Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader

by William S. Burroughs

  Kelley claims to have learned the secrets of death on the gallows, which gives him invincible skill as a swordsman and such sexual prowess that no man or woman can resist him, with the exception of Captain Strobe, whom he regards as more than human. “Voici ma lettre de marque,” he says, running his fingers along the rope mark. (A letter of marque was issued to privateers by their government, authorizing them to prey on enemy vessels in the capacity of accredited combatants, and thus distinguishing them from common pirates. Such a letter often, but by no means always, saved the bearer from the gallows.) Kelley tells me that the mere sight of his hemp marks instills in adversaries a weakness and terror equal to the apparition of Death Himself.

  I asked Kelley what it feels like to be hanged.

  “At first I was sensible of very great pain due to the weight of my body and felt my spirits in a strange commotion violently pressed upwards. After they reached my head, I saw a bright blaze of light which seemed to go out at my eyes with a flash. Then I lost all sense of pain. But after I was cut down, I felt such intolerable pain from the prickings and shootings as my blood and spirits returned that I wished those who cut me down could have been hanged.”*

  from PORT ROGER

  Page from Strobe’s notebook:

  The essence of sleight of hand is distraction and misdirection. If someone can be convinced that he has, through his own perspicacity, divined your hidden purposes, he will not look further.

  How much does he know or suspect? He knows that the capture was prearranged. He surmises an alliance between the pirates and the Pembertons, involving trade in the western hemisphere, the planting of opium in Mexico, and the cultivation of other crops and products now imported from the Near and Far East. He suspects, or soon will, that this alliance may extend to political and military revolution, and secession from England and Spain.

  What does he think is expected from him? The role of gunsmith and inventor, which is partially true. I must not underestimate him. He has already quite literally seen through Mr. Thomas. How long before he will see through the others? Must be careful of Kelley. The most necessary servants are always the most dangerous. He is a cunning and devious little beast.

  Noah writes that I am interested in printing his diaries “for some reason.” Does he have any inkling what reason? He must be kept very busy as a gunsmith lest he realize his primary role.

  How long will it take him to find out that Captain Jones and Captain Nordenholz are interchangeable? To grasp for that matter the full significance of his own name? To see that I am the de Fuentes twins? Finally, to know that I am also—?

  Scarf around his neck immediately arranged between them turning to leer and wink at the armory. I am Captain Strobe, a slim siren. Coat glittering in the sun flute from a distant star in their buttocks. Now I was smoke called Kelley pale in my mind together with a Yes. Sandy hairs, member erect marching around was cleared. Dancing boys to the music played their bags wriggling pale groin toes twisted. We now have double crew down the Red Sea area. Story started with an argument sentences to hang. The sentence preyed on merchant vessels carrying the cargo beautiful hanged back to life women dancing lewdly and ensuring protection against their bodies once one had been rescued. He claimed to have learned the gallows smile. Gasping his lips back surged erect he ejaculated noose and knot feet across the floor. Spirits around his neck. Spurting six.

  Today we reached Port Roger on the coast of Panama. This was formerly Fort Pheasant and had been used as a base by English pirates sixty years ago. The coast here is highly dangerous for the navigation of large vessels, owing to shallows and reefs. Port Roger is one of the few deepwater harbors. It is, however, so difficult to reach that only a navigator with exact knowledge of the passage can hope to do so.

  The coastline is a distant green smudge on our starboard side. Strobe and Thomas scan the skyline with telescopes.

  “Guarda costa . . .,” the boys mutter uneasily.

  Capture by the Spanish means torture or, at best, slavery. If overtaken by a Spanish ship we will abandon ship in the lifeboats, leaving The Great White to the Spanish. The boarding party will receive a surprise, for I have arranged a device which will explode the entire cargo of powder as soon as the doors to the hold are opened.

  Now the ship rounds and heads towards land. Strobe, stripped to the waist, has taken the wheel, his thin body infused with alertness. Two boys are taking soundings on both sides, and the escort ship is a hundred yards behind us. We are sailing through a narrow channel in a reef, Mr. Thomas and Kelley calling out orders as the ship slips like a snake through a strip of blue water. The coastline is ever clearer, trees slowly appearing and low hills in a shimmer of heat. An inaudible twang like a loosed bowstring as the ship glides into a deep blue harbor a few hundred yards from the shore, where waves break on a crescent of sand.

  We drop anchor a bare hundred yards from the beach, The Siren a like distance behind us. From the harbor the town is difficult to discern, being sheltered by a thick growth of bamboo and set among trees and vines. I had the curious impression of looking at a painting in a gold frame: the two ships riding at anchor in the still blue harbor, a cool morning breeze, and written on the bottom of the frame: “Port Roger—April 1, 1702.”

  Captain Nordenholz Disembarks at Port Roger

  There he is standing on a ruined pier left over from the English, in some uniform of his own devising. He is flanked by Opium Jones, the de Fuentes twins and Captain Strobe, all looking like a troupe of traveling players a bit down on their luck but united in determination to play out their assigned roles. Boys trail behind them, carrying an assortment of bags, cases, and chests. They walk across the beach and disappear one after another into a wall of leaves.

  I don’t know what gave me such an impression of shabbiness about this procession, since they all must have chests of gold and precious stones, but for a moment they appeared to my eyes as seedy players with grand roles but no money to pay the rent. The jewels and the gold are false, the curtains patched and shredded and torn, the theater long closed. I was smitten by a feeling of sadness and desolation, as the words of the Immortal Bard came to my mind:

  These our actors,

  As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

  Are melted into air. . . .

  We have landed. Captain Strobe meets us on the beach emerging from a picture puzzle, his shirt and pants splotched with green and brown, stirring slightly in the afternoon breeze. We follow him as he walks towards a seemingly unbroken line of undergrowth. He pushes aside branches to reveal a winding path through a tangle of bamboo and thorn.

  We walk for perhaps a quarter-mile as the path winds upward and ends in a screen of bamboo. We are quite close before I realize that the bamboo trees are painted on a green door that swings open like the magic door in a book I have seen somewhere long ago. We step through into the town of Port Roger.

  We are standing in a walled enclosure like a vast garden, with trees and flowers, paths and pools. I can see buildings along the sides of the square, all painted to blend with the surroundings so that the buildings seem but a reflection of the trees and vines and flowers stirring in a slight breeze that seems to shake the walls, the whole scene insubstantial as a mirage.

  This first glimpse of Port Roger occurred just as some hashish candy I had ingested on the boat started to take effect, producing a hiatus in my mind and the interruption of verbal thought, followed by a sharp jolt as if something had entered my body. I caught a whiff of perfume and a sound of distant flutes.

  CITIES OF THE RED NIGHT

  The Cities of the Red Night were six in number: Tamaghis, Ba’dan, Yass-Waddah, Waghdas, Naufana, and Ghadis. These cities were located in an area roughly corresponding to the Gobi Desert a hundred thousand years ago. At that time the desert was dotted with large oases and traversed by a river which emptied into the Caspian Sea.

  The largest of these oases contained a lake ten miles long and five miles across, on the shores of whi
ch the university town of Waghdas was founded. Pilgrims came from all over the inhabited world to study in the academies of Waghdas, where the arts and sciences reached peaks of attainment that have never been equaled. Much of this ancient knowledge is now lost.

  The towns of Ba’dan and Yass-Waddah were opposite each other on the river. Tamaghis, located in a desolate area to the north on a small oasis, could properly be called a desert town. Naufana and Ghadis were situated in mountainous areas to the west and south beyond the perimeter of usual trade routes between the other cities.

  In addition to the six cities, there were a number of villages and nomadic tribes. Food was plentiful and for a time the population was completely stable: no one was born unless someone died.

  The inhabitants were divided into an elite minority known as the Transmigrants and a majority known as the Receptacles. Within these categories were a number of occupational and specialized strata and the two classes were not in practice separate: Transmigrants acted as Receptacles and Receptacles became Transmigrants.

  To show the system in operation: Here is an old Transmigrant on his deathbed. He has selected his future Receptacle parents, who are summoned to the death chamber. The parents then copulate, achieving orgasm just as the old Transmigrant dies so that his spirit enters the womb to be reborn. Every Transmigrant carries with him at all times a list of alternative parents, and in case of accident, violence, or sudden illness, the nearest parents are rushed to the scene. However, there was at first little chance of random or unexpected deaths since the Council of Transmigrants in Waghdas had attained such skill in the art of prophecy that they were able to chart a life from birth to death and determine in most cases the exact time and manner of death.

  Many Transmigrants preferred not to wait for the infirmities of age and the ravages of illness, lest their spirit be so weakened as to be overwhelmed and absorbed by the Receptacle child. These hardy Transmigrants, in the full vigor of maturity, after rigorous training in concentration and astral projection, would select two death guides to kill them in front of the copulating parents. The methods of death most commonly employed were hanging and strangulation, the Transmigrant dying in orgasm, which was considered the most reliable method of ensuring a successful transfer. Drugs were also developed, large doses of which occasioned death in erotic convulsions, smaller doses being used to enhance sexual pleasure. And these drugs were often used in conjunction with other forms of death.

  In time, death by natural causes became a rare and rather discreditable occurrence as the age for transmigration dropped. The Eternal Youths, a Transmigrant sect, were hanged at the age of eighteen to spare themselves the coarsening experience of middle age and the deterioration of senescence, living their youth again and again.

  Two factors undermined the stability of this system. The first was perfection of techniques for artificial insemination. Whereas the traditional practice called for one death and one rebirth, now hundreds of women could be impregnated from a single sperm collection, and territorially oriented Transmigrants could populate whole areas with their progeny. There were sullen mutters of revolt from the Receptacles, especially the women. At this point, another factor totally unforeseen was introduced.

  In the thinly populated desert area north of Tamaghis a portentous event occurred. Some say it was a meteor that fell to earth leaving a crater twenty miles across. Others say that the crater was caused by what modern physicists call a black hole.

  After this occurrence the whole northern sky lit up red at night, like the reflection from a vast furnace. Those in the immediate vicinity of the crater were the first to be affected and various mutations were observed, the commonest being altered hair and skin color. Red and yellow hair, and white, yellow, and red skin appeared for the first time. Slowly the whole area was similarly affected until the mutants outnumbered the original inhabitants, who were as all human beings were at the time: black.

  The women, led by an albino mutant known as the White Tigress, seized Yass-Waddah, reducing the male inhabitants to slaves, consorts, and courtiers all under sentence of death that could be carried out at any time at the caprice of the White Tigress. The Council in Waghdas countered by developing a method of growing babies in excised wombs, the wombs being supplied by vagrant Womb Snatchers. This practice aggravated the differences between the male and female factions and war with Yass-Waddah seemed unavoidable.

  In Naufana, a method was found to transfer the spirit directly into an adolescent Receptacle, thus averting the awkward and vulnerable period of infancy. This practice required a rigorous period of preparation and training to achieve a harmonious blending of the two spirits in one body. These Transmigrants, combining the freshness and vitality of youth with the wisdom of many lifetimes, were expected to form an army of liberation to free Yass-Waddah. And there were adepts who could die at will without any need of drugs or executioners and project their spirit into a chosen Receptacle.

  I have mentioned hanging, strangulation, and orgasm drugs as the commonest means of effecting the transfer. However, many other forms of death were employed. The Fire Boys were burned to death in the presence of the Receptacles, only the genitals being insulated, so that the practitioner could achieve orgasm in the moment of death. There is an interesting account by a Fire Boy who recalled his experience after transmigrating in this manner:

  “As the flames closed round my body, I inhaled deeply, drawing fire into my lungs, and screamed out flames as the most horrible pain turned to the most exquisite pleasure and I was ejaculating in an adolescent Receptacle who was being sodomized by another.”

  Others were stabbed, decapitated, disemboweled, shot with arrows, or killed by a blow on the head. Some threw themselves from cliffs, landing in front of the copulating Receptacles.

  The scientists at Waghdas were developing a machine that could directly transfer the electromagnetic field of one body to another. In Ghadis there were adepts who were able to leave their bodies before death and occupy a series of hosts. How far this research may have gone will never be known. It was a time of great disorder and chaos.

  The effects of the Red Night on Receptacles and Transmigrants proved to be incalculable and many strange mutants arose as a series of plagues devastated the cities. It is this period of war and pestilence that is covered by the books. The Council had set out to produce a race of supermen for the exploration of space. They produced instead races of ravening idiot vampires.

  Finally, the cities were abandoned and the survivors fled in all directions, carrying the plagues with them. Some of these migrants crossed the Bering Strait into the New World, taking the books with them. They settled in the area later occupied by the Mayans and the books eventually fell into the hands of the Mayan priests.

  The alert student of this noble experiment will perceive that death was regarded as equivalent not to birth but to conception and go on to infer that conception is the basic trauma. In the moment of death, the dying man’s whole life may flash in front of his eyes back to conception. In the moment of conception, his future life flashes forward to his future death. To reexperience conception is fatal.

  This was the basic error of the Transmigrants: you do not get beyond death and conception by reexperience any more than you get beyond heroin by ingesting larger and larger doses. The Transmigrants were quite literally addicted to death and they needed more and more death to kill the pain of conception. They were buying parasitic life with a promissory death note to be paid at a prearranged time. The Transmigrants then imposed these terms on the host child to ensure his future transmigration. There was a basic conflict of interest between host child and Transmigrant. So the Transmigrants reduced the Receptacle class to a condition of virtual idiocy. Otherwise they would have reneged on a bargain from which they stood to gain nothing but death. The books are flagrant falsifications. And some of these basic lies are still current.

  “Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.” The last words of Hassan i Sabbah, Old Man of
the Mountain.

  “Tamaghis . . . Ba’dan . . . Yass-Waddah . . . Waghdas . . . Naufana . . . Ghadis.”

  It is said that an initiate who wishes to know the answer to any question need only repeat these words as he falls asleep and the answer will come in a dream.

  Tamaghis: This is the open city of contending partisans where advantage shifts from moment to moment in a desperate biological war. Here everything is as true as you think it is and everything you can get away with is permitted.

  Ba’dan: This city is given over to competitive games and commerce. Ba’dan closely resembles present-day America with a precarious moneyed elite, a large disaffected middle class and an equally large segment of criminals and outlaws. Unstable, explosive, and swept by whirlwind riots. Everything is true and everything is permitted.

  Yass-Waddah: This city is the female stronghold where the Countess de Gulpa, the Countess de Vile, and the Council of the Selected plot a final subjugation of the other cities. Every shade of sexual transition is represented: boys with girls’ heads, girls with boys’ heads. Here everything is true and nothing is permitted except to the permitters.

  Waghdas: This is the university city, the center of learning where all questions are answered in terms of what can be expressed and understood. Complete permission derives from complete understanding.

  Naufana and Ghadis are the cities of illusion where nothing is true and therefore everything is permitted.