Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader

by William S. Burroughs

  Odors can also be the most subtle and evocative agent for reaching past memories and feelings.

  “The nuances, you understand.”

  The wise old queer Cardinal, oozing suave corruption, slowly slithers amber beads through his silky yellow fingers as the beads give off tiny encrusted odor layers. “Ah, a whiff of Egypt. . .”

  Chlorine from the YMCA swimming pool, the clean smell of naked boys . . . and the differences, my dear. Just whiff this, from before World War I, when people traveled with steamer trunks and no passports. I mean, of course, the people who mattered. Comfortable, isn’t it? And smell the Twenties . . . those dear dead days, hip flasks, raccoon coats.

  Now sniff way back, to a time before homo sap made his perhaps ill-advised appearance. Notice the difference? Nobody out there. Nobody to talk to. Nobody to impress. Hollywood moguls simply drop dead, like divers with their air lines cut. Personally, I find it exhilarating. I can fancy how I would have done it all. Ah, well. . .

  And you know the difference between the air before August 6, 1945, and after that date: a certain security. No one is going to explode the atoms you are made of. . . with a little strength and skill one could outlive himself. . . but now . . .

  Margaras is on the Dead Dream case. If you intend to destroy an individual or a culture, destroy their dreams. This is happening now on a global scale.

  The function of dreams, they tell us, is to unlearn or purge the brain of unneeded connections—according to this view what goes through the mind in a dream is merely the result of a sort of neural housecleaning. They also suggest that it may be damaging to recall dreams, because doing so might strengthen mental connections that should be discarded. “We dream in order to forget,” they write.

  But Joe knows that dreams are a biologic necessity, like sleep itself, without which you will die. Margaras is sure this is war to extermination. Sure, forget your biologic and spiritual destiny in space. Sure, forget the Western Lands. And make arrangements with a competent mortician.

  But desperate struggle may alter the outcome. Joe is tracking down the Venusian agents of a conspiracy with very definite M.O. and objectives. It is antimagical, authoritarian, dogmatic, the deadly enemy of those who are committed to the magical universe, spontaneous, unpredictable, alive. The universe they are imposing is controlled, predictable, dead.

  In 1959, a member of the scientific elite of England said to Brion Gysin: “How does it feel to know that you are one of the last human beings?”

  Brion was noncommittal, and the Venusian added facetiously, “Well, life won’t be so bad on the reservation”

  The program of the ruling elite in Orwell’s 1984 was: “A foot stamping on a human face forever!” This is naive and optimistic. No species could survive for even a generation under such a program. This is not a program of eternal, or even long-range dominance. It is clearly an extermination program.

  Joe decided that people were too busy making money to foster a climate in which research could flourish. Joe didn’t have ideas about rewriting history like Kim did. More of Kim’s irresponsible faggotry: he’s going to rewrite history while we wait. Well, let determined things to destiny hold unbewailed their way. DESTINY prances out in an atomic T-shirt—her glow in the dark.

  Joe decides to go into deepfreeze for fifty years. With a million dollars judiciously distributed in bonds and savings accounts, the whole system set up with dummy companies and mail drops, Joe will be a rich man when he wakes up.

  And what about Kim?

  “Oh,” Joe shrugs. “I guess that one can take care of himself in the Land of the Dead. At least he won’t have any mail-order croaker pulling him out half-baked. Not with that .45-70 hollow point just under the left: shoulder blade.”

  Consider the One God Universe: OGU. The spirit recoils in horror from such a deadly impasse. He is all-powerful and all-knowing. Because He can do everything, He can do nothing, since the act of doing demands opposition. He knows everything, so there is nothing for Him to learn. He can’t go anywhere, since He is already fucking everywhere, like cowshit in Calcutta.

  The OGU is a pre-recorded universe of which He is the recorder. It’s a flat, thermodynamic universe, since it has no friction by definition. So He invents friction and conflict, pain, fear, sickness, famine, war, old age and Death.

  His OGU is running down like an old clock. Takes more and more to make fewer and fewer Energy Units of Sek, as we call it in the trade.

  The Magical Universe, MU, is a universe of many gods, often in conflict. So the paradox of an all-powerful, all-knowing God who permits suffering, evil and death, does not arise.

  “What happened, Osiris? We got a famine here.”

  “Well, you can’t win ‘em all. Hustling myself.”

  “Can’t you give us immortality?”

  “I can get you an extension, maybe. Take you as far as the Duad. You’ll have to make it from there on your own. Most of them don’t. Figure about one in a million. And, biologically speaking, that’s very good odds.”

  We have notice of knives, rebirth and singing. All human thought flattened to a dry husk behind a divided pen. He walks in the glyphs and flattens man and nature onto stone and papyrus, eliminating, except in stone and bronze, the dimension of depth. We were not ignorant of perspective. We deliberately ignored it. A flat world was ours and everything in it had a name once and all the names were ours once. With perspective, names escape from the paper and scatter into the minds of men so they can never be held down again.

  The means of suicide haunts their position. We are not averse to a king had a name and had once stone statues to be sure secret in the usual sense and bronze perspective . . . rage of animated dust that growls like a dog . . . barks and snarls of black granite serene crystal converse in sunlight. . . relive in boats a slough to the sky dotted with rafts, the smoke of cooking fire in dawn mist. All human thought flattened there in present time . . . flashes of innocence . . . birth and singing in the marshes.

  God of the Long Chance, the impossible odds, the punch-drunk fighter who comes up off the floor to win by a knockout, blind Samson pulling down the temple, the horse that comes from last to win in the stretch, God of perilous journeys, Helper in the voyage between death and rebirth, the road to the Western Lands.

  To be reborn at all makes your condition almost hopeless. He is the God of Almost, the God of If Only, the God of Miracles, and he demands more of his followers than any other god. Do not evoke him unless you are ready to take the impossible chances, the longest odds. Chance demands total courage and dedication. He has no time for welchers and pikers and vacillators.

  He is the God of the Second Chance and the Last Chance, God of single combat, of the knife fighter, the swordsman, the gunfighter, God of the explorer, the first traveler on unknown roads, the first to use an untried craft or weapon, to take a blind step in the dark, to stand alone where no man has ever stood before . . . God of Mutation and Change, God of hope in hopeless conditions, he brings a smell of the sea, of vast open places, a smell of courage and purpose . . . a smell of silence confronting the outcome.

  The Road to the Western Lands is devious, unpredictable. Today’s easy passage may be tomorrow’s death trap. The obvious road is almost always a fool’s road, and beware the Middle Roads, the roads of moderation, common sense and careful planning. However, there is a time for planning, moderation and common sense.

  Neferti is inclined to extreme experience, so he gravitates toward the vast underworld of the Pariah Quarter, the quarter of outcasts, of the diseased, the insane, the drug addicts, the followers of forbidden trades, unlicensed embalm-ers, abortionists, surgeons who will perform dubious transplant operations. Old brain, young body? Old fool has a young body but not the sensibilities of youth. He has sold his soul for a strap-on.

  It may be said that any immortality blueprint depending on prolonging the physical body, patching it together, replacing a part here and there like an old car, is the worst plan possible,
like betting on the favorites and doubling up when you lose. Instead of separating yourself from the body, you are immersing yourself in the body, making yourself more and more dependent on the body with every stolen breath through transplanted lungs, with every ejaculation of a young phallus, with every excretion from youthful intestines. But the transplant route attracts many fools, and its practitioners are to be found in this quarter.

  London, Paris, Rome, New York . . . you know where the streets and squares and bridges are. To reach a certain quarter, you have only to consult a map and lo, a string of lights will show you how to reach your objective on the subway.

  In Waghdas, however, quarters and streets, squares, markets and bridges change form, shift location from day to day like traveling carnivals. Comfortable, expensive houses arranged around a neat square (all residents have a key to the gate) can change, even as you find your way there, into a murderous ghetto. Oh, there are maps enough. But they are outmoded as soon as they can be printed.

  Neferti uses this method to orient himself and find the Pariah Quarter: place yourself in a scene from your past, preferably a scene that no longer exists. The buildings have been torn down, streets altered. What was once a vacant lot where one could find snakes under sheets of rusty iron is now a parking lot or an apartment building. It is not always essential to start from a set that no longer exists. There are no rigid rules, only indications in this area. Do you pick just any place? Some work better than others. You will know by certain signs whether the place you have chosen is functional. Now, get up and leave the place. With skill and luck you will find the location that you seek in Waghdas.

  Neferti seeks out the vilest slums of the Pariah Quarter. He is dressed in the inconspicuous garb of a traveling merchant with a single bodyguard. They encounter an obstacle course of beggars. Neferti tosses a coin to an armless leper, who catches it in the suppurating hole where his nose used to be and hawks it out into a clay pot in a gob of pus and blood. Other beggars squirm forward, exhibiting their sores. The bodyguard lashes out with a flail of copper weights and the beggars shrink back, spitting and drooling hideous curses. One turns and raises his robe and jets out a stream of shit, smirking over his shoulder.

  They turn into a wine shop where Insult Contests are held. These contests are illegal by order of the Board of Health on the grounds they pollute the atmosphere. But in this quarter anything and anybody goes. It’s an art rather like flamenco.

  One of the creatures who lounge about in female apparel is seized by the Insult Spirit. He leaps up and focuses on a target, imitating every movement and mannerism with vile hate and inspired empathy, thrusting his face within inches of his victim.

  An English Major is reduced to hysteria as his monocled, frozen face cracks and a stream of filth pours from his mouth, words that stink like vaporized excrement. He screams and rushes out, followed by cackling laughter.

  The victorious insult queen stands in the middle of the floor like a ballerina. He turns and looks at Neferti, feeling for a point of entry, like a questing centipede. Neferti hurls him back with such force that he flattens against the wall and sinks to the floor, his neck broken.

  The others spread out in a semicircle. Neferti lashes out with his poison sponge flail. Faces and arms swell and turn black and burst open. He holsters his flail. (Flails are holstered by pushing the handle up through the bottom of the holster like an octopus retreating into its lair and pulling its tentacles after it.)

  Neferti adjusts an imaginary monocle. “Let’s toddle along and leave these rotters to stew in their own juice. They’re filthy.”

  He stops in a cosmetic shop to rub perfumed unguents on his face and hands, and dusts his clothes with shredded incense.

  They proceed to the Encounter Inn . . . bar along one wall, a few tables. The Bartender is a beast man, a baboon cross with long, yellow canines. When Mandrill vaults over the bar, prudent patrons take cover. Now he fixes his baleful little red eyes on Neferti. His glare glazes with reluctant respect. He becomes obsequious.

  “How can I serve you, noble sir?”

  Neferti orders an opium absinthe. His bodyguard tosses down a double mango brandy. Neferti sips his drink and looks around: some young courtiers from the Palace on a slumming expedition, a table of the dreaded Breathers. By taking certain herbs mixed with centipede excrement, they nurture a breath so foul that it can double a man over at six feet like a kick to the crotch. At point-blank range the breath can kill.

  Every Breather has a different formula. Some swear by bat dung, others by vulture vomit smoothed by rotten land crabs, or the accumulated body fluids of an imperfectly embalmed mummy. There are specialty shops catering to Breathers where such mixtures can be obtained. They vie with each other for the foulest breath. The breath mixtures slowly eat away the gums and lips and palate.

  Now a Breather exhales into the air above the courtiers” table and dead flies rain down into their drinks. The Breather lisps through a cleft palate, “Noble sirs, I beg your forgiveness. I simply wish to prevent the flies from annoying your revered persons.”

  Neferti shudders to remember his encounter with an old Breather . . .

  The Breather bars his path. His lips are gone and there are maggots at the corners of his mouth.

  “A pittance, noble sir.”

  “Out of my path, offal.”

  The old Breather stands his ground. He smiles, and a maggot drops from his mouth.

  “Please, kind sir.”

  Neferti shoots him in the stomach with his .44 Special. The Breather doubles forward and such a foul stink jets from his mouth in a hail of rotten teeth and maggots that Neferti loses consciousness.

  He came to in a chamber of the Palace, attended by the royal physicians. He shuddered at the memory and vomited until he brought up green bile. Worst of all was knowing that his Ka had been defiled. Three months of rigorous purification, during which he ate only fruits and drank the purest spring water, restored him to health.

  A beautiful young Breather with smooth purple skin like an overripe tropical fruit glides over to Neferti.

  “Honored sir,” he purrs, “I can breathe many smells.” He exhales a heavy, clinging musk that sends blood tingling to Neferti’s groin.

  “I can show you how to pass through the Duad.”

  The Duad is a river of excrement, one of the deadliest obstacles on the road to the Western Lands. To transcend life you must transcend the conditions of life, the shit and farts and piss and sweat and snot of life. A frozen disgust is as fatal as prurient fixation, two sides of the same counterfeit coin. It is necessary to achieve a gentle and precise detachment, then the Duad opens like an intricate puzzle. Since Neferti had been exposed to the deadly poison of Christianity, it was doubly difficult for him to deal with the Duad.

  So he nods and the Breather, Giver of Strong Smells and Tainted Winds, guides them through a maze of alleys, paths, ladders, bridges and catwalks, through inns and squares, patios and houses where people are eating, sleeping, defecating, making love. This is a poor quarter and few can afford the luxury of a private house with no rights of passage. There are many degrees of privacy. In some houses there is a public passage only through the garden. Others live in open stalls on heavily traveled streets, or in the maze of tunnels under the city, or on roofs where the neighbors hang clothes to dry and tether their sheep and goats and fowl. Some are entitled to exact a toll. And some routes are the exclusive prerogative of a club, a secret society, a sect, a tong, a profession or trade. Fights over passage rights are frequent and bloody. There are no public services in this quarter, no police, fire, sanitation, water, power or medical service. These are provided by families and clubs, if at all.

  Neferti is dropping his Ego, his Me, his face to meet the faces that he meets. There is nothing here to protect himself from. He can feel the old defenses falling, dropping away like muttering burlap, dripping from crystal bone, burning out like a Coleman mantle . . . the black mantle shreds in the night wind.
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  In the 1920s, everyone had a farm where they would spend the weekends. I remember the Coleman lanterns that made a roaring noise, and the smell of the chemical toilets. . . . Khaibit, my shadow, my memory, is shredding away in the wind.

  The Honey Door

  Stone workers uncovered a stratum of fossilized honeycombs. The congealed sweetness sealed in over the centuries wafted out and the Pharaoh, Great Outhouse 8, whiffed it fifty miles away in his palace. It was said of Great 8 that he could tell when any of his subjects defecated and differentiate among them by the smell.

  He dispatched his most skilled stonecutters to the spot. The stratum of stone combs was cut free from the surrounding rock and carried to the palace. Of an irregular shape, it measured ten by eight feet and in some places was two feet in depth.

  Great 8 was very old, and he gave orders for his embalming. After the preliminary procedures of extracting the internal organs and the brain and drying and curing the mummy, instead of being wrapped in linen, he would be placed naked into a sarcophagus cut from the combs, the sarcophagus to be filled with honey.

  It is known that sugar does not spoil, and soon others are following in the sweet steps of Great Outhouse 8, having their mummies preserved in orange and strawberry, rose and lotus syrups, glycerine with opal chips . . . the sarcophagus swings on a pivot so that the chips float about, and there is a little crystal window to observe the deceased in his final habitat.

  The priests are disquieted and paw the ground like cattle scenting danger. A flood of unorthodox embalming methods could sweep away the fundamentals of our Thing, they wail. And their fears are not without foundation.