Still confused, I looked around.
Narcisa gestured skyward with her nose, afraid to point and draw attention to herself.
I looked up again. There they were, all right. Buzzards.
“Yeah?” I shrugged. “So?”
“Is very bad thing these big black bird, Cigano!” She winced. “Is de warning, de omen!”
“Huh? Howzat, baby?”
“These horrible creature, they know I gonna die soon, so they going round an’ round up in de circle, waiting for de Narcisa heart e’stop so they can come down an’ pick on my bone with de horrible long black beak an’ claw! Arrrggghhh!”
I couldn’t speak. I just sat looking at her in dumbfounded pity.
Suddenly, Narcisa grinned; a strange, tragic little smile, her face shining with a proud glow of serenity. Surrender. Total acceptance of her own imminent demise. Fearless and calm.
Then, with a sudden majestic gesture of defiance, she jumped up from the bench and raised her angelic white face skyward, shaking an angry fist with the middle finger extended at the circling birds, shouting into the air, in her beautiful, raw, savage growl.
“Foda-se! Vaza fora, seus filhos da puta, vaiii-iii! Go! Fock off! You don’ gonna get on me yet! No way! You can ride round up there an’ wait, got it? You no gonna suck on these bone! No before I suck up de last focking drop out from these e’stupid life! Got it?”
She fell silent. She just stood there, glaring up.
Finally, she spoke again, more softly this time. “Hah! Now you got it, e’stupid! Good!”
With a curt, businesslike nod, Narcisa spat on the ground and strode off, having made her point to the looming, indifferent heavens above.
“’Bora, Cigano!” she barked. “Let’s go, mano, c’mon, go, go!”
Shaking my head, I got up and followed her out of the park.
What else could I do?
71. A TRIP TO THE COUNTRY
“HE THAT IS DISCONTENTED IN ONE PLACE WILL SELDOM BE HAPPY IN ANOTHER.”
—Aesop
No matter how desperate things ever got, Narcisa always maintained there was an easy way out. I’d been hearing about it for months now.
Salvation awaited, in one simple, optimistic magical formula:
A Trip to the Country.
That cheery little pipe dream was the foolproof solution to all her woes, she claimed. A lifelong marathon of trauma and self-destruction would be wiped clean forever by a quick, painless little change of scenery.
Craving relief from the escalating weirdness of our life in Rio, I was half inclined to believe her. There was just one small snag.
I hated the Great Outdoors.
Unlike many of my people, I despised the country. Most Brazilian Roma—restless, dirty-faced, nomadic gypsies—are well content to spend their lives roaming the rural backlands in caravans of broken-down cars and vans, even on horseback. Not me. In all my decades of travel, the countryside had always seemed little more than a boring, faceless backdrop; a means to an end. Something to endure on my way to the next city.
I’d grown up a city Rom, begging for change, hustling and scamming on the dirty, crowded, hungry streets and favelas of Rio. That familiar urban terrain had always been my jungle, my forest, my Happy Hunting Grounds. I could never stomach the country, with its endless, tedious acres of soulless, empty, vapid, melancholy nothingness. I dreaded those dreary, muddy vistas of drab little shacks where nobody’s ever home; the crooked dirt roads that never go anywhere. No. The country had never been my kind of picnic.
Narcisa had been working on me over the weeks, though, expounding on the many wonders of the bucolic life, painting a joyful little picture of an idyllic rural paradise where we could live happily ever after.
The faster things deteriorated at home, the more her eager sales pitch began to appeal to me. She swore that if she could just get away from the cutthroat streets and favelas of Rio for a while, everything would be different. Well, what did I know? Hadn’t I operated by the same basic formula over a lifetime of running away from people, places and things? My frantic gypsy geographic acrobatics had indeed enabled me to dodge my own drooling demons for quite some time. I’d lived on the road for decades. Until I’d come face-to-face with myself in prison, I, too, had always been a firm believer in quick geographical cures for deep existential maladies.
Some habits die harder than others. Love and hope can run roughshod over logic and reason. Narcisa had me just about sold on her grand road trip plan. All that was needed to seal the deal was one last boot to my head.
Soon enough, it came.
Narcisa had been pushing the outer limits of her body and mind to the snapping point for weeks; toasting her brains to ashes, teetering on the edge of complete physical and mental breakdown. By the end of her latest weeklong run, I could smell the stench of death on her.
At my wit’s end, I begged her to give it a rest. “Por favor, princesa!” I stood over her as she sat on the sofa smoking rock after rock, her eyes popping out of her skull like alligator eggs. “Why don’t ya just chill for a while? Give it a break, already, before ya kill yerself!”
She shot me a look of disdain. “I wish I can kill myself, Cigano! I just wanna finish an’ go home to my own planeta , but is no possible! Only de good peoples can dead young here. So I never gonna dead, cuz my soul she completely corrupt! Hah! Nothing can kill me! Nada! I got de cockroach blood in my vein, bro! Fock!”
I rolled my eyes and groaned.
“Menos!” Shrugging me off, she fired up another huge rock. “Lissen, Cigano, e’soon we gonna go. I almost ready for get de fock out an’ e’stop e’smoke these e’stupid e’sheet forever!”
I stared at her. “Are you serious, Narcisa?”
Her eyes lit up. “Just wait an’ you gonna see it, mano! After tomorrow we gonna go away to de nature! Gonna visit de beautiful waterfall an’ de jungle, an’ every little thing gonna be beautiful! Perfect, Max! Only de tree an’ all de little animal there, only eat an’ e’sleep, simple like that, got it? So now just you leave me for have de fun some more, just a little more while, an’ then I gonna be e’sick of these e’stupid droga. An’ then we gonna go far far away from these e’sheet city!”
“You mean it!” I looked at her, incredulous. “Ya really wanna go . . . ?”
She fixed me with a look of such innocent sincerity, I was a Believer.
Then she closed the deal. “Is only these one thing I wan’ in de life now, Cigano! I wan’ it more than any other thing in de whole world!”
I was sold.
A few days later, the Big Day arrived at last.
Narcisa stumbled in more dead than alive. She informed me that we’d be leaving town right away, as soon as she “rested her eyes” for a few minutes. Then she dropped onto the sofa and passed out like a cadaver.
Aside from the nightmares, she didn’t move for the next eighteen hours. I could only tell she was still alive because she kept talking in her sleep. Every few minutes, she would cry out, whimpering in childlike terror, her ghostly, emaciated carcass contorting in heartbreaking spasms of delirium. But for the most part, though, she lay still as a corpse. I even checked her pulse a few times, just in case, half fearing she’d given up the ghost and slipped away in her sleep, like a sneaky kid.
No such luck for her. Narcisa lived.
The next day, she rose up in a sputtering fury of jerky spastic movements, all pointy elbows and knees, sharp insults and fiery complaints. Pushing past me, she rummaged through my kitchen like a prison riot, banging drawers and slamming cupboards. Silverware clattered, skittering across the floor. Plates and glasses shattered as she ripped her way like a maddened baboon through another agonizing feeding frenzy.
“Go down-stair to de boteco an’ get it for me de Coca Cola!” She shouted, shoveling dripping gobs of food into her face. “Anda logo, cara, vaiii-iiií, porra! Go! Go . . . An’ get me a pack of cigarette, de good one, you cheap gyp-say e’sheet! An’ da morthes!”
<
br /> “Huh? Wha . . . ?” I stopped, my hand on the doorknob, a standing question mark, waiting for a translation.
Swallowing another mouthful with petulant determination, she scowled. “De matches, you e’stupid e’sheet! Match-es! Match-es! You go deaf now, hein? Retard like e’stupid old man, hein? Porra! Retardado! Idiota! Lesado! Imbicil! Babaca!” She went back to her chewing, glowering, rolling her eyes like lemons in a slot machine as I beat it out the door.
When I returned, she was lying faceup on the sofa, snoring. Her mouth hung open like a gaping grave, her dirty gray feet pointing toward the ceiling like a pair of lopsided tombstones. Pizza crust, candy wrappers, cigarette butts and ashes littered the floor.
I stood over her, holding the sweaty Coke bottle in my hand, like a wilted bouquet, a jilted, lovestruck farm boy, a survivor in a tornado’s wake, shaking my head, surveying the devastation.
72. THE BIG DAY
“OUR GREATEST FOES, AND WHOM WE MUST CHIEFLY COMBAT, ARE OURSELVES.”
—Cervantes
Twenty-four hours later, Narcisa arose from the depths. Right away, the orders began flying across the room like squawking birds of prey, jolting me from a sound sleep.
“Food! Foo-ood! Comidaa-aah!!”
Groaning with fatigue, I scrambled to the refrigerator, desperate to get her fed and shut her up. She snatched the plates from my hands as fast as I could fill them, attacking the food like a starved wolverine on its hind legs. Then she scampered off with an overflowing plate.
When I emerged from the kitchen, Narcisa was sitting on the toilet with the bathroom door open, still eating, crapping her tortured guts out. Ignoring her gluttonous savagery, I went over and opened the long-shuttered window to a spectacular purple and red sunrise.
“Today’s the big day, princesa!” I beamed through a fuzzy haze.
“Porra! Shut de fock up, e’stupid e’sheet! Close these focking door an’ get de fock outa here, go! I trying to def’cate! Out! Go!”
I slunk off like a wounded mutt. I got busy clearing the sofa and floor, then went and hid out in the dark little kitchen, washing dishes.
Suddenly the infernal idiot chatter of the TV was hammering my ears. What now? I peered back into the room. Narcisa had pulled the shutters closed again. She was sitting in darkness before the giant glowing eyeball, like a glassy-eyed zombie, lost in a surreal hellscape of morning children’s programming.
What the fuck is this shit? Animated teddy bears with screeching, ratlike voices, babbling weird nonsense talk. Retarded-looking idiots dressed as clowns, farmers, witches and goons, running around in circles, squeaking like deranged rodents and butchered pigs!
Fuck! What the hell is she watching in there? I stared at the screen, feeling mounting waves of disgust as a giant cockroach pranced into center stage. All the other repulsive creatures made a dancing ring around the wretched thing. They all began singing together, squealing with infuriating, high-pitched shrieks.
Fuck! I could feel a red cauldron of hate welling up in my gut. I grimaced at her through clenched teeth, producing a painful smile. “Baby, we should probably be leaving soon, no . . . ?”
She responded by hurling an overflowing ashtray at me, scattering cigarette butts and ashes all across the clean floor I’d just swept.
“Jesus, Narcisa! What th’ fu—” I moved in front of the television.
“Menos!! Shut de fock up, Cigano, go! Moo-oove, e’stupid!” She screeched and cursed, as a glass whizzed past my head and shattered against the wall. “I watching de—”
That’s it, goddammit! I jumped on her like a disturbed alligator and grabbed her by the throat. Hauling her up to her feet, I pinned her against the wall. Shocked, hateful eyes of outrage popped out of her pimply face as I banged her head against the hard plaster twice, tok, tok, screaming, raging, spitting. “You have gone too fuggin’ far this time, bitch!”
It was on. Narcisa fought back like a savage beast. We struggled, knocking plates and furniture asunder. Finally, I got her pinned to the floor. Lowering my knees down onto her arms, I tightened my grip around her throat with both hands.
As her face turned red, she realized her best efforts to struggle free were no match for my sizzling rage. She gave up and stopped fighting.
I got over it fast, of course, like I always got over it. Sitting on top of her, looking down at her in that helpless state, I began to feel bad. I told her I’d let her up if she promised to calm down and quit breaking things. She nodded and I let her go.
But Narcisa wasn’t finished. The guilt card came out right away. “You think I ever gonna go away together with you now, hein, Cigano? Why for, hein? So you can beat me in de country an’ kill me an’ left me there for de animal an’ de ants to eat my carcass, hein?”
I wanted to crawl off and die as she ranted on, sobbing, working herself up into a high-pitched, hysterical, mindless new frenzy.
“No focking way I going anywhere with you, ever! Nunca! You a dangerous maniac, Cigano! I don’ trust you no more! You are violent an’ crazy an’ bad! I shoulda listen to Doc! He tell me long time ago you a very bad man! A criminal! I never wan’ see you again, got it?”
I got it. Narcisa was going stark-raving nuts again, foaming at the mouth in wild spasms of poisonous, uncontrollable fury.
She spun around the room like a frantic top, struggling into her filthy clothes, howling, hollering that the was leaving forever, that I’d never see her again.
Blah blah blah . . . I knew her blustery threats were pure pigshit. I’d heard it all before. And still, no matter how many times I lived through one of Narcisa’s mad tirades, it always felt the same to me, that this crisis would be the last. As she raged on, I could feel the shadow of disaster approaching like an atomic fallout cloud. Reliving the horrors of my violent, unstable childhood again and again with Narcisa, I would soon come to a deep understanding that some hurts you simply never forget. It was the same feeling I’d always lived with as a little boy, watching my mother in a drunken rampage, raging, insulting, violent, insane. Each time Narcisa threw a fit, I feared it would be the time where someone would really get hurt, or locked up, or killed, just like when I was a helpless, frightened little kid; always waiting for that tragic, violent, heartbreaking ending. Always fearing the worst. Danger was in the air.
Still spitting and cursing, Narcisa started for the door. I knew the streets were a minefield of peril for her in that murderous, hysterical state. Once again, I was filled with horror, fearing for her life.
Worried for her safety, with Doc out on the prowl, I jumped between her and the door.
Locking it fast, I pocketed the key. “Where th’ fuck ya think you’re going, huh?” I stood there with my arms crossed, blocking her way.
“Moo-oove!” She pushed, prodding, bellowing, trying to get around me.
“Calma!” I gave her a gentle shove backward. “You’re not going anywhere! Not like this, Narcisa. Not till ya chill th’ fuck out! I’m not letting ya go out there to run the streets like a mad cow! Are you out of yer fuggin’ mind? They’ll murder ya this time!”
“Moo-oove! Open de focking door, e’stupid! I wanna go!”
“Go where? When th’ fuck ya gonna go? Jesus! When are ya gonna wise up, ya crazy bitch? I’m just trying to protect you here.”
“Protect me? By lock me inside these e’sheet place?! Hah! You de crazy one! Complete insane! You wan’ protect me, hein? Who gonna protect me from YOU, hein!?”
I didn’t budge. Narcisa pulled out her next weapon. Blackmail.
“Ha-alp! HA-ALP!! I prison inside here! POLICIA!”
Oh shit! Noise! Neighbors! Police! Fuck!
I stood frozen in horror as she screeched on, her piercing wails rattling the windows.
“SOCORRO!! HAA-AALP ME!! PLEE-EEZE!! POLICIA!!”
I could hear the neighbors banging on the walls as the nightmare began again. Panicking, I grabbed her arms and shook her, desperate to shut her up before an army of pissed-off resident
s broke my door down to murder us both. As usual, it was six in the morning.
She just yelled louder. “OH JE-SOOZ, HAA-AALP!! HA-ALP!! HA-AALP!! SAAM-BADY, POR FAVOR!! HE GAANNA KEE-EEL MEEE!!”
Jesus! Shut up! Gotta shut this crazy cunt up!
I clamped my hand over her screeching blowhole and she bit me like a rabid dog, drawing blood from my fingers.
“Arrrggghhh! Bitch!” In a sudden knee-jerk reflex, my fist flew back and connected with her jaw. Pow!
I guess I’d hoped to knock her out and stop the insane drama. But at the last second, I hesitated and pulled my punch to a weak, ineffective blow.
Instantly, I regretted it . . . Oh shit! What have I done?
Narcisa glowered at me with blazing eyes of hate. She charged past me and put her shoulder to the door, smashing the lock open. I heard the latch crack, and then she was out in the hallway, wailing her lungs raw.
“Arrrggghhh! You HIT me! Filho da puta-aa! You never gonna see me again, nu-unca! Never no more, sua merda! Filho da puta-aaaahhh!”
She ran off, howling like a flaming demon in hellfire, her angry curses echoing off my neighbors’ doors all the way down the hall, stomping down the stairs like a herd of rhinos, shrieking all the way.
I listened in dread. Then she was gone.
My heart slunk like a whipped dog into its corner . . . Shit shit shit!
Consumed with remorse, I hurried down the stairway behind her, cursing myself with every step . . . Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit!
By the time I ran out into the street, she was gone . . . Shit!
I looked around in panic . . . Where the fuck is she? Fuck! I jumped on my motorcycle and rode up the block, going slow, looking left, looking right, looking, looking . . . Shit! Shit! Shit! Where the fuck is this fucking head case?
Finally, I caught up to her on the corner. She was standing in the middle of the busy sidewalk, crying, shouting, cursing, wailing.
Narcisa Page 34