Gold Skin leaves a small orifice capped by an airtight seal. Every year, on the conception date of the deceased, the Breathing is observed: the seal is broken, and the assembled dignitaries advance and sniff. If there is evidence of mortification, the embalmer is cut into small pieces, which are consumed in a very hot fire with ten Nubian slaves at the bellows so that every fiber of his being is utterly vaporized, until nothing nothing nothing remains as the ashes blow away with the afternoon wind to mix with sand and dust. It's the worst thing that can happen to an embalmer with mummy aspirations . . . got his condominium in the Western Lands all picked out and paid for.
It sometimes happens that a business rival, a disgruntled former employee or a malicious prankster may gain access to the tomb, make an opening in the gold skin, and squirt in an enema bag of liquid shit and rotten blood and carrion with a goodly culture of maggots selected from a dead vulture. He then seals the opening and polishes the metal so that his intervention is undetectable.
This is the Fifth Breathing, and a goodly crowd is there. On previous occasions a sweet, spicy smell wafted out and there was an appreciative sigh from the guests. This time, as he unscrews the cap, it is torn from his hands and a geyser of stinking filth cascades out, spattering the dignitaries with shit and writhing maggots.
Gold Skin was saved from execution, since the Pharaoh and the High Priest recognized the handiwork of the dreaded demon Fuku, also known as the Mummy Basher for his vicious attacks on helpless mummies.
Fuku is the God of Insolence. He respects nothing and nobody. He once screamed at the Pharaoh, Great Two House 9, "Give me any lip and I'll jerk the living prick offen your mummy!"
Creature of Chaos, God of pranksters and poltergeists, dreaded by the pompous, the fraudulent, the hypocritical, the boastful . . . wild, riderless, he knows no master but Pan, God of Panic. Wherever Pan rides screaming crowds to the shrilling pipes, you will find Fuku.
Cut-rate embalmers offer pay-as-you-go plans, so much a month for mummy insurance. If you live fifty years or die tomorrow, your future in the Western Lands is assured. (An old couple with their arms around each other's shoulders stand in front of their modest little villa.)
The Western Lands are now open to the middle class of merchants and artisans, speculators and adventurers, pimps, grave robbers and courtesans. The Priests wring their hands and warn of a hideous soul glut. But Egypt is threatened by invasion from without and rebellion from within. So the Pharaoh decides to throw the biggest sop he's got to the middle classes, to ensure their loyalty. He will give them Immortality.
"If we alienate the middle classes, they will take their skills to the partisans and the rebels."
"It is true what you say, Great Outhouse. But I likes the old ways."
"I too. It was a good tight club in those days. If things get rough, we can always liquidate the excess mummies."
The Embalming Conclaves are able to offer cheap rates because the embalming is done on a moving belt, each team of embalmers performing one operation: remove brains, remove internal organs, wind the wrappings. They become extremely dexterous and quick. What used to take a month can now be done in a day.
"These changes are too fast for Khepera," moans the High Priest. (Khepera, the Dung Beetle of Becoming, is seen rushing frantically about, faster and faster. He throws himself on his back in despair, feebly kicking his legs in the air.)
Three hours and twenty-three minutes from Death to Mummification: an hour to gut it out good, an hour in the drying vats, an hour in the lime-cure vats, internal organs stashed in tasteful vases, wrap it up and store it in the communal vaults, which are carefully controlled for humidity and temperature and patrolled by armed guards at all times.
"You see, Great Outhouse, things have gotten out of hand."
"True. Things always do, sooner or later."
Even the lowly fellaheen carry out home embalmings in their fish-drying sheds and smokehouses. Practically anybody can get into the Western Lands.
The young question the mummy concept:
"To keep the same asshole forever? Is this a clarion call to youth?"
"It stinks like petrified shit."
"Have you something better to offer?" says a serious young Scribe. "We know that mummification can ensure a measure of immortality." He turns to Neferti. "And what can you offer that is better than such precarious survival?"
"I can offer the refusal to accept survival on such terms, the disastrous terms of birth. I can offer the determination to seek survival elsewhere. Who dictates all this mummy shit?"
"The Gods."
"And who are they to impose such conditions?"
"They are those who succeed in imposing such conditions."
"To reach the Western Lands is to achieve freedom from fear. Do you free yourself from fear by cowering in your physical body for eternity? Your body is a boat to lay aside when you reach the far shore, or sell it if you can find a fool . . . it's full of holes . . . it's full of holes."
Neferti and the Breather stand before a door of fossilized honeycombs.
"This," says the Breather, "is the top of His sarcophagus."
"What did you do with the Pharaoh Great Outhouse 8?"
"We ate him. He was unspeakably toothsome."
The Breather breathes on the door, a heavy, cloying sweetness. Neph steps back quickly, lest he be candied on the spot, for a sweet breathing can be as lethal as the foul breathings. The door swings open on an oiled pivot. A Breathing festival is in full swing. Singing Breathers give out the appropriate scents, mariachis belch fried beans and chili. There are bread ovens and tortillas.
The patron Saint of the Breathers is Humwawa, Lord of Abominations, who rides on a whispering south wind, whose face is a mass of entrails, whose breath is the stench of death. No incense or perfume can remove the stink of Humwawa. Lord of all that sours and decays and, in consequence, Lord of the Future. And Pazuzu, Lord of Fevers and Plagues . . . on his breath, hospitals and gangrene, leprous flesh, suppurating glands, black vomit, the diarrhea of cholera, stink of burnt plastic and rotten oranges.
He will teach Neph to ride the smells.
"Stand there." The Breather stands six feet in front of Neph and gives him a full breath of carrion. As instructed, he lets the smell come in. The feeling is like eating a very hot pepper or breathing smelling salts, a violent clearing and purging of the head, a lightness, a lift as you breathe death and confront his smell, his corruption, without flinching, for you are breathing in your death.
Breathe in your death.
Death you're in. Breathe.
You're in. Breathe death.
In breath. You are death.
It is essential for immortalists to remember, do not take anything too seriously. And remember also that frivolity is even more fatal . . . so, what now?
We leave The Golden Sphincter. Out the back way ... steps going down ... a thousand feet of stone steps through rubble, down down down into the distance, we are moving down sideways like a slipping plane. You lean over on the stick and slide down through the air to lose altitude, so we are sliding down the steps. On either side is brush and cactus . . . it looks like Gibraltar. Are we the famous Rock apes skipping down a slope? Down into compounds where women hang out their wash and gossip. Boys with their bicycles. British we are, British we stay—dead fingers in smoke pointing to Gibraltar.
At the bottom of the steps is a little concrete platform by the highway, and across the way is another little landing platform, if you can reach it. Nothing in sight in any direction. A feeling of complete desolation . . . nothing, nothing here.
I sit down on the little concrete shelf and lean against the grassy hillside. I look at the grass under my cheek and stretch out my legs over the stone steps leading up to a road. In front of me is the highway. But there is no traffic, no movement on the highway. Why go on? I look back up the steps. The sky is dark with rain. I seem to be stuck here . . . waiting.
Board a train. It is night, and I
can see water outside, glittering points of light sliding by, now green rocky slopes, train whistles rocking shifting clickety clack gathering speed . . . Raton Pass . . . ruined warehouses windows broken flash by . . . swaying from side to side as I walk down the aisle to the toilet . . . smell of stale cigar smoke, steam and iron and soot and excrement encrusted in the cracked leather seats. I can't see my face in the mirror opposite, on the door of the toilet . . . just the blank empty mirror . . . whoooooooooooooooo . . . fading. . . . The train is now moving along an inlet or wide river. . . .
Look at their Western Lands. What do they look like? The houses and gardens of a rich man. Is this all the Gods can offer? Well, I say then it is time for new Gods who do not offer such paltry bribes. It is dangerous even to think such things. It is very dangerous to live, my friend, and few survive it. And one does not survive by shunning danger, when we have a universe to win and absolutely nothing to lose. It is already lost. After what we know, there can be no forgiveness. Remember, to them we are a nightmare. Can you trust the peace offers, the treaties and agreements of an adversary who considers you in the dark? Of course not.
We can make our own Western Lands.
We know that the Western Lands are made solid by fellaheen blood and energy, siphoned off by vampire mummies, just as water is siphoned off to create an oasis. Such an oasis lasts only so long as the water lasts, and the technology for its diversion. However, an oasis that is self-sustaining, recreated by the inhabitants, does not need such an inglorious vampiric lifeline.
We can create a land of dreams.
"But how can we make it solid?"
"We don't. That is precisely the error of the mummies. They made spirit solid. When you do this, it ceases to be spirit. We will make ourselves less solid."
Well, that's what art is all about, isn't it? All creative thought, actually. A bid for immortality. So long as sloppy, stupid, so-called democracies live, the ghosts of various boring people who escape my mind still stalk about in the mess they have made.
We poets and writers are tidier, fade out in firefly evenings, a Prom and a distant train whistle, we live in a maid opening a boiled egg for a long-ago convalescent, we live in the snow on Michael's grave falling softly like the descent of their last end on all the living and the dead, we live in the green light at the end of Daisy's dock, in the last and greatest of human dreams. . . .
I spit on the Christian God. When the White God arrived with the Spaniards, the Indians brought down fruit and corn-cakes and chocolate. The White Christian God proceeded to cut their hands off. He was not responsible for the Christian conquistadors? Yes, he was. Any God is responsible for his worshippers.
What am I doing in Gibraltar with my sulky Ba? Waiting, of course. What does anyone do in Gibraltar? Waiting for a boat, a bank draft, a letter, waiting for a suit to be finished, waiting for a car to be fixed, waiting to see an English doctor.
The first night Hall spends at the Rock Hotel. He finds the English colonial fog unbearable, the room small and uncomfortable, workmen banging in the afternoon when he wanted to sleep. So he checked out and found a room on Main Street, up a flight of dingy stairs, the dark reception desk, a room in the back opening on an airwell. What is the special stink of this place? A smell of greasy french fries and stale fish, of old mattresses never touched by the sun, of the constant 80° heat. He recalls the same smell about cheap hotels in Panama City.
He has made arrangements to pick up his mail at Lloyd's, where he has an account.
"Sorry, sir. There is nothing for you."
He cashes a check and walks along Main Street in the shadow of the Rock. You can see it from anywhere, this great mass of rock and brush and fortifications and radio towers.
British we are, British we stay.
A tearoom with tiled floor and potted plants stretching fifty feet back from the street, mirrors on both sides reflect Halifax, Malta, military and civil service personnel, talk of leaves and allowances and servants. He can hardly breathe here. He pays and walks out, feeling disapproving eyes. "Not overseas personnel."
Clothing stores with Irish tweed, cameras, field glasses, music boxes, and the Indian shops, replicas of the same shops in Panama, Malta, Madagascar . . . ivory balls, one inside the other, tapestries with tigers and bearded horsemen with scimitars. Who buys this junk? He thinks it must be a cover for some monstrous conspiracy. Of course, many Indians are money changers.
A soldier-sailor bar with swinging doors, some old Tangier hands over for a day's shopping. Earl Grey's Tea, Fortnum & Mason's marmalade, brown sugar, a special cream biscuit. The suit isn't quite ready. The tailor promises it for tomorrow. Shall they stay over at the Rock?
Back to his hotel room, a heavy key you leave on the rack. Bed not made ... the sheets look dirty and smell dirty, not white but gray, the color of orphanage sugar, and damp, they cling to his skin like a sweaty shroud. At five-thirty he gets up and drinks two stiff whiskeys in his room, sitting in a straight chair of black, stained wood, a picture of Edward VII on the wall, no doubt a complimentary gift from the company who installed the water closets with copper, pipes and the tank up by the ceiling, with its constant drip.
The dining room almost empty... an old-fashioned commercial traveler with a consignment of Hong Kong music boxes, cheap transistors and pen flashlights. The waiter is ugly, fattish, with frizzy black hair and gold teeth, in a filthy black jacket and a white shirt black at the neck.
He orders steak and french fries resignedly, with a half bottle of red wine. "Oh, yes, and bring me a double whiskey first."
"We don't have a spirit license."
"You certainly don't."
The steak is thin and crinkled and cooked to leather. The french fries drip with grease, and the waiter has brought some sweet white wine.
"Bring me red wine, you hairy-assed Rock ape, or I drink it from your throat!!" he grates at the threshold of hearing without opening his lips. The waiter recoils with a puzzled snarl. Hall points to the menu.
"This . . . take that away and bring me this." The waiter snatches the bottle and walks away muttering. The tablecloths are the same damp gray as the sheets, stained with food and wine and beer and cigarette ashes. Quite intolerable. He remembers seeing a hotel sign from the airport out by the East Beach: Hotel Panama.
He checks out of the hotel and finds a cab rack on a small square under trees filled with sparrows.
"That would be out East Beach way. . . ."
GUINNESS IS GOOD FOR YOU
Concrete and barbed wire overgrown with weeds and vines, radio towers, compounds where Spanish women hang out clothes and gossip in yacking parrot voices . . . Spanish boys with their bicycles.
The Hotel Panama people are polite in contrast to other Rock hotels. They show him to a room on the back overlooking a workers' compound and the radio towers and the Rock. Clean, with a large, comfortable bed, a closet and a writing desk, a bathroom with a large bathtub in pink porcelain and plenty of hot water.
The next day he checks at Lloyd's.
"Sorry, sir. Nothing for you."
My God, my ship leaves in three days. If the books aren't here by then . . .
In front of the hotel a road runs along the beach to the fence around the airport, about five hundred yards from the hotel. In the other direction, East Beach Road joins the main road that runs around the Rock about forty feet above the shoreline. Where the East Beach joins the main road is a municipal incinerator, with a towering smokestack smudging the sky with greasy black smoke.
Again to Lloyd's.
"Here we are, sir. Sign here please. . . ."
Just in time. The boat leaves at 9 p.m. tomorrow. He buys a webbed shopping bag for the book package. He will not open it until he is on board. He buys a stock of liquor, some biscuits and cheese. On impulse, he turns into a steep side street. A doorway, dark steps. DOCTOR HENLEY, PHYSICIAN AND SURGEON. Well, why not give it a shot?
The office is shabby, like the doctor's flashy clothes. Th
e doctor is in his early sixties, tall and thin with quick darting blue eyes, like a crow looking for a bright object to carry away.
"So, what can I do for you, young man?"
"Doctor, I have a medical problem. I'm a morphine addict and I'm taking a boat for Venezuela tomorrow ... fifteen days."
"Hmmm, well . . . you do have a problem."
"I can get by on a grain a day, doctor." He slides a twenty-pound note from his wallet. The doctor looks at the note.
"I can write for ten grains and that's stretching it, or I can give you five grains of Dilaudid."
"I'll take the Dilaudid."
The doctor writes. Hall glimpses a spotty past. Spot of bother here and there. Hong Kong, Singapore, Aden, Alexandria. How did he ever wash up on the Rock?
The doctor speaks into the phone and hangs up.
"Take this to the English chemist on Main Street . . . ask for Senor Ramirez."
He hurries to the chemist's without due delay. Señor Ramirez looks at the prescription briefly.
"Two minutes, sir."
He returns with a dark brown vial. "That will be ten pounds, sir." The chemist knows there will be no argument.
The Western Lands Page 17