“How much shall I give him Mother?”
I can sidle up to any old bag, she nods and smiles, it’s all so familiar “must be that cute man we met on the plane over from Gibraltar Captain Clark welcomes you aboard and he says: ‘Now what’s this form? I don’t read Arabic.’ Then he turns to me and says ‘Mother I need help.’ And I show him how to fill out the form and after that he would come up to me on the street this cute man so helpless bobbing up everywhere.”
“What is he saying Mother?”
“I think he wants money.”
“They all do.” He turns to an army of beggars, guides, shoeshine boys and whores of all sexes and makes an ineffectual gesture.
“Go away! Scram off!”
“One dirham Meester.”
“One cigarette.”
“You want beeg one Meester?”
And the old settlers pass on the other side. No, they don’t get through my cover. And I have a lot of special numbers for emergency use . . . Character with wild eyes that spin in little circles, believes trepanning is the last answer, pull you into a garage and try to do the job with an electric drill straightaway.
“Now if you’ll kindly take a seat here.”
“Say what is this?”
“All over in a minute and you’ll be out of that rigid cranium.”
So the word goes out stay away from that one. You need him like a hole in the head. I have deadly old-style bores who are translating the Koran into Provençal or constructing a new cosmology based on “brain breathing.” And the animal lover with exotic pets. The CIA man looks down with moist suspicious brow at the animal in his lap. It is a large ocelot, its claws pricking into his flesh, and every time he tries to shove it away the animal growls and digs in. I won’t be seeing that Bay of Pigs again.
So I give myself a week on the build-up and make contact. Colonel Bradly knows the wild boys better than any man in Africa. In fact he has given his whole life to youth and it would seem gotten something back. There is talk of the devil’s bargain and in fact he is indecently young-looking for a man of sixty-odd. As the Colonel puts it, with engaging candor: “The world is not my home you understand here on young people.”
We have lunch on the terrace of his mountain house. A heavily wooded garden with pools and paths stretches down to a cliff over the sea. Lunch is turbot in cream sauce, grouse, wild asparagus, peaches in wine. Quite a change from the grey cafeteria food I have been subjected to in Western cities, where I pass myself off as one of the faceless apathetic citizens searched and questioned by the police on every corner, set upon by brazen muggers, stumbling home to my burglarized apartment to find the narcotics squad going through my medicine chest again. We are served by a lithe young Malay with bright red gums. Colonel Bradly jabs a fork at him.
“Had a job getting that dish through immigration. The Consulate wasn’t at all helpful.”
After lunch we settle down to discuss my assignment.
“The wild boys are an overflow from North African cities that started in 1969. The uneasy spring of 1969 in Marrakech. Spring in Marrakech is always uneasy, each day a little hotter, knowing what Marrakech can be in August. That spring gasoline gangs prowled the rubbish heaps, alleys and squares of the city, dousing just anybody with gasoline and setting that person on fire. They rush in anywhere, nice young couple sitting in their chintzy middle-class living room when hello! yes hello! the gas boys rush in douse them head to foot with a pump fire extinguisher full of gasoline and I got some good pictures from a closet where I had prudently taken refuge. Shot of the boy who lit the match, he let the rank and file slosh his couple then he lit a Swan match, face young, pure, pitiless as the cleansing fire brought the match close enough to catch the fumes.
“Then he lit a Player with the same match, sucked the smoke in and smiled, he was listening to the screams and I thought My God what a cigarette ad: Clambake on a beach the BOY there with a match. He is looking at two girls in bikinis. As he lights the match they lean forward with a LUCKYSTRIKECHESTERFIELDOLDGOLDCAMELPLAYER in the bim and give a pert little salute.
“The BOY turned out to be the hottest property in advertising. Enigmatic smile on the delicate young face. Just what is the BOY looking at? We had set out to sell cigarettes or whatever else we were paid to sell. The BOY was too hot to handle. Temples were erected to the BOY and there were posters of his face seventy feet high and all the teenagers began acting like the BOY looking at you with a dreamy look lips parted over their Wheaties. They all bought BOY shirts and BOY knives running around like wolf packs burning, looting, killing, it spread everywhere all that summer in Marrakech, the city would light up at night, human torches flickering on walls, trees, fountains, all very romantic, you could map the dangerous areas sitting on your balcony under the stars sipping a scotch. I looked across the square and watched a tourist burning in blue fire, they had gasoline that burned in all colors by then. . . .” (He turned on the projector and stepped to the edge of the balcony.) . . . “Just look at them out there, all those little figures dissolving in light. Rather like fairyland isn’t it, except for the smell of gasoline and burning flesh.
“Well they called in a strong man, Colonel Arachnid Ben Driss, who cruised the city in trucks, rounded up the gas boys, took them outside the walls, shaved their heads and machine-gunned them. Survivors went underground or took to the deserts and the mountains, where they evolved different ways of life and modes of combat.”
THE WILD BOYS SMILE
June 25,1988, Casablanca 4 P.M. The Café Azar was on a rundown suburban street you could find in Fort Worth, Texas. CAFE AZAR in red letters on plate glass, the interior hidden from the street by faded pink curtains. Inside, a few Europeans and Arabs drinking tea and soft drinks.
The shoeshine boy came over and pointed to my shoes. He was naked except for a dirty white jockstrap and leather sandals. His head was shaved and a tuft of hair sprouted from the crown. His face had been beautiful at some other time and place, now broken and twisted by altered pressure, the teeth stuck out at angles, features wrenched out of focus, body emaciated by distant hungers. He sat on his box and looked up at me, squinting, snub-nosed legs sprawled apart, one finger scratching his jock. The skin was white as paper, hairs black and shiny lay flat on his skinny legs.
As he shined my shoes with deft precise movements his body gave off a dry musty smell. In one corner of the room I saw a green curtain in front of which two boys were undressing. The corner was apparently at a level below the café floor since I could not see their legs below the knee. One of the boys had stripped to pink underwear sticking out straight at the fly. The other patrons paid no attention to this tableau. The boy jerked his head toward the two actors who were now fucking in upright position, lips parted in silent gasps. He put a finger to one eye and shook his head. The others could not see the boys. I handed the boy a coin. He checked the date and nodded. The Dib checked the date of nettles feet twisted by the altered disk.
“Long time nobody use jump” he said leg hairs covered with mold. The gun jumping, crumpled twisted body, his face floating there the soldier’s identification card and skinny in picture.
“I was too.” He pointed to his thin body. He picked up his box. I followed him through the café. When I walk with the Dib they can’t see me. Buttocks were smooth and white as old ivory. The corner of the green curtain was a sunken limestone square two steps down from the café floor, dry musty smell of empty waiting rooms, a worn wooden bench along one wall. Embedded in the stone floor was an iron disk about five feet in diameter, degrees and numbers cut in its edges, brass arrows indicating N. S. E. W. This compass floated on an hydraulic medium. In the center of the disk a marine compass occupied a teakwood socket. Two pairs of sandals worn smooth and black, mounted on spring stilts eight inches in height, were spaced eighteen inches apart so that two people standing in the sandals would be one behind the other, the center of the disk and the marine compass exactly between them. The springs were bolted to pis
tons which projected on shafts from the iron disk. The sandals were at different levels. Evidently they could be adjusted by raising or lowering the shafts.
At a sign from the boy I stripped off my clothes smooth hands guided by film tracks I was to bend over and brace my hands on my knees. The boy reached in his box and took out a tape measure that ended in a little knob. He measured the distance from my rectum to the floor. With a round key which fitted into locks in the support shafts he adjusted the level of the two pairs of sandals on the spring stilts. He stood up and stripped off his jockstrap scraping erection. He mounted one pair of spring stilts and strapped his feet into the sandals poised on the springs, nuts tight and precise as bearings, his phallus projected needle of the compass, the disk turned until it was facing the green curtain which moved slightly as if it might cover an opening, ass arrows indicating N. S. E. W. feet a taste of metal in the mouth 18 penis floated I stepped in the sandals from behind knees his skinny arms and I was seeing the take from outside at different levels soft machine my ass a rusty cylinder pearly glands electric click blue sparks my spine into his I bend over and brace vibrating on the springs iron smell of rectal mucus streaking across the sky a wrench spurting soft tracks a distant gun jumping the soldier’s identification disk covered with mold his smile across tears of pain squinting up at me snub-nosed hands at the crotch worn metal smell of the gun as my feet touched the iron disk a soft shock tingled up my legs to the crotch. The penis floated. I stepped onto the stilts in front of the boy and he adjusted the straps from behind. I bent over and braced my hands on my knees. He hooked his skinny arms under my shoulders leg hairs twisted together a slow greased pressure and I was seeing the take from outside transparent soft machine ass a rusty cylinder phallus a piston pumping the pearly glands blue sparks and my spine clicked back into his then forward his head in mine eyes steering through a maze of turnstiles. Stop. Click. Start. Stop. Click. Start streaking across the sky a smear of pain gun jumping out trees weed-grown tracks rusty identification disk covered with mold. Click. Green Pullman curtain. Click. “You wanta see something?” Click. Penis floated. Click. Distant 1920 wind and dust. Click. Bits of silver paper in a wind across the park. Click. Summer afternoon on car seat to the thin brown knees. Click. His smile across the golf course. Click. Click. Click. See on back what I mean each time place dim jerky faraway. The curtain stirs slightly. Click. Sharp smell of weeds. The curtain was gone. The feeling in my stomach when a fast elevator stops as we landed in a stone kiosk by an abandoned railroad dried shit urine initials
KILROY JACKED OFF HERE
B. J. MARTIN
D & D
BUEN LUGAR PARA FOLLAR
QUIÉN ES?
A.D. KID
We unlaced our feet and stepped down from the springs. The disk was rusty and rust had stained the stone around its edges.
“Long time nobody use jump” the boy said, pointing. I saw my clothes in a corner covered with mold. The boy shook his head and handed me a white jockstrap from his box.
“Clothes no good here. Easy see clothes. Very hard see this.” He pointed to his thin body.
Then I felt the thirst, my body dry and brittle as a dead leaf.
“Jump take your last water Meester. We find spring.”
Above the kiosk was a steep hillside. The boy made his way through brush that seemed to move aside for him, leaving a tunnel of leaves. He dropped on his knees and parted a tangle of vines. A deep black spring flowed from a limestone cleft. We scooped up clear cold water with our hands. The boy wiped his mouth. From the hillside we could see a railroad bridge, a stream, ruined suburbs.
“This bad place Meester. Patrols out here.”
The boy reached into his box and brought out two packages of oiled paper tied with cord. He undid the cord and unwrapped two snub-nosed .38 revolvers the hammers filed off, the grips cut short, the checked walnut stocks worn smooth. The revolvers could only be used double action. The grip came to the middle of my palm, held precisely in place by two converging mounds of hard flesh like part of my hand. The boy pointed with his revolver, indicating the path we were going to take into the town under the bridge along the stream.
There was no sign of life in the town, ruined villas overgrown with vines, empty cafés and courtyards. The boy led the way. He would move forward in a burst of speed for fifty feet or so, then stop, poised sniffing quivering. We were walking along a path by a white wall.
“DOWN MEESTER!”
A burst of machine-gun fire ripped into the wall. I threw myself into a ditch full of nettles. Pain poured out my arm like a fire hose gun jumping. Three soldiers about forty feet away crumpled twisted and fell. The boy got up blowing smoke from his gun barrel body covered with red welts. In a burst of speed his feet reached the bodies. I had fired twice. He had fired four times. Every bullet had found a vital spot.
One soldier lay on his back, legs twisted under him, a hole in the middle of his forehead. Another was still alive, twitching convulsively as blood spurted from a neck wound. The third had been shot three times in the stomach. He lay face down hands clasped over his stomach, his machine gun still smoking three yards away, white smoke curling up from the grass. It was a subdivision street, lawns, palm trees, bungalows built along one side, vacant lot opposite, could have been Palm Beach, Florida, empty ten years, weeds, palm branches in the driveways, windows broken, no sign of life.
The boy went through pockets with expert fingers: a knife, identification papers, cigarettes, a packet of kif. Two of the soldiers had been carrying carbines, the third a submachine gun. “No good Czech grease gun” the boy said, and kicked it aside after unclipping the magazine. The carbines he propped against a palm tree. We dragged the bodies into a ditch. The pressure of pain lent manic power and precision to our movements. We rushed about dragging palm branches to heap on the bodies. We couldn’t stop.
We found a Christmas tree, bits of silver paper twisted in its brown needles, and heaved it over onto the dead soldiers. We paused, panting, shivering, and looked at each other. Spots boiled in front of my eyes blood pounded to neck and crotch feeling the strap tighten hot squeezing pressure inside stomach intestines a muffled explosion as scalding diarrhea spurted down the backs of our trembling thighs the Boy Scout Manual floated across summer afternoons the boy’s cracked broken film voice seeing the take from outside the shelf I rummaged in the shelf knew what I was looking for along a flagstone path feet like blocks of wood trailing black oily shit this must be the kitchen door open rusty electric stove moldy chili dishes food containers silver paper knew what I was looking for rummaged in the shelves fingers numb wet-dream tension in my crotch and I knew there was not much time found a can of baking powder emptied it into a porcelain fruit bowl painted roses no water silver pies choking in a red haze not much time out into the ruined garden fish pond stagnant water green slime a frog jumped the boy was tearing at his jockstrap I sat down and slipped my strap off strap halfway down his thighs cock flipped out stiff he lost balance fell on his side I pulled the strap down off his feet he turned on his back knees up body arched pulled together spurted neck tumescent choking I dipped water and green slime into the bowl with both hands mixed a paste slapped the paste on both sides of his neck and down the chest to the heart ejaculated across his quivering stomach I dipped more paste held it to the sides of my throbbing neck then down the chest I could breathe now easier to move more paste down the boy’s stomach and thighs to the feet turned him over and rubbed the paste down his back where the nettles had whipped great welts across the back he sighed simpered body went limp and emptied again. I stood up and rubbed the paste over my body the pain was going and the numbness. I flopped down beside the boy and fell into a deep sleep.
“Five Indian youths accompanied us from the village in the capacity of guides. Actually they seemed quite ignorant of the country we were traversing and spent much of their time hunting with an old muzzle-loading shotgun more hazardous to the hunters than the quarry. Five days out
of Candiru in the head waters of the Baboonsasshole, they managed to wound a deer. Chasing the wounded animal in wild excitement they ran though a patch of nettles. They emerged covered from head to foot with pulsing welts whipped across red skins like dusky roses. Fortunately they were wearing loincloths. Pain seemed to lend fleetness and energy to the pursuit and they brought the deer down with another shot. They closed on the dying animal with shrill cries of triumph and severed its head with a machete. Quite suddenly they were silent looking at each other and with one accord were seized by uncontrollable diarrhea. They tore off their loincloths in a frenzy of lust, faces tumescent eyes swollen shut, threw themselves on the ground ejaculating and defecating again and again. We watched, powerless to aid them, until the Chinese cook with rare presence of mind mixed baking powder into a thick paste with water. He applied this paste to the neck of the nearest youth and then down the chest to the heart. In this way he was able to save two of the youths but the other three perished in erotic convulsions. As to whether the nettles were of a special variety or the symptoms resulted from an excess of formic acid circulated through the blood by exertion, I could not say. The prompt relief afforded by applying an alkaline paste would suggest that the symptoms resulted from some form of acid poisoning.” Quote Greenbaum early explorer.
When we woke up the sun was setting. We were smeared with a dried paste of shit, baking powder and green slime as if anointed for some ceremony or sacrifice. We found soap in the kitchen and washed off the crusted paste feeling rather like molting snakes. We dined on vichyssoise, cold crab meat and brandied peaches. The boy refused to sleep in the house, saying simply that it was “very bad place.” So we dragged a mattress to the garage and slept there, the carbines ready, a snub-nosed .38 by each hand. Never keep a pistol under your pillow where you have to reach up for it. Keep it down by your hand at the crotch. That way you can come up shooting right through the blanket.
Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader Page 59