A gleeful smirk lit up Narcisa’s face as she snatched the money and stuffed it into her jeans. But instead of handing back my wallet, she hurled it right out the window, singing, “Thank you come again!”
Fu-uck! No-ooo! I felt my heart sink as I watched the wallet flutter in the air like a dying sparrow, before plummeting straight down.
Narcisa brushed past me and grabbed her knapsack, heading for the door.
As she reached for the doorknob, I grabbed her and spun her around.
Furious, I slapped her face.
Swaa-aaackkk!
She said nothing, but from her look of pure hate, I knew it hurt. It hurt us both.
She kicked her beloved television off the table with her big, heavy steel-toed combat boot. A sad little plume of smoke rose from the murdered squawk box as she stormed out the door and out of my life.
That was the last I saw of Narcisa. Something told me that this time, she wouldn’t be back. Even consumed with regret, I realized right then that, even for all our uncanny complicity and deep, soulful identification, I was still nothing but a means to an end for her; a necessary evil. A man: a walking, talking penis, attached to a piggy bank.
And Narcisa could never respect any man.
By a stroke of luck, the watchful porteiro returned my wallet intact—minus the cash. But that was the least of my worries.
Regret was my constant companion in the days and weeks to come.
Narcisa’s absence would become far worse for me than the depressing little tantrum that sent her running back out in into the bottomless night of another flaming circus adventure in her long, dangerous tightrope walk of the soul. Because one day she’d been there, overrunning my world like a wild invasion of squawking green parrots, filling my world with lust, obsession, sex, desire, passion, hunger, frustration, noise, and frenetic, urgent drama, eating me alive with her fiery, savage grace.
And then, in one sudden, violent flash, Narcisa was gone.
14. DANCING WITH MYSELF
“TO DARE TO LIVE ALONE IS THE RAREST COURAGE; SINCE THERE ARE MANY WHO HAD RATHER MEET THEIR BITTEREST ENEMY IN THE FIELD, THAN THEIR OWN HEARTS IN THEIR CLOSET.”
—Charles Caleb Colton
When she ran off that day, Narcisa forgot to take her journals with her.
All those notebooks filled with mad, visionary poetry, pages and pages of her inspired, mystifying writings were still sitting on my shelf.
As the weeks passed without word from her, it hit me that she was really gone for good this time. Feeling increasingly guilty and confused, I started reading through her stuff, searching for some clue to her possible whereabouts.
I found nothing. One particular passage, though, would stick with me:
. . . ONE POSSESSES A SURE AND INDOMITABLE INTELLIGENCE, A SAVAGE LOGIC, A POINT OF VIEW THAT CANNOT BE SHAKEN. TRY TO BE EMPTY AND FILL YOUR BRAIN CELLS WITH A PETTY HAPPINESS. ALWAYS DESTROY WHAT YOU HAVE IN YOU. ON RANDOM WALKS. THEN YOU WILL BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND MANY THINGS . . .
As time went on, those enigmatic words would come to represent for me the unencumbered essence of Narcisa, lingering on the hazy fringes of my memory, the night I’d first stumbled across her; two marginal shadows merging on a random walk in Copacabana. Or was it really so random? I wondered.
Since sobering up and embarking on a haphazard spiritual quest, I’d slowly come to trust in an essential intelligent order to all things, seen and unseen. The concept of casual, random occurrences was no longer a part of my reasoning.
From time to time, I would take out that notebook and read the mysterious phrase again, as if it might somehow sum up Narcisa’s existence, bringing me some small degree of comfort in her absence. But it didn’t. I missed her, the way you miss a pain that goes away, and with it, your whole concept of life.
Every other girl I went with after Narcisa would be little more than a weak, futile attempt to relive the furious magic and frantic, reckless fuck-the-world passion she’d brought me.
As time crawled by, I would come to fully understand that Narcisa had been a gift—a deadly, sweet-smelling poison that had blessed and cursed me with each day we’d spent together. And then, one day she was gone, like a wild, translucent, wandering phantom. A dream. Just like that. Gone. Like a ghost.
Bit by bit, I began to accept it, as one comes to accept a sudden, tragic death in the family.
About a week after she left, I shrugged off the sadness and began busying myself with the unfinished task of reconnecting with my lost, tangled roots.
I woke up alone and showered off the sweaty musk of the last night’s hooker. I got dressed and puttered around the apartment. Then, around noon, I went out to continue rebuilding a relationship with the shadowy old city of my youth.
I walked the crowded downtown pedestrian alleys for hours that day, making small talk with strangers, street vendors, hawkers, merchants, beggars, gypsy fortune-tellers and whores. Sitting on park benches, people-watching, reading a newspaper, I was getting familiar with the world again; Ignácio Van Winkle, waking up from a long, lonesome heroin nod.
I’d always loved the teeming wholesale districts of the Centro, and its bustling shopping mecca, known as “Sahara” for its Syrian-Lebanese immigrants and the exotic wares they sold in tiny stores lining the cramped alleyways. Across the thundering Avenida Presidente Vargas was the big lofty old Central do Brasil train station, always swarming with frenzied human activity.
My heart rejoiced as I revisited all those spots. As a kid, I’d always been entranced by the lopsided little zigzag paths off the Rua Uruguaiana and the hoary old Praça Tiradentes, with its looming colonial statues and lazy Portuguese mosaic sidewalks. Those bustling urban labyrinths had once been my playground and school and family and home. Now I was back, experiencing it again; exploring all the enticing, obscure nooks and crannies of long-forgotten childhood memory.
Standing on a corner by the praça, staring at the ancient pool hall across the street, I marveled that it was still there after all these years; just as I remembered it—those shady back rooms, still frequented by thin Negro malandro hustlers in their old-time straw hats and suspenders; living photographs from another era.
Fascinated, I wandered over and peered inside, watching them moving around in shadows behind old-time patterned green glass windows; ghosts of Madame Satá and his/her murderous turn-of-the-century gang of transvestite bandidos. All the legendary crimes and passions of underworld daring and old-school malandragem were written in the dusty molecules of that enticing little time warp, floating in the musty air within, taunting me to decipher their haunting folklore language, whispering ephemeral tales of my own deepest roots.
The spirits were all around me now, letting me know I was really, finally home again, walking old, familiar streets, lost in the sights and sounds and smells of the surreal metropolitan funhouse of Rio de Janeiro.
For weeks, I spent my afternoons like that, trudging through those fertile memory gardens, plodding from rua to rua, store to store; taking long, solitary lunches at the little hole-in-the-wall working-class eateries downtown, bathing my senses in a nostalgic world of spicy garlic-swaddled beans-and-rice meals, strong dark coffee and cheap black-tobacco cigars.
After lunch, it was back to exploring my old haunts. I was that curious ten-year-old gypsy kid again; little Ignácio, out on his own little dreamlike quest, slowly awakening, desperate for any small scrap of a lost, abandoned youth he’d never quite gotten to live. Anxious to make up for it now, I was falling in love again; a strange, exotic new love affair with a city of fuzzy, forgotten dreams, searching for any little missing scrap of myself in the alluring rubble of people, places and things rediscovered on those magical urban walkabouts.
Soon I found myself even shopping for things, the sort of things I’d never dreamt of owning; little odds and ends and decorations for my pad. A picture to hang on the wall here. An extra pillowcase there. Some new towels. A frying pan.
For the last couple of yea
rs, I’d just been more or less camped out there; a rootless nomad, always ready to pack his bag and hit the road at a moment’s notice. A restless, reluctant visitor; someone just passing through. Now, though, with Narcisa gone, I began claiming the place as a permanent residence.
At first, it felt a bit awkward, buying possessions for an apartment; my first real settle-down home ever—at least my first time living alone. I’d been married and shacked up, over the years, with an assortment of girls in the many places I’d lived since leaving Rio. For most of my adult life, I’d been what they call a serial monogamist—going from one steady affair to another, like a lovesick, hungry lost soul; but always repeating the same habitual codependent patterns, over and over again—forever expecting some new outcome with the next romance.
In truth, I’d really just been trying to dominate some other poor, misguided soul—either that or depending on the Other like a grabby little brat clinging to his mommy. In the end, they’d all turned out to be the same unholy alliance; one sweet, needy companion after the other; different names and faces—some lasting for years, even—but always marked by the same repetitive lifelong habits; the emotional equivalent of hijacking a revolving door.
Thinking about it, I recalled a phrase I’d heard at an AA meeting in Mexico City one day, early on in my recovery. “Alcoholics don’t form relationships; we take hostages.” That was me, all right. Einstein had defined that sort of behavior as insanity—doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. Since getting sober, I’d had to face some unpleasant truths about my old ingrained attitudes. Now, for the first time ever, I was making a living attempt to really change; a conscious effort to grow up and learn to care for myself, physically and emotionally, like an autonomous, self-reliant adult—one of the prerequisites to any lasting respite from the self-destructive, mind-powered scourge that had plagued me all my life. After all the pain, loss and misery I’d been through with the Curse, I’d finally come to take the whole concept of psychic change as a matter of life or death. “Change or die.” That’s what they had said at those early AA meetings.
That compelling admonition had continued to evolve in my consciousness, until I’d come to accept it as my highest priority. And there I was now, trying to change and grow, living all alone, for the first time ever. Dancing with myself. Just me and little Ignácio. Just me and my shadow. Me and my ghosts. No more liquor, no more drugs, no more girlfriends or shack jobs to lean on or boss around or live in constant daily combat with; no more “significant others” to pull the focus away from myself and my search for psychic healing. No more Narcisa. Nobody. No distractions; nothing to divert me from my daily meditations, reading, writing and solitary reflections, my new friendships and new sober life; my confused, slowly mending heart and mind.
I was finally all alone; wide awake and stone-cold sober, back in Rio, the very place where little Ignácio had grown up too fast, and never drawn a sober breath.
At first, it all felt sort of overwhelming, all that unfamiliar solitude, while trying to live a straight, crime-free life—especially in a place so haunted with brutal old phantoms. But Providence provides. When I’d first got out of prison in Mexico, I’d been obliged to do some honest manual labor for the first time in my life. That had equipped me with a little stash of money. Those humble savings, together with my meager inheritance from Tia Silvia, were just enough to keep me going; a nest egg, buying me time to pursue my writing, and even keeping me honest—at least if I lived modestly. For the most part, I did.
I didn’t require much, really; just some food, and a little company from the many cheerful hookers packing the street corners of the city at night like chattering packs of coked-up spider monkeys. Those girls really took the edge off all that self-imposed introspection and solitude; that and the lazy, sun-drenched afternoons at the beach, bumping into old and new friends and acquaintances in that bright, sandy democracy where rich and poor and black and white are all a big, animated human stew under the blazing Carioca sun.
For a few blessed hours every day, I would lose myself in that sprawling brotherhood of half-naked strangers, diving into the crashing waves, like a giant washing machine for the soul. It was essential. Those life-affirming swims in the sparkling summer sea were the highlight of my days, before going over to sit on a rock by the waves, in quiet contemplation; writing in my journals, composing short stories and even beginning a long-projected novel.
For the first time ever, creative juices were really flowing for me, as I sat at my regular spot near the fisherman’s shack in Copacabana—the same place I’d met Narcisa two years before. Now I had plenty of time to spend at my lovely outdoor escritorio, with its magnificent view of the ocean and the rolling waves below, alternately diving in and out of the rushing summer breakers, and scribbling into a notebook. Later, I’d go home and sit at my table by the window, often working till way past dawn, editing and transcribing all the day’s work into the laptop I’d saved up and bought myself as a three-year-sober anniversary present.
I began spending time with my few surviving childhood friends too. With Narcisa out of the picture and plenty of time on my hands, I’d finally gotten in touch with Luciana. A recovering addict herself now, she became my new best friend and an angel of mercy. She and her sister Veronica and I began hanging out a lot. With their easy laughter and warm, unconditional love, sharing a fond complicity of communal memories, we became the kind of close-knit little tribe I’d always longed for as a kid, but had never known. I was home at last.
A couple of times a week, Veronica would have us over for dinner, sometimes with a few other friends—artists and writers and musicians. Luciana and I would usually wind up the evenings sitting by the waves at one of the beachside kiosks we both loved over in Copacabana, drinking coconut water and talking about philosophy, recovery, art and travel, gossiping and laughing about the past, sometimes till long after midnight.
Out of nowhere, I’d acquired a pair of delightful sisters. Suddenly, I was a happy bachelor; a single man, self-sufficient and autonomous. I even started to cook in my little kitchen, in order to save money. All in all, I was doing all right.
Yet there was still something missing. Like an itch on an amputated limb, always begging to be scratched; something invisible kept nagging, tugging at my heart like an impatient, hungry child; an elusive, diminutive shadow, darting around corners in the busy downtown crowds, troubling my sleep, as the cars and buses of morning whined and rumbled and tumbled and raced their frantic paths to nowhere outside my shuttered windows.
Narcisa. Yes. I still missed her. There were days when I thought of her and couldn’t stop thinking, until it was almost unbearable. Even in the best of times, those were the worst times too—the deep, dark, cold and lonesome moments, feeling the stinging longing of wanting to talk to her again, to apologize, to hold her, to smell her, to hear my sweet little friend’s crazy, lilting singsong laughter, her endless childish stream of mad, poetic, apocalyptic nonsense. I wanted to go out and look for her, to find her somehow and bring her back into my life.
But, alas, Narcisa was gone.
15. WAKE-UP CALL
“DON’T TALK UNLESS YOU CAN IMPROVE THE SILENCE.”
—Laurence Coughlin
Longing for news of Narcisa, as the weeks dragged by, I fell into the habit of sleeping with my cell phone on—just in case she ever called.
Early one morning, a week short of two months after her disappearance, the phone began ringing. As it buzzed in my ear like some evil overgrown insect, I regretted having left that horrible ringer on . . . Narcisa! Shit! After all this time, of course she decides to call right when I’m fast asleep! Goddammit! Typical . . .
Groggy, I fumbled for the accursed instrument and pushed the green button.
“Pronto!” I croaked into the phone, glancing at my watch.
Jesus! Nine o’clock . . . And I just got to sleep an hour ago!
An efficient man’s voice, crisp and abrasiv
e, jolted me out of my stupor.
“Alô, ahhh, bom dia. Isto é o . . . Cigano?”
I instantly hated him.
“Eu!” I grunted.
“Ahh . . . Bom dia, senhor!” The irritating voice grated against my eardrum.
I was about ready to curse him to hell . . . Fucking telemarketing shitflies buzzing in my ear! Bastards! But something held my tongue . . . Wait! No one calls me “Cigano”! That’s what Narcisa calls me . . . Everybody else calls me Ignácio . . .
I said nothing. I just lay there, fuzzily assessing the odd little early-morning mystery.
“Ahhh . . . Alô? Bom dia?” The hateful disembodied voice insisted.
“Que bom dia, porra?!” I spat into the phone, exasperated. “What’s so fuggin’ good about it, man? Jesus! I’m sleeping! Whaddya want? Who is this?”
“It’s Doc, Narcisa’s . . .”
Doc! Narcisa’s . . . what?
“ . . . Narcisa’s guardian.”
Guardian? Who is this fucking freak? And why’s he calling me now? How’d he even get my number? What does the little shitbird want with me?
Wait! Maybe he knows about Narcisa! Maybe she told him to call!
I sat up, wide awake. “Oh, yeah . . . Right . . . Oí.”
“So sorry to have, ahhh, awakened you . . . ?”
“Uh, yeah, uh, sorry . . . Sleeping . . . So, uh, I guess you’re looking for Narcisa?” I mumbled, hoping maybe he’d take the hint and tell me something.
“Ahhh, well, no, not really, Cigano . . . I was just calling to say hello . . .”
Hello? To me? At nine in the fucking morning? Goodbye’s more like it!
“Oh, well, uh . . . Lissen, uh, Doc. I haven’t seen Narcisa for a while now.” I was already fluffing up my pillows, getting ready to hang up and sink back into dreamland. “I’ll tell her ya called though, uh, if I see her around sometime, okay?”
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