Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader

by William S. Burroughs

  “This yours, lady?”

  I began to laugh. The figure had emerged from a lightless region where everything we have been taught, all the conventional feelings, do not apply. There is no light to see them by. It is from this dark door that the antihero emerges . . .

  A Titanic survivor. . . . You know the one I mean . . .

  “Somewhere in the shadows of the Titanic slinks a cur in human shape. He found himself hemmed in by the band of heros whose watchword and countersign rang out across the deep:

  “‘Women and children first.’

  “What did he do? He scuttled to the stateroom deck, put on a woman’s skirt, a woman’s hat, and a woman’s veil and, picking his crafty way back among the brave men who guarded the rail of the doomed ship, he filched a seat in one of the lifeboats and saved his skin. His identity is not yet known. This man still lives. Surely he was born and saved to set for men a new standard by which to measure infamy and shame . . .”

  Or a survivor of the Hindenburg disaster who was never seen or heard of again. By some strange quirk his name was omitted from the passenger list. He is known as No. 23 . . .

  Drang nach Westen: the drag to the West. When the Traveler turns west, time travel ceases to be travel and becomes instead an inexorable suction, pulling everything into a black hole. Light itself cannot escape from this compacted gravity, time so dense, reality so concentrated, that it ceases to be time and becomes a singularity, where all physical laws are no longer valid. From such license there is no escape . . . stepping westward a jump ahead of the Geiger . . .

  Kim looks up at a burning sky, his face lit by the blazing dirigible. No bones broken, and he didn’t see fit to wait around and check in. . . . No. 23 just faded into the crowd.

  The Bunker is dusty, dust on the old office safe, on the pipe threaders and sledgehammers, dust on his father’s picture. The West has only its short past and no future, no light.

  Kim feels that New York City has congealed into frozen stills in his absence, awaiting the sound of a little voice and the touch of a little hand. . . . Boy walks into an Italian social club on Bleecker Street. A moment of dead ominous silence, dominoes frozen in the air.

  “Can’t you read, kid? Members only.”

  Two heavy bodyguards move toward him.

  “But I’m a member in good standing!” A huge wooden phallus, crudely fashioned and daubed with ocher, springs out from his fly as he cuts loose, shooting with clear ringing peals of boyish laughter as he cleans out that nest of garlic-burping Cosas.

  Patagonian graves, wind and dust. . . . Same old act, sad as a music box running down in the last attic, as darkness swirls around the leaded window. . . . It looks like an early winter. Dead leaves on the sidewalk.

  A number of faces looking out from passports and identity cards, and something that is Kim in all of them. It’s as though Kim walked into a toy shop and set a number of elaborate toys in motion, all vying for his attention. . . . “Buy me and me and meeee . . .”

  Little figures shoot each other in little toy streets . . . hither and thither, moves and checks and slays, and one by one back in the closet lays. He can feel the city freeze behind him, a vast intricate toy with no children to play in it, sad and pointless as some ancient artifact shaped to fill a forgotten empty need.

  There is an urgency about moving westward—or stepping westward, isn’t it? A wildish destiny? One is definitely a jump or a tick ahead of something . . . the Blackout . . . the countdown . . . or the sheer, shining color of police? Perhaps you have just seen the same Stranger too many times, and suddenly it is time to be up and gone.

  One-way ticket to the Windy City. . . . “There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight.” Tiny figures string looters up to paper lampposts as the fire raging on the backdrop is bent horizontal by the wind. Two actors in a cow do a song-and-dance number, tripping each other up and squirting milk at the audience.

  “One dark night when all the people were in bed”—squirt squirt squirt—“Mrs. O’Leary took a lantern to the shed.”

  Mrs. O’Leary with her milk pail—clearly she is retarded, or psychotic. She looks around the barn blankly (I’m sorry, I guess I have the wrong number), puts the lantern down, goes to the door and looks out (Oh well, he’s always late. I’ll wait inside for him). The cow kicks the pail over with a wink and sings, “There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight.”

  The cow dances offstage, and suddenly the audience realizes that the fire in the backdrop is real. . .

  Meet me in Saint Louie, Louie

  Meet me at the fair

  Don’t tell me the lights are shining

  Anyplace but there . . .

  The lights go on. The music plays. Well-dressed characters stroll through the fountains and booths and restaurants. . . . There is Colonel Greenfield, and Judge Farris, Mrs. Worldly, Mr. and Mrs. Kindheart. . . . Walk-on parts, all perfectly dressed models of wealth and calm self-possession . . .

  The Director screams out: “No, no, no! It’s too stiff! Loosen it up, let’s see some animation. Tell a joke. “

  “Well, you see the clerk is being nice. This old colored mammy wants to buy some soap: ‘You mean toilet soap, madam.’

  “‘Oh no, just some soap to wash my hands and face . . .’”

  “It’s a sick picture, B. J.”

  “Oh well, the songs will carry it.”

  Meet Me in Saint Louis, The Trolley Song, Saint Louis Blues, Long Way from Saint Louis. . . They are turning off the fountains, carrying the sets away.

  “All right, you extras, line up here.”

  “Look, I told a joke. I get one-liner pay.”

  “You mean you dropped a heavy ethnic. We had to cut the whole scene.” A security guard edges closer. “Pick up your bread and beat it, Colonel.”

  Train whistles . . . “Saint Albans Junction.”

  “Which way is the town?”

  “What town?”

  “Saint Albans.”

  “Where you been for twenty years, Mister?”

  Just the old farmhouse . . . where are the boys? There are no boys, just the empty house.

  Denver . . . Mrs. Murphy’s Rooming House, a little western ketch in the station . . . Salt Chunk Mary’s, rings and watches spilling out on the table . . . Joe Varland drops with a hole between his eyes . . . train whistles . . . CLEAR CREEK,weeds growing through the rails . . . “End of the line: Fort Johnson.”

  “All rise and face the enemy!”

  The Wild Fruits stand up, resplendent in their Shit Slaughter uniforms. Each drains a champagne glass of heroin and aconite. They throw the glasses at the gate.

  When shit blood spurts from the knife

  Denn geht schön alles gut!

  They stagger and fall. Kim feels the tingling numbness sweeping through him, legs and feet like blocks of wood . . . the sky begins to darken around the edges, until there is just a tiny round piece of sky left. . . SPUT he hits a body, bounces off, face to the sky . . . he is moving out at great speed, streaking across the sky . . . Raton Pass . . . the wind that blew between the worlds, it cut him like a knife . . . back in the valley, now in the store being tested—Wouldn’t mind being reborn as a Mexican, he thought wistfully, knowing he really can’t be reborn anywhere on this planet. He just doesn’t fit somehow.

  Tom’s grave . . . Kim rides out on a pack horse. Kim, going the other way, heads out on a strawberry roan. A rattle of thunder across the valley. Kim scratches on a boulder: Ah Pook Was Here.

  Frogs croaking, the red sun on black water . . . a fish jumps . . . a smudge of gnats . . . this heath, this calm, this quiet scene; the memory of what has been, and never more will be . . . back on the mesa top, Kim remembers the ambush. Time to settle that score.

  Kim is heading north for Boulder. Should make it in five, six days hard riding. He doesn’t have much time left. September 17, 1899, is the deadline, only ten days away.

  In Libre, Colorado, his horse is limping. Kim figures to sell him and
move on, after a night’s sleep. He receives an early morning visit from Sheriff Marker and his frog-faced deputy.

  “So you’re Kim Carsons, aren’t you?”

  “So you got a flier?”

  “Nope. Just wondered if you figure on staying long.”

  “Nope. Horse is lame. I figure to sell him, buy another, and move on.”

  “Maybe you better get the morning train. Faster that way.”

  Kim took the stage to Boulder, arriving at 3:00 P.M.on September 16.

  He checked into the Overlook Hotel. . . . “Room with bath. I’ll take the suite, in fact. I may be entertaining.”

  Kim took a long, hot bath. He looked down at his naked body, an old servant that had served him so long and so well, and for what? Sadness, alienation . . . he hadn’t thought of sex for months.

  “Well, space is here. Space is where your ass is.”

  He dries himself, thinking of the shoot-out and making his own plans. He knows Mike Chase will have a plan that won’t involve a straight shootout. Mike is faster, but he doesn’t take chances. Kim will use his .44 special double-action. Of course it isn’t as fast as Mike’s .455 Webley, but this contest won’t be decided by a barrage. First two shots will tell the story and end it. Kim will have to make Mike miss his first shot, and he’ll have to cover himself.

  But Mike has no intention of shooting it out with Kim. Mike is fast and he is good, but he always likes to keep the odds in his favor. The fill-your-hand number is out of date.

  This is 1899, not 1869, Mike tells himself. Oh yes, he will keep the appointment at the Boulder Cemetery. But he has three backup men with hunting rifles. This is going to be his last bounty hunt. Time to move on to more lucrative and less dangerous ventures. He will put his past behind him, take a new name. He has a good head for business, and he’ll make money, a lot of money, and go into politics.

  It is a clear, crisp day. . . . Aspens splash the mountains with gold. Colorado Gold, they call it; only lasts a few days.

  The cemetery is shaded by oak and maple and cottonwood, overhanging a path that runs along its east side. Leaves are falling. The scene looks like a tinted postcard: “Having fine time. Wish you were here.”

  Mike swings into the path at the northeast corner, wary and watchful. He is carrying his Webley .455 semi-automatic revolver. His backup men are about ten yards behind him.

  Kim steps out of the graveyard, onto the path.

  “Hello, Mike.” His voice carries cool and clear on the wind.

  Twelve yards . . . ten. . . eight. . .

  Kim’s hand flicks down to his holster and up, hand empty, pointing his index finger at Mike.

  “BANG! YOU’RE DEADl”

  Mike clutches his chest and crumples forward in a child’s game.

  “WHAT THE FU______” Someone slaps Kim very hard on the back, knocking the word out. Kim hates being slapped on the back. He turns in angry protest . . . blood in his mouth . . . can’t turn . . . the sky darkens and goes out.

  from the western lands

  (SELECTIONS)

  The old writer lived in a boxcar by the river. This was fill land that had once been a dump heap, but it was not used anymore: five acres along the river which he had inherited from his father, who had been a wrecker and scrap metal dealer.

  Forty years ago the writer had published a novel which had made a stir, and a few short stories and some poems. He still had the clippings, but they were yellow and brittle now and he never looked at them. If he had removed them from the cellophane covering in his scrapbook they would have shredded to dust.

  After the first novel he started on a second, but he never finished it. Gradually, as he wrote, a disgust for his words accumulated until it choked him and he could no longer bear to look at his words on a piece of paper. It was like arsenic or lead, which slowly builds up in the body until a certain point is reached and then . . . he hummed the refrain of “Dead Man Blues” by Jelly Roll Morton. He had an old wind-up Victrola and sometimes he played the few records he had.

  He lived on a small welfare check and he walked a mile to a grocery store once a week to buy lard and canned beans and tomatoes and vegetables and cheap whiskey. Every night he put out trotlines and often he would catch giant catfish and carp. He also used a trap, which was illegal, but no one bothered him about it.

  Often in the morning he would lie in bed and watch grids of typewritten words in front of his eyes that moved and shifted as he tried to read the words, but he never could. He thought if he could just copy these words down, which were not his own words, he might be able to put together another book and then . . . yes, and then what?

  Most of his time he sat on a little screened porch built onto the boxcar and looked out over the river. He had an old twelve-gauge double-barreled shotgun, and sometimes he would shoot a quail or a pheasant. He also had a .38 snub-nosed revolver, which he kept under his pillow.

  One morning, instead of the typewritten words, he saw handwritten words and tried to read them. Some of the words were on pieces of cardboard and some were on white typewriter paper, and they were all in his handwriting. Some of the notes were written on the inside bottom of a cardboard box about three inches by four inches. The sides of the box had been partially torn away. He looked carefully and made out one phrase: “the fate of others.”

  Another page had writing around the side and over the top, leaving a blank space three by seven inches on the right side of the page. The words were written over each other, and he could make out nothing.

  From a piece of brown paper he read: “2001.”

  Then there was another white sheet with six or seven sentences on it, words crossed out, and he was able to read:

  “well almost never”

  He got up and wrote the words out on a sheet of paper. 2001 was the name of a movie about space travel and a computer called HAL that got out of control. He had the beginning of an idea for a ventriloquist’s act with a computer instead of a dummy, but he was not able to finish it.

  And the other phrase, “well almost never.” He saw right away that it didn’t mean “well almost never,” that the words were not connected in sequence.

  He got out his typewriter, which hadn’t been used in many years. The case was covered with dust and mold and the lock was rusted. He set the typewriter on the table he used to eat from. It was just two-by-fours attached to the wall and a heavy piece of half-inch plywood that stretched between them and an old oak chair.

  He put some paper in the machine and started to write.

  I can see a slope which looks like sand carved by wind but there is grass or some green plant growing on it. And I am running up the slope . . . a fence and the same green plants now on a flat meadow with a mound delineated here and there . . . he was almost there . . . almost over the fence . . . roads leading away . . . waiting. . . .

  Lying in bed I see handwritten notes and pages in front of my eyes. I keep trying to read them but I can only get a few words here and there. . . . Here is a little cardboard box with the sides torn half off and the writing on the inside bottom and I can read one phrase . . . “the fate of others” . . . and another on a piece of paper . . . “2001” . . . and on a page of white paper with crossouts and only about six sentences on the page . . . “well almost never” . . . and that’s all. One page has writing all around the edges, on one side and the top. I can’t read any of it.

  The old novelists like Scott were always writing their way out of debt. . . laudable . . . a valuable attribute for a writer is tenacity. So William Seward Hall sets out to write his way out of death. Death, he reflects, is equivalent to a declaration of spiritual bankruptcy. One must be careful to avoid the crime of concealing assets . . . a precise inventory will often show that the assets are considerable and that bankruptcy is not justified. A writer must be very punctilious and scrupulous about his debts.

  Hall once admonished an aspiring writer, “You will never be a good writer because you are an inveterate check dodg
er. I have never been out with you when you didn’t try to dodge your share of the check. Writers can afford many flaws and faults, but not that one. There are no bargains on the writer’s market. You have to pay the piper. If you are not willing to pay, seek another vocation.” It was the end of that friendship. But the ex-friend did take his advice, probably without intending to do so. He applied his talents to publicity, where no one is ever expected to pay.

  So cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.

  Wenn Du dies nicht hast dieses Sterben und Werden,

  Bist du nur ein trübe Gust aufder dunklen Erden.

  When you don’t have this dying and becoming,

  You are only a sad guest on the dark Earth.

  —Goethe

  The ancient Egyptians postulated seven souls.

  Top soul, and the first to leave at the moment of death, is Ren, the Secret Name. This corresponds to my Director. He directs the film of your life from conception to death. The Secret Name is the title of your film. When you die, that’s where Ren came in.

  Second soul, and second one off the sinking ship, is Sekem: Energy, Power, Light. The Director gives the orders, Sekem presses the right buttons.

  Number three is Khu, the Guardian Angel. He, she, or it is third man out. . . depicted as flying away across a full moon, a bird with luminous wings and head of light. Sort of thing you might see on a screen in an Indian restaurant in Panama. The Khu is responsible for the subject and can be injured in his defense—but not permanently, since the first three souls are eternal. They go back to Heaven for another vessel. The four remaining souls must take their chances with the subject in the Land of the Dead.