I strode up and greeted my old comrade with a bear hug. He gestured to a chair. I sat down and we talked, catching up, exchanging local news.
Finally, I began spilling my guts about Narcisa.
Mateus got it. Sitting at his table, eating shiny green Portuguese olives and soft white Minas cheese, smoking and drinking strong black coffee, we bantered on, joking and laughing like the kids we’d once been together, back in another life.
After a while, he stopped talking and gave me a funny look.
“What’s up, mano?” I looked at him, puzzled.
He studied me long and hard. Then he began explaining that my Narcisa was a spiritual archetype—a sort of angelic entity; not just some random whore; not even a person, he implied. Not in the conventional sense.
I could tell Mateus was serious. There was something in his manner that rang true, like the way Caridade had explained things.
What Mateus told me that day would give me pause for contemplation—especially when I thought of that dreamy little card from Narcisa in my wallet . . . The Spirits increase. Vigor grows through a wound. As he talked on, I pulled it out and handed it to him. He sat staring at it for a long time, turning it over and over in his hand, as if judging its spiritual weight and value.
Then, with a wide grin, my friend started to tell me about the Dakini.
“She dance, manu! Like a crazy sky dancer! De Dakini, she like a personification of de energia vital, a pow’ful female energy form, see? She look pretty terrible, but only if ya don’ know all de good thing she bring. De Dakini only come round when de warrior ready. You won’t even see her come till ya preparado, spiritually, to learn all de thing she can show ya about you own true inside self.”
He fell silent again, studying Narcisa’s little card. Then he handed it back and stared me with those bright black eyes of humor and compassion.
“Ya always been a lucky bastard, Ignácio!” He chuckled, shaking his head. “Ya always fell right on ya feet, like a cat. And no matter how far down the toilet ya gone, ya could climb right back out again, and den you use ya experience to help de other peoples. That’s a callin’, manu! A gift. Papo serio! Most people never find dey gift. But ya found yours. Ya just like dem old-time samurai, bro.” He stopped and looked at me. “Ya know what dat word samurai mean?”
I shook my head.
“Means servidor! ‘Him dat Serve.’ Dat’s you, brother! How else you coulda survive all dem hard years? Ya know ya shoulda been dead long time ago, manu, same like me. When I got outa de jail an’ I heard from Luciana how ya got off drugs, porra, dat was de big inspiration to keep stayin’ clean myself. And now ya helpin’ dis girl too, same way . . .”
That threw me off. “Nobody can help her, man! Fuck! I’ve tried everything, brother, but she’s so fucking broken! All I can do is pray . . .”
He nodded. “Can’t nobody make nobody else wanna change, but I know ya never give up ya faith, guerreiro. So ya helpin’ her spirit like dat. And she for sure helping you! Yeh, ya really meet de match for ya self dis time, bro! Parabens!”
Still feeling a little sorry for myself, I looked at Mateus and grimaced . . . Parabens? Congratulations? What the fuck?
He laughed. “Lemme tell ya something, Ignácio. I been knowing ya since we was kids, so lissen careful, mermão. When ya was just a little boy, somebody told ya to go to hell . . . ‘Vá pro inferno, meu filho!’ Ya know what I mean?”
I nodded. Mateus had known my people. He knew the hell I’d grown up in.
“ . . . Ya had a tough life as a kid, same like me. I remember when ya momma die and ya end up livin’ in de street all alone . . . ‘Go to hell!’ Dat was de instruction ya got from ya mother, manu . . . And ya musta really took dat shit literal!”
We both laughed. A deep, warm survivors’ laughter. It felt good. Solid.
“ . . . So den ya gone out and made a holy fucking mess of ya life. Just like ya peoples taught ya, see? Same like me, ya gone right to hell, and ya stayed on livin’ there for years. Ya spend so much time in de hell, manu, ya settle down in there. Hah! Maybe ya get to feelin’ comfortable livin’ in hell. But for years now, ya been doin’ good and lookin’ for ya way out. So dis what I sayin’ here. Dat’s how ya got a beautiful Dakini come to show ya de exit . . .”
I rubbed my chin, nodding, thinking of Narcisa’s portentous little song. “Can you show me—de exit to these e’sheet world . . .”
Mateus bent forward and stared at me hard with those dark, piercing eyes and whispered. “Sometime ya think ya girl is de devil. But she really an anjo!”
“Some fucking angel!” I guffawed, sucking my teeth. “Ninguém merece!”
Mateus poked his big, stubby armed-robber’s trigger finger in my chest and howled with laughter. “Hah! What ya thinking I mean when I say anjo, Ignácio, huh? I’m not talkin’ ’bout some kinda little pink-face baby cherub doll like ya seen on de church wall, fucker! Not for you! Hehehe! Dis Dakini, she like de extermination angel, bro, hahahaha!” He fell back in his chair, cackling like a mad monk.
I stared at him, impressed by his sincerity. His enthusiasm was infectious.
“So a Dakini’s kinda like a blessing in disguise, huh?” I grinned.
Mateus nodded with that enigmatic Buddhist smile. “Sem duvida, mermão! Check it out!” He started waving his hands in the air like a pair of dancers. “She look like a fierce demon-monster, but I tell ya, she only come for de good!”
I listened as he explained that Buddhists in deep meditation can hear the bones of her victims rattling and clattering as the Dakini makes her approach, heralding transcendence over Maya, the Big Illusion of Ego: Fear, Want, Greed. Selfishness, Anger; all the hydra-headed attachments and addictions of the Curse.
I left my encounter with Mateus with a renewed sense of faith. As the long, weary days flashed by like a surreal, sinister slideshow, more and more I found myself contemplating the apocalyptic, sacred form of the Dakini. At times I swore I could see her moving behind Narcisa’s mad, frenetic dancing shadow.
Soon there came a sudden and frightening resurgence in Narcisa’s savage mood swings. Things were getting scary again. Out of nowhere, she’d turn on me and strike like a swift, shiny Black Mambo, drawing blood as she moved in for the kill.
I knew it was inevitable. The closer Narcisa came to trusting me and allowing me in, putting her secrets into my fumbling hands like precious jewels, the more violently she had to flip whenever she turned again. And now her hateful outbursts were escalating from the usual angry, childish temper tantrums into true demonic fits of destruction; growing more insane and brutal in direct proportion with our growing intimacy. It was like some greedy toll or tax, a spiteful vengeance being exacted by her unseen oppressors for the ground they’d lost by her letting someone else in. Me. Now they were demanding their pound of flesh. Retribution.
As the days rattled forward like a hell-bound train, I could feel the presence of those malevolent, shadowy forces of opposition increasing all around us; rapacious, angry spirit enemies, multiplying in strength and numbers. It was a persistent reminder of Caridade’s grim admonishment that my life was in danger.
By choosing to stay with Narcisa, I’d made some horrendous pact with dark, unseen forces; and the closer I came to hauling her out of the pit, the more deadly the battle became. As I relived the traumas and dramas of my ultraviolent childhood, a day at a time with Narcisa, I kept picturing the crazed, bloodthirsty Dakini.
I’d been thinking about my mother a lot, as if she was standing somewhere nearby, whispering, warning me from some weird, long-forgotten dream zone . . . “Cuidado, Ignácio! Take caution, meu filho!” With each passing day, I could sense the same madness that had killed her reverberating from the humid shadows of the past and jolting through Narcisa, like some ugly, ferocious, unseen electrical current.
I’d been thinking of old Doc lately too; his freaky claim that Narcisa was possessed by the spirit of the alcoholic mother he’d murdered in a bathtub
. I began to fear he’d end up killing Narcisa too, if he ever caught up with her. I could feel him watching, lurking in the darkness, stalking, closing in on us, in some awful mission of twisted karma and occult retribution. At times it seemed I was watching the whole mad spectacle of our lives from a distance, like some creepy old black-and-white horror movie I’d seen before. My waking hours became a twisted maze of ceaseless déjà vu. Dark things were hovering in the air, like pieces in a big, ugly jigsaw puzzle, as I thought about my poor, mad mother and the deadly, predatory Curse that had ruled her life, then taken it, once and for all, in a hideous final act of barbaric self-destruction.
The tragic slow dance of suicide is a solitary, narcissistic, self-centered process. But I knew that the mere absence of a will to live is never enough to kill anyone. To end one’s own life requires a serious conscious effort. I couldn’t stop thinking about the events leading up to my mother’s death. As Narcisa slipped deeper into madness, I found myself reliving the fear and insecurity, confusion and outrage; all the bitter, stinging frustration of a lonely, frightened little boy caught in the eye of a rampaging nightmare of hurt and violence.
Narcisa took to walking the streets wearing this old motorcycle helmet she’d pinched from my closet—as if somewhere at the back of her mind she too could hear the harsh, pounding echoes of impending danger; the nagging memory of her near-fatal head-bashing.
One morning, after being up smoking for a week, she gave me a tragic look of despair.
“You know I already dead, Cigano. Defunta . . .” Her eyes glistened, filling up with tears. “De girl you see now, she only de fantasma, a ghost who pretend de Narcisa e’still alive. But today I know de truth, Cigano. Now I really know!”
She hung her poor, sick, tormented head and wept.
I held her and cried into her musky hair, which reminded me of the cool winter smell of my mother’s embrace. But, as usual, I said nothing. There was nothing to say that would ever make it better.
Like Narcisa, I too had long ago learned the rules of the game. Back when I was just a little kid, I’d been taught to mind my own business, and to keep my fucking mouth shut.
100. THE LONGEST DAY
“THEY HAD ALL TURNED ASIDE, AND GONE OUT INTO THE WILDERNESS, TO FALL DOWN BEFORE IDOLS OF GOLD AND SILVER, AND WOOD AND STONE, FALSE GODS THAT COULD NOT HEAL THEM.”
—James Baldwin
After another long, chaotic mission, Narcisa crashed. This time, she stayed in a deep, comatose slumber for three whole days and nights; locked away in my dark apartment, sheltered from the blistering, blazing world of trouble outside, snoring, coughing and wheezing, hibernating like a sick baby bear.
When she finally crawled out of her moldy grotto of tortured dreams, she woke up shouting her lungs out, booting me out of a sound sleep. “Food! Foo-ood! Hungry, Cigano!”
“Huh, wha—” My eyes popped open to a smell of burning rubber. It might have been my brain melting. I looked around, bewildered.
Narcisa was trying to repair her broken flip-flops with a cigarette lighter. She looked up, howling like a mad, red-eyed coyote. “Foo-ood!! Hungry! Naa-oow! Go-oo!!”
I groaned, shrugging off a heavy blanket of fatigue.
Without another word, Narcisa tore right out the door. Fuck! I struggled into my boots and ran out behind her, wiping sleep from my eyes. Hot on her frantic, speeding feet as she hit the sidewalk, I stumbled along in blurry-eyed misery, feeling like a helpless spectator to impending doom, as some awful inner compass seemed to guide her footsteps, a block at a time, steering her into the throbbing, meat-grinding monkey-pit of humanity she hated.
And so it began: The Day That Wouldn’t End.
After a long, torturous hour, trudging the sweaty, tumultuous downtown streets behind her, I sat brooding at a tiny corner table in a bustling self-service cafeteria, feeling a vague sense of guilt for the terrible calamity of Narcisa being there. Cringing with embarrassment, I watched, horrified, as she pushed and shoved and prodded her way through the packed food lines, poking old grandmas in the kidneys with her tray, her famished, reddened eyes blazing, stabbing, jabbing, spitting, hissing, insulting, yelling, foaming at the mouth.
“Fock! Moo-oove it, go go go, you e’stupid focking slow old cow peoples!! Hungry! Fome! Arggghhh! Move moo-oove, porr-rraaa!! Go go go go go!”
Still chewing the last greedy mouthful of her meal, food scraps clinging to her face like shrapnel, she pulled me out the door, and into a throbbing, horn-blaring intersection. I felt like a fight dog going into the pit, running behind her as she hurtled through the frenetic asphalt labyrinth. The world was a sweltering monkey-muddle of anguish and stress, swarming with crazed, heat-maddened, rat-eyed commuters and nervous downtown shoppers, all jostling around in a boiling nightmare stew of high-tension, frenzied urban angst; a terrible slow-motion massacre. All that mad, hyperactive activity was like some kind of new drug for Narcisa . . . Shit! I groaned as she elbowed her way through the crowds with a hate that was bright and splendid in its pristine, savage purity, bumping against people, shouting and cursing, “Move! Moo-oove, e’stupid.” Flailing away like a trapped wildebeest in that clamoring sea of living, breathing human meat, she was pushing and shoving in a mad, manic rush to get somewhere, anywhere, nowhere, everywhere at once.
“Hurry! Beep beep! Moo-oove, e’stupid! Fo-ock!”
As she dragged me along behind her like a crippled appendage, another furious feeding frenzy began. Shopping. The force of her bottomless Need was unstoppable. Her anguished, whining demands raged in my ears like a blaring emergency siren.
“Buy me these, Cigano, an’ let’s get that, an’ I wan’ some of those! Ooh aaahh, such a pretty jacket! Buy it! Give it to me! Now! Go go! I need new shoes! Gimme more money, Cigano, go, go! Gimme gimme gimme, go go go!”
Powerless, I watched as Narcisa tore through shops, touching, sampling, pinching, feeling, fondling, smelling, molesting, trying on and discarding item after useless, overpriced item . . . Fuck! Shit! Jesus, help me! It was like witnessing some horrible, senseless slaughter. I was ready to go home and sleep forever. I wanted to keel over and die, to lie down in my grave for relief. And still we marched on, through those hot, humid, greasy streets of Need.
It was remarkable, seeing Narcisa drawn like a frantic summer insect to the very material objects she’d always claimed to despise. As loudly as my rebellious little anarchist always railed against the whole concept of consumerism, I could see she was equally seduced by it too. It was the pure, unencumbered heart and soul of Addiction; that perverse need in her, questing for eternal happiness in all the expensive, trendy gadgets and gimmicks and fancy, rhinestone-encrusted Gucci poodle-turd-holsters, beckoning from the glittering shop windows.
Poor Narcisa just couldn’t hide an inconvenient and persistent longing for all the luxury trinkets and vacuous status symbols of the wealthy—those evildoing, idle-rich wannabe-gringo parasitas she’d always said should be ground into hamburgers and fed to the poor.
Her brain was a nervous buzzing hornet’s nest of agonizing, stinging contradictions as the day dragged on like a stumbling, drunken wretch. Watching her coveting everything she saw, I flashed back to when I’d found her again, after her long, mysterious disappearance. There she’d stood that cold, lonesome, windy night, hungry and destitute, strung out, crazed and abandoned, crying, shivering all alone in the rain. At first I’d thought it odd to see Narcisa in such a sordid state. Where was the old prideful princess then? The one who’d always deemed herself so superior to the lowly station of a common street hooker?
How the Mighty I Am had fallen! All the way down from the exclusive top-shelf call-girl joints at the other end of the beach, toppled from her Made in America Plastic Fantastic Magical Gringo Honeymoon American Dream Love Boat Cruise, down, down the wobbly ladder of her own bright-eyed consumer dreams, to that decrepit state of pitiful, dirt-poor demoralization; filthy, homeless, clad in burnt-out, torn-up, tragic tatters. But still clutching an eq
ually filthy, battered Louis Vuitton bag to her breast; a depressing little relic that looked like it had been excavated from King Tut’s fucking tomb, along with its unlucky owner.
Where were all her Louis Vuitton consumer dreams then?
Having squandered away all my cash on her every frivolous whim, by noon I was broke again, unable to buy her any more clothes and shoes and spangles and gimcracks and whim-whams and baubles, bangles and beads . . . Thank God, it’s over at last! I breathed a deep sigh of relief at the prospect of finally going home to rest.
But here would be no rest. Now she insisted we go straight to the big fancy Rio Sul shopping mall near Copacabana next . . . Go, go, hurry, hurry, Cigano, go go go! My nerves were shot. Seeing double with fatigue, I tried to explain I was broke. I pleaded, reminding her I’d already bought her a hundred useless trinkets.
No dice. Narcisa didn’t care. She wanted to go to the mall.
I fretted over my latest dilemma as we sped across town, zigzagging though deadly bumper-to-bumper traffic, risking life and limb as she babbled on in my ear, telling me to hurry . . . Fuck! Where am I gonna get any cash? I haven’t been out to hustle in eons! I can’t! Narcisa needs me all the time now! And I have agreed to this madness! Begged for it! Shit! I needed her more than I needed money, more than my sanity! Now I have no sanity! Now I have no money! Oh God! Oh fuck! What a shit-fest!
With a sinking dread, I spied the gigantic glittering mall, looming dead ahead. As we drew closer, I shuddered, brooding . . . Fuck! The way things are going, I’m gonna end up homeless. A beggar. A bum, eating out of garbage cans in Lapa with crippled, mangy dogs . . . My left eye will be infested with little green bugs, eating their way into my brain . . . Narcisa has run off with another rich gringo . . . to Paris . . . Staying at the Ritz, with her new husband . . . Another crackhead . . . A rich one, with a platinum credit card! Shit! A famous rock star, with a bigger dick than mine . . . Mick Jagger. Johnny Depp. Paris Hilton. Louis Vuitton!
Narcisa Page 49