Narcisa

by Jonathan Shaw

  I turn a corner and I see her. Narcisa, wearing her purple bomber jacket. She’s hunched over something, crouched down like a big glowing silent predator . . . A panther, a vampire, a giant bat, some terrible, malevolent being. And she’s feeding on something, someone, perched atop an immobile human body.

  Everything is bathed in a eerie golden light. Moving closer, I see a familiar leathery face. It’s Mãe Caridade! The old woman is lying on her back, immobile. Narcisa is inhaling, consuming, feeding, sucking the life force from her chest.

  I run over, yelling. “Baby, baby, princesa, what are you doing? Stop it! Get up! Leave her alone! Para, porra! Stop! She’s helping us!”

  Narcisa turns and looks at me. But it’s not Narcisa. It’s my mother! Then, it’s not my mother anymore. She’s morphed back into Narcisa again. As I look on, she shape-shifts anew, this time into a gray-faced, snarling Medusa, all covered in ashes.

  The snakes are hissing in her hair. The hideous hell-creature begins to laugh, cackling and howling, a mad, furious, demonic phantom laughter.

  I feel myself going numb, paralyzed. I can’t breathe . . . Can’t move . . . I cannot scream . . . I am turning to stone, disintegrating into dust and ashes at her feet, as her frightful howls echo and fade to nothing in my crumbling, cold, dead ears of stone.

  Awakened with a start, I bolted up on the bed, looking around in panic.

  Dazed, disoriented, my eyes fixed on Narcisa. She stood by the window, playing with the latch, the curtains, glancing around like a scared animal, her face frozen in a gray mask of terror.

  The Shadow People were closing in on her.

  I went over, took her by the hand and led her back to the bed. Putting her down on the hard, round vinyl mattress, I fucked her again till I climaxed long and hard, screaming; howling like a deranged ghost. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck fuck!”

  Without a word, she got up and went back to smoking the rest of her stash.

  I lay back on the bed, thinking . . . For a streetwise old malandro, I’m getting pretty good at ignoring all the warning signs . . . Then I passed out again.

  By morning, Narcisa was out of drugs.

  She looked at me and I knew.

  It was time to take her back to Rio.

  98. THE THING THAT WOULDN’T DIE

  “PHYSICAL DEPENDENCE IS THE SIMPLE CELLULAR ADAPTATION OF THE BODY. IN CONTRAST, ADDICTION IS A COMPLEX, LIFELONG DISEASE OF THE ENTIRE SELF.”

  —Robert L. Dupont, M.D.

  I’ve always said you can tell how good a chick fucks by the way she sits on the back of a motorcycle. But, in all my decades of riding up and down the four corners of hell with all kinds of chicks, there’d never been a perfect fit like Narcisa.

  The ride home with her was three hours of heaven . . . Triumph! Ecstasy! Victory! As we sailed down the road, she wasn’t just holding on to me, but making love to me, hugging my soul with her entire being, her unquenchable, bottomless Need; embracing me right down to my cells, like a mother holding a fetus in the timeless, warm opiate stupor of the womb. And I never wanted her to let go again. I could have kept on riding forever like that, with Narcisa clutching me like a baby monkey clinging to its mother’s back. I didn’t want to stop; not for food or gas or a piss; not for anything, ever again. All I wanted was to keep riding with her forever, together; until the engine exploded, till the wheels fell off, anything to keep that mad, obsessive, crucial momentum going; reveling in our boundless, unstoppable need as we sped on through time and space together, going, going, going down the long, euphoric highway to nowhere . . . Motion, speed, movement, go go go!

  Like magic, we rolled into Rio, blasting through the old frenetic downtown traffic, Narcisa clinging to my back, like a hungry crustacean of Need and Doom and Want and Salvation, as we dodged between cars on the long, breathtaking overpass, seeing all the familiar sights of this Rio de Janeiro we both lived in and created and hated and loved together.

  My soul soared like a drunken white seagull as we flew past the antique Victorian concrete wedding cake ferryboat terminal of the old Praça XV, and the little Santos Dumont Airport, cruising into the green, green Aterro do Flamengo, Sugarloaf Mountain looming monolithic and spectacular across Botafogo Bay.

  We turned off by the staid old whitewashed Hotel Gloria, into the neighborhood, and then we were winding along those old, familiar ruas we knew and lived and loved and hated; streets we patrolled together forever. Drowning in a spicy stew of memories, we sped on through the crumbling cobblestone alleys of Lapa, past the Love House. And then I could see my building up ahead, and I knew we were really, finally home . . . Together! Twin Flames of Hunger . . . Boundless addiction to Love . . . And, like Narcisa, I only wanted to want anymore; to live and die in that perpetual state of endless longing, addiction, need and desire.

  I fully, finally knew at last that I would go to any lengths to keep it alive; to make it my mission, my purpose, my meaning, my passion, my obsession, my life.

  My blessing. My Curse.

  The days blurred into weeks in a fuzzy replay of everything we’d lived together before; all those excruciating months we’d somehow survived, then tried, both really, really tried so very, very hard to escape and put behind us forever.

  Now, I knew, there was no escape. Our toxic, tainted love had become the Thing That Wouldn’t Die. And I knew it wouldn’t die. Ever. Even if it killed us both to survive.

  Narcisa swore that this time it would all be different; and this time I really, truly believed her. I wanted and needed to believe. I really did. And she really meant well this time, I knew. She really, really did! This time, she swore she was going to “moderate.” And I was going to help her by telling her when it was getting out of hand.

  That was our new Best-Laid Plan of action.

  And we really believed it.

  Such was the degree of our self-deception.

  Within days, Narcisa was worse than ever; smoking all day and all night, out of control, plummeting south of insanity, south of hell, running on a doomed, demented hamster wheel of progressive, escalating madness.

  As the days flickered by in a surreal, timeless sleepless blur, I watched in horror, feeling powerless as a squirrel in a raging tornado, as the red spiders of delirium crawled across her brain, dragging her down, down, down into the filthy little hole where they fought and fucked without respite.

  It was all just as Mãe Caridade had warned. As Narcisa raged and rampaged through her life, teetering on the edge of collapse, I could almost see the otherworld beings dancing in her body. She’d finally been reduced to a teetering, dilapidated, rusty vehicle for tortured spirits of the damned; a living, breathing, walking, talking portal to the Dark Side. A haunted zombie ghost.

  And still, she wouldn’t sleep. She didn’t dare! Terrified to even sit down anymore, Narcisa lived in constant fear of passing out and being carried off to those wretched, demonic regions she struggled so valiantly to avoid—even as she cranked open the gates of hell anew, again and again, smoking more and more crack in a futile quest for release from the never-ending cycle of torment.

  Then, one day, after weeks without sleep or food, sucking on the crack pipe day and night, Narcisa finally toppled over and crashed.

  And still there was no rest. Even her dreams were visited by unspeakable tortures. She cried out and whimpered, tossing around on my sofa, a doomed, desperate, frightened little refugee, struggling with angry mobs of parasitic spirits.

  Over the next few weeks, though, I began to notice a subtle shift. Even as her madness progressed, she seemed to be trying to open up to me; a quiet little cry for help. Narcisa was suddenly groping for a deeper connection of some sort. Out of nowhere, she began confiding in me like never before; sharing her most intimate fears, memories, hopes and dreams; exposing a whole new vulnerability, a humanity I’d rarely seen in her.

  One day, on my birthday, after sitting up smoking for hours, scribbling furiously into one of her journals, she looked up and handed me the n
otebook.

  “Feliz aniversario, Cigano.” She grinned with a calm expression of pride, before going belly-up on the sofa.

  Staring at the unexpected gift in my hands, I was astonished; amazed she’d even remembered it was my birthday. And she’d actually taken the time to write something, just for me. It was phenomenal!

  As she snored the day away, I sat down beside her and opened the book.

  FOR CIGANO. HAPPY BIRTHDAY FROM N.

  STAIRS, HIGH AND LOW. WHAT HEIGHT! WHAT DEPTH!

  I’VE BEEN UP AND DOWN SO MANY STAIRS. SO MANY TIMES. OFTEN GETTING RIGHT TO THE LAST STEP AT THE TOP. DIZZY, UNBALANCED, I FELL.

  I’VE BEEN PUSHED DOWN STAIRS, AS WELL, HITTING MY HEAD, STEP BY STEP, HURTING MY BODY ON THE WAY DOWN. I’VE PUSHED SOMEONE ELSE, AND THEY GOT HURT TOO. I’VE SLIPPED BY ACCIDENT. I’VE BEEN CARRIED IN ARMS AND AWAKENED DOWNSTAIRS AGAIN.

  STAIRS. UGLY, OLD, BROKEN, MADE OF WOOD, OF METAL, OF CONCRETE. IMMENSE STAIRCASES THAT LEFT ME BREATHLESS! THE SPIRALS, THE SIMPLE, THE STRAIGHT, THE PORTABLE STAIRS. LADDERS. STAIRS OF MOSAIC TILES, WITH CRACKS IN BETWEEN. EVEN FIRE ESCAPES.

  I’VE WALKED, I’VE RUN, I’VE SLID DOWN BANISTERS. AND RIGHT NOW, I’M JUST CRAWLING UP AGAIN, ONE LITTLE STEP AT A TIME, SO I WILL NOT DROWN IN A FLOOD.

  I’M HOPING THAT, ONCE THE WATER SUBSIDES, I MIGHT GO DOWN AGAIN. BUT I HAVE THE IMPRESSION IT WILL COME UP HIGHER STILL, SO YES, I WILL JUST STAY RIGHT HERE.

  I DON’T WANT TO GET PUSHED, OR PUSH ANYBODY ELSE ANYMORE. EVERY TIME I GOT TO THE TOP, I ALWAYS HAD TO COME BACK DOWN AGAIN, FOR SOME REASON I DO NOT RECOGNIZE. GO UP AND GO DOWN, UP AND DOWN, AND STILL ASK WHY.

  I ONCE WENT UP A BEAUTIFUL STAIRWAY, AND WITH COMPANY, BUT I FELL AGAIN!

  ANOTHER TIME, I WENT UP A HORRIBLE, SHAKY OLD STAIRCASE, WITH SOMEONE VERY SLOW. AND ANOTHER TIME, WITH SOMEONE VERY QUICK.

  NOW, THE ONLY THING I AM SURE OF IS THAT I WILL BE STAYING. STAYING. SITTING RIGHT HERE ON THIS SAME LITTLE STEP.

  BUT IT’S NOT SO BAD HERE.

  I CAN ALWAYS SHARE IT WITH SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO SIT HERE TOO.

  I DON’T KNOW IF I CAN OR IF I SHOULD STAY. THESE ARE NOT MY STAIRS, OR EVEN MY STEP. BUT I WILL NOT GET OUT. NOBODY GETS ME OUT OF HERE! I WILL NOT RISE AND FALL AGAIN. NOT GOING TO DROWN ON PURPOSE EITHER. NOT THAT I HAVEN’T TRIED.

  MAYBE I’LL TRY TO SWIM AGAINST THE CURRENT.

  MAYBE I’LL GET TO ANOTHER SET OF STAIRS. BUT NOT JUST NOW. MAYBE I’LL WAIT FOR COMPANY, TO TRY TO CLIMB TOGETHER, AND FALL TOGETHER, OR THROW EACH OTHER DOWN.

  THERE WAS A TIME WHEN I WAS UP THERE, AND I MADE FUN OF SOMEONE WHO WAS DOWN HERE. THERE WAS ANOTHER TIME THAT WHEN I WAS DOWN HERE, AND SOMEONE UP THERE MADE FUN OF ME. THERE WAS A TIME THAT I MADE SOMEONE COME ALL THE WAY DOWN TO GET ME, SO WE COULD GO BACK UP TOGETHER. BUT THEN I COULDN’T LEAVE.

  MAYBE I’LL JUST MOVE OVER TO THE NEXT STEP, TO HAVE MORE TIME TO DECIDE IF I WILL GO UP OR STAY AND DROWN. PERHAPS THE WATER WILL RISE, FORCING ME TO GO UP.

  BUT EVEN SO, ALL THE STEPS IN THE WORLD ARE NEVER ENOUGH TO ESCAPE.

  IF I COULD, I WOULD BE IN BED SOMEWHERE, TOGETHER WITH SOMEBODY, CUDDLING IN OUR SLEEP, MAYBE EVEN JOINED IN THE VERY SAME DREAM. I WILL NOT FORCE ANYONE TO CLIMB OR FALL ANYMORE, BUT NOBODY WILL FORCE ME TO CLIMB OR FALL ANYMORE EITHER!

  PERHAPS DEATH! PERHAPS LONELINESS! PERHAPS SORROW! MAYBE JUST FLOW . . .

  AND HERE I AM NOW, STILL SITTING ON THE VERY SAME STEP. THE CURRENT IS GETTING STRONGER, COMING CLOSER. MAYBE I SHOULD JUST LET IT TAKE ME. MAYBE I’LL EVEN FIND SOMEONE DOWN AT THE VERY BOTTOM. WE’LL KISS. WE WILL BE NEITHER FAST NOR SLOW.

  Tears ran down my face as I closed the book and kissed it. I knew that writing that poem and giving it to me was a huge leap of trust for Narcisa; a gigantic risk for anyone as injured and traumatized as she. And I appreciated it. Like a pirate burying hidden treasure, I tucked the notebook under my mattress, where it would be safe from the Crack Monster.

  In the days to come, I tried to let her know I wouldn’t betray her fragile little spark of confidence. Even as darkness crept in all around, I could sense a tenuous new bond of complicity and mutual respect growing between us, like age-old adversaries bowing to each other before a battle to the death.

  There was something new happening, something different, beyond the raw, passionate sex and tangled network of compulsions that bound us together like prisoners. As the days shuddered into weeks, we grew all over each other again, like a fungus. And, at last, she just surrendered to it, accepting my gestures of love and kindness. She began to treat me like a friend, a confidant, a partner—more than just a necessary evil, a trick, a sucker, a vic. She showed her new affection in all sorts of small ways—like taking my hand as we walked in the street. That was new. Before, she’d always just ran ahead, without concern for where I ended up.

  Suddenly, we were struggling to be a couple; a partnership. I knew how important a connection like that was for an addict like Narcisa, for anyone who’d ventured so far into the solitary wastelands of addiction it seemed there was no way back. Could it be she was finally trying to bond with someone? Up till now, Narcisa’s relationships had always been geared at dominating others, or depending on them like a spoiled, needy brat. Never before had she expressed the slightest desire to interact with anyone on a give-and-take basis. Now that changed. She started daydreaming out loud, fantasizing about our future—a future that seemed dim and unattainable, given her diminishing capacity to function; and yet there was an intent behind her childish pipe dreams now, a sudden desire to love and be loved by another. That alone was a miracle. She even startled me one afternoon when she started musing about what we’d name our child. At first, I almost choked . . . What? No! That day the rubber broke! Please, God, don’t let her be pregnant! Not now! Then I remembered she was just high. Still, it was significant. And uncommon.

  A few hours later, she surprised me again with yet another gift. A scrap of cardboard with a quote in Latin she said was from Nietzsche: INCRESCUNT ANIMI, VIRESCIT VULNERE VIRTUS. To my amazement, she had drawn it out in an intricate style, nothing like her usual scribbled, illegible crack scrawls.

  It was obvious she’d taken time and care to craft the thing. When she handed it to me, I told her it was beautiful. She grinned with pride and told me to keep it in my wallet, next to the photo I kept of her there. I was dumbfounded. Before, she’d always made fun of me for carrying that picture of her. Now even that had changed.

  When I asked her what the mysterious little saying meant, she stared right down into my soul with those big, bulging brown eyes.

  “It e’say something like these, Cigano: ‘De e’spirits increase, an’ de vigor grow from a wound.’”

  Turning the card over in my hand, I pondered its meaning. . . . The Spirits increase. Vigor grows from a wound . . . Scratching my head, I could feel that odd sense of déjà vu again. Then I remembered a similar phrase I’d heard before, somewhere.

  God enters through the wound.

  “Whaddya think it means, Narcisa?” I looked at her, perplexed and fascinated. “I mean, what’s its significance to you?”

  She looked at me, rolling her mad eyes like a pair of loaded dice.

  “Hah! These from de Nietzsche, Cigano! You so focking e’smart, bro, you figure it out for you own self . . .”

  99. SHE WHO TRAVERSES THE SKY

  “ALL PERSONS ARE PUZZLES UNTIL AT LAST WE FIND IN SOME WORD OR ACT THE KEY TO THE MAN, TO THE WOMAN.”

  —Emerson

  Mateus Segatto was an interesting cat. An old friend who, like myself, had been to hell and back, courtesy of the Curse. Like me, he’d been a hopeless alcoholic and hope-to-die dope fiend. As outcast delinquent kids growing up on the mean old streets of Rio during the military dictatorship of the seventies, we used to call him “Sorrisol”—or “Smiley.” That fond nickname had stuck, and eventually blossomed into headlines and nationwide infamy for Mateus.

  He’d sure had his fifteen minutes of fame in the late 1980s—followed by a long stay
in federal prison for bank robbery. Dubbed “the Smiling Bandit” in the press, Mateus had been a notorious hard-core career criminal, who lost his touch and ended up a loser—all as a consequence of liquor and drugs. After serving over a decade in one of Brazil’s hardest penitentiaries, my old friend was now a free man again.

  A Buddhist, clean and sober for many years now, Mateus was a very different human being today from the crazed, violent-tempered young thug I’d once run the streets with. He’d done it all, and fucked it all up good—the way only addicts can fuck it all up.

  Now Mateus was doing much better.

  A few weeks after our return to Rio, late one foggy evening, Narcisa disappeared again. After a long, sleepless, worried night, by sunup I still hadn’t heard from her. By noon I was famished, anxious, angry, lonely and exhausted.

  I had to get out. I rode over to the Rio Claro. I hadn’t eaten any real food in weeks—at best a quick snack, standing at the crowded paderia counter, Narcisa, tugging at my arm. Hurry, Cigano, go go go! I was craving a real sit-down lunch.

  Riding up the hill to Santa Teresa, I wondered if Mateus might be around, since he lived next door to the place. It had been months since I’d last seen him.

  As I stepped into the shady little café, I spotted him right away, ensconced at his regular corner table. Mateus had a face like Louis Armstrong’s voice. Unforgettable. Looking up, my old friend beamed at me like the sun.

  “Ah haah! Faa-aala, Ignácio! Como vai, meu velho companheiro?”

  It was turning out to be a pretty rough day for me: sleepless, stressed-out, ragged and worried sick over Narcisa. It must have showed.

  I knew that when Mateus asked how you were doing, he meant it. And he was the one guy who could relate to my situation. Right before his imprisonment, Mateus had been shacked up in Copacabana with this coke-crazy whore. His affair with that vile live-in succubus had almost taken him out for good. Mateus had been there. I recalled how I’d always marveled that a street-wise malandro like him could have ended up pussy-whipped by some saggy-ass, low-rent street rat like that. Their brutal alliance had rattled on for ages, till he’d ended up in prison and lost everything—including her. Today his gruesome, troubled past was just part of his long, colorful life story; a survivor’s tale.