And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tanks

by William S. Burroughs

  Phillip said, “That’s good. Let’s go in and see it.” So we went in and sat in an orchestra seat. Something had gone wrong with the air-conditioning system and it was suffocating in there.

  The picture started off with a caption telling of the murder of thousands of British soldiers in the Sudan at the hands of the ruthless Fuzzy Wuzzies. Phillip waved his hand and said, “They can murder ’em by the thousands.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  There was an ambush scene where you saw British soldiers and Fuzzy Wuzzies hacking away at each other with sabers and knives and much blood. Most of the picture kept reminding us of Al lying in the yard in a pool of blood, so we couldn’t enjoy it that much. And one of the characters in the story was named Dennison.

  We came out of the theater soaking wet with sweat, and it was even hotter outside. It was now about three-thirty. We went into a bar and drank a few glasses of cold beer.

  “I’ll have to go soon,” Phillip said.

  I said, “What about the museum?”

  “That was a good picture,” Phillip said, “but it kept reminding me that my time is drawing near.”

  We drank and were silent.

  “Well,” he said at length, “let’s go to the museum.”

  We went out and hailed a cab.

  In the air-cooled museum Phil spent ten minutes in front of a portrait of Jean Cocteau by Modigliani. I wandered off to look at Blume’s vast studies of the decline and fall of the West, with Corinthian pillars fallen and always the same underworld types plotting in cellars while priests wail at the sacrifice and Oriental-looking troops gut the city. Then we both stopped in front of Tchelitchew’s Cache-Cache and looked at that for a while.

  There was a tall blond fag, wearing a striped polo shirt and tan slacks, who kept looking at Phil out of the corner of his eye. Even when we went downstairs to see the one-hour movie, the fag was sitting just behind us.

  The movie was an old Italian film made in 1915 with Eleonora Duse in it. Phillip and I thought she was great. There was something virile in her attitude toward tragedy, as though she were defying God to knock off the chip He Himself had placed on her shoulder.

  We went back upstairs to the paintings. I wanted to drink some beer but Phillip insisted on staying in the museum till closing time. I looked around to see if the fag was still tailing Phil, but I didn’t see him.

  Phillip again installed himself in front of Modigliani’s portrait and kept looking at it, with a smile on his face.

  I said, “Meet me down in the bar on 53rd Street. I’m thirsty.”

  Phillip said, “All right,” and I went out of the museum. The blond fag was talking to a young man in the lobby.

  In the bar I took a table in the corner and ordered a bottle of Schlitz beer. The waiter brought it and set it down on the white tablecloth. He didn’t like the way I was dressed, and his manner was a bit indulgent. I was wondering why people made such a fuss over clothes, and while I was thinking about these things the idea of the murder kept popping up and down in a steady rhythm.

  I got hungry after a while, so I ordered a hamburger steak dinner. The waiter brought over silverware and a clean white napkin and a glass of water. The place had that brown east-side light in it, like a rathskeller, and it was cool and pleasant. I looked around, and took in all the characters that were in there.

  While I was waiting for the hamburger steak, I ordered a double bourbon and drank it down in two gulps. When the food came, I ate loosely and goofily, the way you do when you’ve had too many martinis before dinner.

  I was finished and was drinking some beer when Phillip walked in and looked around. I waved at him and he came over.

  “I ate,” I said, “I was hungry.”

  “Don’t apologize, ghoul. I’m hungry too.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Phillip ordered the same dinner plus a bottle of beer, and I ordered another double bourbon.

  The waiter was beginning to brighten up to his table. He was beginning to say “Sir,” and before you knew it he had emptied out my ashtray and wiped it clean with a moist towel.

  Phillip said, “I’ve got about ten dollars left of my uncle’s money. We might as well spend it all before I give myself up.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  Phillip finished eating, and paid the check. We went out on 53rd Street and wandered east until we got to Third Avenue. We found a cheap saloon and went in and sat at the bar.

  “This is where Don Birnam does all his drinking in The Lost Weekend,” I said. “Third Avenue.”

  Phillip ordered two whiskeys and we were launched off again. The door of the bar was open, and a cool late afternoon breeze was blowing in.

  Phillip was getting very nervous now. He kept saying he’d have to go home soon, and I kept reminding him of Boldieu and his white gloves in La Grand Illusion.

  Two soldiers were sitting next to us. They looked like they had spent a winter in the North African campaign. One of them was looking at me and finally he leaned over and wanted to know if there were any whorehouses in this town.

  I wrote down an address for him. “I’m not sure they’re still operating,” I said, “but try it anyway.”

  The other soldier started talking to Phillip and asked him how he liked the merchant marine.

  Phillip said it was fine, and a minute later he got up and stuck out his hand to me.

  “Well, Mike, so long.”

  He took me by surprise. “So long,” I said.

  Phillip walked out the door and I followed him, leaving my change and cigarettes on the bar.

  We stopped outside the door. Phillip stuck out his hand again. He had some change in it. When we shook hands the coins jingled and a few of them dropped down on the sidewalk and clinked. Phillip opened his hand and let the rest of the money drop down from stiff, dramatic fingers.

  “I’ll pick them up,” I warned him.

  “Go ahead. So long, Mike.”

  “So long, Phil.”

  Phillip walked away toward 60th Street and I watched him for a while. I felt like running after him to say good-bye again. He disappeared around the corner walking determinedly, as if he were on his way to work, and I went back inside the bar. I saw the change on the sidewalk and went back outside to pick it up. Then I reentered the bar and ordered a beer and sat in an empty booth.

  It was the loneliest beer I ever had.

  I finally walked out and there I was, all alone, standing on Third Avenue in the late afternoon. The Elevated roared by overhead, and the big trucks rumbled by. Here I was, all alone, and everything was finished.

  I decided right then and there to go off and travel again. I felt like seeing the Pennsylvania hills again, and the scrub pines of North Carolina. I was standing there thinking about this when I saw Phillip returning down Third Avenue, running.

  “What’s the matter?” I was running toward him.

  He took the bloody handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to me.

  “What’ll I do with this?” he asked. “Want it?”

  “Why?”

  “It’s Al’s handkerchief.”

  “I know.”

  “We’ve got to get rid of it,” he said.

  “That’s easy,” I said. I took the handkerchief and dropped it in the gutter. Then we started laughing.

  We were both nervous and half crazy, glad to see each other again.

  “Let’s go into a bar,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said.

  We went to another saloon on Third Avenue and started drinking again. The bar was full of Third Avenue characters, and the bartender was fat and Irish.

  “I gotta go home,” Phillip kept saying. Then he said, “I’m getting sick of my white gloves.” He held up his hands. “I’m weak. The gloves are beginning to chafe.”

  I felt so lousy I didn’t say anything. We were just beginning to realize what had happened.

  “I’ll walk you home,” I told him.

  We had another dri
nk or two and then we were out on the street. I kept saying, “Well ...” and Phillip kept saying, “Well ...” also, and both of us had a lot to say, but there was no room to say it in, we were so tense and close.

  We finally reached Central Park South, and there was Phillip’s uncle’s apartment house. We walked up to the entrance and stopped.

  Phillip waved at the doorman and then said to me, “He’s a neurotic. Some guy.”

  I said, “Yeah.”

  We paused and automatically stuck out our hands.

  “Well,” said Phillip, “here we go again. See you behind bars.”

  “I’ll go and see you,” I said.

  “Bring me good books and all that.”

  “Yeah.”

  We shook hands and patted each other on the shoulders and leered at each other, smiling. Then he said “So long” and I said “So long” and he turned and went into the lobby, and I walked toward Columbus Circle where two big trucks went by that made me want to travel far.

  18

  WILL DENNISON

  PHILLIP’S UNCLE FIXED EVERYTHING UP AND HAD the boy committed to the state nuthouse. I figure he won’t be there more than six months because the uncle knows several doctors on the board who will play ball.

  The cops weren’t too pleased about the way I knew about the murder and still didn’t rush to the nearest phone like a decent citizen who are all supposed to be stool pigeons according to the official ruling. Anyway, I don’t like any sort of publicity. So I took a trip out to Chicago for a few weeks to renew some old acquaintances.

  That town isn’t what it was. Seems like everybody I used to know there five years ago is either dead, in jail, or in the army. But I ran into a few guys I used to know who were still hanging out in the old spots, around North and Halsted.

  When I got back to New York there was a letter from a man in Chicago saying he was a friend of Charley Anderson and would like to see me about a business proposition. There would be something in it for me. It sounded like he had some hot stuff and didn’t know where to take it. There was a phone number in the letter and I called it several times, but did not get the party.

  I decided to go up to Al’s place and see Agnes, who had moved into Al’s room after the murder. I found her packing. She was going to leave town the next day.

  It seemed a Mrs. Rogers had bought the house from Mrs. Frascati and she was weeding out the disorderly elements. Chris Rivers had been thrown out as a chronic deadbeat and sanitary problem. “She’s going to redeco-rate and raise the rents,” Agnes told me.

  “What happened to Hugh Maddox?” I asked.

  “He got three years, but may be allowed to join the army later. No one seems to know for certain.”

  We thought that over for a while, then Agnes said, “Oh, and another thing. You know I packed Al’s things and sent them off to his brother in Memphis. But the radio was missing. Someone must have gone into the room and taken it. I think it was Bunny, that socialite thief from Boston.”

  I said, “Very likely.”

  We sat there in Al’s old room and it began to get dark. Agnes was telling a long story about Mrs. Rogers, but I didn’t listen. Finally I got up to go.

  “If you get out West, look up my old lady,” I told her. “Just ask anybody where is Mrs. Dennison’s grocery store.”

  Agnes said she would do it if she got out to Reno, then we shook hands and said good-bye at the door.

  I went to the Three G’s alone and ate dinner.

  As I was walking home from Sheridan Square someone stepped out of a doorway and said, “Hello, Will.” It was Danny Borman.

  I said, “Well Danny, how are things going, like a house afire, hey?” but he didn’t think that was funny.

  We went back to my room and he began telling me what had happened.

  He did set fire to the house, and several other houses caught fire, which wouldn’t have amounted to much except that some unpatriotic prick had a lot of gasoline hoarded in his basement. Anyway the fire got so big it set fire to a defense plant and a wing of the plant burned down. Somebody yelled sabotage and the FBI was on the case.

  I asked Danny if he collected, and he said yes. He was going to blow town with the money. I didn’t have the heart to ask him for a cut, and he didn’t try to force it on me.

  So we said good-bye and good luck and so forth. Then Danny asked me what had happened with Phillip, and I told him.

  Danny thought about it for a minute and said, “Well, he can go into politics when he gets out.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He ought to be good at that.”

  THE END

  AFTERWORD

  Jack Kerouac was drinking and talking in his living room at 271 Sanders Avenue in his hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, in October 1967. The young poets Ted Berrigan, Aram Saroyan, and Duncan McNaughton were sitting and talking with him; they had come to record an interview for The Paris Review. After a question about his first novel, The Town and the City, Kerouac remarked, “I also wrote another version [of that story] that’s hidden under the floorboards, with Burroughs. It’s called And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks.”

  “Yes,” said Berrigan, “I’ve heard rumors of that book. Everyone wants to get at that book.”

  As the exchange attests, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks had already gained legendary status forty years ago. But when its two authors wrote the text in 1945 they were unpublished and unknown. Hippos predated by more than a decade the works that brought them lasting literary fame—On the Road in 1957 for Kerouac and Naked Lunch in 1959 for William S. Burroughs. Those books, along with Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems in 1956, are the flagship works of the Beat Generation and it seems unlikely that anyone reading this book will be entirely unaware of them.

  Even if all you know about the Hippos novel comes from this book’s jacket, you already know too much for you to meet the text as it was written, by two nobodies and about no one you ever heard of. Thanks to a virtual mountain of Beat bibliography, biography, belles lettres, memoirs, and new archival sources, most of the persons on whom Kerouac and Burroughs based their characters in 1945 are widely recognizable today. For better or worse, Hippos comes to you now as a “framed” work: The Columbia murder that gave birth to the Beats! A lost Kerouac book! A lost Burroughs book!

  Today, sixty-odd years after it was composed, the setting of Hippos—New York City near the end of World War II—makes it a period piece. You’ll want to bring to your reading of this text all the imagery you associate with that period, all the wartime music and automobiles and fashions, the movies and novels and headlines. But depending on which version of the “Lucien Carr–David Kammerer story” you have been served, you will probably want to throw out your pre-conceptions and let the novel’s characters “Phillip Tourian” and “Ramsay Allen” speak for themselves.

  For anyone who just walked in, the basics: the enmeshed relationship between Lucien Carr IV and David Eames Kammerer began in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1936, when Lucien was eleven and Dave was twenty-five. Eight years, five states, four prep schools, and two colleges later, that connection was grown too intense, those emotions too feverish; as “Will Dennison” writes in Hippos, “When they get together, something happens.” Something had to give, and something finally did.

  In the muggy predawn hours of Monday, August 14, 1944, in cruisy Riverside Park on New York’s Upper West Side, Lucien and Dave were alone, drunk and quarreling. They wrestled and struggled in the grass, and then Lucien stabbed Dave with his little Boy Scout knife, twice, in the upper chest. Dave passed out. Lucien assumed he was dead and he rolled Dave’s limp body into the Hudson River—unconscious and bleeding out, arms tied together with shoelaces, pants pockets weighted with rocks—to drown. It took Carr almost twenty-four hours to surrender himself to authorities and still another day for Dave to be hauled up at the foot of West 79th Street.

  The killing was front-page news for a week in New York, but it was especially shocking t
o the three new friends whom Lucien had introduced to one another in his freshman year at Columbia University: Allen Ginsberg, eighteen, a fellow Columbia frosh from Paterson, New Jersey; Jack Kerouac, twenty-two, a recent Columbia dropout from Lowell; and William S. Burroughs, thirty, a Harvard graduate and Kammerer’s friend since 1920, when they were school chums in St. Louis.

  Today, many written explanations of the long, fraught relationship between Kammerer and Carr are available to the interested reader. In almost all of them, however, David is reduced to a pathetic caricature: the obsessive, older male homosexual stalker who increasingly oppresses his innocent, heterosexual victim, finally leaving the younger man no alternative but to “defend his honor” with violence. This was, in fact, the theory of Carr’s legal defense, intended to be palatable to a judge, as well as to the public—especially in 1944.

  There is much more to be said, however, about Lucien Carr’s early life and youthful bisexuality than has ever been published in even the fullest, most reliable biographies of the major Beat figures. Lucien did, for example, share a number of sexual encounters with Ginsberg in 1944. So did Kammerer: that became clear when Ginsberg’s early journals were published in 2006 as The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice. But Lucien never had any sexual contact with Dave—not even once, according to what Burroughs remembered Kammerer telling him often, and undoubtedly Dave would have told his old friend Bill if anything at all had ever happened.

  To almost all who knew the actors, the retrospective sanitizing of Lucien’s sexual history for public consumption seemed forgivable, in the circumstances. After all, even the dead man’s oldest friend did not turn against Carr. William Burroughs was the first person to hear Lucien’s confession, a few hours after the killing; he immediately suggested that Lucien get a good lawyer and turn himself in, relying on the defense-of-honor scenario. Burroughs felt that no purpose would be served by Lucien taking the maximum fall.

  When Lucien hurried to tell Jack the news next, Kerouac was more ambivalent. He had found much to like about David Kammerer. Jack’s bisexuality was confused and covert, but undeniable; he could not feel any real contempt for Kammerer on that account. And yet even though he and Carr had been friends for only six months, Kerouac felt a loyalty to Lucien that overrode his misgivings.