Love Is Strange (A Paranormal Romance)

by Bruce Sterling

  And you feed him. No one else. Only you. You feed him all his favorite things, made with your own hands, all your dishes that he always liked best. You cry with joy when he eats, but you don’t just cry in front of him. No, you go into the church, and you cry to your confessor. And you confess, too. You confess some small venial sins from your dirty heart, and then you tell this priest: ‘My sins are destroying my happy life with this man who I love so much!’ And then you go to your girlfriends, all the women who love you best, and who trust you, you say to them, weeping, ‘I fear so much that my beloved will die!’

  That is just the first part of his dying. Becaus, in that first episode, you have to cure the sick man. He suffers a great deal, because of the secret poisons that you put in his food. But first, you have to cure him. You have to save him from his painful sickness, with your patience and devotion. Then, he does get better and he is slowly restored to his health. That is why he trusts you so much, the second time. That is why he believes in you.

  Then you wait, once again. That is the second episode. You wait, like the she-cat at the mousehole. Then, some illness strikes him, because illness will surely come, over time. And this time, you go back again, to your priest, and your girls, and his relatives. You wring your hands and you suffer and weep a great deal, and you tell them, ‘I had hoped that he was all better, and I rejoiced, but this time he is much worse!’ And you suffer twice as much than in the first episode. You refuse to eat, and you grow thin, just as he grows thin. That part of the story is very important. Because he will not walk toward his grave unless you accompany him.

  Then again, he recovers from his sickness again, except — not so well, not like before. He remains under the shadow of his sickness — that second time. The shadows of forthcoming doom, they cling to his body, the second time. Then, at last, the third time comes. That is when you poison him and also praise him. You praise him to everybody. You go to the priest and the girls and all the relations, and you tell them, ‘He is fighting his deadly sickness like a hero! I never knew he was so brave!’ And they go to his bedside and they all tell him, unprompted and uncoached, ‘You are fighting this deadly sickness like a hero, you are so brave!’

  That’s when you can poison him fatally. Since he is a brave man, and a fighting man, he will die in a noble defeat. Because he is doing what everyone wants him to do. That was his purpose as a man. And he will die, if he has any honor. He will die for you, and for his own pride. Sometimes, you don’t even have to poison him! Many men hurry to die in that way!

  When he dies, the voodoo continues. There is a fourth episode. To understand this part is very important. He is a ghost now, but you also become the shadow of yourself. You are thin and dressed all in black. You look the picture of misery. So great is your grief and loss that you are a trial for all to look on. So, when your tormentor is finally deep in the earth, and you find yourself some other man — a younger and prettier man, who is kinder to you — all those around you are very happy about that. They rejoice for you. They do not have any doubts, they suspect nothing. They are glad to be relieved of your awful grief and your suffering. It pleases them to no longer feel so sorry for you. That is how true voodoo is done, my dear. That is how a witch kills a man properly. Not by beating him to death in a stupid rage the way that men do to us women, but by persuading him to die like a hero. That killing is done through patience and womanly wisdom, and by understanding him better than he will ever understand you. Did you listen to my story?”

  “Yes,” said Farfalla.

  “I’m glad that you were listening.”

  “I understand that story completely. You must love me a lot, to tell me a story so terrible. That is the worst story I ever heard.”

  “My dear, you are young. You lack experience in these things.”

  “That’s true, I am young. I don’t know very much about the world. Not yet. But, my God, my poor boyfriend! He is so futuristic, I could kill him with that magic in a week. He would never stand a chance.”

  “If he is that easy,” shrugged Hepsiba, “then you had better make sure that no other witch gets her claws on him.”

  “Well, I’ll never kill him. Not him. It would be ten times easier for me to kill myself.”

  “Suicide is for cowards! We are the adepts! Don’t be a foolish amateur, who wants the quick way out! And, mind you, any slow poison will do the work. It’s not about some precious powder that you pay the priestess for — it’s all about the hatred. The smallest axe can fell the biggest tree.” Hepsiba gazed upward. “Like an airplane that fells a skyscraper. Black magic can change the whole world!”

  “I love him, but maybe I will never understand him,” said Farfalla, slowly. “He upsets me so much, and he loses his temper with me and is rude to me, and there are so many things about him that are dark and terrible, and I know, for sure, that he must be wrong for me in a thousand ways, but, well, never. I could never do that awful thing that you just taught me how to do.” Farfalla looked at her fingernails. “Well, never to him.”

  “It’s good that you admit your shortcomings,” said Hepsiba, serenely. “But still, you must always remember my good advice. Because — this nice man you love? — he might well die, for other reasons. Then, some brute might marry you. You will need to remember how to do him in.”

  “Oh,” said Farfalla. “Yes, I see. I didn’t think that far ahead.”

  “This magic works not just for husbands, my dear. It also works for sons-in-law, young grandsons... any man who is a real man. It even works for some enemy women! But, for an enemy woman, you will generally need two or three women friends. To help you conspire to destroy her.”

  “You are so much wiser than me,” said Farfalla. “I’m a grown woman now, and I feel like such a child... I don’t even know what to say! But I want you to meet my boyfriend. I want you to learn his name, and look into his face. You are my Nana. I want you to give us your blessing.”

  “No,” said Hepsiba. “No, why should I do that? This favela world is not your gentleman’s castle! Look at that boar-pig happily eating his garbage there. We’re going to eat that pig, this very winter. I already know where your man is. I know about his fine hotel. I have seen that building. I can ride a bus anywhere in this city, and I can look at all the fine rich people. They are visible to me. They cannot ever see me, because I am occult.”

  “I know that I seem innocent and stupid,” said Farfalla, “and I agree with you about all that, but even if I hid from him, here in the favela... I know that he would come here to get me. He would come here to get me, to make me his own. I don’t want to belong to him, but nothing would stop him! He would show up here faster than email. I swear to God that lawyers, guns and money wouldn’t stop him!”

  “My dear,” nodded Hepsiba, “you are pretty, but no pretty girl is that pretty. He will never come here to this favela. Our landlady here at this bar, Dona Ida Cardoso, she is as good as bread. She pays protection to the First Command of the Capital, a gang so scary that the Sao Paulo police have to come here in armored cars. No, even their armored cars will not do. Here, they fly over us in helicopters. He will never come here.”

  “Oh, yes, he would most certainly come here. Nevertheless, he would come here. For me, he would come here. I can prophesy that he would come here. I know that my words would come true.”

  Hepsiba considered this. “It might be, that we could go to see him. He would never come here to see us.”

  “Nana, he would be here. He wouldn’t even realize that this was hard to do. He would come here like tomorrow morning comes here. The future comes to everybody. This place is the future.”

  “If you foresee this rightly,” said Hepsiba, “then this man is not your One. He is not even a man with a soul. This man would be your Demon. He would possess you.”

  “Nana, yes, he would possess me. He would come to the end of the Earth to possess me. Something about him is already here. Possessing me! I know him, I know what he is!”

&nb
sp; Chapter Twenty-Three: Bachelor Party

  Gavin sipped his caipirinha through a gleaming steel straw. How could Brazil’s national drink possibly be so fantastically good? As mixed drinks went, a caipirinha was as simple as dirt: just mint, lime, cane sugar, and cachaça. And cachaça was just fermented sugar cane. Three ingredients.

  Gavin’s ears were gently ringing. What a wild event this Futurist Congress had been. Never had he given so much of himself, or attracted so much public attention. He wasn’t even billed at the event as a formal speaker. He’d just walked into the place, out of nowhere, really. And yet Carlo, the organizer, had quickly shunted him onto four different panels. As the event’s surprise guest star.

  After those panels, came the bloggers, the newspaper people, the Brazilian television crews...

  Italians were swarming at this Sao Paulo event. The Italians from the Capri Futurist event were here to repay the favor. To tell the truth, that wasn’t a “favor” at all. The chic Italians were here to awe the Brazilians, and to loot-and-sack Brazil’s emerging luxury market.

  Yet, the Paulistas were cool about that. The Paulistas didn’t mind Italians. This city of Sao Paulo was a densely Italian city. A hundred years ago, half the population of Sao Paulo had been Italian. The famous Paulista accent, unique in Brazil, was an Italianized Portuguese accent. Even modern Italians didn’t know about that. That was the kind of weird, local-color detail that you had to show up here to learn.

  Brazil was a continental American superpower. Brazil had carelessly swallowed generations of Italians. Many, many more Italians became Brazilians, than Brazilians would ever become Italians. That seemed to be the basic difference between a “power” and a “superpower.” Which nation had the power to suck the living human flesh from another nation?

  Gavin had been a hit at this Futurist Congress. More than just a hit — the Brazilians treated him like an oracle. The Brazilians asked him many questions — mostly about the Italians. The Italians, for their part, asked his opinions of the Brazilians.

  Nobody asked him one question about Seattle. Nobody asked him about high-tech accounting, either — the one area of life where Gavin had useful and practical knowledge. They simply wanted to hear from him — all about themselves. Their lives to come, their future, theirs, theirs, theirs. They asked with frantic, yet respectful eagerness. Gavin Tremaine: the talking magic-mirror.

  Gavin spun a shiny coin on the bar. He loved the idea of a kind of money called the “real.” The Brazilian Real. Brazilian money was long notorious for being un-real.

  This shiny piece of Brazilian small change had a beautiful shining woman on it. As the coin spun before Gavin, hypnotic on the dark wooden bar, Gavin had a massive flash of insight. He suddenly understood — he just knew — that Brazil and the United States of America were two sisters.

  Not “sister countries” — genuine sisters. Two sister cultures. Their sisterhood was obscure, occult, and hidden. Somewhat scandalous, even. These two big girls were not eager to admit their sisterhood. Why not?

  Nations were commonly seen as women, all over the world. There was “Marianne” in France, “Britannia” with her shield, “Germania,” even “Italia,” with a funky old castle on her head. But the USA and Brazil were personified by a genuinely shady pair of babes. America, as a woman was “Columbia.” “Columbia” was a pretty shabby excuse for a mystical national goddess. Brazil was “Efígie da República.” Efígie was the woman on the shiny coin in Gavin’s fingers.

  “Columbia” had stolen the name of another American country, “Colombia.” That shady rip-off was obviously pretty bad, but “Efigie,” for all her Latin good looks, didn’t even have a proper name. “Efigie” was just an effigy.

  Gavin closely examined his coin, which he had gotten in change for his third caipirinha. “Efigie” wore classical imperial Roman gear. Presumably, Efigie spoke Latin. Efigie lurked in all the pockets and purses of Brazil. Obviously, no Brazilian ever really saw Efigie. She was way too close to them to be understood.

  Efigie was the female personification of a colossal empire. Brazil, a country bigger than the ancient Roman Empire had ever been. But just, frankly, made-up. A fantasy. Efigie was a fantasy girl with a powerful fantasy story. Brazil and the USA were two fantasy girls from the very same genre of fantasy. National romantic fantasy. These girls were sisters because they were immigrant chicks. They were two big, beefy, brawny harbor chicks who had stolen some ancient Roman clothes. No wonder they didn’t much want to be seen together in public.

  Gavin suddenly jolted upright on his barstool. Carlo had arrived and slapped his back. Dr. Carlo was a balding, bearded Brazilian intellectual in a black, silk turtleneck. Once you got to knew him, one heck of a guy. Carlo was the organizer and the motor of the Futurist Congress, a Brazilian academic, an intellectual commentator, and a sometime Brazilian TV star.

  Dr. Carlo was one of those two-fisted Brazilian anthropologists. Dr. Carlo was a world-class stuffy, uptight intellectual, but once the guy unbent a little, he brimmed over with incredible magic-realist war stories. Carlo had spent years up the Amazon, studying the language of a Brazilian tribe, who didn’t even have a past tense. Carlo knew about lost Amazonian cities. Neurotoxic blowguns. Gay Yankee beatnik tribes high on yage’ and ayahuasca. Dr. Carlo seemed to know everybody in the world.

  “At last, this event is behind us!” crowed Carlo, who was the picture of happy relief. “All the staff goes out to eat now. It’s a celebration. I want you to come along with us, Gavin.”

  “I can’t, I’m waiting here for my girlfriend,” said Gavin. “My fiancee’. She’s coming to get me. Here at the conference hotel.”

  “Are you sure you can’t come with us? We have hired a helicopter.”

  “Oh, Farfalla will show up here, all right,” Gavin nodded, sipping his metal straw. “You can depend on that. She’s a given.”

  “I want you to repeat, to all my good friends tonight,” said Carlo, “what you said to the public, during that amazing panel on digital fabrication.”

  “And what was that?” said Gavin, slowly spinning his sugar-crusted glass.

  “That connection between the bricolage of Claude Levi-Strauss and the street aesthetic of homemade digital replicators. I had never heard that connection made — but as soon as you said that, I knew it was true!”

  “Oh,” smiled Gavin, “I was just riffing! Nothing to that! I’ve got a million of ‘em.”

  “Then, you will not mind,” said Carlo carefully, “if I write a paper about that subject. Or, if I tell my friends in the manufacturing industry.”

  “Why would I mind?” said Gavin. “That was a fun panel! They were live-streaming that on the Internet. Any clown with broadband could see me say that stuff. Anywhere in the world.”

  “That is true,” said Carlo, startled. “I missed your panel on biotechnology and carbon-fixation. I heard some good things about that discussion.”

  “All I did there,” shrugged Gavin, “was to point out that Brazil’s sugar-cane bagasse cellulosic-ethanol labs could be bigger than petroleum. If there was a global carbon tax. Of course.”

  “I’m an anthropologist,” Carlo confessed. “I don’t know much about that subject.”

  “Carlo, that one is dead easy. Just look here. This glass is full of Brazilian sugar and ethanol. It’s literally here in my hand. All you have to do is look. Look at the future.” Gavin tossed back the sugary dregs of his caipirinha. “And, you know, you also have to swallow it.”

  “My friend, I know some good people who will swallow that. Yes, I certainly do. We’re all going out to the Clube de Churrasco. It’s the best barbecue club in this city, and I know the owner, personally. He’s as good as bread. You really must come with us. You obliged me by coming from Seattle to my event. Let me oblige you through this small courtesy. You won’t regret it.”

  “I’m still waiting for the girlfriend. She sent me an SMS.”

  “Call her, tell her to meet us! I’d be thrilled t
o play the host for your American girlfriend. She must be a wonderful girl.”

  “She’s Brazilian,” said Gavin, not moving from his brass-studded mahogany barstool. “And yeah, she’s worth waiting for.”

  A smile spread across Carlo’s stony face. “Now I see. That explains how well you know us. The ‘Eternal Brazilian Woman’... Well, it’s good news! So, my friend, since you cannot join us for our dinner, and since you are waiting here, for something that every man agrees is worth waiting for — let me introduce you to someone else. A good friend. He has been dying to meet you.”

  Carlo turned toward the crowded ruckus of the underlit hotel bar, and he beckoned. A short man shouldered through his way through the chattering crowd.

  This man was wearing a frock coat, gaiters, a top-hat, and brass goggles on a rubber strap. He looked like an utter lunatic.

  “Mr. Gavin Tremaine,” said Carlo, in his best courtly fashion, “may I introduce you to one of our most distinguished popular writers, Mr Xavier Alfredo de la Rocque.”

  “How do you do, sir,” said Xavier Alfredo de la Rocque, offering a small, deft hand in a tailored pink pigskin glove.

  “That’s quite a name,” said Gavin.

  “Oh, that is my nom-de-plume, my pseudonym,” declared Xavier Alfredo de la Rocque, smoothing his black mustache with his pink gloved finger. “I print that name on the spines of my paperback novels — so my real employers can’t fire me!” He smiled. “You can just call me ‘Xavier.’ All my fans do that.”

  “I don’t meet many literary writer-type guys,” Gavin confessed. “So, what kind of novels do you write, Xavier?”

  “I write ‘F-C,’’ said Xavier, sheepishly. “I write ‘Ficção Científica.’”