Narcisa

by Jonathan Shaw

  I watch her closely, feeling that weird sense of kinship growing.

  “ . . . I just like to go out in de e’street, you know, for meet some interesting new peoples sometime. I don’ like think bout nothing too much, just go. Go wherever, follow de wind, walk round in de e’star light, e’same like de night! That’s me, Cigano. Whatever happen next, that’s de plan, got it?”

  I get it. But when I try to ask her what part of town she’s staying at in Rio, I realize it’s another stupid question.

  “Hah! Whatever place I e’stay, always de right place for me, got it? Better if is maybe some kinda little corner for me lay down inside an’ e’sleep when I feel tire, you know, maybe got some good food, some interesting peoples for talk to. But I don’ care much bout these kinda thing, really, you know. I just like to learn de new thing an’ keep move around, got it?”

  I get it. I nod. She stops and looks at me, as if debating saying more.

  Then she winks. “I like de travel between de different dimension too, bro, whenever I got it de right kinda e’substance. Is very good for my e’study, I think.”

  “Whaddya study, Narcisa?”

  “I like e’study . . . you know, de Earth peoples . . .”

  With a deadpan look, Narcisa informs me she doesn’t really belong on planet Earth; that she’s stranded here—just visiting, from the constellation of Alpha Centauri.

  That would eventually explain many things about Narcisa.

  She begins telling me of her interactions with psychedelic-plant-based spirit cults and the Umbanda, UFOlogists and students of Christian mysticism, the Intergalactic Ashtar Command, and the ancient esoteric teachings of the Kabbalah.

  My head is swimming as she goes on. “All de knowledge an’ de most secret e’science, Cigano, is always got to do with de numero, got it? De universe is all de big mathematics equation, got it? E’same like de computer! You know something bout de Matrix? Well I do! Hah! I take it de little Red Pill too many time, ha ha! Or maybe is de Blue Pill, can’t remember, whatever. Doiiiiing! Delete! Next? Hah! When I go an’ e’stay with de mountain peoples, all de time we go de Santo Daime ceremony for drink de ayahuasca tea. Then I see it all, bro!”

  “See what, like visions?”

  “Hah! Forget it! Is too complexo for try e’splain with de human languages, mano. I think I maybe e’stay too much time on these e’stupid planet now, you know, an’ she finally make me crazy. De peoples on de mountain e’say to me all de time I gotta e’study Kabbalah. Porra, cara! When I go an’ e’start research these e’sheets, it make me really confuse! Crowwn crowwwn crowwwwn, ha ha! You know de Kabbalah, Cigano? Fock, mano, I know too-oo much about these crazy e’sheets!”

  Narcisa talks on. Like some enigmatic idiot savant, the words flow from her perfect baby-doll lips in frantic, perplexing torrents. I can’t shake the persistent sense of déjà vu, a weird, lingering impression that I’ve known this captivating sixteen-year-old prodigy before; somewhere, sometime, a long time ago.

  Silent lightning flashes out over the ocean as an approaching wall of rain moves in across a suddenly choppy sea, conjuring memories of the explosive summer lightning storms of my youth.

  As if on cue, Narcisa begins singing a strange, haunting chant in a deep, husky growl. “We gonna run run run to de city of de future . . .”

  I look over at her and smile. With her haunting beauty, natural charisma and off-the-charts IQ, Narcisa is clearly homeless only by choice; and she seems to have no care for money. She’s open to any new adventure. A nomad. Street-wise. Not a prostitute, though, I’m certain. Nothing like any whore I’ve ever met. She just wants some interesting company, maybe a roof over her head for a long, stormy night.

  She winks at me, sealing the deal.

  Then, without a word, she takes me by my arm again. My kind of people. We move toward the bus stop. She’s just right. Spontaneous, uninhibited, wild; Narcisa is a true gypsy spirit, someone who lives only for the day she’s in, and knows the score—which she shows me as soon as we get to my new apartment.

  Taking off her clothes, she stands admiring herself in the dresser mirror with undisguised narcissistic fascination.

  I watch in grateful admiration as she makes herself at home, occupying the comfortable, worn leather sofa as if she owns the place.

  Maybe she does.

  Narcisa. Naked. Perfect and unashamed as a blinking white Siamese cat.

  8. SAVAGE GRACE

  “ALL CHARMING PEOPLE ARE SPOILED. IT IS THE SECRET OF THEIR ATTRACTION.”

  —Oscar Wilde

  For the next couple of years, Narcisa darted in and out of my life like a deranged seagull. Over time, she began to exhibit a weird sort of mean streak, a vicious wild animal nature.

  As she dropped her ashes on my floor one day, I tried to hand her an ashtray.

  She glared at me, then swatted the thing to the floor.

  “De world is my ashtray, bro!” She spit at my feet. “Got it?”

  I got it. Whenever Narcisa didn’t get her way, she would pout and sulk, or shout and whine, cranky as a spoiled, autistic brat crossed with a bitter old cunt.

  But then, out of the blue, she could also be sweet; charming and kindhearted, ingratiating, large of spirit and generous in that odd, reckless way that only children and wild animals, and maybe Lucifer, can be.

  Narcisa just loved to argue. That was her weakness. It was as if she couldn’t help herself. She would spend hours on end debating with anybody about any silly little thing at all. She even spoke of putting her talents to work and becoming a lawyer someday. And she criticized everything she saw, machine-gunning crazed insults at random strangers on the streets of Rio. She was especially brutal with the people closest to her. As time went by, I realized there weren’t any people close to Narcisa.

  Nobody but me. Somehow, though, I didn’t mind.

  Narcisa was obsessed with the color purple; the mystical color of redemption and spiritual rebirth. Everything she owned or wore had to be purple. When she couldn’t find the things she wanted in purple, she would settle for pink.

  Even her food had to be purple or pink, and Narcisa ate heaps of beets, devouring big, overflowing plates of beet salad at the cheap downtown eateries we went to together—maybe in hopes of shitting purple, just for good measure.

  Narcisa craved attention. A lot of attention, often the negative kind. Didn’t seem to matter one way or the other, as long as she got attention. She talked loud and cursed a lot to get it, too. And she dressed eccentrically. Sometimes she would even wear her bra and panties outside her clothes—then hurl venomous curses and insults at people on the streets when they stopped and gawked.

  Narcisa was an enigma to me, with her many weird, eclectic, contradictory tastes; everything from the writings of Nietzsche, Sartre and Descartes, to corny Brazilian soap operas and asinine old American sitcoms dubbed with preposterous, outdated TV Portuguese. Soon after she came around, she nagged me to buy her a little portable television. She loved watching the children’s shows and cartoons. She would spend whole days with her eyes glued to the screen, while devouring pizza and chocolate, and drinking Coca-Cola—always with lots of ice cubes. She liked to make a lot of noise chewing up the ice. Some Brazilians say it’s a sign of sexual frustration when a woman chews on her ice cubes. As more would be revealed about Narcisa’s personal history, that quaint bit of folklore would begin to make sense—especially given her surreal background of childhood sexual abuse.

  She liked to eat messy snacks in bed; even sitting on the toilet, or in the shower. She would eat and chew on her ice cubes while I fucked her.

  Sometimes she liked to sing during sex, usually when she was high.

  Narcisa consumed great quantities of pink bubble gum, and stuck it to the walls and furniture all over my place, like some neurotic little devil dog pissing on things to mark its turf.

  One day, early on in our bizarre friendship, she bitched me out mercilessly for ten minutes straight, standing
on a busy downtown street corner. All because I’d bought her some blue bubble gum. The wrong color for Narcisa.

  “Porra! These e’sheet is blue, Cigano! Blue! Argghh!” she screeched, throwing a wadded up ball of gum at me, bouncing it off my head as passersby stopped on the sidewalk to watch. “De blue color is de color for de boy, Cigano, don’ you know it? Maybe you don’ notice I am de gee-rool, hein?”

  I stood there, shocked, frozen in horror as she pulled her pants down and flashed her shaved pussy at me accusingly, like some undernourished house pet I’d neglected to feed. A crowd gathered and stood around, watching, gawking, commenting, spectating as Narcisa railed on. “Geer-ool! Girl is pink, you see? Got it now, hein?” She spun around and stood flashing the bewildered crowd.

  Some of the men leered and made lecherous comments as I cringed with embarrassment. “Bu-ceta! Buceta bo-oa! Go-od pussy!” A toothless old bum cackled to the delight of one and all. I wanted to rip his lungs out with my bare hands, but Narcisa’s crazed scandal held my attention like a straitjacket.

  “ . . . So de next time you wanna buy de Chiclet for me, bro, you better remember is only de pink Chiclet for de Narcisa, got it? Hah! Now you got it!”

  She turned to the crowd again, throwing the remaining bits of bubble gum at the shocked spectators, still yelling as she hiked up her pants. “Okey, de e’streep teaser show finish for all you e’stupid little monkey face peoples. That’s all folks! Hah! Now we gotta go, gotta go go go! Next? Thank you come again! ’Bora, Cigano!”

  Then she grabbed my arm, leading me off, like a dog on a leash, as if nothing had happened. Just like a long-forgotten little boy named Ignácio, being dragged along those same crowded downtown streets, behind a rough-handed, scandalous, drunken gypsy whore, back in another lifetime, a long time ago.

  One afternoon, I was out walking when I spotted a group of local gypsies gathered on a busy downtown corner. I recognized some of the older ones from back in the day. Like my family of origin, they belonged to a scattered network of city-dwelling Roma; humble underground traders who’d long ago swapped the old nomadic lifestyle of horses, mules and caravans for cars, motorcycles and cramped little backstreet flats. Still, they were Roms to the bone; outsiders and natural-born hustlers.

  Like my Tia Silvia, the colorful ciganas would take to the streets in their traditional long, flowing skirts, bead necklaces and exotic gold jewelry. They spent their days reading palms in the busy downtown praças, while their men stood in nearby clusters, wheeling and dealing, buying, selling and trading whatever they could acquire for cheap and dispose of for a quick profit—mostly used vehicles.

  As I passed, a man’s voice rang out, calling my name above the rumble of traffic.

  I turned. A face emerged from the crowd like a memory, grinning gold teeth under a wide-brimmed black fedora. “Mixztô, mer’mão!”

  I did a double-take and stopped. It was my old friend, Luca.

  “God has sent you, Ignácio!” He rushed over and kissed me on the cheek.

  After exchanging warm backslaps and pleasantries in the familiar Portuguese-laced Romani of our youth, he led me around a corner to show me his latest treasure: a slightly battered black Yamaha XT-600. Just the motorcycle I’d always dreamed of owning someday. Luca’s asking price was affordable, and the engine was sound. Best of all, having known me all my life, he offered to sign it over for a small cash payment, then trust me for the rest over time.

  Once again, I was in the right place at the right time.

  I handed him a few hundred reais as he put the keys and papers in my hand.

  I rode off, beaming with pride and smiling like a fox.

  “Das dab ka i roata le neve vurdoneski, mer’mão!” Luca waved behind me, wishing a fellow gypsy “steady wheels for the new wagon.”

  That fortuitous acquisition would mark the real beginning of a new life for me in the city of my youth. For the first time in years, I had something of my own and nobody else’s.

  It was a good feeling.

  9. ALL ABOUT NARCISA

  “ONE MAY UNDERSTAND THE COSMOS, BUT NEVER THE EGO; THE SELF IS MORE DISTANT THAN ANY STAR.”

  —G. K. Chesterton

  Narcisa liked the mountains, but she couldn’t take the solitude.

  Narcisa, I would come to learn, didn’t like to be alone. Ever. She liked the rain; didn’t even care about getting soaked in an apocalyptic tropical downpour—which happened more than once as we flew through the nights on my new motorbike. Maybe she didn’t mind because it gave her something to complain about.

  Narcisa loved to complain.

  When not complaining, Narcisa enjoyed classical music, old Brazilian rock and roll, bubble baths, bubble gum, and anything to do with smoke and fire.

  She always said she’d smoke anything; literally, anything at all. To prove it, whenever she was around, she would chain-smoke all my cigarettes, then dig through the overflowing ashtrays searching for butts.

  She consumed copious quantities of weed. She even puffed on tobacco pipes and cigars. Narcisa didn’t care. She would smoke any damn thing that came her way, including PCP, DMT and crack cocaine; and, speaking of smoking, she wanted to be cremated, not buried, not under any circumstances, when she died—which she hoped would be real soon. To that end, she’d leave lighted cigarettes burning on the furniture in random spots around my place—maybe in hopes of fulfilling her death wish by starting a fire and smoking herself as a swan song.

  Narcisa was well named.

  Obsessed with mirrors, she could stand before one for hours on end, lost, hypnotized, looking at herself, studying, preening, flirting, admiring her own marvelous, sensuous, ghostly image in the looking glass.

  As I got to know her better, I realized she was quite opinionated. There were so many people, places and things she disliked, the litany of her pet peeves was hard to keep up with.

  Narcisa hated anyone in a uniform, particularly waiters, police and the military; fat people, Argentines; Forró and Caipira music were a constant source of annoyance to her, as well as all religious art, newspapers and newscasts. She also despised poor people. But, as an equal-opportunity hater, she disliked rich people just as much. Basically, Narcisa loathed the whole human race.

  Sports (soccer in particular, Brazil’s national passion), popular fashion trends, sunshine and the beach were all high on Narcisa’s shit list; airplanes and air traffic irritated her to no end too. Above all else, she hated old people. And Narcisa absolutely detested “stupid” people—especially the ones in her long-estranged family of origin.

  Despite an almost pathological narcissistic fascination with herself, Narcisa had a special dislike of her physical body—her “space suit” as she referred to it—and she punished it without pity, every chance she got, often provoking street fights with strangers, just for the hell of it, thereby getting them to do the job. Narcisa was covered in battle scars and stitches, bruises, cuts and messed-up homemade tattoos. She also liked to cut herself with sharp objects.

  As an extension of the perfect adolescent body she despised, Narcisa hated her bodily functions. She had no patience with going to the bathroom, producing waste, shitting; “defecating,” she called it, not even caring to verbalize the word shit for its intended usage.

  Narcisa abhorred her period, her pussy, her tits, and she spoke of having them cut off her someday—tiny as they were—if she ever got enough money to pay for plastic surgery.

  She often lamented having been born a female, and she didn’t care for women much, as a whole. Still, she was always oddly tolerant of other teenage girls like herself—especially when she wanted something from them. Usually sex.

  Yes, Narcisa also hated men, at least that’s what she claimed—a fact that would make my intimate dealings with her a challenge.

  Despite her many antisocial, abrasive ways, Narcisa was also witty, engaging and convincing—even charming, in a surreal manner. And Narcisa always got whatever she wanted. The only problem was that w
hat she tended to want was mostly chaos, confusion and conflict.

  Narcisa professed to be expert in all sorts of shadowy mind-control techniques, things she’d picked up at a young age, supposedly, from reading stolen books on Satanism, occult Freemasonry and black magic. She even claimed to have participated as a child in ritualistic pacts with the devil.

  Oh, and Narcisa hated any words printed on clothing, too.

  She would cut all the words and labels off her clothes, even the expensive designer stuff she always mysteriously acquired. One day, she showed up at my door, covered from head to toe in catsup and mustard. She refused to discuss how she’d come to be a walking hot dog. I let it go. As I ran a bath for her, I went into my stockpile of bootleg swag and handed her a brand-new fake Calvin Klein T-shirt to wear. Right away, she took a scissors from my drawer and cut the name off the front, leaving her own hated breasts exposed to the world as a trade-off.

  “Out! Out!! E’stupid gringo bool-e’sheet!” She cackled as she “customized” the shirt. “Que merda! Who de fock these focking Calvin for me, hein? Focking e’stupid reptile! If de Narcisa ever gotta walk around like a focking circus clown with some e’stupid gringo name on front of me, they better give it to me plenty focking gringo dollar an’ pay me for advertise, got it? Hah! Next?”

  I got it. Anything would be better for Narcisa than to be a walking billboard for some unknown gringo parasita.

  Narcisa also detested machines. I was obliged to hide my cell phone whenever she was around, just to keep it from flying out the window.

  She was fond of destroying all sorts of other costly, imported gringo appliances, like cameras, radios, blenders and toaster ovens.

  Speaking of blenders and toaster ovens, Narcisa abhorred the boring earthly concept of food. In her baffling extraterrestrial philosophy, eating was just a crude necessity, at best. She said she wished she could dehydrate food and smoke it in a big spliff, thereby bypassing the unpleasant chore of taking nourishment altogether.