Narcisa

by Jonathan Shaw

  “It took me a long time to wake up, and I’m still working on it today, one day at a time. I’m no saint either, believe me. But I have gotten better, ’cause I’ve been willing to change. For me, love and service to other sick, suffering drunks have been the key to my own recovery. And thanks to the program, I’ve finally learned to care about other people. For a selfish old drunken bum like me, that’s a miracle in itself.”

  Those words had rung true and clear as a temple bell. A lifetime of addiction had swept me into the gutter. I’d spent years in prison contemplating the consequences of the selfish attitudes and actions that had ended me up there.

  After getting out, those meetings had been my last chance to salvage my life. Like Narcisa, I’d been a real stubborn, prideful case, stumbling blindly down a road of slow, steady, drug-induced self-annihilation for decades. I was almost dead by the time I finally threw in the towel. Like her, I’d always been too proud to ask anyone else for help. Me, I’d had to taste complete defeat before getting willing to humble myself and recover.

  The only difference between me and Narcisa now was that I was just a bit less proud than she. That kind of stubborn, irrational bravado had been beaten out of me by the Curse. I didn’t walk on water, I knew, but I was getting better; slowly recovering from the mad, egocentric commands of my own trauma-warped brain.

  If some benevolent Higher Power had changed me from a pathetic, pissed-off, lying, thieving shitbag, why would it drop me on my ass now? No. It didn’t make sense to live in that kind of doubt anymore. Faith was my key to sanity today.

  Even as Narcisa backed me to the wall like a cornered rat, again and again, I always came out unharmed somehow—even strengthened, by the harsh, painful experiences. One sober day at a time, my soul was being fortified, along with my unshakable belief in a hopeless addict’s ability to change and grow and recover.

  Even against all odds, I knew Narcisa could make it too. I just didn’t know how. Staring into the blazing, tormented pits of her eyes that day, I wondered what it would take to carve a chink in the Crack Monster’s ironclad armor. I prayed it would be enough for the light to shine through, before she ended up dead, like all the others.

  “You wanna take a focking foto? Why de fock you just stand there e’studying me, hein, e’stupid?” She kept taunting me, daring me to react.

  I rolled my eyes and sighed, but I didn’t take the bait. I just watched her, groaning under my breath. “Jesus! Where does this shit ever end?”

  “What de fock you talking about de Jees-ooz now, hein? What happen to you, e’stupid old e’sheet, hein? Too focking retard to know you alive . . .”

  I bit my tongue again, reminding myself how soul-sick she was. No matter how bad she ever treated me, I had to keep standing beside Narcisa, like a shipwrecked sailor, watching the horizon for any little glimmer of hope, a message in a bottle, anything. I could never forget that time she’d looked at me with that heartbreaking expression of helpless, pleading despair. Every time I found myself starting to hate her, I would see the hazy image of her standing in front of the Love House the night she’d uttered those fateful words: “Don’ give up on me, Cigano . . .”

  Right then, my soul had heard her soul’s stifled little plea, and responded with a deep, unspoken commitment to never give up on her—no matter what. And I never had. I’d never lost hope that Narcisa could make it; that she could change.

  Well, she hadn’t changed a bit, I realized. But I had.

  Somehow, over the months, I had found an unusual degree of patience, tolerance and compassion. Just by virtue of my being willing to try to help her, I’d been changed in some deep, essential way. And through it all, I’d maintained my own daily reprieve from drug addiction. As Narcisa raged on and on that endless, horrible afternoon, I realized I’d never been tempted, even in the most dreadful moments of terror and desperation, to just grab the fucking crack pipe out of her hand and join her on that enticing old thrill ride to hell.

  It never even crossed my mind. Not once.

  The same strung-out loser who couldn’t get through a day without massive amounts of hard liquor and drugs wasn’t the least bit interested in them now! That alone was miraculous. I simply wasn’t prepared to run away from trouble anymore, no matter how bad things ever got. For the first time in my life, I was determined to stand up and face whatever was happening, head-on, like a man.

  I may have never been able to save Narcisa, or even help her to rescue herself—not if she didn’t want it. But, somehow, she was helping me. Just wanting to help her was forcing me to change and grow and evolve.

  But there was more. As a recovering addict myself, well familiar with all the occult mechanisms and insidious subterfuges of the Curse, I could always see right through the smoke screen of her vicious maladjustments.

  To me, Narcisa was like the Wizard of Oz: A lot of blustering, empty sound and fury, ultimately signifying nothing. All her posturing and angry huffing and puffing were just an elaborate show of thunder and lightning, designed to keep people away. I could see it. Narcisa could put on a terrifying performance, all right, but I knew it was all just a show. A front. Behind that ironclad mask of defiance, I sensed she was seeking a bond with another human being—the one healing force that could save her from the solitary Curse of herself. Why else would she keep coming back? Why would she want to be with someone who understood what she was going through, unless it was a muffled little cry for help?

  Still, the time would always come when I had to give her the boot; and then off she’d go again, back out onto the shitty, gritty coldhearted old streets that were her world and her only other interaction with humanity. Narcisa would wander those harsh, dark, dangerous paths of night again, incurring all the sufferings, punishments and consequences of her crappy crackhead attitude, until there was nowhere left to go. Then, she’d come slithering back, complaining, cursing, whining and lamenting, oozing self-pity, rage and resentment from every stinking, unwashed pore, blaming me and everyone else for all her self-inflicted woes.

  It was a painful thing to witness.

  As she bitched and moaned, late into the long, hazy afternoon that day, I contemplated how pain seems to be the only real path to growth for most people. Ironically, that was exactly what her favorite philosopher had said.

  Exasperated with her irritating tirades, I got out a book and found the familiar passage where her beloved Nietzsche had made that very declaration:

  I began to read out loud. “The discipline of suffering, of great suffering, do you not know that only this discipline has created all enhancements of man so far?”

  “Menos!” She jumped up and knocked the book from my hand, barking like an angry Chihuahua. “You so focking ignorant, Cigano! You don’ know nothing! Nada! You ugly an’ old! E’stupid old hypocrite loo-oser! Just shut de fock up an’ don’ e’say nothing to me about Nietzsche, cuz you too e’stupid to get it!”

  I laughed. All the abuse she sprayed me with just rolled off me now, like jizz dripping down the face of a molested child. After hours of listening to her bitch and rant and rave and complain, lamenting about her unjust lot in life, hurling her poisoned darts at me, I started laughing, like a battered kid retreating into his own funny little fantasy world. Shutting down, I could feel myself growing numb.

  Finally, I stopped giggling and smiled at her. “Are you done yet, Narcisa?”

  My indifference only fueled her rage. The Crack Monster was moving her lips like a demented hand puppet, demanding violent retribution from me, insulting, yelling, twisting the knife with each new insult, digging it in deeper and deeper.

  “You too focking old, Cigano!”

  Nothing.

  “You too fat, Cigano!”

  Nothing.

  “You ugly an’ e’stupid like a retard old fock-monkey, Cigano!”

  Bitch! I’ll ring your fucking neck, you miserable little shit!

  Stop! She’s getting to you! Keep cool! Don’t do it! Just let her spew. />
  Narcisa’s beautiful, savage voice had been usurped by an evil possessing entity, converted into a hoarse, hellish, demented croak. By the time that long, trembling afternoon oozed into the murky shadows of night, I was so consumed with stifled hatred, I was ready to pull out my knife and gut her like a fish.

  If she doesn’t shut up, I swear to God, I’m gonna stab her right in her dirty black crackhead heart! Anything to not have to look at that nasty ratlike sneer anymore!

  And still, she rattled on. “Covardee-ee! You too coward to make it with de real womans, so you gotta be with a focking who-ore, hein? Well, you never gonna control me, Cigano! Hah! First I gonna kee-eel you, got it?”

  I got it. Narcisa was really cruising for another beating.

  Rage grabbed at my bowels like nuthouse sheets clutched in a madman’s fist. I wanted to slaughter her like a diseased goat. But with the memory of recent violence still nagging at my conscience, I was determined not to snap.

  Somehow I managed to stay calm, reminding myself that, deep inside, Narcisa was just a garden-variety addict. For such unfortunate souls, everything’s just wrong all the time. Even as her curses bounced off the walls like maddened wasps, I couldn’t help but sympathize with her plight. How not? Hadn’t I been there myself?

  In the end, my patience paid off. After another excruciating hour of abuse, finally, I gave in and threw her a ten-spot to go cop. That did the trick.

  She struggled into her filthy denim jacket. With a final “Fock you!” she spat on my floor, then stormed off into the night, slamming the door behind her.

  I listened to her footsteps clomping away down the hall, the echo of her angry voice squawking down the stairwell, like a blackhearted demon crow flapping off to hell.

  Thank Christ! She’s gone! Taking a long, deep breath, I limped over and stood at the window. I watched her emerge onto the street below, then trudge across the plaza, her shadow dissolving into the dark summer haze.

  A garbage truck stopped on the street, blocking my view for a moment, and when it moved on, Narcisa was gone, swallowed up in the septic humid mist, like a ghost.

  Gone, like a fart in the wind! Thank you come again, ya miserable bitch!

  I fell back on the sofa and sighed with relief. Despite all the abuse I’d just swallowed, I was happy. Because, once again, I had manifested a Miracle; all throughout her latest raging tantrum, I had miraculously kept the big switchblade knife in my pocket—and out of poor Narcisa’s crumbling, devastated, broken heart.

  Turning sideways, I fell into a long, deep, dreamless slumber.

  52. ENDS JUSTIFY MEANS

  “SEX IS KICKING DEATH IN THE ASS WHILE SINGING.”

  —Charles Bukowski

  Morning came, and Narcisa was back from the wars.

  She jumped in bed with me, as though she hadn’t just spent the previous afternoon trying to drive me to drink, murder and destruction. Silent as a cat, she got astride me.

  Still half asleep, I tried to say something, anything. Something conventional, casual, mundane. Something stupid, like “good morning, baby . . .”

  She held her hand over my mouth, silencing me with those big, piercing, popping eyes, while her other hand worked me up into her—deep inside, right where I belonged.

  Then, from deep in the crazed, alien, primal core of her, Narcisa gripped me with that amazing, pulsating, supersonic, paranormal, extraterrestrial pussy-muscle that only she had, tickling, stimulating, driving me mad all at once.

  When I was so hard I thought it would break off inside her, she began to fuck me like she meant it, slamming her wiry body against me hard, a ferocious, silent predator feeding on a dying animal. My hands locked on to her relentless, pounding buttocks, holding on for dear life.

  Then I felt it.

  In a flash, I was a little girl, being ravaged by a big, brutal centaur as she clung to me with a bloodthirsty desperation, a madness so intense, I started to cry. By some weird sexual telepathy, I was experiencing the roots of Narcisa’s own deepest trauma.

  Rape.

  For that one little moment, I was her!

  We fucked and fucked, a thundering, unstoppable, infernal fuck-machine, as if the erect penis holding us together was a pulsing, thick, iron-hard umbilical cord. It was hers, while that swirling ocean of pussy was mine, being raped and ravaged and plundered and possessed, again and again. We were one energy, one being. I could feel the juices flowing, and they were ours as one, as she came all over me in delirious spasms.

  Then, with a deep, weary sigh, she went limp in my arms, like a sleeping child. Our dying sex twitched and pulsed all around us, a living, breathing mist.

  All of a sudden, with a ghostly scream that wasn’t my own, I could feel the marrow of my core, my very soul, being extracted from me . . . Oh, God! Coming coming coming! “Arrggghhh!” I lay there, shaking all over, screaming, gasping, dying, again and again and again. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck!”

  I held Narcisa close, feeling our two frantic heartbeats drumming away like a pair of spastic lab rats. Then, I passed out.

  When I awakened, it was late afternoon and she was gone.

  Gone with my cigarettes, my lighter, and the fifty I’d left sitting on the dresser the night before . . . Shit! I was broke again.

  I didn’t care. Even if it was my last money, my last hope of a meal, a liter of gasoline, a pack of cheap bootleg Paraguayan cigarettes. I knew I’d just have to go out and hustle up some more cash . . . What else can I do? Fuck it! It’s worth it . . . Worth anything . . . Worth dying for!

  Desperate for the means to support our long, ecstatic rides, I spent the rest of the day wandering around the busy downtown plazas of Cinelândia, thinking, scheming, worrying, looking for a score.

  Then I saw them.

  Bingo! Tourists! Plastic surgery faces! Those perfectly tended tanning salon, yoga-toned bodies! Expensive watches . . . Designer jeans . . . Gucci loafers . . . Well-dressed, rich, clueless cash cows . . . Easy pickings . . . Perfect, Max!

  I strolled over to the well-heeled, middle-aged gringo couple and pretended to ask for directions. Starting up a casual conversation in English, I baffled the guy with a practiced line of bullshit. With casual ease, I began reeling him in, just like old times for little Ignácio.

  Within minutes, we were old pals . . . Some kinda fancy-pants entertainment lawyer from Miami . . . Says he works for Madonna . . . Must have plenty of cash.

  I’d spent enough time running drugs into Miami back in the eighties to talk all the Miami Beach gadjo talk with him. I knew just what to say to put the guy at ease. Sure enough, he invited me to join him and his woman for lunch at the big, swarming Amarelinho café.

  Perfect, Max!

  We took a sidewalk table and sat making idle conversation about the wonders of Rio’s beaches, the Samba, Carnaval, and then—bang! I had his bulging alligator-skin wallet in my pocket. A minute later, I slipped his lady friend’s expensive designer purse from an empty chair beside me and stuffed it under my jacket.

  The gringo was still smiling like a big, self-satisfied kid when I got up to go to the bathroom. I ducked out the side door and took off down the street, adrenaline pumping in my chest . . . Go go go go go! Thank you come again! Next?

  Grinning like a wolf, I disappeared down a teeming pedestrian alley. I got to my motorcycle and took off.

  Did I feel guilty for being the black eye on some idiot gringo’s exotic Rio de Janeiro holiday? Not at all . . . Hardly! Fuck ’em!

  On the ride home, I thought back to what one of my old gang had told me once, back in the day. My childhood friend, Mateus—also known as “Smiley”—had been an infamous professional bank robber in Rio. That guy had been a big influence on my thinking. The newspapers had dubbed old Mateus “the Smiling Bandido” for his trademark impeccable manners and friendly, ingratiating grin while plying his chosen trade. A classy career criminal, Mateus had taught me a lot about class. And crime. And criminal rationalization.

  Riding
along, I could hear his words echoing down the halls of my memory.

  “When de teef he teef from de other teef, Ignácio, God, he only laugh!”

  To me, all gringos were basically thieves, just by virtue of being gringos. Like those corrupt, thieving banksters Mateus had cheerfully robbed with his notorious winning smile, gringos were like some evil race of jet-setting vampires, traveling the world, sucking the planet’s resources dry for the benefit of their own disproportionate luxury and decadent, self-centered comforts. Out of necessity, or simply by habit, most Brazilians were natural-born thieves, too. But the biggest, most shameless, greediest bandits had always been the richest, most powerful of my countrymen. They’d been taught well by their masters; those cowardly, warlike bullies to the north, the hated americanos, who made the rules the rest of the world was forced to play by, or go hungry.

  I parked the bike and nodded to a fourteen-year-old mulatto shouldering a big black assault rifle. He grinned back, giving me the familiar thumbs-up okay to proceed. Swaggering down the shadowy path, I was still thinking of Madonna’s lawyer . . . And fuck that stupid old cunt Madonna too! Silly cow! Fuck ’em all!

  Yeah, I was proud of my latest sting. My bad old gypsy blood was pumping hard with the sweet aftertaste of another successful score as I approached the spot.

  It was all for a good cause.

  I was betting with our lives now; wagering everything in the hope that if I could just manage to keep Narcisa in drugs long enough to still be there by the time she hit bottom and cried out for help; then maybe, just maybe I’d finally get a chance to haul her up out of the dark, solitary, lethal pit she’d smoked herself into.

  As I haggled over my pilfered goods with the bandidos in the boca, I played it all out in my mind . . . Yeah, those stupid rich gringos can always go out and buy themselves another fucking camera, a new set of credit cards, a new iPod, another cell phone, more money, more property, luxury and prestige . . . Fuck ’em! What do they care? What do I care?