Narcisa

by Jonathan Shaw

  Sailing on a sea of gringo vodka and a bellyful of cheap squatter’s wine, there would’ve been little thought of consequences for my swashbuckling little pirate. Pluto let out a sad guffaw as he went on with his tale. The gang of young predators had been so unnerved by her audacity, they just stared at Narcisa for a beat, trying to gauge what form of madness might have overtaken her. Mistaking their silence for weakness, she’d strung together one of her classic poetic litanies of guttersnipe insults and curses. I could almost hear her growling as she unleashed a torrential sewer spray of serpent-toothed verbal abuse on the adolescent toughs.

  “Then she get her ass beat like a real man, hehehe!” Zé snickered.

  It was on . . . BAM! And she’s down on the ground, getting kicked around like a stolen beach ball, in a hailstorm of blows to her body, face and head!

  “Aiiii!! Aiiii! Aiiiii!”

  With Narcisa’s anguished howls echoing in my inner ear, I winced as Pluto went on with his tale. The gringos she’d defended had scurried off, he said, back to the safety of their luxury beachfront hotel, leaving poor Narcisa all alone to take a man-sized beat-down.

  By another account I got later, though, it seemed the true story had been somewhat less altruistic on Narcisa’s part; that she’d in fact been jumped that night by some neighborhood kids, for bullying an old lady selling beer and shots of cachaça from a Styrofoam cooler on the sidewalk in front of the Holiday Bar.

  According to my other source—a local cabdriver close to the action on the Copacabana ho-stroll—the unfortunate vendor had committed the heinous crime of refusing to spot Narcisa free drinks when she couldn’t pay for what she’d already consumed. Narcisa’s septic sewer trap had flown open and exploded in the startled woman’s face. After the indignant camelô shouted back in anger, a crowd had gathered. Insults flew, escalating into a shoving match, the cabbie told me. Then Narcisa head-butted the vendor’s young helper in the face, breaking his nose. A small mob of local youths had then jumped in and beat her down like a mad dog.

  Knowing Narcisa’s dirty street fighting tactics, the cabdriver’s version sounded more plausible than the heroic tales of derring-do she’d concocted to impress her Casa Verde cronies. Either way, it was just another day in the life for Narcisa. Whatever really happened that night, the point remained: she’d gotten shit-pants drunk, blacked out, then fucked with the wrong people again. She’d gotten herself stomped pretty bad this time too, it seemed. I was told she had needed dozens of stitches to the head, after my acquaintance drove her to the hospital, getting the windshield of his cab kicked out for his trouble by a hysterical, drunken Narcisa, howling, spitting and bleeding all over the seat.

  To make matters worse, the police had been called to the emergency room, where she’d had to be restrained after breaking an expensive gringo X-ray machine. Narcisa fought back like a wildcat, cursing, spitting and biting. Then she’d gotten lumped up again, this time by the cops, after being carted off in a headlock. Narcisa’s mother was contacted to bail her out, after even the jailers grew tired of her shit. As the woman reluctantly parted with her church money at the delegacia, there was yet another round of deranged public scandal and violence.

  Once the dust cleared, Narcisa tucked her frayed, beaten tail between her legs and limped away from Rio. Back in her hometown, penniless, homeless and destitute, she’d caved in to desperation and called Doc. Taking advantage of my absence, the repugnant little creeper got his balls up and ran straight to the rescue, renting her a shack in the middle of nowhere, then following up with his ward on regular weekend visits.

  With her Dickless Old Cushion now restored to his long-coveted station as Savior, Narcisa was hiding from the world now, somewhere at the edge of the jungle near Penedo.

  According to Zé, who hated Doc with a vengeance, the old bloodsucker had finally succeeded in poisoning Narcisa against me for good. In shock, I looked at Pluto, who confirmed that Doc had indeed planted all sorts of cowardly seeds of distrust in Narcisa’s mind, supposedly extracting a solemn promise that she was done with the Evil Gypsy forever.

  Her friend shrugged with a deep, mournful sigh. Reaching across the counter, Pluto downed the last of his beer in one long, unhappy gulp. Looking up, he informed me that Narcisa had vowed to never set foot in Rio again.

  91. INTO THE VOID

  “HEAVEN, TO KEEP ITS BEAUTY, CAST THEM OUT, BUT EVEN HELL ITSELF WOULD NOT RECEIVE THEM FOR FEAR THE WICKED THERE MIGHT GLORY OVER THEM.”

  —Dante

  My first night back, it rained until dawn.

  All alone in the apartment, I crawled up to the loft and stared at my bed, unmade and still wrinkled with the body marks of Narcisa’s last tortured sleep there.

  Nothing had changed, but everything had changed. As I knelt on the mattress, the faint scent of her filled my senses with memories. The smell of her greasy, unwashed hair on the cold, abandoned pillows sent me crashing into a spell of restless discomfort. Shit. How could a physical space feel so empty and alone, yet so alive with someone’s presence?

  Uneasy in my skin, I climbed back down and lay on the sofa. I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t stop my mind. I looked up at the ceiling, listening to the voices in my head. The stories I’d heard at the Casa Verde were echoing like a silent riot in my brain. I got up and paced the floor. Every chilly, desolate inch of the place was haunted by Narcisa’s living ghost. Finally, exhausted, I sat down in the cool, empty porcelain bathtub and passed out.

  Early the next morning, after only a couple of hours of fitful rest, I went out on a frenzied shopping spree. Tearing through the crowded pedestrian alleys of the Sahara, I purchased all sorts of little gifts. Then I loaded the bike with a bulging duffel bag.

  This time I was on a mission. Barreling down the highway toward Narcisa, I could hear the phantom echo of her voice whistling in the wind . . . “Is because inside of you some terrible thing make it so you always gotta e’stay all alone. Inside. You wan’ only to want, Cigano! Cuz nothing can never e’satisfy Nobody, got it?”

  I got it. Again and again, I got it. Rolling along through the hot, sticky country air, I reflected on our times together, contemplating Narcisa, the riddle of her existence; digging in my memory like an archeologist, digging, dusting, excavating.

  Right then, flying through time and space, it hit me like a stone.

  Game over. Nobody. Nothing! Fuck! That’s it! It’s God she’s been talking about! The Void. The Unnamable. The One. First Cause. Prime Creator. The Big Kahuna! That’s why nothing satisfies! Because no fucking thing can ever fill the God-sized Hole!

  And now, my frazzled little runaway chicken had finally come home to roost. To find herself. To find Nobody. To find Something. To find Nothing. To find God. Running, forever running, that blind, mindless idiot creed we both know so well. Addicts like us are so good at it, always running away from people, places and things, like some monstrous, self-defeating reverse homing instinct; as though maybe if we could just run long or far or fast enough, we might be able to outrun the plague of our existence, that endless loop of toxic, traumatic horror-show nightmare memories that rule over our lives and loves and destinies.

  Yes, I mused, Narcisa had finally come full circle; running right back into the festering old rancid pains of her past. Into the wound.

  And that’s just how I found her that day. Wounded. Quiet. Subdued. Lost, humiliated, beaten; right back where she’d started out so long ago, living all alone in a miserable little dirt-gray shack on the outskirts of nowhere, at the edge of her long-abandoned hometown.

  It was late afternoon when I pulled into Penedo. I stopped and fished the hastily scrawled scrap of paper from my pocket, squinting in the sun to decipher Pluto’s garbled directions to the remote hamlet where Narcisa was holed up. I rode on out of town, past fences made of branches and flimsy rusted wire, then nothing but sprawling acres of empty, open land.

  I traveled on for almost an hour without seeing a car. Startled by the noise of a motorcycle
, flocks of giant condors took wing in feathery black explosions. There were threadbare horses and cows here and there, and the occasional scrawny feral dog. Other than that, nothing. With each passing kilometer, I was heading into a forgotten era, where gaunt-faced brown men in tattered straw hats, carrying long machetes, bounced alongside the muddy path on ragged donkeys with giant tragic eyes. Then, no sign of life for another hour.

  Finally, I saw it. I brought the bike to a halt and parked beside a stagnant, mossy brown bog, trembling with mosquito larvae. I got off and stood there in the insect-humming stillness, staring at the decrepit gray wooden shack.

  Like a phantom in a dream, Narcisa appeared at the door. I flashed a wide smile. She just stood looking back at me in silence, as the frozen, timeless moment registered in my brain like a faded old photograph.

  Seeing her like that was a shock. She seemed to have aged several years. To add to the surreal effect, she’d bleached her hair. She must’ve done it before leaving Rio, along with the other Casa Verde denizens, in another desperate attempt to rid themselves of their ravenous plague of head lice. Narcisa’s straw-white hair, combined with the ravages of malnutrition and crack addiction, had left my poor baby looking like an emaciated old sunken-eyed, demented drag queen’s ghost.

  I beamed at her with eyes of love. As she ushered me in without a word, I marveled at her situation. She seemed cowed and bowed and humiliated. I stood in the doorway, shifting from foot to foot as she turned her back and began organizing her few meager, crappy, burnt-out possessions. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Narcisa, circling the bowl in some empty dirt-floored shack, going round and round in futile little circles in a cold, cruddy hovel in the middle of nowhere, licking her wounds in a stifling little empire of ruin.

  Still, there was her invincible armor of pride—that unpardonable sin by which even the angels fall. I could see it in her shy little grin, as she turned and broke the silence at last, addressing me with a guarded drawl.

  “E aí, Cigano? Whassup, bro?”

  Narcisa’s proud, defiant soul was still alive; flickering like a feeble old neon whorehouse sign, sputtering on bravely, even in the shadows of defeat.

  It was a weird, awkward reunion, right from the start.

  First off, she wasn’t alone there. She had this creepy older sister hanging around. It was strange. She seemed like a prop. A buffer. Protection. As I beamed at her, Narcisa appeared unable to look me in the eye. There was none of her usual badass, blustery posturing; no frenetic, grandiose accounts bubbling forth from that shamefaced little grin to explain how she’d ended up in such a pitiful state.

  Narcisa, for once, was oddly subdued.

  To make things weirder yet, this sister—whom she’d rarely spoken of—was nothing like Narcisa. Pudgy and unattractive, drab, dull-looking, and seemingly devoid of any personality, she had a long, brutal scar running across a flat, expressionless face, like an extra cunt on a cow. A real dirt clod, the woman was dressed tastelessly, like one of Narcisa’s “clone people,” and wore the vapid, sedated glare of a chronic pill popper; someone unlucky, someone unloved. Saying nothing, she just kind of hovered there, like a fart in the gloomy air, plopped down on an uncomfortable-looking little cot, glaring at me in surly silence, sizing me up, as I unpacked the duffel bag full of gifts.

  Narcisa herself remained strangely distant and aloof. I got the distinct impression she’d set it all up that way on purpose, even though there was no way she could have known I’d be coming. Still, it gave me the creeps. Especially the sister, just sitting there like a jealous old watchdog, not leaving. It was as though Narcisa was frightened to be alone with me now; as if I represented something in herself that she was struggling to deny.

  After her initial chill, though, she appeared glad enough to see me, in a cool, distant sort of way. Still, I couldn’t help wondering if that subdued sparkle in her eye was only twinkling because I’d brought that bulging bag of presents. As I unpacked it, slowly, Narcisa’s old swagger sprung back to life—one gift at a time.

  I was so glad to see her, I barely noticed all the lingering weirdness. At first. I hadn’t even noticed him standing there when I first stepped in, but, besides the sister, there was this other ghoulish little fellow who just appeared out of nowhere. Like the somber sister, he too said nothing. He just stood there, lurking by the door, smoking a big, stinky basiado and staring at me in silence, like a resentful spider monkey.

  I looked around and wondered . . . Who the fuck are all these freaks? What kinda fucked-up Twilight Zone scene have I stumbled into here?

  But I knew. They were just part of the scenery. Wherever Narcisa went, she always gathered a following of zombielike hangers-on. Here they were again.

  Narcisa didn’t bother with any introductions, of course; and, given the collective creepiness of the moment, none were forthcoming. We all just stood around in a listless, insipid fog of greasy, oppressive alienation; everyone but the rude, stodgy sister, who kept her fat ass firmly planted on Narcisa’s hard little cot—the only place to sit in the cramped, colorless space.

  Time was frozen in a awkward gray silence of the tomb. Jealousy, confusion, envy and suspicion weighed heavy in the air, like cyanide gas seeping into an execution chamber.

  Then, with a start, I picked up on something else. Something malevolent: I could sense another unhealthy, unseen presence, lurking in the shadows.

  Doc! My gut went cold with a sudden, powerful flash of déjà vu as I heard the words of the old spirit medium, Caridade, echoing in my brain.

  “She spirit infested, ya seen? Her got de jealous spirit enemy all ’round she. De vampiro inna human form, an’ dem all gots de evil eye ’pon she, fe’ true!”

  I felt gooseflesh creeping up my back as I watched a small brown scorpion disappear behind a crevice in the wall, like an omen. Unseen phantoms were all around us in that place, whispering toxic, occult curses into the lifeless air. I knew Doc had been visiting her on weekends, bearing gifts, spreading lies about me to anyone who’d listen. He’d obviously gotten his hooks into Narcisa’s ugly sister. That sort of explained her distrustful, sulky demeanor.

  Finally, Narcisa started trying on all the new clothes I’d brought for her, posturing and strutting around her hovel like the Whore of Babylon on parade. Still, I could see that, deep inside, she was beaten. I stood watching her, musing sadly. All her big plans and dreams, everything shot to pieces. There she was, rotting away with the rest of the dead-end small-town drunks and druggies and end-of-the-line losers from her troubled, unhappy past.

  I was so happy to see her, though, I just stood there, grinning like an idiot, hoping to lighten the tension somehow.

  After a mute, throbbing eternity, the Creepy Sister and the Sulky Guy finally wandered off into the gathering night—without so much as a civil word being spoken. Like ghosts.

  Once Narcisa’s gloomy visitors departed, her mood began to brighten.

  I could see she was trying hard to pry the rusty fortress gates of her heart open again. Then, all of a sudden, the clouds parted and the sun shone through as she smirked at me with that old endearing, childlike grin.

  “Eí, Cigano, you got my back, hein? Let’s go for a ride, bro, go, go!”

  She didn’t have to ask twice. I practically flew out the door. I got on the bike and fired up the motor. As soon as she jumped on behind me, her long, elegant arms wrapping around me like old times, I knew it was still there . . . Yes! We’re still us!

  But as we rode away, I could also sense that other chilly Something, sitting between us like a phantom passenger. A vague shadow of fear. Trepidation. Suspicion.

  I did my best to ignore it as I navigated the winding country roads. In silence, we rolled through a nearby village, then off into the sprawling jungles, where a deep country darkness enveloped us like a shroud.

  Narcisa said nothing; and then there was nothing but the motorcycle’s headlight on the dark path ahead. As the steady rumbling growl of the engine propelled
us through the night, she held on tight, her long arms wrapped around me, like old times, and that was all that mattered.

  We rode for a long while like that, rolling through the forest, deep into the long, moonless madrugada. The air was crisp and cold and smelled of pine trees and cedar smoke and Narcisa. Without a word, she steered me with her finger along the empty roads, finally pointing to a steep turnoff, snaking up into the dark, looming winter mountains.

  We rode and rode forever, up a winding path, with a sheer granite wall on one side and a dark precipice on the other. I could feel my ears pop from the altitude as we came at last to a rustic village in the foggy heights.

  Shaking with stinging cold, our bones rattling like icicles, we pulled into the sleeping hamlet at last, teeth chattering, numb with bitter fatigue. A few minutes later, we found a warm, furnished mountain cabin for rent.

  I parked and we checked in for the night. Inside the chalet, Narcisa swallowed a handful of pills. Downers. Having been off crack for over a month now, that was her new, Doc-approved, legal kick. Then, she smoked some weed, hacking and coughing and choking like an old man in an iron lung after each greedy toke.

  As the drugs eased the raging war in her head, she began dancing around in the sparkly new dress I’d brought her, pirouetting like a maddened epileptic white giraffe to whatever music replaced the Shadow People’s angry nightmare soundtrack in her tortured inner ear.

  Watching Narcisa dance again was like witnessing a lightning storm, a tornado; something elemental, dangerous, powerful, crucial and indescribably beautiful. I looked on, transfixed, as she glided across the rough wooden floor like a wild, swirling funnel cloud; a blue-veined, mad, translucent phantom.