Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader

by William S. Burroughs

  With a boy from the magazine making it in a ditch. Summer night breathes through salt-encrusted gills, the porous taste on his tongue in the rubble of wing sheaths and shells, rose-patterned stone under the archways, blue shadow cool on the silken bed, the scent of hyacinths. Mother and Dad will drive me to Liberty, Ohio, a student town. Kiki doesn’t like it.

  A warm wind winter stubble

  Late afternoon in the 1920s

  Room over the florist shop by the vacant lot where I could find snakes under rusty iron

  A little green snake nuzzles lovingly at my face.

  Awhiff of speakeasies, white silk scarves, tuxedos, 1920 wraiths that fade from the paper.

  Christmas was warm soot on melting snow

  walking by granite walls on Euclid

  and I said to my cousin

  “I can’t believe if’s Christmas.”

  The night before Christmas

  And all through the house

  Not a creature is stirring

  Not even a louse.

  A room with high ceilings

  Lobsters in a room with

  high ceilings

  There’s a party down the road

  had to be restrained

  Mick jagger and I think

  pulled the curtains closed

  There was more

  I am off to a hunt

  Remember it

  Last night dogs howling

  A dog to feed

  Lightning in the south of Spain

  Let me tell you some crystal

  and pineapples. . . lobster last

  have a lobster?

  Make luff with you

  in a room with high ceilings

  Sweet rosebuds dear old prince

  Fat and twinkly in his shades

  Dead on the toilet seat

  Selective historians, come on

  Don’t be touchy

  Umbrageous in the apartment

  I glimpsed obligingly a modicum of central heating

  A modicum whippet and the central heat

  Honky foolery yet if I could

  The telephone’s ringing through the sky

  Littered with silver and BOOM BOOM

  Giff any champagne?? When did I?

  My God it’s all so—

  Lobster. . .

  The Wishing Machine

  The old writer lived in a converted boxcar in a junk heap on the river. The junk heap was owned by a wrecking company, and he was the caretaker. Commander of a junk heap. Sometimes he sported a yachting cap. The writer didn’t write anymore. Blocked. It happens.

  It was Christmas night, getting dark. The writer had just walked a quarter mile to a truck stop that was serving hot turkey sandwiches with dressing and gravy to go. He was carrying his sandwich back when he heard a cat mewling. A little black cat stepped into his path. As he put down his shopping bag and leaned toward the cat, it leaped into his arms and snuggled against him, purring loudly.

  Snow was coming down in great soft flakes, falling like the descent of their last end on all the living and the dead, the writer remembered. So he brought the little black foundling back to his boxcar, and they shared the turkey sandwich.

  Next day he walked to the nearest convenience store and bought a supply of cat food. He called the foundling “Smoker” after the Black Smokers. These are clefts in the Earth’s crust, two miles under the sea—no oxygen, no light, and enormous pressure. It would seem axiomatic that no life could exist there. However, abundant life teems along the cleft of a Black Smoker: huge crabs and tuber worms four feet long, and clams as big as dinner plates. One brought to the surface is said to have given off an incredible stink like nobody ever smelled before. These creatures eat minerals and suck nutrients from rotten-egg gas.

  And Smoker was a strange cat. His fur was a glistening soot-black, his eyes a shiny white that glittered in the dark. He grew rapidly. Smoker, a creature of the lightless depths, where life as we on the surface know it cannot exist, brought light and color with him as colors pour from tar. From the total lack of air, from pressures that would crush a submarine like a flattened beer can, he brings a compressed variety of life. Nourished on phosphorescent minerals, his eyes glitter like diamonds. His body is molded from the absence of light. And Smoker loves the writer with a special affection from his special place, with a message urgent as a volcano, or an earthquake, that only the writer can read.

  And the writer begins to write again. Animal stories, of course. He leafs through The Audubon Society Book of Animal Life for his characters . . . the Flying Fox, with long thin black fingers and its sharp sad black face, just like Smoker. A Fishing Bat peeks out of a turtle shell. A Pallid Bat creeps forward, the only ground feeder. The writer caresses the pictures as he turns the pages and pulls them toward him, as he’s seen a mother cat reach out and pull her five kittens to her.

  At sight of the Black Lemur, with round red eyes and a little red tongue protruding, the writer experiences a delight that is almost painful. . . the silky hair, the shiny black nose, the blazing innocence. Bush Babies with huge round yellow eyes, fingers and toes equipped with little sucker pads . . . a Wolverine with thick, black fur, body flat on the ground, head tilted up to show its teeth in a smirk of vicious depravity. (He marks his food with a musk that no other animal can tolerate.) The beautiful Ring-Tailed Lemur, that hops along through the forest as if riding a pogo stick, the Gliding Lemur with two curious folds in his brain. The Aye-aye, one of the rarest of animals, cat-size, with a long bushy tail, round orange eyes and thin bony fingers, each tipped with a long needle claw. So many creatures, and he loves them all.

  Then Smoker disappeared. The old writer canvassed the neighborhood with Smoker’s picture. He offered a fifty-dollar reward. Finally he bought a Wishing Machine. Directions for use are simple. You put a picture, nail clipping, hair or anything connected with the subject of your wish between two copper plates activated by a patented magnetic device that runs on standard current. Then you make your wish.

  “Well, mister. I don’t say it works, but I knowed a man cleared the acne off his daughter’s ugly face. Nobody seen just how ugly it was till he cleared the acne off, and maybe he shouldn’t have done it like that. Then he wished the hemorrhoids of his grandmother to recede perceptibly. Before, they was night-crawlers, now they is like little red worms you play hell threading on your hook. Another bloke kilted a tapeworm in his maiden aunt and her gained ten pounds in one week.”

  “Will it do anything positive, like bringing back a lost cat?”

  “Well, I don’t rightly know, but I figure with this artyfact the sky might not be the limit.”

  “‘All is in the not done, the diffidence that faltered.’”

  “How’s that?”

  “Ezra Pound.”

  “Tell Ezra to pull down his vanity. And bear in mind that this is a murder machine. This you gotta hear: man wished his neighbor dead. Neighbor went full crazy and come after the wisher with a chain saw, cut him in two sections like the lady-sawed-in-half act, difference being the wisher was in no condition to take a bow. And then the neighbor dropped dead from the glory of it. So think, before you wish out some rotten-weed wish.”

  The old Wish Machine peddler drops to his knees and clasps his hands. “Giva me womans, maka me rich!” he mocks.

  The Gods of Chance don’t like whiners, welchers and pikers. Feed a whiny wish through the Machine, and you will soon have ample cause to whine. And from half-assed wishers shall be taken even that which they have.

  “I only want one thing.”

  “In that case you’ll likely get it, one way or another. Well, here’s your machine, all gift-wrapped for Christmas. Just a few more calls to make.”

  Back in his boxcar, the old writer unpacked the machine and plugged it in. He sat down in front of the Wishing Machine and formulated a silent, unconditional wish for Smoker’s return, dead or alive, regardless of any consequences. He knew that the fulfillment of his wish might occas
ion an earthquake (unknown in this area) or a winter tornado. Might even rip the known universe apart.

  “Let it come down.”

  From the boxcar window he could see the snow swirling down like flakes in a paperweight. His wish is a giant arm. He can reach out and turn the paperweight upside down. He can break it in two. He can see Smoker racing through the winter stubble, crystals of snow in his fur, closer and closer. Then, incredibly, a scratch at the door and Smoker’s chittering cry. He slides the door open and blackness pours in.

  It was a hectic, portentous time in Paris, in 1959, at the Beat Hotel, No. 9, rue Git-le-coeur. We all thought we were interplanetary agents involved in a deadly struggle . . . battles . . . codes . . . ambushes. It seemed real at the time. From here, who knows? We were promised transport out of the area, out of Time and into Space. We were getting messages, making contacts. Everything had meaning. The danger and the fear were real enough. When somebody is trying to kill you, you know it. Better get up off your tail and fight.

  Remember when I threw a blast of energy and all the light in the Earl’s Court area of London went out, all the way down to North End Road? There in my five-quid-a-week room in the Empress Hotel, torn down long ago. And the wind I called up, like Conrad Veidt in one of those sword-and-sorcery movies, up on top of a tower raising his arms: “Wind! Wind! Wind!” Ripped the shutters off the stalls along World’s End and set up tidal waves killed several hundred people in Holland or Belgium or someplace.

  It all reads like sci-fi from here. Not very good sci-fi, but real enough at the time. There were casualties . . . quite a number.

  Well, there isn’t any transport out. There isn’t any important assignment. It’s every man for himself. Like the old bum in the dream said: Maybe we lost. And this is what happens when you lose.

  But in those days there were still purple patches, time eddies by the side of the river. I remember a Gypsy with a baboon that jumped through a hoop to an old, foul tune, and a muzzled dancing bear, and a trained goat that walked up a ladder, a German piper boy with a wolfs face and sharp little teeth. Gone, all gone now . . . and soon, anyone who might regret their going will be gone too.

  So here I am in Kansas with my cats, like the honorary agent for a planet that went out light-years ago. Maybe I am. Who will ever know?

  The Director reels around on an empty deck giving meaningless orders. The radio is out. The guns stopped working light-years ago. The Shadow, Memory, horribly maimed, clings to the Remains, Sekhu. The spirit that must remain in the body after all the others are gone: the Remains, that enabled the others to leave, by giving them a receptacle to occupy in the first place.

  Palm Beach, Florida. 202 Sanford Avenue. Mother and I take Old Fash-ioneds, which I mix every day at four P.M.We are trying to keep my son Billy from getting into more trouble before his trial, on a charge of passing forged speed scripts.

  Mother comes into my room with a bag full of empty paregoric botdes from Billy’s room, just lying around for the nares to find. I take the bag down to Lake Worth and throw it out with a stone for ballast.

  Every day I walk out to the end of a sandy road by the sea, to wait for four P.M.Once a police car stopped and drove part way out on the road, looked at me, backed up and turned around.

  “Just an old fuck with a cane and his trousers rolled.”

  At least I dare to eat a peach.

  The dream is set right there in the sand and driftwood. An L-shaped building with an open door. Standing by the door is an old bum who says, “We lost!”

  There were moments of catastrophic defeat, and moments of triumph. The pure killing purpose. You find out what it means to lose. Abject fear and ignominy. Still fighting, without the means to fight. Deserted. Cut off. Still we wore the dandy uniform, like the dress uniform of a distant planet long gone out. Messages from headquarters? What headquarters? Every man for himself—if he’s got a self left. Not many do.

  I am looking at a big book, the paper made of some heavy, translucent material. The pages are blue, with indistinct figures. The book is attached to the floor of a balcony. I am looking at the book when two Chinese girls intervene and say to someone else I can’t see clearly, “This is ridiculous. After all, he is just an old bum”

  Battles are fought to be won, and this is what happens when you lose. However, to be alive at all is a victory.

  Soul Death takes many forms: an eighty-year-old man drinking out of an overflowing toilet clogged with shit.

  “We lost!”

  Cancer wards where death is as banal as a bedpan. Just an empty bed to prepare for the next Remains. The walking Remains, who fill up the vast medical complexes, haunted by nothingness.

  The door closes behind you, and you begin to know where you are. This planet is a Death Camp . . . the Second and Final Death. Chances of getting out are maybe one in a billion. It’s the last game.

  The ally Smoker is not lighdy invoked, a creature of lightless depths and pressure that could flatten a gun barrel. Smoker emerges in a burst of darkness.

  Remember, Smoker will take you at your word . . .

  NEWLYWEDS KILLED IN FLASH FIRE. . .

  “Not that way!” the foolish wisher exclaims in horror. “He left me paralyzed from a botched operation, and then took my bloody bird. All I wanted was to ruin him with a malpractice suit, to see him barred from practice, eking out a meager living as a male midwife, and her peddling ‘er dish in Piccadilly. Didn’t mean to burn them. Hmm, well, I did say ‘damn his soul to hell and she should fry with him.” But I didn’t mean . . .”

  Be careful, and remember there is such a thing as too much of the goodest thing, like a wise guy who wishes all his wishes would be immediately granted. Wakes up, has to shave and dress—no sooner said than done, breakfast already eaten, at the office another million dollars, faster and faster, a lifetime burnt out in a few seconds. He clutches at Joy, Youth, Innocence, enchanted moments that burst at his touch, like soap bubbles.

  Mr. Hart wanted the ultimate weapon so he would always be safe. His is a face diseased and covered with pustules, bursting to communicate a secret so loathsome that few can learn it and live. They flee before him in blind panic or drop in their twisted tracks, tongues protruding to the root, eyes exploded from their sockets. Perhaps those eyes saw Smoker.

  As Joe moves about the house making tea, smoking cigarettes, reading trash, he finds that he is, from time to time, holding his breath. At such times a sound exhales from his lips, a sound of almost unbearable pain. It is not a pain he can locate in bodily terms. It isn’t exactly his pain. It’s as if some creature inside him is suffering horribly, and he doesn’t know exactly why, or what to do to alleviate the pain, which communicates itself to him as a paralyzing fatigue, an inability to do the simplest thing—like fill out the driver’s license renewal form. Each night he tells himself firmly that he will do it tomorrow, and tomorrow finds that he simply cannot do it. The thought of sitting down and doing it causes him the indirect pain that drains his strength, so that he can barely move.

  What is wrong? To begin with, the lack of any position from which anything can be seen as right. He cannot conceive of a way out, since he has no place to leave from. His self is crumbling away to shreds and tatters, bits of old songs, stray quotations, fleeting spurts of purpose and direction sputtering out to nothing and nowhere, like the body at death deserted by one soul after the other.

  First goes Ren, the Secret Name. Destiny. Significance. The Director reels out onto a buckling deck. In shabby theatrical hotels the Actors are frantically packing:

  “Oh don’t bother with all that junk, John. The Directorio onstage and you know what that means in show biz!”

  “Every man for himself.”

  Then Sekem, Energy. The Technician who knows what buttons to push. No buttons left. He disappears in a belch.

  Then Khu, the Guardian, intuitive guide through a perilous maze. You’re on your own now.

  Then Ba, the Heart. “Feeling’s dull
decay.” Nothing remains to him but his feeling for cats. Human feelings are withering away to lifeless fragments abandoned in a distant drawer. “Held a little boy photo in his withered hand . . . dim jerky far away someone has shut a bureau drawer.”—(cut-up, circa 1962–63).

  Is it the Ka, the Double, who is in such pain? Trapped here, unable to escape, unable even to formulate any place to escape to?

  And the Shadow, Memory, scenes arbitrarily selected and presented . . . the badger shot by the Southern counsellor at Los Alamos, sad shrinking face rolling down a slope, bleeding, dying.

  Joe is galvanized for a few incandescent seconds of rage. He jerks the gun from the man’s hand and slaps him across the face with it.

  “But it might have bitten one of the boys!”

  The boys? Even lust is dead. The boys wink out one by one, like dead stars. The badger turns to bones and dust. The counsellor died years ago, heart attack in his sleep. A shadowy figure stands over him with an old .45 automatic pointed at his chest.

  “But, but—I, I—”

  The bullets crash into his chest, knocking the breath out. Standing on an empty hillside, a rusting gun in his arthritic hand, like an old root growing around the cracked handle.

  “Gibbons,” the Director A. J. Connell called his boys. Tailless apes. Ugh! Your gibbon is a very dangerous animal. A friend of mine pushed his pet gibbon gently aside, and the gibbon whirled with a scream of rage and severed his femoral artery with its canines. He knew what to do. He lived. He gave the gibbon to the zoo. Wouldn’t you? Bits and pieces.