William S. Burroughs (30 page)

"How sleep the
brave who sink to rest by all their country's wishes
bless'd!
..."

"Quien es?"
Helpless pieces in the game he
plays.

"God damn you,
if I can't get you off my land one way I will another." On this
checkerboard of nights and days. "It is raining, Anita
Huffington." Confused alarms of struggle and flight.
"Quien
es?"
Hither and thither moves and checks and slays. "God
damn you, if I can't get you off my land one way I will another."
And one by one back in the closet lays.

"It is raining,
Anita Huffington." Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Cold dewy
fingers
...
a tinted photo.

Ledger book shining
in the sky
...
Big Picture, he calls the
rearranged fragments...
"Quien es?"
Last of Kim's
inventions...Leaves whisper, "Hello, Anita Huffington."

It is time for Kim's
Arab assignment and he will need perfect Arabic without a trace of
foreign accent. Language sense is like card sense. Some people have
it, some don't. Reading is one thing, speaking another. Kim's guess
that language operates on the virus principle of replication has been
verified in the Linguistic Institute located outside Paris. Any
language can now be conveyed directly by a series of injections.

The Institute is
dedicated to studying the origin, function and future of language. As
in physics and mathematics, the most abstract data may prove to be
the most practical...Matter into energy...Word back to virus.
Students are taught such seemingly useless skills as talking
backward or talking at supersonic speed. They can talk right along
with you and finish at the same time with precise mimicry of every
syllable. It's a most disconcerting performance that can reduce
a speaker to
...
stammer slobber glob
glub
...
and the students are all expert
ventriloquists.

Kim is waiting to
see the doctor. The Chief was vague about Kim's assignment except to
say that we could be very close to a final solution of the language
problem and that Kim's assignment could be a crucial step. Kim knows
that language shots can be very painful, especially for those who are
not good natural linguists...The doctor looks younger than his
twenty-eight years. He is thin and sandy-haired and keeps running his
hands through his hair as he talks.

"Some shots are
a lot more difficult than others. French Spanish
tres muy
facil...
Maybe you need to rest up for a day or two.
.
..
But when it comes to oriental languages you are using
a whole different set of muscles and neural patterns
...
so
you're bound to have a sore throat, just like your legs are sore
after riding a horse for the first time...And Arabic is frankly the
worst.
..
It literally cuts an
English-speaking throat...Spitting blood is one of the symptoms,
though not necessarily the worst...It is the stutter of neural
response
—
remember when you first
tried to row a gondola? The way you couldn't possibly get it, and
your muscles knotted up and you were just making spastic
gestures with the oar and the feeling in your stomach and groin, that
sort of packing dream tension almost sexual...
?
And then suddenly you could do it? Well it's like that, only
worse...And there is the gap between languages that can be
terrifying
...
the great silences...And
erotic frenzies when the patient feels himself sexually attacked by
Arab demons...

"About ten days
in the hospital...You realize that you don't talk with your mouth and
throat and lungs and vocal cords, you talk with your whole body...And
the body keeps reaching back for the old language
—
it's
rather like junk withdrawal in a way...The erotic manifestations
always occur...It's like the subject is being raped by the language,
shouting out obscenities in the injected idiom...And of course the
set is important...
"

"The set?"

"Yes. For
example, we had six Arab boys in for an English injection...And we
rigged it up like a dorm in an English public school...It isn't
just the language, the subject has to come from somewhere...He's got
to have a regional accent. This was an old-school-tie infiltration
job
—
they had to have not just an
upper-class accent but an upper-class accent complete with a special
school and a part of England
...
this was an
interesting case because of the surprises involved...The boys could
soon spout those clear English voices you can hear across a baronial
dining room but they were sexually aroused by Cockney
vulgarisms...One would say to the other
...
'Cooo
I'd like to glim you in the altogether...
'
I
want to bottle you, mate...
'
'Get
off my dish,' one boy snarls to another. 'Look at Reggie,
starkers...
'
It was like some Cockney demon
had invaded our re-creation of Eton...
"

"How do you
account for this erotic factor...
?"

"It must be
something inherent in the nature of language itself...After all,
language is communication
—
that is,
getting to know someone all over like in the altogether.
..
There
is in fact strong evidence that at one time the larynx was a sexual
organ...The first words were not warning cries or exchanges of
information...The first words were obscenities...As you may have
gathered, your mission is to discover more about the nature and
function of words...That is why you have been selected. You are
a writer who can not only gather the information we are seeking but
transcribe it as well
..."

The doctor got up
and pointed to a map..."Now in this area, the highlands of
Yemen, there are a few remote valleys where the original link between
ape and man that led to speech may still survive. These beings have
sex by talking in each other's throats. They are called
'smouners.'
...
An experienced smouner can
strangle an adversary by this lethal ventriloquism...Your job is
to penetrate the smouners...
"

"So I am the
man for a highly important and, I may add, highly dangerous
assignment
—
is that it?"

The doctor smiled
and ran his fingers through his hair..."Yes...But, I may add, a
highly diverting assignment...In fact I'd like to go along."

"What's keeping
you?"

"Not much. My
papers are going through channels. However, we won't be
traveling together. Your point of entry will be here
...
this
is the market...It varies as to time and place...This year it will be
held on the outskirts of Ganymede, an oasis village in the
highlands
...
with the language and a supply
of money
...
two hundred thousand dollars is
minimal."

The doctor prepares
an injection. As the shot takes effect, Kim can feel the language
stirring in his throat with a taste of blood and mint tea and greasy
lamb. He is squeezed into a crowded bus in a smell of unwashed flesh,
exhaust fumes, and kief. The words are eroding English like
acid
...
later
...
time
sense is not segmented into hours, but laid out spatially like a
road
...
the truck stops in the marketplace
of Ganymede.

The market had the
temporary and dilapidated aspect of a military encampment or a
carnival that has, for some reason, been there for a very long time.
The Greek camp outside Troy must have looked something like this, he
decided. Only this market had been here for centuries. The truck
stopped in a huge square with trees and wells here and there and
people filling gasoline cans and pots at the pumps. Around the square
and on side streets running from it were stalls, tents, tin-roofed
shacks, houses of stone and adobe. He walked past sidewalk cafes and
shabby hotels and bathhouses. Boys with painted eyes beckoned from
doorways. He knew where he was going and soon he began to see guns
and knives displayed in front of the bazaars and in the windows of
dark shops. This he knew was the weapons section. He slowed his
steps, stopping now and again to look at displays. He noticed
armed guards here and there. He came to a square where a number of
people were offering weapons for sale. The guns were passed from hand
to hand as bargaining went on...The guns were mostly automatic
rifles, Israeli and Russian and a few M-16s. A boy touched his arm
and pointed to an M-16.

"Buy me that
and I am yours forever."

Kim nodded. He asked
the price of a frizzy-haired boy. The boy held up three fingers.
"Three American dollars."

Kim looked puzzled
and the boy who had accosted him quickly explained. "That means
three thousand dollars and it's too much."

After haggling, a
price of
$2,500
was agreed upon, with two
hundred rounds of ammunition thrown in. The boy slung the rifle over
his shoulder and put the bullets into a leather shoulder pouch. At
the end of a long crooked street that wound steeply upward between
walls of red adobe was the Ganymede Hotel, with a facade of marble
pillars from some ancient settlement. Kim could see the market
spread out below. It would take days to see it all...

Kim is winded from
the steep climb and the heat. Silver spots boil in front of his
eyes...Vertigo
...
a whiff of ether...a
marketplace...terrible heat...a gathering crowd
...
the
faces
...
screaming
...

"Hold him down,
Greg...I'll get some medication."

"Say, these
language shots are rough
...
learning a
language the hard way, if you ask me
...
Remember
that bloke in for bushman shots? Poor blighter never came back...
"

"That shot
straightened him out...
"
Kim is
sleeping peacefully.

The town has the
temporary look of a military encampment, an oil or mining town,
deserted and repopulated in strata at once gratingly new and
dilapidated. A marketplace with army surplus trucks parked around
it...Booths selling hardware, camping equipment, knives, guns and
ammunition, stone steps leading up from the marketplace to the old
town built into a hillside, a town of red adobe and shuttered
windows.

Kim thought it
looked all spewed out in one piece by a monster wasp. From the narrow
twisting streets he catches whiffs of shit-encrusted walls, an
ancient insect evil that stops the breath...Get yourself together,
Agent K9. The Traveler is equipped with money and the language. He
strolls about in jeans with an army surplus jacket and a straw
hat...Ah the guns...Quite a large area given over to buying and
selling every variety of gun.

"If you are
looking for a special model, sir"
—
a
portly gentleman hands Kim his card
—
"we'll
track it down, sir...
"
Kim looks
around
—
nothing but weapons as far as
he can see in shops built into the hillside. He is in the
automatic-weapons section. Here the golden youth gather to
lovingly feel a K-47 Russian assault rifle, or an Uzi, it's the
chic thing to carry around with you to bars and restaurants
...
full
auto stuff, Kim observes, and lots of it. From junk like the
Czech squirtguns, effective range about four feet, to good heavy
stuff like the old Thompsons...A boy with dusky-rose cheeks and long
lashes looks longingly at an
Η
&
Κ
223...
"Buy me that and I am yours forever...
"
The boy's breath is spicy and musky...The Traveler steps forward and
asks the price. The dealer sees that the Traveler is armed and
probably skilled in the use of arms...

"Four thousand
dollars it is, reasonable."

They settle for
thirty-five hundred. Money doesn't mean much here. Kim hands the boy
the gun in front of the beaming dealer...

"Pleased to
serve such fine gentlemens...
"

"Now I need
some handguns
...
spare clothes and
luggage."

It is usual
procedure for an agent or private buyer to arrive at the market
knowing he can pick up whatever gear he needs at the shops. Kim is
quickly outfitted with just his brand of aftershave and his
eternal alligator, as he calls his Gladstone, when one wears out he
buys another. Ah yes, weapons...That double-action
44
special takes the Russian as well? Very good, rosewood
handle, and that two-inch Colt
38
special
with the butt cut down right into Kim's hand. Don't forget the KY
—
my
God, it's five dollars a tube..."Yessir, things do keep going
up," the young attendant titters without shame. The boy leads
the way, his new
Η
&
Κ
slung over sure arrogant young shoulders. You can see how neatly he
could unsling it and cut someone in two.