one can pray—”

  “All the way to the grave?” I interrupted. Then, more sternly, I said, “Someday you will understand that darkness is your greatest asset, the void your most powerful strength.”

  She didn’t look convinced, but she said nothing more after that.

  I turned back to Ludo. He was drunk. He had squeezed every drop out of his carton. His cheeks were flushed and his lips stained purple. He looked delightfully effeminate. Then he opened his mouth, and recited: “I hardly feel constrained to try to make head or tail of this condition of the world.”

  A quote from Benjamin via Arendt. Ludo had been reading my notebook again! Or had he secretly been reading what I had been reading in order to gain access to the inner workings of my consciousness? I had no idea. Soon enough, I thought, I will get to the bottom of things with this mysterious Bembo.

  By then, it was time to go. We arranged to meet again at the parking lot in exactly one week’s time. “The first literary pilgrimage,” I said, “involves a trip to the terroirs of Josep Pla’s birth and eventual death, Catalonia’s infamous Memory Man.But before we depart, dear pilgrims, I’d like you to repeat the following sentences after me: We are aware,” I said.

  “We are aware,” they repeated.

  “That each literary pilgrimage we undertake will unleash a chain of events that, like any event . . .”

  “Will unleash a chain of events that, like any event,” they chimed in.

  “Once set into motion, will enter in contact with other events and give rise to sublime and banal phenomena.” I let them catch up, then said: “We understand that while every event occurs in the present it also casts a shadow forward and backward in time and space and that there is no way of knowing if that shadow will serve to protect us or if it will keep us in darkness, submerged in a sea of opacity. But we, Pilgrims of the Void, are willing to sacrifice ourselves.” They followed along swimmingly. I didn’t give them a chance to pause and reflect on what was being said. “Our findings will be as inconclusive as life and we will defend them for that very reason, for their total disordering of so-called reality. Now let’s bring our hands together.”

  We came together.

  “In the words of beloved Shakespeare . . . ,” I said.

  “In the words of beloved Shakespeare . . . ,” they repeated.

  “What’s past is prologue!”

  “What’s past is prologue!” they echoed into the air.

  A week later, I gathered the Pilgrims of the Void at the Centre Fraternal in Palafrugell, a modernist-style casino and bar with a yellow facade and several Catalan flags that hung over its windows and awnings. This was the cultural center where Josep Pla used to spend his evenings drinking with his friends, practicing objectivism, discussing literature into the wee hours of the morning.

  The waiter, seated at a stool behind the bar, refused to rise when we entered. He simply waved us in the direction of a round table at the far corner of the large rectangular room. We walked single file across that tiled floor, navigating the tables and chairs, the scrutinizing gaze of the other customers—four wrinkled men, all dressed in brown slacks and green wool sweaters, whose eyes momentarily drifted away from their plates and their newspapers to apprehend our collective figure.

  We sat at a table sandwiched between a floor-to-ceiling window and the bathrooms. A good omen. Ludo whispered something to Agatha. He, the King of Food, was in charge of ordering for us. We had each chipped in four euros. That was all we had. I looked at the waiter. He had a phallic nose and bloodshot eyes and gnarly little fingers, which he had likely plunged into the earth, digging up roots and planting seeds his whole life.

  “The man looks so powerful fixed to that stool!” I declared under my breath.

  Gheorghe, who had taken to me, leaned in, and whispered, “Too true.” His belly awkwardly grazed my arm.

  “Gheorghe,” I said, seeing that Ludo was about to order a round of tap beers. “You are not to drink. You are a pilgrim now, and you need to keep your wits about you, protect your faculties.”

  He looked crestfallen. The flap of skin that ran from his chin to his ears, a fleshy bib, shook each time he felt despair. I could hardly stand to see him that way. I wanted to cheer him up.

  “I’ve assigned you a central role in today’s pilgrimage,” I said. “You are going to be the corpse of Josep Pla.”

  Remedios gasped in horror and reached immediately for a napkin from the dispenser at the center of the table. She dabbed her rash, which had taken on a glossy finish in that steely light.

  “Do you want to volunteer as a corpse?” I asked her.

  She said nothing. Mercè sat there with her face in her hands, her yellow bob spilling over her fingers. She looked like a mop that had been used to sweep up urine.

  “It’s a time-honored tradition, Remedios,” I said, turning back to Gheorghe, who was nervously weaving his fingers because the waiter had finally detached himself from his stool and was carelessly setting down the cold steins of beer on the table. The foam ran over the lip of the glasses. Ludo cleaned each one.

  “Gheorghe!” I called out, trying to claim his attention. “Josep Pla, too, had a mole that looked out at the world like a third eye”—I stared at his mole as I delivered my lines—“so astute was his gaze among the world’s commoners, the willfully blind.”

  He regained his resolve. The rest of us chugged our beers. We each ate a plate of sausages and rice. Ludo, who had more money than all of us combined, ordered coffee and crema catalana. He used his spoon to crack the crystallized surface and then proceeded to consume the entire concoction without offering any to the rest of us. Self-centered beast, I thought. But there was no time to pick a fight with him. We had a long day ahead of us.

  I’d left Taüt inside the miniature museum. As I had walked away, I’d heard him hissing and pacing, sucking in air through the drilled holes. He released macabre screams at fixed intervals throughout our meal.

  “He’s calling out in panic to see if I’m around,” I announced to the pilgrims. Everyone except Ludo nodded in agreement. To distinguish himself, he rolled his eyes.

  “Taüt!” I yelled. “Taüt!”

  Remedios nearly jumped out of her seat.

  “So he knows I’m here,” I assured the pilgrims, turning to look at Ludo’s face, which was flushed. The other men in the casino were staring at me wide-eyed, jaws dropped, newspapers in their laps, cigars hanging from the rafters of their mouths. Ludo took it upon himself to cast a regretful gaze in their direction.

  “Offering apologies on my behalf?” I asked, pointing at his empty dish of dessert.

  He got up and went to the bathroom. His chair almos
t flew out from under him. A few minutes later, he returned with an artificial calm. He leaned back, removed his pipe from the pocket of his tweed jacket—all his actions rehearsed—and placed it between his lips with those nimble fingers. He smoked with a superior air.

  The Pilgrimage of the Memory Man was not without obstacle. It took us three hours to walk the old road from Palafrugell to El Far de San Sebastià, where the young Josep Pla would sit, crack open his notebook, and record triumphant descriptions of the glorious landscapes of his birth. We got lost on the way. We didn’t have maps. We ended up on a rugged downward pass that led to a cluster of trees. Taüt, thrilled to be out of the casket, was miming the noises of the wild: the ping of a walnut falling from a tree, the sound of rocks detaching from the hills and knocking against one another in those vast tracts of forest densely packed with cork oaks, pines, eucalyptus.

  “No sense of direction!” Ludo said breathily.

  I was the one leading the way through that abysmal network of unpaved roads.

  “No sense of direction!” Taüt mimed. Then he chirped like a canary because he heard a canary chirp in the dense fabric of shrubs.

  “That wretched bird!” Ludo said.

  “That wretched bird!” Taüt echoed.

  “Agatha,” I said. “Can you tell Ludo that I can hear everything he’s saying?”

  Agatha threw her hands up in the air.