The Narbow

I've always liked the smell of wet asphalt. It smells like a respite. That evening, however, there was something strange in the air: a hint of metallic ozone, as if lightning had been stuck between the buildings on the outskirts of town and was slowly decaying.

I saw him near the ring road pylon, slumped against the peeling concrete.

At first glance, it looked like a condensed collective hallucination. A scaffolding of asymmetrical, crooked light, with colors losing saturation and dripping toward the floor like neon paint on a warm wall. Red and yellow blended into a sickly orange, while indigo seemed to have given up on manifesting itself entirely. At the center of its arc, two half-closed eyes shone, surrounded by a faint reddish halo, staring into space with the weariness of those who haven't slept for three centuries.

I stopped, hands in my pockets, not sure what to say. Usually, when you see a rainbow, you call someone. At that moment, I wanted to call an ambulance. Or the Anti-Doping Agency. It was clear that I was facing the world's first case of... Narcobaleno!

«Do you have a light?»" he croaked. His voice was a hiss of static.

«I don't smoke,»" I replied, taking a step closer. "«And I don't think refracted light has lungs.»

«Witty," he snorted. He sniffed—if he could call it a sniff—inhaling a glittering dust from a wisp of cloud that smelled like a burnt comet. His colors flickered, brightening for a fraction of a second before fading back into opaqueness.

He looked at me. «Don't judge me, human. You have no idea how hard it is to do my damn job these days.»

«Your job? Being… a meteorological phenomenon?»

«Yes, of course. “The meteorological phenomenon.” That’s what you like to call me since you stopped looking up.» He spat out, dropping a drop of purple onto the pavement, which sizzled. «IOr I was born for something else. My permanent contract with the Almighty is clear: Representation of the Serene. Hope in optical form. But you're killing me.»

He slid down the pylon until he almost touched the ground.

«Rodari said: A rainbow without a storm, that would be a celebration. Brilliant, really. But the truth, my friend, is that today there are only storms. Once upon a time, it was enough for me to appear after a summer storm and people would dedicate sonnets to me, or point me out to children. Yesterday they sent me to the Middle East..»

He paused, inhaling another pinch of the astral dust that stained his magenta.

«I was beautiful. I rose in all my glory above a pile of smoking rubble. I wanted to do my duty: bring hope. Do you know what the children did? They ran screaming into the shelters. They thought I was a new chemical weapon. They thought the heavens wanted to kill them again.»

I remained silent. The hum of the streetlights above us seemed the only sound left in the world.

«Is that why you use… that stuff?» I asked him, pointing to the cosmic dust.

«Saturn's rings chopped up, mixed with a bit of interstellar void,»" he whispered. "«I need it to numb myself. Last year, in an Eastern European country, a dictator in uniform broadcast a proclamation saying my colors were a "symbol of weakness.". They fired surface-to-air missiles at me. Antiaircraft guns against the humidity! And when I appear here, in the West, after a flood has washed away half the region? People are too busy shoveling mud to remember that the sky exists. When you're surrounded by ruin, my colors are an insult. I have to dope myself to keep from crying, human. Because if I cry, it starts raining again. And no one can afford that anymore.»

The Narcobaleno closed his eyes. The arch was losing consistency, becoming transparent. It was fading. The weight of being the bridge between the misery of men and the promise of God had crushed him.

«So it's over?» I asked, with a lump in my throat that I hadn't expected. «Are you resigning? Are we leaving everything to the gray?»

He opened one eye again. It was shaking, unsteady.

«Rodari himself said that fantasy is not an escape route, but a tool for transforming reality.» He smiled, a lopsided, melancholy smile that smelled of infinite tiredness. «And then, this morning, in Kiev. There was this little girl. She'd lost her shoes. She was huddling in an oversized coat, in front of a gutted building. She saw me. She tugged on her mother's sleeve, raised a dirt-covered finger at me, and… smiled. Three seconds. Three fucking seconds of peace inside hell.»

The Narcobaleno straightened for an instant, and for a split second I saw the primordial grandeur of the world's first dawn.

«As long as there's even one of you fools willing to smile at some stupid refracted light... I have to clock in. See you tomorrow, human. Don't forget to look up.»

And he disappeared.

I was left alone in the parking lot, with my hands in my pockets and my feet in the water.

I had nothing to smile about that evening. Yet, as I walked home, I realized I wasn't looking at puddles anymore.