Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader

by William S. Burroughs

  Number four is Ba, the Heart, often treacherous. This is a hawk’s body with your face on it, shrunk down to the size of a fist. Many a hero has been brought down, like Samson, by a perfidious Ba.

  Number five is Ka, the Double, most closely associated with the subject. The Ka, which usually reaches adolescence at the time of bodily death, is the only reliable guide through the Land of the Dead to the Western Lands.

  Number six is Khaibit, the Shadow, Memory, your whole past conditioning from this and other lives.

  Number seven is Sekhu, the Remains.

  * * *

  I first encountered this concept in Norman Mailer’s Ancient Evenings, and saw that it corresponded precisely with my own mythology, developed over a period of many years, since birth in fact.

  Ren, the Director, the Secret Name, is your life story, your destiny—in one word or one sentence, what was your life about?

  Nixon: Watergate.

  Billy the Kid: ¿Quién es?

  And what is the Ren of the Director?

  Actors frantically packing in thousands of furnished rooms and theatrical hotels: “Don’t bother with all that junk, John. The Director is on stage! And you know what that means in show biz: every man for himself.”

  Sekem corresponds to my Technician: Lights. Action. Camera.

  “Look, boss, we don’t got enough Sek to fry an elderly woman in a fleabag hotel fire. And you want a hurricane?”

  “Well, Joe, we’ll just have to start faking it.”

  “Fucking moguls don’t even know what buttons to push or what happens when you push them. Sure, start faking it and leave the details to Joe.”

  Look, from a real disaster you get a pig of Sek: sacrifice, tears, heartbreak, heroism and violent death. Always remember, one case of VD yields more Sek than a cancer ward. And you get the lowest acts of which humans are capable—remember the Italian steward who put on women’s clothes and so filched a seat in a lifeboat? “A cur in human shape, certainly he was born and saved to set a new standard by which to judge infamy and shame.”

  With a Sek surplus you can underwrite the next one, but if the first one’s a fake you can’t underwrite a shithouse.

  Sekem is second man out: “No power left in this set.” He drinks a bicarbonate of soda and disappears in a belch.

  Lots of people don’t have a Khu these days. No Khu would work for them. Mafioso Don: “Get offa me, Khu crumb! Worka for a living!”

  Ba, the Heart: that’s sex. Always treacherous. Suck all the Sek out of a man. Many Bas have poison juices.

  The Ka is about the only soul a man can trust. If you don’t make it, he don’t make it. But it is very difficult to contact your real Ka.

  Sekhu is the physical body, and the planet is mostly populated with walking Sekhus, just enough Sek to keep them moving.

  The Venusian invasion is a takeover of the souls. Ren is degraded by Hollywood down to John Wayne levels. Sekem works for the Company. The Khus are all transparent fakes. The Bas is rotten with AIDS. The Ka is paralyzed. Khaibit sits on you like a nagging wife. Sekhu is poisoned with radiation and contaminants and cancer.

  There is intrigue among the souls, and treachery. No worse fate can befall a man than to be surrounded by traitor souls. And what about Mr. Eight-Ball, who has these souls? They don’t exist without him, and he gets the dirty end of every stick.

  Eights of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your dirty rotten vampires.

  Joe the Dead lowered the rifle, like some cryptic metal extension growing from his arm socket, and smiled for a fleeting moment. A blush touched his ravaged features with a flash of youth that evaporated in powder smoke. With quick, precise movements he disassembled the telescoping rifle and silencer and fitted the components into a toolbox. Behind him, Kim Carsons and Mike Chase lay dead in the dust of the Boulder Cemetery. The date was September 17, 1899.

  Joe walked away from the Cemetery, back toward Pearl Street and the center of town, whistling a dry raspy little tune like a snake shedding its skin. He made his way to the train station, bought a ticket to Denver and took a shot of morphine in the outhouse. Two hours later he was back in his Denver stronghold.

  No regrets about Kim. Arty type, no principles. And not much sense. Sooner or later he would have precipitated a senseless disaster with his histrionic faggotries . . . a chessman to be removed from the board, perhaps to be used again in a more advantageous context.

  Mike Chase was slated for a disastrous presidency, replete with idiotic legislation, backed by Old Man Bickford, one of the whiskey-drinking, poker-playing evil old men who run America from the back rooms and clubhouses. Nothing upsets someone like Bickford more than the sudden knowledge that an unknown player is sitting in on a game he thought was all his. Such men cannot tolerate doubt. They must have everything sewed up tight.

  Joe could of course throw in with Bickford—another sinking ship, only sinking a bit slower. Laissez-faire capitalism was a thing of the past that would metamorphose into conglomerate corporate capitalism, another dead end. A problem cannot be solved in terms of itself. The human problem cannot be solved in human terms. Only a basic change in the board and the chessmen could offer a chance of survival. Consider the Egyptian concept of seven souls, with different and incompatible interests. They must be welded into one. Otherwise the organism remains wide open to parasitic attack.

  There were a number of valid reasons for eliminating Kim and Chase. They were jointly responsible for the death of Tom Dark. Chase set it up, Kim rode into it. There is never any excuse for negligence. Joe and Tom belonged to the same ancient guild—tinkers, smiths, masters of fire. . . . Loki, Anubis and the Mayan God Kak U Pacat, He Who Works in Fire. Masters of number and measurement. . . technicians. With the advent of modern technology, the guild gravitated toward physics, mathematics, computers, electronics and photography. Joe could have done this, except he was tied down in Kim’s Rover-Boy weapon models, doing what any hack gunsmith could have done.

  But the real reason was PAIN. In a universe controlled and delineated by Kim and his obsession with antiquated weaponry, Joe was in hideous and constant pain. His left arm and side clung to him like a burning mantle. That pain could be alleviated by morphine. The other pain, the soul pain, morphine and heroin could not touch. Joe had been brought back from the Land of the Dead, back from Hell. Every movement, everything he looked at, was a source of excruciating pain.

  The safe that had blown up in his face and nearly killed him was in a warehouse used as a beer drop. Crates of old oranges stacked around . . . the box looked like you could open it with a can opener. Joe carried the blast always with him, a reek of rotten burning oranges, cordite and scorched metal. Joe’s withered, blighted face, seared by the fires of Hell from the molten core of a doomed planet.

  As he walked away from the cemetery humming “A Bicycle Built for Two,” Joe felt good. For the first time in years the pain was gone. It was like a shot of morphine in fourth-day withdrawal. Killing always brought a measure of relief, as if the pain had been siphoned off. But in this instance the relief was profound, since Kim was an integral part of the pain context. Shoot your way to freedom, Joe thought. He knew the pain would come back, but by then perhaps he would see a way out.

  He turned into Pleasant Street. . . trees and lawns and red brick houses. The street was curiously empty. The dogs were quiet. Just the wind in trembling poplars, and the sound of running water . . . A smell of burning leaves. A boy in a red sweater rode by on a bicycle and smiled at Joe.

  It was just as well that he had concealed his assets and talents. That would make him much harder to locate when Bickford realized things had gone wrong and started looking for the unknown player. Bickford knew about Joe’s past, of course, but would have considered him unimportant. A gunsmith, a checker player—not even chess.

  Over the centuries and tens of centuries, Joe had served many men—and many Gods, for men are but the representatives of Gods. He had served many, and respecte
d none. “They don’t even know what buttons to push or what happens when you push them. Push themselves out of a job every fucking time.”

  Joe is the Tinker, the Smith, the Master of Keys and Locks, of Time and Fire, the Master of Light and Sound, the Technician. He knows the how and the when. The why does not concern him. He has left many sinking ships. “So I am to take orders from a birdbrained posturing faggot? Just leave the details to Joe. . . . Well, he left one too many. They all do.”

  He would have to move quickly before Bickford & Co. could recover and close the leak. He knew there was only one man who could effect the basic changes dictated by the human impasse: Hassan i Sabbah: HIS. The Old Man of the Mountain. And HIS was cut off by a blockade that made the Gates of Anubis look like a dimestore lock.

  Joe understood Kim so well that he could afford to dispense with him as a part of himself not useful or relevant at the present time. He understood Kim’s attempt to transcend his physical structure, to which he could never become reconciled, by an icy, inhuman perfection of attitude, painfully maintained and refined to an unbearable pitch. Joe turned to a negation of attitude, a purity of function that could be maintained only by the pressure of deadly purpose.

  The simplest task caused him almost unbearable pain, like looking about his workspace and putting every object in its ordained place, each object to be either assigned a place or moved to another room, which resulted in moving one clutter to another place where he would, in time, extend his tidying process until each object had felt the touch of his hand, and those objects that finally belonged nowhere would be arranged into what he called a Muriel, a final expression of random disorder.

  This continual pain is a sanction imposed by Nature, whose laws he flouts by remaining alive. Joe’s only lifeline is the love of certain animals. Dogs immediately see him with deep hatred as the Stranger, but he can make himself invisible to dogs, incapable of being seen because the dog’s eyes would hurt, so that the dog skirts the perimeters of his cover.

  Cats see him as a friend. They rub against him purring, and he can tame weasels, skunks and raccoons. He knows the lost art of turning an animal into a familiar. The touch must be very brave and very gentle. He can feel his ki fill the lost hand and the animal turns, its back arched under the phantom touch. If the touch fails, the animal may attack like a demon from Hell. Several people have been killed trying to tame the Tiger Cat, a twenty-pound wildcat found in Central America. Only those who can be without fear can make a familiar. And Joe has nothing left to fear.

  Faint blush transfigured his years and implemented a flash of youth. He unscrewed capitalism, snake shedding its skin. Change terminal. Bought a ticket to offer a chance of outhouse. Hour souls . . . for Mike Chase Joe knows in his arm socket become President, a faint blush flashed some disastrous legislation features a disastrous presidency leaving for Bickford another sink out in nitrous film smoke quick precise Joe detached another dead end. Only a tool box. The board and checkers coo a little tune like survival. Consider the seven ways to the stage melted into one. There is only one man in the Cemetery—HIS. How can the blockade be broken and the day’s cul de sac?

  Neferti is eating breakfast at a long, wooden table with five members of an expedition: English, French, Russian, Austrian, Swedish. They are housed in a large utility shed, with filing cabinets, cots, footlockers, tool shelves and gun racks.

  The Englishman addresses Neferti: “Look at you, a burnt-out astronaut. You are supposed to bring drastic change . . . to exhort!”

  “It is difficult when my exhortations are shot down by enemy critics backed by computerized thought control.”

  “Critics? Stand up! Exhort!”

  Neferti experiences a sudden surge of energy. He soars to the ceiling. The others continue eating. The Russian is studying graphs on the table between mouthfuls. Up through the ceiling. He encounters a blanket of compacted snow. He breaks through the snow into a crystalline cobalt sky over the ruins of Samarkand.

  Below him he sees a Turkish shed on a rise above a deep blue lake. He alights and walks across an arm of the lake on pilings that protrude a few feet above the surface, to reach a spiral stairway with wide steps of tile in patterns of blue and red. He is willing to remain in this context and to accept whatever new dangers he may encounter. Anything is better than stasis. He is ready to leave his old body as he bounds up the steps, which curve toward a landing about twenty feet above the lake.

  At the top he comes to a door of burnished silvery metal in which he can now see his face and garb. He is dressed in Tartar clothes . . . gold braid, red and blue silk threads with stiff shoulder pads and felt boots. There is a curved sword at his belt. His face is much younger, as is the lean, hard body. The teeth are yellow and hard as old ivory, his mouth set in a desperate grin. Clearly there is immediate danger and the need for drastic action.

  The door has a protruding, circular lock. He twists the lock and the door opens. A small grey dog advances. He knows the dog and tells it to shut up. There are two more door dogs behind it, one black and one brown. He tries to lock the door behind him, but is not quite sure how the mechanism works.

  He is in a small room with low divans around the walls, and pegs for clothes. There is another room of the same size, alongside the entrance hall, separated by a partition with an opening at the far end. In the second room are two men, one an elderly man in a grey djellaba, who presents Neferti to a fat middle-aged eunuch in a brown robe, with a toothless mouth and an unmistakable air of authority and silken cunning. The old eunuch is Master of the Door Dogs.

  Neferti bows and says, “It is my honor.”

  The eunuch bows in return. Obviously they have serious and urgent business.

  A servant brings mint tea and glasses. The three men confer. The door dogs sit immobile, looking from one face to the other.

  The old eunuch takes from a leather bag a worn copy of Officers and Gentlemen. A grey dog sniffs and his lips curl back with a flash of yellow fangs.

  Now he brings out a fork with the dry yellow skein of distant eggs. The brown dog sniffs and his eyes light up.

  He brings forth a page of newsprint, a sweatshirt with the number 23, a knife with a hollow handle. The black dog sniffs . . . a panel slides open. The door dogs file out.

  When Neferti told the door dog to shut up, it was a joke, because door dogs never make a sound. Silent and purposeful, they stray a few inches behind the heels of the target. No matter how quickly he turns, the door dog is always behind him. They are small creatures, not more than twenty pounds, with a long, pointed muzzle, something like a Schipperke. Door dogs are not guarders but crossers of the threshold. They bring Death with them.

  The door dog is a limited artifact. Our most versatile agent is Margaras, the dreaded White Cat, the Tracker, the Hunter, the Killer, also known as the Stone Weasel. He is a total albino. All his body hair is snow-white, and his eyes are pearly white disks that can luminesce from within, a diffuse silver light, or can concentrate into a laser beam. Having no color, he can take all colors. He has a thousand names and a thousand faces. His skin is white and smooth as alabaster. His hair is dead white, and he can curl it around his head in a casque, he can ruffle it or stick it up in a crest, and he’s got complete control of all the hairs on his body. His eyebrows and eyelashes flare out, feeling for the scent. His ass and genital hairs are wired for a stunning shock or a poison deadly as the tentacles of the Sea Wasp.

  There are those who say we have violated the Articles by invoking Margaras. He is too dangerous. He can’t be stopped once he gets the scent. He has not come justa smella you.

  As Margaras closes in, the light waxes brighter and brighter with a musky smell flaring to ozone as the light reeks to a suppurating electric violet. Few can breathe the reeking, seeking light of Margaras. Nothing exists until it is observed, and Margaras is the best observer in the industry.

  “Open up, Prick. You got a Venusian in there.”

  “I’ll kill you, you filthy
sod!”

  LIGHTS—ACTION—CAMERA

  The chase comes to a climax. All around him dogs howl and whimper and scream and moan as Margaras moves closer.

  “What you want with me?”

  “What you asking me for?”

  Give him the light now, right in the face, enough to see the worn red upholstery of the first-class seat with a brass number through his transparent fading shell, fading with a stink of impacted mortality, a final reek of hate from shrieking silence, the pustules on his face swell and burst, spattering rotten venom in the breakfast room.

  “Mrs. Hardy, help! He’s gone bloody mad! Call the police! Call an ambulance!”

  Margaras can follow a trail by the signs, the little signs any creature leaves behind by his passage, and he can follow a trail through a maze of computers. All top-secret files are open to him. The rich and powerful of the earth, those who move behind the scenes, stand in deadly fear of his light.

  The dim silver light of Margaras can invade and wipe out other programs. He is the Call. The Challenge. The Confront. His opponents always try to evade his light, like the squid who disappears in a spray of ink.

  Preferences in food and wines, evaluation of pictures, music, poetry and prose. An identikit picture emerges, charged with the energy of hundreds of preferences and evaluations. He can hide in snow and sunlight on white walls and clouds and rocks, he moves down windy streets with blown newspapers and shreds of music and silver paper in the wind.

  Being albino, Margaras can put on any eye color, hair color, skin color, right up until he “whites” the target. “Push,” “off,” “grease,” “blow away” are out: “White” is in. The White Purr: without color, he attracts all colors and all stains; without odor, he attracts all odors, the fouler the better, into smell swirls, whirlpools, tornados, the dreaded Smell Twisters, creating a low-pressure smell wake so that organic animals explode behind them, the inner smells sucked into the Stink Twister round and round faster faster throwing out a maelstrom of filth in all directions, sucking in more and more over a cemetery and the coffins all pop open and the dead do a grisly Exploding Polka. Privies are sucked out by the roots with old men screaming and waving shitty Montgomery Ward catalogues.