Narcisa

by Jonathan Shaw

  I got off the bike and ran over. “Stop this shit, Narcisa!” I grabbed her by the arms and shook her. “Just shut th’ fuck up, ya loony bitch!”

  Emboldened by the presence of spectators, she spit a big green wad of crack-polluted phlegm right into my face.

  Fu-uck! That did it.

  I shook her till her eyes rattled, then brandished a big, angry, white-knuckled fist under her nose. “Narcisa, stop this fuckin’ shit right now, motherfucker, or I swear to Christ, I will beat you till I’m fuckin’ tired! And I don’t give a shit who’s watching!” I turned to the crowd of people and glowered. “Anybody got a fuckin’ problem with that?”

  They shuffled away. It was just me and Narcisa.

  I glared at her. “Let’s go, you! C’mon! ’Bora!”

  Cowed, she crumbled at my feet, cowering, whimpering like a whipped mutt. “Okey, okey, Cigano! Plee-ease! Don’ beat me no more! Por favor!”

  I could see she was working herself up into a state of blind hysteria again, blubbering, crying and hyperventilating in fast, spastic little pants, like a dog. Then, without warning, she pulled her pants down. Squatting on the sidewalk, she started peeing, a cowering puppy swatted with a newspaper.

  Shit! Right then, I saw it all clearly: something I’d never fully gotten before . . . That’s it! There it is . . . The shadow of all the terrors she’d provoked for herself over the years. Narcisa was reliving it all in a monstrous, self-perpetuating, endless nightmare loop of trauma; reviving all the injuries of her abused, mangled, mutilated inner child.

  She never talked about it much, but I could see it all in that sad, doleful moment. All the beatings she had taken all her life had left Narcisa permanently shell-shocked, traumatized forever. And still, she was constantly asking for more. She’d been doing the same thing over and over for years, I realized, like some fucked-up, unconscious need to punish herself, to beat herself up for the crime of existing . . . Shit! Poor baby! What a fucking mess!

  Finally, she began to run out of momentum. Seizing the moment, I apologized. I groveled and begged her forgiveness.

  It worked. Narcisa relented . . . Truce! Thank God! We were both tired.

  As we shuffled back into my building, past the disapproving stares of neighbors on the sidewalk, I didn’t care. I was just relieved the latest battle was over.

  Back upstairs, Narcisa’s mood brightened. With a nervous little grin, she told me how, as she’d heard my motorcycle approaching, she’d run to a pay phone to call someone for help; but the number she dialed was mine. We both laughed as she recounted how the phone had rung and rung, unanswered, while I cruised up the street, looking for her.

  I was still chuckling when I saw her expression shift.

  Oh, shit! What now? Her grin faded as she explained that’s when she’d pushed the panic button. She went on with a sheepish look, telling me she’d hung up, then made another call.

  I looked at her in dread . . . What now? Don’t tell me this crazy freak show called the fucking cops on me! No! She wouldn’t . . . Would she?

  Narcisa stared at the floor, mumbling that she’d rung Doc.

  “What?”

  I stared at her till she hung her head in shame. Then, with another little shit-eating grin, she stammered some sort of an apology.

  “Arggh, whatever.” I shrugged. “Forget it. It’s done. Don’t worry about it, baby . . .”

  She grinned and got undressed, and we climbed up to bed. She was going to make it all up to me now, the only way she knew how. As Narcisa worked her magic, I put the whole affair out of my mind, like a bad dream.

  An hour later, we were kicking back on the sofa, smoking cigarettes, talking about our upcoming trip, when a frantic knocking came at the door.

  I got up, thinking it was the guy I’d called to fix the lock she’d broken. . . . Wrong!

  Doc barged right in and pushed past me, stumbling across the room, huffing and puffing like a hyperactive clown. “Narcisa! Querida-ah!” He stood in front of her, whimpering like a cocker spaniel bitch reunited with its missing puppy. “My poor, daah-ling daughter! Thank heavens you’re all right! Get your belongings, Narcisa! I’m taking you to a safe place, far away from this horrible, depraved monster!”

  I was too shocked to move. Before I could grab him by the throat and give him the bum’s rush, Narcisa flew up in his face and ordered him out. Baffled and rebuked, the murdering little psycho slunk out the door, glaring at me with a chilling gray look of stifled rage. And then he was gone . . . Slithered out of a beating again!

  Somehow, we wrangled each other through the rest of the morning.

  The time had come at last. The road was calling.

  Narcisa nodded at me and winked as I put on my jacket and stuffed a change of underwear and a toothbrush into my pocket.

  73. ON THE ROAD

  “BIZARRE TRAVEL PLANS ARE DANCING LESSONS FROM GOD.”

  —Kurt Vonnegut

  Blasting through the raging downtown traffic, I grinned like a happy dog, luxuriating in the long-awaited magical moment unfolding. As we dodged through the mad, horn-blaring, bubbling stew of cars, trucks and buses, I pondered our upcoming adventure with growing excitement, Narcisa clinging to my back like a needy, greedy monkey, singing her crazy little alien anthem: “Can you show me, where’s de exit, to these e’sheet world? Cuz I tire tire tire of de human being . . .”

  Inhaling sputtering black gusts of diesel exhaust, we followed the endless toxic river of Avenida Brasil out into the dark, foul-smelling outskirts of the city. The apocalyptic outlying slums were a spinning, septic whirlwind of poverty and chaos, punctuated by the ever-present trudging legions of ragged, haggard street vendors, weaving in and out among the stalled vehicles like hungry dogs. I took it all in, like a dream . . .

  Cars, trucks, buses, dogs, motorcycles, jeeps, vans, bicycles, an endless zombie procession of sweaty human traffic, staggering, standing in the road like sluggish statues of defeat, selling roasted peanuts, cheap paçoca candy and bottles of água mineral, ass-drip open-sewer ghetto-rat-shit tap water they put into old plastic bottles. Humanity. Shirtless sweating, rapacious rat hordes of hell, selling everything, bargaining, hawking, bartering, pawning, wagering their tired little lives, their souls, their asses, their dying, decaying grandmothers’ pussy fart’s straggling, haggling, whoring ghosts. Hopeless lost souls of hell, trudging through a decaying shitstream of traffic, wandering, somnambulant herds of the damned, peddling, touting, vending, begging, cheating, stealing, lying, living and dying, drowning in ass-reeking, undulating oceans of infected shit-brown mosquito dung ass-water, suffocating, miserable beggars of forgotten progress and boundless disorder, shuffling back and forth from car to car in a perpetual dead-end gridlock maze of lack and loss, strife, frustration and impotence, suppressed, drooling rage and seething, soul-stifling, lifelong destitution, disappointment and death. Interminable poverty-stricken thundering minions of hell, an overflowing stampede of rancid humanity, spilling like cockroaches from bottomless miles of putrid favela sewers, and the whole fucking earth is a vile, vacuous ghetto of the soul in this festering open wound on the face of our world, our reality, our godforsaken planet’s living, breathing, choking, smoking, hopeless, hateful urban hellscape . . . Our City of God, Rio de Janeiro, in the Year of Our Lord, 2010 . . . Fuck! Can you show me, where’s de exit, to these e’sheet world? Get me the fuck outa here!

  Sweating, wincing, holding my breath, I gunned the motor harder, harder, traversing the sprawling tangle of blighted ghettos, till finally, the teeming, reeking industrial wastelands of the city faded into a fetid, septic mist behind us; and then, like magic, we were cruising along a long, empty stretch of road, breathing in a clean new scent of lush, tropical green humidity and fertile red earth, a slow-motion, freeze-frame slide show of the senses.

  Surfing the shimmering black ribbon of highway into a warm southern wind, it was like an old movie I’d seen before, a long time ago. My heart rejoiced as we rolled along under expan
sive blue skies, past green hills and pastures of grazing cattle, a gigantic mountain range looming in the distance as we made our way toward the country village of Penedo.

  Penedo. A couple of hours south of Rio, Narcisa’s little hometown sat nestled in a fecund, fertile valley, surrounded by a towering mountain range and an infinite expanse of wild, untouched rain forests. I knew the place vaguely, having passed through it a few times, long ago in my travels; a breathtaking mountain paradise, where weekenders fleeing the choking metropolitan infernos of Rio and São Paulo flocked to bask in its pristine scenery and cool country climate.

  Riding along, I conjured up utopian images of the crystalline waterfalls and fresh, oxygen-laden air ahead; an idyllic pastoral setting, where, Once Upon a Time, Narcisa had run free and unencumbered, an enchanted fairy-tale princess, bouncing through the magical woods of childhood, innocent, happy and free—before destiny gave her an angry shove down the road to hell.

  Approaching the outskirts, just as we passed a palm-roofed roadside hut selling coconuts and bananas, Narcisa began slapping me on the back.

  Over the roar of the motor, I could hear her shouting.

  “Pare! Pare aqui!! E’stop here, Cigano. E’stop!”

  Slowing the bike, I pulled over to the side of the highway. “Wassup, baby? Ya gotta pee?” I cut the motor and waited.

  Still sitting behind me on the motorcycle, Narcisa lit a cigarette. After she’d taken a couple of pulls, I reached over, plucked it from her fingers and took a long, deep drag.

  Bad move.

  She freaked. “Arrgghh! Filho da puta! These is my cigarette! Odio! Arrrgghhh! Fock you! I haa-aate you!”

  Fuck! I’d forgotten during our calm, scenic ride that Narcisa without her drugs would be as volatile as a truckload of traveling nitro . . . Shit! Before I knew what was happening, she’d exploded into a screeching, demonic fury. Leaping off the bike like a lightning bolt, red-faced, shouting, raving, she landed in the middle of the highway, right in front of an oncoming truck!

  Oh fuck! No! Truck! Truck! Barreling down on her like a freight train! Shit! No time to think! Flash! Adrenaline! Panic! Grabbing her, yanking her out of the jaws of death as the truck flashes by, big horn booming like a bomb blast, and it’s gone!

  Gone! Sweet Jesus! Just one more second to death!

  I winced as I watched the screaming behemoth speeding off in the distance. In a shuddering flash I pictured the horror of witnessing Narcisa’s death . . . Flattened! Roadkill! Narcisa! Bones and guts splattered across the highway in a bloody red mist! Jesus!

  Obrigado, Senhor! Thank you God! Thank you!

  Did Narcisa thank me for salvaging her life again? Maybe, in her own strange way. As we stood by the side of the highway, she began pointing and waving at the ruins of an old shack, about a hundred meters back from the road.

  I looked up into the dense jungle clearing. What was left of the dilapidated hovel was half consumed by overgrowth.

  “Lookit, Cigano!” Her eyes filled with angry tears. “See de little casinha over there? Is de e’same wonderful home where I grow up with my beautiful mother! Nice place, hein? Hah! I wonder if it e’still got blood on de walls from when these e’stupid bitch get e’stab by her focking trick!”

  I looked at her, not knowing what to say.

  “Yeh, bro, I got it de very good memory of these focking place! Got it all, right inside here!” She dug her finger like a knife into the side of her head. “I only six year old when I gotta save these e’stupid witch life in there! Hah! I shoulda leave her to die! E’same place when I twelve year old I get rape by these ridiculous woman friend when she pass out drunk! Puta babaca! I cry an’ cry, but she never come an’ help me! Only me ever gotta give de help to her! Hah! Now you understand, Cigano? You happy now, hein?”

  Standing by the side of the road, haunted by the phantoms of her savage past, Narcisa broke down and sobbed. I could feel the pain behind her tears. Unlike her usual bouts of maudlin self-pity, I knew she was crying for something wounded deep inside, mourning a brutalized, traumatized child.

  Her sudden urgent impulse to stop at that particular place, and her subsequent dive into the road there, all began to make sense. In that moment, everything about Narcisa became clear to me: her hungry, hyperactive lust for life, and her bitter, cynical hatred of it; her nihilism and passion and fierce, furious intensity.

  Standing beside her, I watched my little friend being mugged and raped again and again, dragged down into the dungeon, the angry torture chamber of her memory. Those deep, unconscious drives that push us all around like rag dolls had just pushed poor Narcisa right into the path of a speeding truck.

  She was exhuming her childhood, crying for each dark, secret injury of the past. As the tears rolled down her face, I felt a powerful wave of love and compassion. Still, I knew there was nothing I could say or do that would ever make it better. I just stood there beside her, a silent witness to her suffering, thinking . . . Maybe love really is the only hope of redemption for people like us . . . Maybe if I can just love her enough . . . I hoped and prayed it was true—that maybe this fucked-up, bloodthirsty, painful love was a sort of spiritual surgery, a last little chance for redemption for us both. Maybe confronting our wounds together could help us mend our crippled souls somehow.

  I tried to hug her and she let me, but only for a moment.

  Then, as if suddenly reminded of her own hopelessness, she broke away and stormed off down the highway, shouting that she was through with me forever, that I should go back to Rio, that she was sick of me, that this would never work out.

  I followed along in silence, letting her walk off her rage, but staying close behind her, just in case she got any ideas of jumping in front of another vehicle. She didn’t, of course. I knew that hadn’t been a conscious move. Narcisa was basically a coward, a runner, like me.

  Still, I caught her by the wrist just as another big truck roared by.

  “Sai fora, cara!” She yanked her arm away. “Vaa-aaza, porra! Just go away, Cigano! Beat it! Go!” She stomped off again, crying and howling like a wounded, tortured ghost as I hurried along behind her.

  After a minute, she stopped and turned around to face me.

  “Porra, Cigano! Mete o pé, vai! Just go an’ leave me alone, go! I already e’say to you it won’ never work, porra! I warn you long time ago when you first go with me!”

  I could see the agony in her face, her flashing red eyes. Unable to speak, I just stood there facing her, feeling powerless and sad.

  “Yeh, now you got it! Now you got it all de focking trouble that I am! Just go back now, Cigano, go! I am unlucky to you! I unlucky to every-body, okey? Got it now?”

  I got it. Narcisa was drowning in a stinking, solitary cesspool of self-hate. And I knew I couldn’t leave her there all alone. She turned and started walking away again. I kept pace as she stumbled down the highway, yelling over her shoulder.

  “Get de fuck out, Cigano, vai, porra! Vaza! Beat it! Rala o peito, mermão, vá embora, vai! Go back to Rio an’ leave me die here alone. Narcisa no you problema no more . . .”

  That did it. I grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around to face me. “Lissen! I already told ya, Narcisa! It’s too fuckin’ late for that!”

  She looked at me and I looked back. Time stopped. If God is Love, I could see His face right there in the burning depths of her eyes.

  I heard my own voice shouting, pleading. “Years I’ve loved you, Narcisa! Since the first day we met! Since before I was born! I was born to love you, don’t you get it? You ARE my fucking problem!”

  She crossed her arms like a pair of swords and glared.

  “All right, goddammit!” I was crying now too. “If ya really wanna die, Narcisa, it’s okay with me! I will respect your decision, all right? What else can I do? But just know this: remember the time you asked me not to give up on you and I said I wouldn’t? Well, that was a promise I made! Um compromisso! That means something! It’s important, got it?”


  She kept looking at me, saying nothing. I knew Narcisa would rather have flaming bamboo shoots shoved under her eyeballs than ever admit it, but she got it.

  She dried her eyes and told me to shut the fuck up.

  I shut the fuck up.

  She didn’t say anything more as she followed me back to the bike. Without a word, she got on. She sat in silence for the rest of the ride.

  I didn’t know it then, but her desire to return to the place of her birth in an effort to get clean was significant in some deep, unconscious way; like a primal homing instinct; some sort of profound self-healing process struggling to emerge from the depths of her soul.

  It was as if Narcisa, by intuition, was seeking a cure for the Curse by diving blindly into the festering, buried wounds that fed it; that dark, ugly corridor of memory roots, going all the way down to the core of the deadly soul sickness of her addiction.

  Our Trip to the Country was destined to be a fumbling, halfhearted, weak attempt by Narcisa to meet the Curse head-on.

  But it was an honest and valiant attempt, all the same. And I respected her all the more for the courage of her intention—even as I continued to despise the goddamned Curse she carried, with a hatred that was sublime.

  74. TANGLED ROOTS

  “HE INVITES FUTURE INJURIES WHO REWARDS PAST ONES.”

  —Thomas Fuller, M.D.

  It was almost dusk when we pulled into Resende, the medium-sized neighboring city just before Penedo on the highway. Narcisa still had family and friends scattered around the area from the days of her youth. Even though she was only nineteen, that youth seemed a lifetime ago, long buried under furious years of ashes, road dust and ruin.

  Our first stop was some guy’s house, where she picked up an old bag of clothes she’d stashed there God knows how many months or years before.

  As she fetched her stuff, I remembered her leaving a similar satchel with me, back before she’d disappeared to New York. It was still sitting in my closet. As I stood watching, Narcisa spilled the contents of her bag out onto the sidewalk, extracting a moth-eaten wool-lined sheepskin jacket for the cold mountain nights ahead.