Narcisa

by Jonathan Shaw

  I watched, paralyzed in horror, as she dug into the wound, fishing for a vein to pluck out.

  She cried, wailing like an anguished ghost as dark red blood ran down her fingers, splattering onto the floor . . . Oh God! Blood! Blood! Jabbing! Stabbing! Sharp! Glass! Bloody! Deep! Cutting! Blood! No no no, God, no! Blood blood, oh God, no no no! Stop!

  That was it. She won. Right then. Checkmate.

  I ran over and grabbed her . . . God God God!

  I threw her down on the bed. . . . Oh, God, God! Blood blood! Make it stop! Oh, God, help me please, help us, God! Tearing off a strip of bedsheet with my teeth, I could taste the hot, metallic fire of Narcisa’s blood in my mouth as I tied it tight around the deep, bleeding wound . . . Blood blood, bubbling from her wrist like oil! Fuck! Please, God, por favor, help me, help me, help me stop all the blood, blood blood blood blood blood blood!

  In a flash, I was reliving my dark past, sobbing, weeping, blubbering, telling her everything would be all right . . . Okay, it’s okay, I’ll get you more crack! I’ll buy you all the fucking drugs you want! I’ll do anything, whatever you want! Oh God, please, baby, please please please, por favor, no! Just don’t hurt yourself anymore! Oh God, stop the blood, please, God! Don’t cry, don’t die, please, baby! I’ll take care of you! Please, please, God, please don’t bleed, don’t die, don’t die again, don’t leave me all alone again, please. I love you, don’t go, no no no! Stop the blood, please, God! Don’t die now, please please!

  Tears clouded my vision, and there I was again, standing in shorts and high socks. Little Ignácio, frozen in the doorway after school, breathing hard, crying, looking down at his mother lying on the floor, blood seeping across the dirty white tiles, a creeping, hellish red nightmare shadow . . . Blood blood blood . . . So much blood, blood, blood, weeping from the obscene, gaping dark wounds on both her wrists, her throat cut open . . . Naked and red and dead dead dead . . . Please, Momma, please wake up! No no no, don’t die, don’t leave me all alone! Por favor por favor please please please, don’t go, no no no no no!

  After a dark, heart-pounding eternity, Narcisa calmed down and started breathing normally again. I lay down beside her, holding her to me tight, hugging her as she sobbed and blubbered and shook. I had never felt so powerless, so unable to help someone—not since that awful day when little Ignácio was five years old. And in that moment, like that lost, confused little boy, I felt love. Love and sadness. A great sad wave of hopelessness swallowed my heart like the cold, dark mountain fog outside. All I could do was lie there and cry with Narcisa, holding her close as she wept and sobbed and trembled like a kitten in the rain.

  I told her that everything would be all right—even though I didn’t believe it. I held her and told her I’d do whatever she wanted, that I would always take care of her and protect her from the Curse. I didn’t know how, but I would, goddammit! Over and over, I promised her protection and care, love and understanding and compassion, again and again, hypnotizing myself, taking myself back and back and back, again and again, until I was that little five-year-old ghost, promising his momma he’d save her, again and again and again; the only thing in this fucked-up miserable hell-pit of a world that ever fucking mattered.

  76. TEARS OF A CLOWN

  “THERE IS ALWAYS SOME MADNESS IN LOVE. BUT THERE IS ALSO ALWAYS SOME REASON IN MADNESS.”

  —Nietzsche

  Our next couple of days in the country were a strange, blurry montage of marginally functional weirdness. Somehow we made it. Before leaving to go back to Rio, Narcisa insisted on going up the mountain to visit her special waterfalls; the secret spot where she’d first become aware of the World Unknown. The place where she’d known her happiest years as an innocent country girl, talking to the spirits, all alone in the wild green woods of childhood.

  She spent the day there hunched over in a dark grotto beside the beautiful crystalline cascade, smoking crack, while I slept fitfully on a shady rock nearby.

  On the ride back to Rio, Narcisa cried in heartbreaking spasms of remorse, for having sullied even her magical, sacred places now with her sickness, her sadness, her madness, her addiction: her Curse. I could hear her muttering, moaning, insulting, berating and cursing herself, all the way home, repeating the same tragic little words, over and over, again and again, in a low, unhappy self-hating growl, a hellish mantra of self-made torture.

  “Idiota! You so e’stupid e’stupid e’stupid! So disrespect! So e’stupid, so disrespect, so disrespect, so e’stupid e’stupid e’stupid! Idiota!”

  I knew Narcisa was waging a sad, solitary battle back there, struggling with her mind, her memories and traumas and terrors; fighting with the nightmare of her past, the disease, the demons, the crack, in waves of foul, unending torment, shadowboxing with herself, under the looming shadows of the Curse.

  I rode along in silence, brooding, saying nothing, but thinking much . . . Poor thing! And me, what the fuck was I thinking coming down here? Why why why?

  Never again! Not if I live another hundred fucking years, never again will I ever go back to the fucking country! Never! I promise! I swear to Christ! A solemn fucking oath!

  Back at my place again, it was as if we’d never left Rio; as if the whole trip had been one big, long, nasty hallucination, a fleeting fever dream.

  That’s when Narcisa gave me the only real present she’d ever given me.

  Her ring. Silver and amethyst. Purple.

  Maybe she was grateful I’d stuck around to care for her after her botched suicide attempt. Maybe I was “proving” myself to her at last.

  Smiling, she popped it off her finger and handed it to me. I held it in my palm like a precious icon. I didn’t know what to say. I stared at her and blinked as grateful tears welled up in my eyes.

  “My grandmother give me these anel, Cigano, an’ now is for you. From de Narcisa.”

  Beaming, I slipped it onto my pinky finger.

  A perfect fit . . . Treasure!

  After that, we started getting along better. As the days went by, her mood began improving, if in a typically surreal manner.

  A few nights later, Narcisa showed up at my door, soaking wet, dressed in an extraordinary outfit; an improvised rain suit, pieced together entirely from multicolored plastic bags. She told me she’d snatched the makings of her stylish new ensemble from the raging favela alleys during the previous night’s flashing tropical downpour.

  The next afternoon, we went for a walk up in the old hilltop neighborhood of Santa Teresa. Still wearing her weird costume, Narcisa looked like a cross between a visiting alien queen and some kind of mad-eyed gutter punk samurai.

  To add to the overall surreal effect, she’d donned that bright red plastic clown nose again. She’d just confiscated it back from her Casa Verde crony, Pluto, as we passed him at a busy intersection, juggling bottles, bumming coins from a captive audience of weary motorists.

  Skipping alongside the crooked old trolley tracks, Narcisa chattered away like a hyperactive monkey, telling me about her hair-raising ninja adventure during last night’s booming thunderstorm. Breathlessly, she described how she’d cheated the Reaper once again, as a fallen power line struck by lightning buzzed at her feet, a deadly high-voltage sidewinder, spraying sizzling sparks, twisting and writhing all around her. As she jabbered on, I could picture her out there in the middle of the raging storm, cracked out of her skull in some dark ghetto alleyway, hopping around like a drug-maddened matador.

  Suddenly she stopped and looked at me. Her eyes grew wide as doughnuts.

  “These focking sabotage was because of de Doc, Cigano!”

  “What?”

  “Poisé, mermão! These focking guy he try an’ kee-eel me again in de night, got it? Only reason he don’ succeeding these time cuz de Narcisa too fast for him! Hah!”

  I looked at her in shock. She was convinced the fallen power line had been part of Doc’s evil plot to do her in by electrocution, just as he’d dispatched his mother.

  As we w
alked on, I sighed and said nothing.

  After stopping at a little corner paderia for a snack, we were standing out front, smoking cigarettes and watching the world go by, when Narcisa’s eyes zeroed in on a pair of stocky, pink-skinned white girls, foreign tourists, about her age, trudging past with backpacks and cameras, speaking English.

  Suddenly, she called out. “Hey, you! Oi! E’stupid gee-rool! Lissen to me! It don’ matter how much focking money you got! You e’still always gonna be FAT!”

  The gringas turned, took one look at Narcisa and scurried off. She left me standing there and followed behind them, hounding, badgering, bedeviling them, shouting and gesturing, like some kind of wild-eyed, clown-garbed fire-and-brimstone Pentecostal evangelist.

  “Hah! You wanna run away from de truth, hein, e’stupid? Hah! Go ahead an’ run! Go an’ make it you big visit to de Dr. Pitangi for get de e’spensive lippy-suction operation with all you focking dollar an’ deutchmark an’ pounds e’sterling!! But even he can no save you from de bad genetica, unlucky cow! Mooo-ooo! Hah! You can go an’ buy it all de Calvin Kleins an’ de Dolce Gabbana, de Versace, de Chanel, de Louis Vuitton! But always, always you gonna be de fat-ass ugly e’sheet eater pig! Chicken head with two fat elephant bottom! You born to be fat, an’ you gonna die fat, fat, FAA—AAT, GOT IT?!”

  Cringing with embarrassment, I lunged along behind her as she raved on at the top of her lungs. People stopped on the sidewalk to gawk.

  When I caught up to her and hustled her away, Narcisa was howling with glee. “Hah! I ha-ate it all de fat peoples, Cigano! E’special most I hate de fat rich ugly gee-rool! An’ de e’stupid foreigner too! Hah! I never miss one little chance to insult these e’sheet-face e’stupid little cow peoples, got it?”

  I got it. What could I say? That was Narcisa. And I loved her. The good and the bad; all the monumental extremes and insane, passionate contradictions of her. I loved her, and I loved it all. Only God knows why.

  Maybe because nobody else could or would.

  Back home, still half dressed in her Raggedy Ann clown getup, Narcisa tried to start a big fucking fight with me. Literally. It all started because I wasn’t fucking her fast enough!

  I’d been giving her the big daddy long-stroke for over an hour, hitting it slow and steady, enjoying every moment, each holy detail, fucking her like it was the fucking Fuck Olympics. Narcisa was still wearing her clown nose—which at that point I was just trying to ignore.

  Suddenly, without warning, she looked up at me with those big, bulging lunatic eyes.

  Then she said it: “BO-RING!!”

  What?!?

  Shit! I kept going, stroking it faster, wanting to climax and get it over with.

  That’s just what she was after, apparently.

  “Boring, Cigano! Puta merda, cara! You focking like de old mans! Hurry up an’ finish these boring e’stupid e’sheet now, vai, anda logo, porra!”

  That did the trick. Without a word, I finished up and pulled out . . . And just when everything was going so good lately . . . Shit!

  Ball-breaking bitch! Thank you come again! I didn’t really take it to heart, though. I already knew I was the only man who’d ever given her any sort of pleasure. This was just her way of taking revenge on me for inflicting that humiliating indignity on her.

  The more I came to understand the bizarre, fucked-up pathology that made Narcisa tick, the less her insults had the power to hurt me. Narcisa could be as brutal and mean-spirited in bed as she was uninhibited, authentic and passionate in every other area. But the good sex was only when she was high as a jumbo jet. Without drugs, Narcisa’s libido was frigid as a Popsicle.

  Either way, though, she always liked to hit below the belt.

  “Bo-ring! Hurry up an’ finish, you e’sheet!! Gimme my focking money now, go, or I gonna kee-eel you when you e’sleep, e’stupid dick, go go go!”

  I just shook my head and laughed to keep from crying.

  77. THE PARTY

  “THE WORLD IS FULL OF PEOPLE THAT HAVE STOPPED LISTENING TO THEMSELVES OR HAVE LISTENED ONLY TO THEIR NEIGHBORS TO LEARN WHAT THEY OUGHT TO DO, HOW THEY OUGHT TO BEHAVE, AND WHAT THE VALUES ARE THAT THEY SHOULD BE LIVING FOR.”

  —Joseph Campbell

  A few weeks later, I got invited to a party; some kind of posh little art reception for a painter acquaintance from the Rio Claro, the funky local bohemian café up in Santa Teresa that had been my regular hangout over the years of Narcisa’s absence.

  Narcisa had left me high and dry again, after starting another big fight over nothing. I was alone on another tedious Saturday night, with nothing to do but worry and brood.

  Hoping to get my mind off her, I decided to go check out the party. Anything seemed better than sitting at home alone, worrying.

  Since getting tangled up with Narcisa, I’d pretty much dropped off the face of the planet. Some of my friends and acquaintances seemed kind of concerned lately—especially the ones who’d seen me with her over the months. With the exception of Luciana, nobody really got my involvement with Narcisa.

  Random people would call from time to time, making all sorts of stupid, irritating little comments—as if they knew anything about my fucking life.

  “What you doing with that crazy crack-smoking freak, Ignácio?”

  “You a good looking guy, man, smart, fun. You could get any girl you want!”

  “Haven’t seen you around lately, Ignácio! Where you been?”

  “What’s up with you and that crazy whore?”

  “Jailbait! Cuidado, amigo!”

  “Don’t tell me she’s staying with you now!”

  “Man, you supposed to be street smart, brother, you gotta know better!”

  “What’s up, Ignácio? You all right?”

  I felt all right, given my surreal circumstances. But I didn’t know how to explain it to anyone. Moreover, I couldn’t be bothered. I hadn’t seen any of those people in ages, anyway.

  They’d been calling a lot over the last few weeks, trying to pry me loose from my only drug, Narcisa. Wanting to get them all off my back, once and for all, I decided to make an appearance.

  It was a typical warm, lively late-summer weekend in Rio. Narcisa was off running the streets again, doing whatever a Whore of Babylon does on a Saturday night. I’d been trying to keep from thinking about her, but it wasn’t working.

  I needed to get out and do something, anything.

  As soon as I arrived at the address on the invite, I could tell at once it was nothing like the Rio Claro. This was one of those pretentious, trendy art gallery/restaurant/bars; just the sort of tiresome little bourgeois scene I’d normally shun like a leper colony. Bored and antsy, though, with nowhere else to go, I decided to stick around.

  I parked the bike and shuffled up to the door. I gave my name to a big lumbering suit-and-tie motherfucker, and a burgundy velvet rope was held open for me.

  Squeezing past all the fancy, fabulous-looking Beautiful People lined up outside, I sized up the festive atmosphere. Right away, my dark mood got darker. Inching my way through the crowd, I felt hideously out of place. All alone in that fashionable, groovy art setting, I was a strange, awkward bird, flying into a strange nest.

  I could hear Narcisa’s voice echoing in my head . . .

  “Bo-oring!”

  I pretended to look at the uninspired, overpriced, derivative “artwork” for a few minutes, then moved on, muttering. “What a load of bland, pretentious crap!”

  After nodding to a few faceless people I barely knew and didn’t care to know any better, I made a beeline past the bar and found a corner. Getting my back up against a wall, I stood there, feeling like an outsider looking in; a spy in the world of those squeaky-clean, trendy art types. I sneered as they sang and danced and laughed, hooting and shouting at each other above the music, exchanging backslaps and kisses and warm, familiar embraces.

  I stood there. And I stood there. And I stood there some more . . .

  The night dragged on,
the drinks went down, and their loud, obnoxious party chatter got louder. Pretty soon, they were all drunk as a roomful of soccer fans . . . Aggghhh! Those fucking high-pitched idiot voices! Like a battalion of screeching, squeaky, retarded brats!

  Drunks! I hate fucking drunks! Crackheads are so much more interesting!

  Feeling increasingly alienated and uncomfortable, suddenly, it hit me . . . Shit! I might as well be sitting in a fucking cave all alone, like Narcisa . . . I am alone here! I got nothing in common with any of these shitheads! Nothing! People . . . Shit . . . Who needs ’em? Why the hell am I even here? This is their world, not mine . . . Bastards all know each other . . . Me, I fit in here like a turd in a fucking punchbowl!

  The party was a strange, foreign, baffling little ceremony, filled with weird, unfathomable, unspoken codes of conduct I knew I would never get. I could feel it in the air; this vague, confusing sense of unity, bonding all those stuffy upper-class art types together; a mysterious, alien Something I could never be a part of. It was a depressing reminder of the persistent sense of dark alienation I’d always felt deep in my heart, all my life.

  For some reason, though, I couldn’t bring myself to just walk out. I stood there, chain-smoking, sucking on a soda, feeling painfully sober, wondering if I would ever fit in anywhere; or if I was forever condemned to a bitter, angry, morbid existence on the margins of human society . . . Where are my fucking people, my tribe? Gypsies? Family? Friends? Hah! They’re all long dead and gone! Ghosts. So who do I belong to in this world anymore?

  Nobody.

  That’s when it hit me, like a cold blue flapping tuna fish slap in the face.

  Nobody, that’s it! That’s Narcisa! She’s Nobody, and I’m Nobody too!

  All of a sudden I was seeing the world through the shattered kaleidoscope of Narcisa’s eyes. And it all looked senseless to me; drab and lifeless. Stupid, annoying . . . Bo-ring!

  I stood there like a statue of Scorn, watching, taking in all the ugly details.