William S. Burroughs (42 page)

"What's wrong
with you? Remember he
saw
the picture."

Kim sees himself
spread on a pink launching pad like a soft rocket. His ass is the
touchhole, Jerry's cock the light. Now it touches, enters in a blaze
of light as they streak out over the river and trees
...
a
wake of jism across the Milky Way.

The space capsule is
accelerating
...
cracked concrete streets,
drifting sand
...
Thousands of white
butterflies. Blue mist of abandoned army
...
there's
a path out...Smell of adolescent genitals on the camel saddle
spermy smear across a vast empty sky
...
old
cars and bicycles rusty derricks worn benches sand streets pools of
silence
...
driftwood ruined piers and
pavilions
...
swamp land
...
canals.

The guide traces the
area on the map with his finger..."The Place of Dead Roads,
senor.
This does not mean roads that are no longer used, roads
that are overgrown, it means roads that are
dead.
You
comprehend the difference?"

"And how can
this area be reached?"

The guide shrugged.
"It is usual to start in a City of Dead Streets...And where is
this city? In every city are dead streets,
senor,
but in some
more than in others. New York is well supplied in this respect...But
we are late. The car is waiting to take us to the fiesta."

Evening falls on
Mexico, D. F. The plumed serpent is suffocating the city in
coils of foul saffron smoke that rasp the lungs like sandpaper,
undulating slightly as the inhabitants walk through, many with
handkerchiefs tied across mouth and nose. The poisonous reds and
greens and blues of neon light fuzz and shimmer.

Two men reel out of
a cantina and pull their nasty little
25
automatics from inside belt holsters and empty them into each
other at a distance of four feet. Smoke flashes light the sneering
macho faces, suddenly gray with the realization of death. They lurch
and stagger, eyes wild like panicked horses. Pistols fall from
nerveless fingers. One is slumped on the curb spitting blood. The
other is kicking the soles of his boots out against a wall. In
seconds the street is empty, wise citizens running to get as far away
as possible before the
policia
arrive and start beating
"
'
confesiones"
out of everyone in sight. A buck-toothed boy with long arms like
an ape snatches up one of the pistols as he lopes by.

Kim ducks into an
alley, practicing Ninja arts of invisibility. They are on the
outskirts of the city by a ruined hacienda. Along crumbling mud walls
men huddle in serapes of darkness that seeps into ditches and
potholes like black ink.

Abruptly the city
ends. An empty road winds away through the cactus, sharp and clear in
moonlight as if cut out of tin.

Clouds are gathering
over a lake of pale filmy waters. A speckled boy with erection
glares at Kim as Kim glides by in his black gondola, trailing a
languid hand in the water. Hate shimmers from the boy's eyes like
black lightning. He holds up a huge purple-yellow mango. "You
like beeg one, Meester Melican cocksucker?" The fragile shells
of other boys are gathering
...
lifeless
faces of despair...

"Malos, esos
muchachos"
said the clouds
and heat lightning behind the boy.

Kim is floating down
a river that opens into a lake of pale milky water. Storm clouds are
gathering over the mountains to the north. Heat lightning flickers
over the filmy water in splashes of silver. On a sandbank a naked boy
with erection holds up a huge silver fish, still flapping.

"On peso,
Meester. Him
fruit
fish." The boy's body shimmers
with pure naked hate.

"Why don't you
come with us instead of moaning?" Kim drawls. Other boys are
gathering, faces of hatred and evil and despair. They run through the
shallow water that scatters from their legs like fish milk. They
huddle in the stern of the boat like frightened cats. The boys
shimmer and melt together. One boy remains, sitting on a coil of
rope.

"Me Ten Boy
Clone. Can be one boy, five six, maybe."

"Malos, esos
muchachos,"
says the guide
from the tiller behind the boy. The boy sniggers.

At daybreak they are
in a vast delta to the sky, dotted with islands of swamp cypress
and mangos. There is a feeling of end less depths under the
fragile shell of the boat. Not a breath of air stirring.

As they pass an
island the leaves hang limp and lifeless. An alligator slides into
the water and a snake hanging from a tree limb turns to watch them
attentively, darting out its purple tongue. Here the dead roads and
empty dream places drift down into a vast stagnant delta. Alligator
snouts protrude above oily iridescent water. Pale and unreal, the
lake extends into nowhere.

The Place of Dead
Roads
...
We are floating down a wide river
heat lightning sound of howler monkies. The guide is steering
for the shore. We will tie up for the night. The boat is a raft on
pontoons with a sleeping tent. I am adjusting the mosquito netting. A
fire in the back of the boat in a tub of stones frying fish. We lie
side by side listening to the lapping water. Once a jaguar jumped
onto the stern of the boat. Caught in the flashlight he snarled
and jumped back onto the shore. I put down the double-barreled
twelve-gauge loaded with buckshot. We are passing a joint back and
forth.

Every day the river
is wider. We are drifting into a vast delta with islands of
swamp cypress, freshwater sharks stir in the dark water. The guide
looks at his charts. The fish here are sluggish and covered with
fungus. We are eating our stores of salt beef and dried fish and
vitamin pills. We are in a dead-end slough, land ahead on all sides.

And there is a pier.
We moor the boat and step ashore. There is a path leading from the
pier, weed-grown but easy to follow.

"And what is a
dead road? Well,
senor,
somebody you used to meet,
uno
amigo, tal vez...
"

Remember a red brick
house on Jane Street? Your breath quickens as you mount the worn
red-carpeted stairs...The road to
4
calle
Larachi, Tangier, or
24
Arundle Terrace in
London? So many dead roads you will never use again
...
a
flickering gray haze of old photos
...
pools
of darkness in the street like spilled ink
...
a
dim movie marquee with smoky yellow bulbs
...
red-haired
boy with a dead-white face.

The guide points to
a map of South America. "Here,
senor...
is the Place of
Dead Roads."

Just ahead a ruined
jetty
...
some large sluggish fish stirs at
our approach with a swish and a glimpse of a dark shape moving into
deeper water...

We step
ashore
...
through the broken walls and weeds
of a deserted garden
...
dilapidated
arches...A boy, eyes clotted with dreams, fills his water jug from a
stagnant well.

As Kim moves back in
time he leaves a wake of disasters behind him, which is only logical
since he is retracing his space in time, leaving a time vacuum behind
him.

Here he is in
Tangier having his coffee on the terrace. He settles down to read
about the earthquake in Agadir oh yes he'd just been there the
Commander was way off course lucky thing he didn't split the earth
open with his bungling the incompetent old beast. Kim read avidly all
eyewitness accounts, people who were saved because they stayed where
they were people who just got out of where they had been in time
frantic relatives clawing at the rubble with their bare hands seem to
look at him accusingly
...
the boiled eggs
are just right
...
rather high on the
scale it was Kim is hopeless about the mechanical details after all
what could be less magical than saying I am going to produce an
earthquake of seven microperimeters on the Whosis scale...Oh here was
something juicy: an underground snake pit was ruptured by the quake
so that thousands of frenzied cobras and adders slither through
the stricken city biting any unfortunates they encounter...

Trucks rumble
through the rubble filled with wild-eyed soldiers...

"NOTICE TO ALL
CITIZENS
...
NOTICE TO ALL CITIZENS
...
KILL
YOUR DOGS AND CATS
...
REPEAT: KILL YOUR DOGS
AND CATS
...
ANYONE TRYING TO BE A HYPOCRITE
WILL BE PUNISHED BY TWENTY YEARS IN JAIL"

Despite the strict
order of the government health services, thousands of dogs roam the
streets and the police have a shoot-on-sight order for all stray
animals. However, their inaccuracy is such that citizens are
frequently wounded or killed by stray bullets while a disdainful
Afghan hound swishes away untouched.

"We have a
tight schedule to keep, remember...
"

"Ah yes
...
and
what happens here when we leave...
?"

"A riot, I
think. It will suck all the money out of Tangier
..."

Earthquakes, riots,
floods, fires, hurricanes and tornadoes he digs special because that
is what he is leaving in his wake, a low-pressure area...

And the barometer
dropped and dropped until we thought it was broken...Carsons was
here. There were tornadoes never seen before, Sound Twisters
that sucked the words out of your mouth, shattering tapes to dust and
stripping records. Then silence rushes in like a
thunderclap
...
and Odor Twisters.

Kim adored
tornadoes. Giver of winds is my name he wrote it out in Egyptian
characters
...
the green sky the black funnel
the twisting black strength he can feel it in his head...

And hurricanes were
nice too, nothing more exhilarating than riding a hurricane watching
the trees and telephone poles bend and break like matchsticks, the
windows blow out, the roofs tear loose, and tidal waves rushing in
fifty feet high
...
and plagues of course
were delightful but Kim just couldn't get up any enthusiasm for
famine. What a dreary bore the children with swollen bellies and dead
eyes the old people like pieces of dirt just patiently waiting to
crumble...There's no élan about famine
...
not
like riding the wind across a screaming sky...I hear tell they
got these thousand-mile-per-hour winds on Mars just think what that
would do to London or New York...

Kim always reads the
tornado stories. Here was one a barber was shaving a man when
the twister struck the razor was pulled from his hand and cut a man's
throat three hundred yards away. And the straws driven into telephone
poles...Imagine a fist or kick coming at that speed...Kim dismissed
the idea of a twister gun but twister shells or grenades
might
work.

"Clutter the
Glind," screamed the Captain of Moving Land.

Traveling back in
time is like being at the controls of an intricate ship that requires
the most delicate and precise touch to steer through shallows and
reefs and enemy fire...Clickety clickety clack
...
back
back back
...
back through Tangier,
Paris
...
Sometimes he shifted his identity
ten times in the course of a day...Concierge, gendarme, police
inspector, lavatory attendant, thief, bestial peasant, surly
waiter, song-and-dance man, mass murderer, member of the Academy.
Then he rests up in a safe house and catches up on his journals...

Back now in gay
Paree, where Kim indulges in an orgy of identity shifts.

"It's like
footwork in fighting. Keep moving so you are harder to hit. We call
it 'shoe work' in the trade...Your shoes are your identity papers.
Keep them clean and polished. When you travel back in time on your
own time track, you are bucking your whole past karma. So you never
travel in a straight line. It would be suicidal."

Kim began his
acquaintance with the anonymous Shoehorns and Cobblers who forge
passports and other documents. You get what you pay for. Pay enough
and your papers are real.

The gendarme saluted
smartly as the elegant young man approached but the youth
perceived something dead and cold and joyless in the small hard green
eyes. The gendarme would later become a collaborationist commandant
of police, a vicious torturer of resistance fighters. He will
escape to Argentina after the war and find Death Squad work.