Читать книгу ALCHEMIES OF THE HEART - David Dorian - Страница 23

The Jealous Gods

Alvard Norst was my friend. With a face right out of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung, Alvard looked like a hero from a Nordic saga. He hovered over my life like an albatross over a lost sailboat.

At the age of thirteen, this young Norwegian boy adorned the walls of his room with posters of Dizzy Gillespie and John Coltrane. Alvard was an aficionado of black pornography. On the wall across his bed, he had framed a signed photograph of Jeannie Pepper, who had appeared in Chocolate Delights, Anal Innocence, Black Taboo, In and Out of Africa. Every morning he’d masturbate to Jeannie’s breast. His movie collection favored black exploitation films like I’m Gonna Get You Sucka, Across 110th Street, Black Heat, Coonskin, and Foxy Brown. Restless in his native village of Tromso, two hundred miles inside the Arctic Circle, this son of a fisherman bought a one-way ticket to New York. He boarded the USS Constitution, a drakkar of steel, for a maritime trek to the New World. Instead of seven hours by plane, Alvard, a true Viking, opted for a sea voyage, seven days in the North Atlantic crossing, fighting gales and squalls.

Black girls and jazz had lured him to the New World. This silver-blond-haired youth with iceberg-blue eyes waited on tables at Birdland Jazz Club. He befriended musicians and became a protégé of New York’s jazz elite. They had never seen a whiter man than Alvard Norst.

Imitating the lifestyle of the musicians he revered, he began playing the saxophone, using cannabis then cocaine, and became an addict. An overdose sent him to the emergency room at Good Samaritan Hospital, in Suffern, New York. As soon as he was released, he abused the drug again a second time and was committed again. While in detox, wrestling with dragons, he fell in love with his rehabilitation therapist. She was a black girl with an archetypal face who could have modeled for the best sculptor from Benin. She had a name right out of Greek mythology, Ariadne. Didn’t Ariadne guide Theseus out of the labyrinth? And with her assistance, didn’t he slaughter the Minotaur? Alvard, like his Nordic forebears, was superstitious particularly at the tender age of nineteen. He interpreted his encounter with Ariadne as an omen. He would slay the opiate monster that held him captive and sail in into the moonlit fjord with his paramour.

They rented an efficiency studio in Astoria. He supported himself by playing the saxophone in jazz clubs. Their idyllic romance blossomed. He was happy with his Ariadne. But the gods are envious of mortals, and they are known to sow discord and consternation among the living who experience joy.

A routine medical checkup revealed a lesion in the occipital lobe. Few months later, Ariadne died. To fight death, he registered for medical school. He was an exceptional student. Many reputed hospitals invited to join their staff. He chose Good Samaritan, where years ago he’d been treated for his substance abuse. That’s where we met.

While writing this blurb about my friend, the phone rang. It was him. Dining at a Moroccan restaurant near the UN, he had met a Moroccan woman. She was a journalist, a dissident. The flavor of the week, I thought.