Helen Duberstein

Rachel Writes to Medea from the Ramblas in Barcelona 

Medea, I sit on a chair in the Ramblas, the colorful boulevard in Barcelona, Shaded by lofty branches. What magnificent old trees.  Lofty trees.  Lofty tree branches.  Branches of the lofty trees.  Did you know, Medea, that the name of the boulevard itself changes, as does its character?  As it wanders through the various neighborhoods that comprise the city the boulevard is influenced by the blocks, that is, by the neighborhoods it intersects. It rambles, the Ramblas, as we ramble, from fashionable to revolutionary to dowdy, to pickupsville.  An old fat man, a fat old man approaches me.  He seats himself in a chair to my left.  Sean is seated in a seat apart from me, to my right.  To my right, separated by a seat, Sean attracts my attention.  Sean suddenly talks to me.  The stranger who has seated himself next to me now removes his attentions from me.  A bargain had been struck over my body by those two men, Sean and the stranger. One, a stranger to me.  Sean, also, a stranger to me.

--Possession has been ceded by the stranger to the husband.

--A stranger to me.  Sean.  Medea, I played no part in those negotiations.

--What were your thoughts, Rachel, when all that did occur?

--I had no thoughts.

--But, previous to your peripheral notice and dismissal of the approaching man?

--I was thinking, Medea, of Orwell, and slavery, mind control, and revolution.

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