Zone (34 page)

Interzone
come to him, does something else come to him besides sleep, the heat will wake him the heat the broad daylight his arms folded on the table collapsed dirty the extinguished hashish still in his hand conquered by pleasure and death in the blue-tinged reflections of the Bay of Tangier guardian of the Mediterranean—the next morning William Burroughs is still trembling, aching, he pours water on himself in the communal bathroom and goes down to lose himself in the bustle, where will he have his coffee, I picture him at the Baba bar, I don’t know if it existed yet at that time, the Baba Café in Tangier seems as if it’s always been there, since the unscrupulous merchant Phoenicians ancestors of Ghassan and Rafael Kahla the writer, tables chairs old posters on the wall friendly waiters the legends of Tangier have all sat there, I imagine Burroughs there too, Bowles the blue man, Jean Genet, Tennessee Williams, Mohamed Choukri the half-starved wretch, at the Baba Café today there is a poster of the Barça the FC Barcelona a soccer club the Moroccans love I don’t know why they feel united to this Catalan team that doesn’t have half as many titles as its Madrid rival, maybe the colors of its blue-and-red jersey remind them instinctively of some glorious episode, did Jean Genet like soccer I have no idea, he certainly liked to watch those handsome athletes running around scantily dressed on green grass, Genet reaches Barcelona thirty years before coming to Tangier the murky, Barcelona is a dark city a port that smells of fried food and thieves, where there’s dried blood on the pocket knives with their worn-out handles, in the alleyways crammed between the port and the Avenue Parallel Genet falls in love with a Serb stinking of brilliantine and filth, Genet gets a hard-on for crime, Genet gets a hard-on for crime the way others do for the army, Genet gets a hard-on for a Serb deserter of the Foreign Legion, a one-armed Serb, a thief and pimp, who humiliates him and whom he humiliates, a Serb who served during the First World War, who survived the defeat, the debacle and lost on the highways enlisted with Millán-Astray Death’s betrothed, to end up also disabled like the general in love with decapitation, then a beggar a thief an opium dealer and a lover of Jean Genet the sodomite visionary, Stéphanie in Barcelona looked in vain for the traces of that glorious time when the writer coupled with sailors for a few pesetas, without thinking that it was of course impossible, that her own condition as a tourist was the very proof of the disappearances of the city that Genet had glimpsed just before the civil war, money and foreign visitors implied the end of shady neighborhoods, and it seemed to me very cowardly to look today nostalgically for traces of the humiliation of the poor the whores the thieves while staying at a ritzy hotel for the European bourgeoisie, whereas she couldn’t bear the contemporary version of those pre-war plebeians, all day North Africans stood leaning against a wall waiting for something that wasn’t going to happen, the fat black whores had shouting matches with the emaciated underage whores from Eastern Europe, all of them packed in, forced by cops with fast-acting nightsticks to a few tiny streets, to a crossroads where they kept returning between strongarmed arrests, required not to scatter into more peopled places, ordered to act discreet or disappear as if by magic, usually expelled without ceremony, Barcelona wanted to eradicate prostitution in the street and reserve it for the flashy modern brothels where there was a shower in every room and a certificate of hygiene—Stéphanie the curious played at frightening herself suggesting I take her to a pleasant cathouse, where we could have slept with a very clean pretty woman, the idea was very exciting to her, I remember at the hotel one night when she had drunk a little she whispered her fantasies into my ear, of course I played along, I explained the customs of bordellos to her feeling her desire mount, obviously I knew that Stéphanie was a well-brought-up girl, limited by her social class and her education and that she’d never go to such a place, but no matter we were on vacation far from the Boulevard Mortier far from international conspiracy dossiers and serious things, aside from Zone business I didn’t go out, the house of Francesc Boix the photographer of Mauthausen the Bota camp the police building on Vía Laietana where the Francoists tortured anything that fell into their hands the model prison on Entença Street that the father of Millán-Astray had run I had to think about all that when I went to bed with Stéphanie, Stéphanie Proustian in the morning Célinian at night, I’m thirsty all of a sudden, I could go back to the bar drink something maybe just a glass of fizzy water to wet the inside of my mouth dried out by gin and tobacco, outside it’s dark despite the moon, hills undulate at high speed, this express doesn’t pass through any more towns, there’s nothing but countryside between us and Rome, I observe the curves of the flautist sleeping on her companion’s shoulder, her lingerie shows through her sweater, Stéphanie was very partial to grey V-neck cashmere sweaters, she wore them with nothing underneath except a black bra, women left Genet indifferent, I think, not Burroughs, he had a child with Joan before he killed her in play—of all the heroes of Tangier, Paul Bowles Jean Genet or Tennessee Williams Burroughs is probably the only one who slept with women too, that October morning in 1955 after his first experience of hypoxyphilia delicious suffocation William Burroughs has a coffee calmly at the Baba or at the Tangis, Tangier is living through its last year of independence under the aegis of the international community, as we say, in 1956 the sultan of Morocco with his hooded coat and his little donkey entered the city, nothing was left to the Spanish except Ceuta and Melilla, and to the French only eyes to cry with, even though Morocco wasn’t exactly part of my Zone I still went there once on a mission, for purposes of international anti-terrorist cooperation of course, the Moroccans were very advanced on that issue they had already begun to hide the Islamists the leftists and the democrats in the desert ever since the 1960s, in very dry open-air prisons, in Kenitra, in Tazmamart then in Outita, a very recent prison that had no reason to be envious of its more famous elders: Moroccan methods were simple if not efficient, it was a matter of imprisoning the largest possible number of the poor, the unemployed, of tramps of all kinds, religious or not, for having gone to the same street, the same school or the same neighborhood as an opponent, which didn’t increase the popularity of the government in place but duly filled the kingdom’s prisons—the Moroccan intelligence agencies always had a grudge against us, or rather our relations were always under the shadow of Ben Barka, and every time a French judge got out some letters rogatory or a former cop came out with revelations about the affair they took offence, made obstacles for us while still vaguely understanding that we couldn’t do much about it, after all they didn’t just kidnap him, their Ben Barka, and dissolve him in acid or bury him in the furthest reaches of the desert, that was taking a big risk, the proof is that we’re still talking about it, once again I took advantage of my mission to go see a little of the country, Casablanca and Tangier in a fast train, an entirely agreeable train what’s more, without of course the Pininfarina design of today’s Italian rapid-transit trains, in Tangier I had looked for the pension-brothel where Burroughs stayed the visionary telepath and I had tried to read
Naked Lunch
, without success, aside from a few pages at random, nor did Tennessee Williams inspire me, or Bowles the tea-drinker, Genet’s grave was in Larache quite far from there, I sat at the Baba Café with a newspaper to make myself look busy, I had put up at the Fuentes pension, on a tiny square in the old city, a tourist for tourist’s sake might as well go all the way, I was playing for time, I was playing for time before going back to Paris to see Stéphanie again and that obscure boulevard where I buried myself in papers and the commentaries of Lebihan the bicycle king, he was quite close to retirement, in limbo between active life and the house in Normandy, and he realized that himself: ah, Francis, I’m not into what I do anymore, my heart isn’t in my work, you understand? he’d spend hours looking off into space, until he was overcome with guilt and began running every which way looking desperately for something to do, something that would give him the feeling of being one of us again, indispensable, thereby wasting a huge amount of energy like La Fontaine’s fly around the coach horses, Lebihan who was usually so long-suffering no longer knew how to approach a mountain pass, that bike fanatic was pedaling in the void, trying to pass everyone on the false flats, Francis
you have
to go to Morocco, I knew my Lebihan so well the man with the incurable alopecia, I’d pretend not to hear, go where, why, I have a lot of work right now, then I’d see him stand up on the pedals immediately, Francis I’m getting a mission together right away, it’s vital, you can try to find out the name we’re missing in file Z., try to get them to agree to an exchange for file Y., pay attention, read the prospectus, Francis, the A. file is going to gain a lot of importance, the economic situation is pressuring us every day, Francis, the job is floundering, the drainpipe’s leaking go over there at least they’ll get the impression that we’re interested in them, Francis show them we can do more than those computer geeks, there Lebihan was unfair, in fact by complete chance we were responsible for a magnificent memo on
The Methods of Communication of Q. on the Internet
, Lebihan didn’t know a thing about computer science and he was very proud of it, of that memo, the quantity of information to deal with made Internet specialists almost inoperative, unless some madman sent an e-mail in Braille to ask for news about Bin Laden’s health: in the era of the Web human ways of getting information were finding their hour of glory and Lebihan, about to go into retirement, was going slightly off his rocker, the man trained during the Cold War was regaining some strength for a fresh onslaught, from time to time he’d shout as he scratched himself
Francis, Francis, you haven’t made any progress on the K. affair
, and Francis huffed, Francis spent hours checking vague memos from incongruous posts to make progress on K., as he dreamt about Croatia, Bosnia, action and the sounds of bombs, Francis thought about his dead comrades, about Stéphanie’s ass, about thousands of buttocks swaying in provocative panties, all hidden by the grey flannel slacks that are the daily lot of civil servants, but our specialty, information, made us capable of deciphering, of seeing the thong of this one or that one and so feeding our desire, day after day, for those administrative secret underthings—in Tangier there was no question of underwear, quite the contrary, I was stunned by the absence of women, replaced by African men, Saharan men, Sub-saharan men, all hoping for a quick passage to Europe and its glories, the city seemed full of hunted, waiting men, their eyes lowered, the whole Kasbah harbored timorous illegal immigrants and obese smugglers, a whole country waiting, Tangier stopover city where human trafficking replaced the contraband of drugs weapons and influences, all those poor guys in limbo had to survive waiting for their passage to Spain, the Fuentes pension looked like dozens of others, the more or less friendly staff appreciated Western tourists, as for me I was tempted to set off for Algeciras with a load of illegal immigrants, to become illegal myself, to disappear, to forget Francis the ex-warrior low-level spy Stéphanie the great strategist Lebihan the bicyclist and the whole works, I should have, I should have, if I think about it I was on the point of changing my life three times, once in Venice in the black water of a canal, once in Tangier in a sleazy hotel, once more today, done, that’s it, my name is Yvan Deroy the mad, every time an angel appeared, every time there was a divine intervention a miracle like they say to put me back on the rails that are guiding me now to Rome, in Tangier I was wandering through the alleyways of the Medina or by the sea, between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, haunted by Burroughs drugs and death, pursued by Stéphanie and our relationship that was becoming more difficult by the day, by the suitcase that was getting heavier and that I imagined would sink me in a boat in the middle of the Strait of Gibraltar: in Tingis the Phoenician the saint turned out to be an old Riffian with thick grey curly hair, his mustache almost white, who was drinking beer in a crowded noisy café, as I was killing time leafing through
Naked Lunch
without understanding a word at the next table over, he spoke to me first, he asked me
you are French?
and after I absentmindedly agreed he went on
I don’t like the French
, with a big smile, I immediately took to him, I said
me neither
, me neither I don’t specially like the French, or anyone else for that matter, the old man’s name was Mohamed Choukri he was a writer, known as the White Wolf in Tangier which he had been crisscrossing for forty years, he knew all the taverns all the whores with the suppurating wombs all the foreigners drawn by exoticism by the troubling delicacy of those morbid lands he had known Bowles and Genet he was a little pitiful with his hobo’s soft plastic bag in which he lugged around his complete works to sell to tourists, aware of being a living legend, a piece of the city, gnawed like it by the Crab, Choukri said to me
I have three distinct and independent cancers, believe it or not
, they could have been named like the nails that crucified Christ, poverty, violence, and corruption, he had the three cancers of Tangier old Mohamed with the first name of the Prophet, he was dying, I bought his novels from him
For Bread Alone
and
Time of Errors
, whose titles seemed to me wonderfully appropriate, Choukri asked me if I had come for the kif, the boys, or the nostalgia and I was hard put to reply, what could I have said, I came because Burroughs killed his wife, or something like that, that didn’t hold up, I came because Burroughs almost died asphyxiated jacking off with a plastic bag over his head, I came because I was trying to cure myself of my own cancer, I ended up muttering