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Narcisa

Page 53

by Jonathan Shaw


  I could hear her shouts booming in the hallway. Narcisa was still out there, spewing a pestilent stream of vile, demonic curses. Then she started kicking at the door so hard I thought it would fly off its hinges.

  Boom! Boom! Boom!

  I kept quiet, not moving.

  Boom!

  I felt a mad, violent surge of temptation to pull the door open.

  God help me! I’m gonna drag this fucking miserable cunt back in here and tear her to pieces with my bare hands!

  Boom!

  But something stopped me; as it had always stopped me.

  No! Just wait . . . Don’t give in to her now!

  Boom!

  Bitch! I’m gonna open that door and rip your fuckin’ lungs out!

  No! Just wait! It’ll be over soon . . . Just wait her out!

  Boom!

  I stood with my hand on the doorknob, battling myself, trembling with rage . . . Bitch! I’ll fuckin’ murder ya! No! Don’t do it . . . Stay cool, man . . . Don’t do it! Just wait! She’ll get tired soon and leave . . . She will . . . Soon you’ll be done with her shit forever! Just wait!

  I held my breath and waited.

  Finally, I heard her raving curses fading into the distance as she huffed and puffed away, clomping off down the stairwell.

  Silence.

  I cracked open the door, half expecting to see Narcisa still standing there, those horrible blood-red eyes blazing like a horror movie werewolf.

  I looked out. The hallway was empty, quiet. The way it should be. The way it was before Narcisa . . . She’s gone! Yes! Gone! Thank God!

  I closed the door again and double-locked it, then staggered into the bathroom, dripping blood across the floor. I got a towel and pressed it over the deep, painful gash in my face. I held it there, hard, applying steady pressure. Then I went over to the window and opened it. I squinted out, without my glasses, my eyes searching, slowly adapting to the blurry night outside.

  A cold wind gust blew into the room, and I let it blow. A picture clattered off the wall. Loose pages of writing flew from the table, circling the floor like confused phantoms. Windows must always be kept shut when a sudeste is blowing into Rio.

  I didn’t care. The apartment was a deserted, haunted museum now, a graveyard, a tomb. Narcisa was gone forever. It was over. Nothing mattered.

  As I stood looking out, the frigid wind slapping at my face died down. Then, the only sound was the twitter of bugs in the quiet plaza below. I listened to the sticky, sinister hissing of the crickets and cigarras from the unseen world of nocturnal insects down there, all quietly eating each other alive in their invisible battles of life and death. A damp wind rustled the leaves of the coconut palms in the dark plaza, swirling dust and paper scraps around in little circles. And then there was nothing but the persistant hum of the great urban beast.

  Suddenly exhausted, I closed the window and turned around, surveying the wreckage of my home. Angry ghosts of recent violence reverberated in the stillness. I bent down and kneeled on the cold, dirty wooden floor, praying, picking up bits of my faith’s broken, bloody rubble.

  As I rose to my feet again, I could feel a sudden pounding headache coming on.

  I scrunched up my eyes, trying to quiet the faint echoes of rabid shouts and rattling, dancing bones in the dark, haunted chambers of my inner ear. Rattling, clattering, mad, destructive Dakini bones . . . Getting louder, louder, louder . . . Pain!

  107. THE POSSUM

  “WE ARE SO CAPTIVATED BY AND ENTANGLED IN OUR SUBJECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS THAT WE HAVE FORGOTTEN THE AGE-OLD FACT THAT GOD SPEAKS CHIEFLY THROUGH DREAMS AND VISIONS.”

  —Carl Jung

  Outside, the wind boomed and rattled at my shutters. The storm was picking up again. I could hear garbage cans banging together down on the street. A loose power line thumped against the side of the building with a dull, eerie sound, like someone kicking a corpse. Exhausted, I limped over to the sofa.

  There was a bitter, rancid taste of adrenaline and blood in my mouth. Wincing from the sharp, throbbing pain where Narcisa had brought her size-forty steel-toed Gestapo boot down on my bare foot, crushing fragile bones and tendons, I could still hear the echo of her bottomless spite, those agonizing parting words spitting through my brain like bullets in a favela shootout.

  “I never gonna love you! Nunca! You gonna e’stay all alone forever!”

  In their wake, a familiar phrase washed over my burning thoughts, like a soft ocean wave . . . Antes só que mal acompanhado . . . Foda-se! Fuck her! Better off all alone than in bad company . . . I knew Narcisa was the worst of all the bad company I’d ever kept. And still, I felt a sick, hopeless wave of regret. But what else could I do? I’d had it up to my neck with her shit; enough to last me a lifetime.

  Shaking my head, I opened the closet and took out my worn leather travel bag. I was fucked if I stayed now, and fucked if I left. Either way, I was truly and finally, totally, fatally fucked. Because this time, little Ignácio had hitched his little red wagon to a blazing comet from Alpha Centauri; to a mad, screaming Dakini in a howling, haunted house of mirrors. Mirrors. Because she was me, from start to finish. The Alpha and the Omega. The Dakini in the mirror.

  I stared at the wall. I glanced at my watch. Time to get going. I still had to bring my bike up the hill to store with Mateus before catching a bus to the station.

  Suddenly, it was all too much to think about. Maybe the wind was doing something to my mind. It was rattling at my window like a battalion of angry ghosts. I felt a weird dizziness overcoming my thoughts. As my vision grew fuzzy, I fell back onto the sofa.

  Slipping away into an fitful, delirious stupor, a whirlpool of words bubbled up from a bottomless wound and swirled around and around in my head, like an alphabet soup of falling stars . . . Drifting out to sea . . . Princesa, tigresa, eyes of fire, smoke, thunder, brimstone, sulfur, all elements of your perpetual elemental being. Love. Hell. Abandoned houses and empty castle corridors we’ve walked together forever, broken. And I saw that essence of harm in your eyes and I held it, held your heart in my rough, greasy beggar’s hand for a moment as I held you in my arms, my love, and you cried out in nightmare slumbers, from nether realms where demons rule and shout from bottomless black wormholes, down, down in the underworld ether, running amok between our hot breath where I got all tangled up and didn’t know anymore who was me and who was you, and I cried and cried while I fucked you alive, princesa. I cried for your loss and I cried for your hurt, crying for the poor, stupid, impotent words that could never heal, never mend or amend the filthy black cancer of your earthly experience, my love.

  I am sorry, so sorry, amor, but I must leave you to die all alone now . . . Slipping, I’m slipping down . . . I’m falling, love . . . I’m so sorry for the famished poverty of these words, bright crippled birds without wings, without mercy, nothing but snails and slugs in cruel disguise. And at last I couldn’t save you from their cold and savage embrace. I could not bring you to a light to shine between those sleazy ghosts and show you the way home . . . I’m sorry . . . I’m falling away now, amor, falling down down down into delirium opiate nightmare slumber again, paralyzed, powerless, going down again . . . Going down down down down . . .

  Narcisa is asleep. Sleeping in a big, luxurious parlor of an ancient Spanish castle where I’ve brought her to live, safe and secure, happily ever after . . . My princess.

  Late at night, she wanders into my chambers, holding a big floppy-eared, shaggy stuffed animal. Trembling, afraid, she’s crying like a little girl. Tears run down her face as she tells me of a plague of possums in her room. Poor Narcisa.

  “It’s nothing, princesa!” I laugh. “Don’t worry. They’re just harmless little creatures. Here, come, baby, I’ll show you.”

  Then, we’re back in her chamber. There’s a small gray possum sitting in the middle of the room, on the shiny white marble floor, hissing at us, bearing its hundreds of flashing little yellow teeth, like sharp, pointy knife blades.

&nbs
p; I reach down and pick it up by the back of its furry neck, like a kitten.

  Suddenly, it twists around and sinks its fangs deep into the flesh of my arm, like syringes full of heroin! I try to subdue it, but it struggles and fights! It is powerful! I wrestle the tiny devil, but there’s no subduing the beast. I slow down as I feel a familiar, bittersweet dope rush. I can taste it way in the back my nose, my palate, going numb and warm as Narcisa looks on with a smug “told you so” smirk.

  I make a decision. I must kill the possum. I bend over and lay it down on the ground, holding it in place with my hand as I put my boot heel to its head, applying firm, steady pressure with the weight of my body . . . More . . . Some more . . . There! I hear a sickening pop as its skull cracks open like a walnut. The possum stops moving, stops struggling, stops. It is still.

  I turn around and go back to Narcisa.

  Eyes wide, she screams! “Cigano! Cuidado! Take care! She no dead!”

  Narcisa is standing before me, face frozen in fear, pointing to the bloody gray furball lying on the floor behind me. I turn around, ever so slowly, feeling sluggish. Tired. Stoned. Lazy.

  Slowly, the possum begins moving again. It is stunned. Weak. Then, it turns its head.

  It’s alive! I run over, wrap a towel around it and pick it up.

  “What you gonna do, hein, Cigano?”

  “I’ll take it out and throw it into the highway. A truck will run it over.”

  “No-oo! She gonna come back an’ get us, Cigano! You gotta kee-eel it!”

  “But I already did, princesa! It’s half dead now, dying . . .”

  “Never mind, Cigano! De other half gonna come back an’ get us!” Her big, pleading eyes bore down into my soul. “Is gonna come back . . . Is gonna!”

  The limp, bloody little bundle I’m holding starts to move, slowly, weakly. Then, all of a sudden, it begins thrashing around in my hands, and it’s free! Quick as a bird, it shoots out of the towel and jumps onto me, snapping those awful little dagger-point flashing fangs at my face, tearing into my arm again, drawing blood!

  Arrrggghhh!! Blood! So much blood! Startled, I drop it, feeling sickeningly sober and aware. As it falls, it latches on to my crotch! Pain! Pain! Its jaws clench on to my balls, like an insane, ravenous, snapping hell-lobster!

  Slowly, carefully, I pry the thing loose. The possum is weak again. I drop it to the floor. It crawls off under the sofa to hide. It is dying, mortally wounded.

  In that surreal dream state, where impressions are instantly translated into an odd, subliminal reality, I immediately know it isn’t a possum. Not at all! It’s the essence of pure, undiluted Darkness. An energy that can’t be killed or stopped. Addiction. Pure Evil. The Curse.

  I fish it out from under the sofa with my foot and punt it across the floor, like a ball. Slowly, cautiously, I kick it out the door, then I turn back into the room.

  Wait! This isn’t the same place we were just in. This is the door of my apartment—the place I just threw Narcisa out of in another weird dream. What’s going on? I feel disoriented again. Stoned . . . Don’t know where I am or what I’m doing here . . . I look around and realize Narcisa is gone. Where is she?

  I go out the door and wander the empty castle corridors, searching for Narcisa. She is nowhere in sight. I call out to her, my voice echoing from the cold, high walls of the big, empty marble palace . . . Princesa! Princee-eee-saaa! Princee-eee-saaa! Princee-eee-saaa! Finally, I plod back into her chamber, calling out to her again and again . . . Princ-eessss—aaa!

  Nothing. Tall, cool, shiny stone walls. Echoes.

  No answer . . . Princ-eessss—aaa! Only echoes. Hollow. Empty. Dark. Alone.

  I shuffle out onto the balcony and stand there, looking down.

  I see her! Narcisa is in the plaza down below, laid out on a park bench, like a bum, huddled under a gray blanket of cold, damp newspapers.

  I turn and run down the stairs. So many stairs. They seem to never end.

  I can hear her voice reciting sad, familiar words.

  “I’ve been up enough and fell enough. Go up and go down, up and down, and still ask, why?” Her words echo in my ears like a condemned man’s final plea, as I run and run forever, down, down, down an interminable, empty white marble stairway. I can hear frantic piano music rattling, clattering like wild Dakini bones of confusion, and then I’m down there, beside her. Standing over Narcisa.

  Looking down at her face, I feel sad. Disappointed. Powerless. Lost.

  I reach out and touch her arm. Her flesh is cold and gray as the clammy, damp newspapers covering her like a shroud. “Por que, princesa? Why do you come here to die alone in the park like a beggar when I’ve given you a beautiful castle to come and live in? Por favor, princesa, please! Please come back home!”

  She looks up at me with those big, sad, ironic eyes. “Here is de most comfortable place for me to die, Cigano . . .”

  “Por favor, princesa! No! Come home, please!” I start to cry.

  She pushes my hand away. “Just go now an’ leave me e’stay here alone, go!”

  I feel so sad and powerless to do anything for her.

  She shakes her head and turns away.

  Devastated, crushed, I turn and limp off into the night, alone.

  108. INTO THE STARS

  “THE WOUND IS THE PLACE WHERE THE LIGHT ENTERS YOU.”

  —Rumi

  I woke up covered in sweat and dried blood. My whole face was hot, throbbing in pain.

  Everything hurt. Nothing was right. Just like kicking heroin.

  Not knowing if it was day or night, I squinted at my watch.

  Two hours had passed.

  I stayed like that, lying in the dark for a long time; thinking, remembering the haunting details of that weird, melancholy dream, afraid to go back to sleep.

  Then, in that odd half-waking state, laying in the shadows of my haunted room, out of the darkness, I saw the face of my mother. My beautiful mother. My insane, demented, violent, unstable, unstoppable, suicidal mother.

  Surrendering to the vision, I called her hazy image up from the dim, angry, forbidden back rooms of my being.

  Closing my eyes, I could make out her face clearly.

  She looked just like Narcisa.

  My mother, Dolores, the Spanish word for “Pain,” was only twenty years old when she’d murdered herself and left me an orphan.

  Dead at Narcisa’s age, the poor, deranged creature had gone through her short, savage stay on earth dragging the name of Pain behind her like a death sentence. And pain would be her final legacy to me; with all her sensual, passionate, mad Romani fire and laughter and gaiety; her joy and hope and childish, optimistic lust for life; and her dark, unnamable agony and confusion; that obscene, insatiable hunger for death.

  The Curse.

  I called to memory the way I’d found her that stinking, cold, humid winter day. Her naked white body sprawled crazily across the dirty yellow linoleum, like a broken doll, lying dead on the floor, covered in the expired blood of her sad, chaotic little life. Everything splattered with that dark, oily blood. Blood. Blood, so much fucking blood, weeping from both her cold, dead bluish wrists. The flesh of her throat ripped open like a gaping black pit of bottomless horror. Her body lying there, immobile, like a thrown-out, deflated balloon, dull and tinted with pinkish red flecks of blood. Her skin cold and gray as a bundle of wet newspaper.

  Blood everywhere.

  So much blood! Bad blood. Sad blood. Alcoholic blood. Mahrime blood. Cursed blood. Tainted, poisonous, angry, irritable, broken, tragic blood.

  My blood.

  How deeply ingrained that kind of psychic scar tissue really is; how persistently it runs right down to the very core and essence and lifeblood of who we are and always will be, people like Narcisa and me.

  And how perfectly appropriate, I thought.

  The Spirits increase. Vigor grows through a Wound.

  I could feel it as I lay there in the dark; the healing grace of Redemption, enterin
g my life through an old, cold, festering, long-forgotten wound.

  I could hear my mother’s voice again now, echoing, whispering to me in the cold winter wind whistling outside my window.

  “Lembre bem disso, meu filho, meu filho, meu filho . . . Remember the lessons well, my son, my son, my son . . .”

  I remembered how, when I’d finally come around on that big old, cosmic karmic wheel of fortune, in answer to whatever stifled, choking, crack-croaking, terrified desperation prayers Narcisa had already long forgotten, she had wanted to kill me; to destroy me for the crime of existing; for the crime of loving her.

  But there was an even more heinous offense I’d committed against my poor Narcisa: the crime of making her feel and care for another human being. And for that unpardonable transgression, I had to be sentenced to Death; had to be destroyed. Because, for some strange and terrible reason, out of all the men Narcisa had ever run to and run with, seeking relief from the unrelievable, seeking a way out of the fierce, brutal bondage of herself, I was the one who had gotten to her. And somewhere, deep in the heart of her, she knew it, and she kept coming back for more; just as I kept coming back and letting her in again and again and again. For, rather than being another blind-eyed John, another Trick, another Vic, another escape hatch, another way out of herself, somehow, by the Grace of God, or the Curse of the Devil, I had seen through her steel-plated mask. And so, I’d unwittingly become the way back; back into the primal core of her own hellish, festering wounds, her pain, her soul; just as she had been for me.

  Because I was her and she was me. The Dakini in the mirror.

  Twin Flames. Nowhere to run. O lungo drom. All roads lead to the light. Even the road to hell. The road we both knew so very, very well.

  I rose up on the sofa. I was shivering all over. It might have been the cold wind blowing through my window, but I didn’t think so.

 

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