Love Is Strange (A Paranormal Romance) (45 page)

“You are not talking sense to me,” Farfalla said boldly. “What about
you
? What about
your
love story?”

“Well, of course,
I
have a One,” said Hepsiba, indignantly. “I am a Sainted Sister of the Umbanda Terreiro! It would be a
scandal
if I failed to get
my
One.”

“Nana, I, too, have powers! I see the ghosts of the past, and the harbingers of the future. I know that they are the same!”

“Don’t you be so proud, my dear! There are a
thousand
girls in this favela who have much greater magic powers than you have! Do you think life is
easy
for girls with magic powers? Look around yourself! You stopped living here in the favela, where the true struggle of darkness takes place! You went to Italy, and you put on your pretty clothes, and you forgot all about us.”

“That’s true,” Farfalla admitted. “I ran from reality as soon as I could.”

“That’s all right,” sighed Hepsiba. “You haven’t changed one bit. I still love you, my dear. You will always be my sweet, little girl.”

Hepsiba finished off her tin cup of reeking pinga, and drew a breath. “Voodoo does not exist to make us happy! If magic powers made people happy, then all us voodoo people would be happy. Very, very few of us adepts are ever happy. Did you ever see a happy, cheerful, voodoo adept, with pretty flowers and rainbows? Oh sure, the big star pop-singers. And the government ministers. And the winners of the state lottery, of course. And also, the master thieves and the richest newspaper astrologers. Those are the happy Brazilian voodoo people. Everyone else is dark and terrifying! Voodoo is the black art. Voodoo is necromancy.”

“But, I
want
to be happy! I want to marry someone who will make me happy. Forever after! That was promised to me!”

“Oh, yes, you say that now. That’s because you haven’t married him yet. Did you ever hear a woman tell a romance story about the
tenth year
of her marriage? Let me tell you all about that, my girl. Because, even for a very powerful voodoo witch, getting rid of a husband is hard.”

Hepsiba gazed, narrow-eyed, around the favela bar. There were eighteen other customers crammed into the tiny tin-roofed shack, because the speakeasy was as densely crowded as every other place in the Heliopolis favela. However, the local drinkers were red-eyed with the landlady’s cheap sugar-cane cachaca, which cost two reais a shot. Unless you wanted to take a soccer-labelled shot-glass home with you, in which case that cost five reais.

None of these slumping, drunken, penniless customers seemed to be spying or eavesdropping on their magical conspiracy, so Hepsiba continued with her tale. “First, you do not have to kill your husband. I do not prophesy that you will kill this man. No. You can always run away and come home to me instead. Because I have the power to save you! Because I promise you this, you can come and stay in my terreiro, under my holy roof. And your man, this foolish foreign man, he will never, ever find you here. A camel would leap through the eye of a needle first. I would know, if he ever came looking. And he would never reach you or touch you. Because the tongues of favela women are not made of bone, but the tongues of women can break a man’s bones. And that is the truth.”

Hepsiba signaled for a refill of pinga. The landlady brought over a crockery jug, and watched with care as Hepsiba paid her few coins. Hepsiba waited until the landlady had retired behind her bar with her blaring color TV. Then, Hepsiba leaned in and further confided:

“I do prophesy that you will marry this millionaire, because that is just good sense. But, rich men can be wicked men. He might make happy, but before you live ‘ever after,’ he might make your life into hell. So, I will teach you how to escape that hell. This is not a story for innocent little girls. So listen to me closely nowYou do not poison him. No, not right away. Never get too eager. You must wait for him to fall ill of a natural sickness. Because all men, even the strongest men, are born of women and made of flesh and blood. So, when this man you once loved and you have learned to hate, falls sick at last, do not rejoice. No. You do the opposite. You cling to him. You weep for him. You nurse him with tender care.

And you feed him. No one else. Only you. You feed him all his favorite things, made with your own hands, all your dishes that he always liked best. You cry with joy when he eats, but you don’t just cry in front of him. No, you go into the church, and you cry to your confessor. And you confess, too. You confess some small venial sins from your dirty heart, and then you tell this priest: ‘My sins are destroying my happy life with this man who I love so much!’ And then you go to your girlfriends, all the women who love you best, and who trust you, you say to them, weeping, ‘I fear so much that my beloved will die!’

That is just the first part of his dying. Becaus, in that first episode, you have to cure the sick man. He suffers a great deal, because of the secret poisons that you put in his food. But first, you have to
cure him
. You have to save him from his painful sickness, with your patience and devotion. Then, he does get better and he is slowly restored to his health. That is why he trusts you so much, the second time. That is why he believes in you.

Then you wait, once again. That is the second episode. You wait, like the she-cat at the mousehole. Then, some illness strikes him, because illness will surely come, over time. And this time, you go back again, to your priest, and your girls, and his relatives. You wring your hands and you suffer and weep a great deal, and you tell them, ‘I had hoped that he was all better, and I rejoiced, but this time he is much worse!’ And you suffer twice as much than in the first episode. You refuse to eat, and you grow thin, just as he grows thin. That part of the story is very important. Because he will not walk toward his grave unless you accompany him.

Then again, he recovers from his sickness again, except — not so well, not like before. He remains under the shadow of his sickness — that second time. The shadows of forthcoming doom, they cling to his body, the second time. Then, at last, the third time comes. That is when you poison him and also praise him. You praise him to everybody. You go to the priest and the girls and all the relations, and you tell them, ‘He is fighting his deadly sickness like a hero! I never knew he was so brave!’ And they go to his bedside and they all tell him, unprompted and uncoached, ‘You are fighting this deadly sickness like a hero, you are so brave!’

That’s when you can poison him fatally. Since he is a brave man, and a fighting man, he will die in a noble defeat. Because he is doing what everyone wants him to do. That was his purpose as a man. And he will die, if he has any honor. He will die for you, and for his own pride. Sometimes, you don’t even have to poison him! Many men hurry to die in that way!

When he dies, the voodoo continues. There is a fourth episode. To understand this part is very important. He is a ghost now, but you also become the shadow of yourself. You are thin and dressed all in black. You look the picture of misery. So great is your grief and loss that you are a trial for all to look on. So, when your tormentor is finally deep in the earth, and you find yourself some other man — a younger and prettier man, who is kinder to you — all those around you are very happy about that. They rejoice for you. They do not have any doubts, they suspect nothing. They are glad to be relieved of your awful grief and your suffering. It pleases them to no longer feel so sorry for you. That is how true voodoo is done, my dear. That is how a witch kills a man properly. Not by beating him to death in a stupid rage the way that men do to us women, but by persuading him to die like a hero. That killing is done through patience and womanly wisdom, and by understanding him better than he will ever understand you. Did you listen to my story?”

“Yes,” said Farfalla.

“I’m glad that you were listening.”

“I understand that story completely. You must love me a lot, to tell me a story so terrible. That is the worst story I ever heard.”

“My dear, you are young. You lack experience in these things.”

“That’s true, I am young. I don’t know very much about the world. Not yet. But, my God, my poor boyfriend! He is so futuristic, I could kill him with that magic in a week. He would never stand a chance.”

“If he is that easy,” shrugged Hepsiba, “then you had better make sure that no other witch gets her claws on him.”

“Well, I’ll never kill him. Not him. It would be ten times easier for me to kill myself.”

“Suicide is for cowards! We are the adepts! Don’t be a foolish amateur, who wants the quick way out! And, mind you, any slow poison will do the work. It’s not about some precious powder that you pay the priestess for — it’s all about
the hatred.
The smallest axe can fell the biggest tree.” Hepsiba gazed upward. “Like an airplane that fells a skyscraper. Black magic can change the whole world!”

“I love him, but maybe I will never understand him,” said Farfalla, slowly. “He upsets me so much, and he loses his temper with me and is rude to me, and there are so many things about him that are dark and terrible, and I know, for sure, that he must be wrong for me in a thousand ways, but, well, never. I could never do that awful thing that you just taught me how to do.” Farfalla looked at her fingernails. “Well, never to him.”

“It’s good that you admit your shortcomings,” said Hepsiba, serenely. “But still, you must always remember my good advice. Because — this nice man you love? — he might well die, for
other
reasons. Then, some brute might marry you. You will need to remember how to do him in.”

“Oh,” said Farfalla. “Yes, I see. I didn’t think that far ahead.”

“This magic works not just for husbands, my dear. It also works for sons-in-law, young grandsons... any man who is a real man. It even works for some enemy women! But, for an enemy woman, you will generally need two or three women friends. To help you conspire to destroy her.”

“You are so much wiser than me,” said Farfalla. “I’m a grown woman now, and I feel like such a child... I don’t even know what to say! But I want you to meet my boyfriend. I want you to learn his name, and look into his face. You are my Nana. I want you to give us your blessing.”

“No,” said Hepsiba. “No, why should I do that? This favela world is not your gentleman’s castle! Look at that boar-pig happily eating his garbage there. We’re going to eat that pig, this very winter. I already know where your man is. I know about his fine hotel. I have seen that building. I can ride a bus anywhere in this city, and I can look at all the fine rich people. They are visible to me. They cannot ever see me, because I am occult.”

“I know that I seem innocent and stupid,” said Farfalla, “and I agree with you about all that, but even if I hid from him, here in the favela... I know that he would come here to get me. He would come here to get me, to make me his own. I don’t want to belong to him, but nothing would stop him! He would show up here faster than email. I swear to God that lawyers, guns and money wouldn’t stop him!”

“My dear,” nodded Hepsiba, “you are pretty, but no pretty girl is
that
pretty. He will never come here to this favela. Our landlady here at this bar, Dona Ida Cardoso, she is as good as bread. She pays protection to the First Command of the Capital, a gang so scary that the Sao Paulo police have to come here in armored cars. No, even their armored cars will not do. Here, they fly over us in helicopters. He will never come here.”

“Oh, yes, he would most certainly come here. Nevertheless, he would come here. For me, he would come here. I can prophesy that he would come here. I know that my words would come true.”

Hepsiba considered this. “It might be, that we could go to see him. He would never come here to see us.”

“Nana, he would be here. He wouldn’t even realize that this was hard to do. He would come here like tomorrow morning comes here. The future comes to everybody. This place
is
the future.”

“If you foresee this rightly,” said Hepsiba, “then this man is not your One. He is not even a man with a soul. This man would be your Demon. He would possess you.”

“Nana, yes, he would possess me. He would come to the end of the Earth to possess me. Something about him is
already
here. Possessing me! I know him, I know what he is!”

Chapter Twenty-Three: Bachelor Party

Gavin sipped his caipirinha through a gleaming steel straw. How could Brazil’s national drink possibly be so fantastically good? As mixed drinks went, a caipirinha was as simple as dirt: just mint, lime, cane sugar, and cachaça. And cachaça was just fermented sugar cane. Three ingredients.

Gavin’s ears were gently ringing. What a wild event this Futurist Congress had been. Never had he given so much of himself, or attracted so much public attention. He wasn’t even billed at the event as a formal speaker. He’d just walked into the place, out of nowhere, really. And yet Carlo, the organizer, had quickly shunted him onto four different panels. As the event’s surprise guest star.

After those panels, came the bloggers, the newspaper people, the Brazilian television crews...

Italians were swarming at this Sao Paulo event. The Italians from the Capri Futurist event were here to repay the favor. To tell the truth, that wasn’t a “favor” at all. The chic Italians were here to awe the Brazilians, and to loot-and-sack Brazil’s emerging luxury market.

Yet, the Paulistas were cool about that. The Paulistas didn’t mind Italians. This city of Sao Paulo was a densely Italian city. A hundred years ago, half the population of Sao Paulo had been Italian. The famous Paulista accent, unique in Brazil, was an Italianized Portuguese accent. Even modern Italians didn’t know about that. That was the kind of weird, local-color detail that you had to show up here to learn.

Brazil was a continental American superpower. Brazil had carelessly swallowed generations of Italians. Many, many more Italians became Brazilians, than Brazilians would ever become Italians. That seemed to be the basic difference between a “power” and a “superpower.” Which nation had the power to suck the living human flesh from another nation?