William S. Burroughs (43 page)

"Twenty
Monsieur le Prince?" The gendarme gives precise directions. The
youth thanks him. The police thing nods distantly, for his
soutane waits around the corner.

"If you want to
find a good restaurant just walk around until you see a priest
eating... Well if you want to look like a priest find a good
restaurant and eat in it. Gawd, there's a bishop...Room for one
more inside, sir...
"
After dawdling
over a sumptuous dinner and a little too much wine like any greedy
old pig priest, he hurries away, his cassock flapping behind him,
obviously bent on some urgent errand of mercy or condolence. He stops
in a doorway to adjust his cassock, troublesome beast. His key opens
the door and he slips in like a shadow.

The jewelry firm of
Potterman and Pearlmutter is on the third floor. They're only kikes,
he tells himself, knowing that criminals are bigots. You have to
think and feel your cover. Old-style safe
...
A
muffled boom and Kim walks out after a change of clothes with a
satchelful of jewels.

He is now a fine old
gentleman with the pince-nez, the expensive dark suit, the tiny
ribbon in his lapel. Despite his
bella figura,
Monsieur Dupre
was involved in a number of highly questionable financial
transactions. In fact the Dupre Scandal would bring down a government
and precipitate an abortive revolution...In the course of which
thirty people will die...

"Oui,
monsieur.
"
The
cab driver made a noise like ripping canvas
...
"Machine
guns
...
When
you hear that, you know that it is, how you say, serious."

The suit is now worn
and shabby. He is wearing three dirty old scarves...

"Qui est ca
qui monte?"
he demands,
popping out of his cubbyhole under the stairs. For some hapless
American has dared to visit someone in the blouse without first
announcing himself to the concierge...Oh he knows the step of every
tenant. And woe to the client who attempts to smuggle in an
illicit hotplate. The concierge can detect the slightest overload of
current and trace it to its source by means of a contraption he
has been trying to market for thirty years, writing letters to
various government departments, eliciting polite bureaucratic
replies: Do not envisage any way in which this department
...
and
in course of time replies that were not so polite
...
This
neglect of his genius work has further soured his disposition, if
such a thing is possible. Kim decides to get out from under before
the genius work blows up as it did several days later, razing the
hotel to the ground.

Kim heard the blast
as he had an afternoon Pernod with Madame Rachau, his landlady at the
theatrical hotel where he lived in his song-and-dance capacity.

He nodded...
"Ca
commence.
"

"Oui,
"
said Madame with a smile...
"Ca
commence.
"

Kim can feel Europe
coming apart under his feet as dogs are said to feel the approach of
an earthquake
...
the mutter and rumble of
war. He can smell war in the streets and in the cafes.

So he plunders the
past, present, and future for war songs
...

He gets them in
little bits and pieces
...
Here's a poster
...

mother and children
sitting in front of the fireplace. They are looking at Dad's picture
in uniform.

Keep
the home fires burning

(mutter
of artillery in the distance)

Though
the hearts are yearning
...

(Regret
to inform you)

The war song is of
course a very old genre and far removed from the actualities of
modern combat, where a singing soldier would constitute a public
nuisance outranking a singing waiter.

Kim had cribbed a
song from a future war.

The
last time I saw Paris

Her
heart was young and gay

No
matter how they change her

I'll
remember her that way
...

Impressionist
paintings unfold in his brain like those Japanese flowers that
open in water
...
bookstalls along the
Seine
...
leaves falling
...
urinal
in the upper-right-hand corner
...
this was
going to be a
diseuse
song-and-dance number with magic-lantern
slides of impressionist paintings
...
Monet
...
Renoir
...

No matter how they
change her
...
slides of Paris after nuclear
attack
...
weed-grown rubble. The only thing
left you can recognize is the Eiffel Tower, now a rusted shell, vines
growing up along the struts and the cables. But still unquestionably
the Eiffel Tower. Interplanetary tourists point to the picture in a
guidebook...What remains of London? Kim can see White's gathering the
dust of centuries...

New York? The Statue
of Liberty
...
streets covered with melted
glass like ice and a thousand years hence happy otters slide down the
glass chutes into a crystal-clear East River. Saint Louis? Nothing is
left but the arch, gateway to the west...

I'll remember her
that way...Paris light on the hands of a nurse as she opens a boiled
egg...

le convalescent

She sets the tray
down by an elegant young man in a blue dressing gown...There is a
bottle of laudanum and a medicine glass on his night table. Some
fruit in a bowl. I can make out a ripe peach with a bruise here and
there and an apple
—
it looks like a
goofl
apple
—
I haven't had one
in so long. And the boiled egg is just right with the toast and the
tea, and the laudanum is hitting the back of his neck and moving down
his thighs.

There's a book on
the table. The youth stretches out a languid hand. You can see
that he has been very ill.

The book is entitled
Quien
Es?

On the cover is a
skeleton figure with black vest and sheriffs badge. On the badge
is written
MOI.

Kim dances out
singing:

Paris please stay
the same
...

Citizens dance by
with the morning
pain
under their arms...

An old crippled
woman dances into a
pharmacie..."

Codethyline
Houde, s'il vous plait...
"

"Oui,
madame...
"

The old woman does a
spastic twitching dance out of the store...

Clerk: "This is
the twentieth today
..."

The proprietor is
Madame Rachau
...
"Ah oui...
there
is much pain, much trouble...
"

"And some of
your sad days
..."

"Ah here comes
ce bon vieux Monsieur Carsons
...
"

She reaches for the
codethyline
...

"Bonjour,
monsieur...Codethyline...
?"

"Oui,
madame...
"

Paris please stay
the same
...

All over Paris
people reach for
Quien Es?

Here's a man
collapsed over his
pain,
little pink codethyline pills
spilling down the stairs from a ruptured green and white bag with a
little seal...
Pharmacie de Bonne Chance
...

"ARRETEZ!"
A blurt of machine-gun fire
...

quien es?

Monsieur de Paris
punches the condemned man in the stomach and throws him under the
guillotine. The knife, falls
—

quien es?

Hospital smell of
pain
...

"A blessing it
was...
"

quien es?

And in
wartime
...
Regret to inform you
...
quien
es? quien es? quien es?

The man with a
million faces. Death disguised as any other person, as the planet
heads for the final
sauve qui peut
at vertiginous speed.

"Now when you
get in a tight spot, you head for the nearest terminal. Spot of
bother in London? Duck into the Paris Cafe or the Lima Hotel or the
New York Grill. Of course you have to
make
it into Paris or
Lima or New York. As soon as you walk in look around for a piece of
Paris. Get one of those Maurice Chevalier songs going in your
head...Paris please stay the same
..."

Well it just so
happens the Madame is French and inside of ten seconds Kim is a
favored client and the sounds of pursuit snuff out...The Lima
Hotel
...
a whiff of the sad languorous city
with vultures roosting on all the public buildings and the
statues...A vulture in downtown London is unlikely but look at that
old man, coat flapping, and one of those nasty birdlike English faces
that peck at one...New York is easy because it has pieces from
everywhere
...-
You can't always find a hotel
or cafe
...
then it's a case of naked hide
like naked kill...You have to improvise from what is at
hand
...
Remember, you don't have to move
spatially. You can dodge forward or backward in time...

Kim is in a Paris
street
...
a green haze hangs over the
city
...
the food stalls and shops are all
empty. Everyone is looking at him with a slow hideous
recognition...Eyes blazing with hate, they are all pointing now, and
with a great cry they rush for him hands reaching...Kim runs in a
blind panic. He falls, skinning his knees, gets up, and runs on,
staggering, winded... They are right behind
him.

Now
...
Just
ahead is a rusty urinal and Kim remembers those lines worthy of
Rimbaud
of
Verlaine...

Calmly he slides
into the urinal
...
and the screaming crowd
is snuffed forward to the future time they came from
...
a
time of hunger and disease, madness and death. Kim shudders at the
memory of that green haze, the green-black color of tornado sky
but unmoving, suffocating, a silent arrested twister. And HE was the
one who did it somehow. They SAW him. Kim buttons his pants and
steps out onto dead leaves...They don't belong here, not in this
Paris light. Kim hails a cab with his sword cane. He has a date with
an acrobat.

When you are
shooting for a future terminal, get ready to make a leap in the dark.
You just let go and do nothing and that isn't easy with a screaming
mob six feet behind you going to skin you alive and roll you in
broken Coca-Cola bottles the end result will look like an action
painting. Just
wanting
to be somewhere else, no matter
how intensely, won't do it. You need a peg to hang it on
...
sharp
smell of weeds from a vacant lot and Kim turns around with a
sawed-off shotgun. The mob breaks and scatters at the first blast.

In Marrakesh once,
sitting with Waring on the terrace at sunset...a banging on the door.
Kim peers over and sees his nemesis, Inspector Dupre. The Central
Computer has spat out his falsified passport. Herr Workman died ten
years ago. The Inspector tosses the passport on his desk and
smiles.

"You should
have bought better shoes
...
But I think the

mystery of your
identity will soon unfold itself. Take him to the Slobski Institute."

Waring
points..."Look at that beautiful cat there on the wall."

A white cat on a
white wall, immobile, timeless, looking out over Marrakesh.

"Oh that must
be Monsieur Dupre to change the gas cylinder for the hot-water
heater. Be a dear and let him in."

And there are
changes of identity
...
a silent shift in the
head and you are looking out through different eyes
...
"Screaming
crowds? Oh that's the Olympics on TV...
"
Some frantic characters applaud.