it’s so romantic actually means it’s terribly morbid, Marianne felt it, even though she wasn’t consumptive like the Lady of the Camellias, but subject to the assaults of a more or less violent, more or less drunk ex-warrior, who roughly resembled all the clichés of complete male chauvinism, and still today in this train that’s three-quarters empty I have the sensation of a failure an unforgivable violence like with Stéphanie almost ten years later — close your eyes Francis I squeeze out a tear of rage impossible to forget impossible even in sleep maybe Burroughs in Tangier was in a similar state, beside himself, fighting the black beast of memory and shame the owl with the spider’s feet stuck in a corner of memory, like Marianne Stéphanie the brunette with the long hair the expert in the geopolitics of the Zone is stuck to my personal ceiling like an insect, too many things there are too many things everything is too heavy even a train won’t manage to carry these memories to Rome they weigh so much, they weigh more than all the executioners and victims in the briefcase over my seat, that collection of ghosts begun with Harmen Gerbens the old Cairo-dweller, Harmen Gerbens with the sad mustache imprisoned in Qanater in Cairo, strange fate, escaping the Dutch police to end up locked up in Egypt, you’d have to be Saint Christopher to bear all that, the forty-three photos of Gerbens and his pages of commentaries in his journal, Gerbens the rapist documentary-maker great director of concentration-camp pornography, in the beginning I didn’t know why I was recovering this information these names and photos right and left, in the immense files at the Agency, at first, then farther and farther away, why does one do things not out of the wish to know, not out of a need to understand, to conquer a place in the world that’s becoming undone, Burroughs in Tangier was fighting against his own violence with opiates alcohol and kif, like Malcolm Lowry with firewater, Tangier a drifting city a city of grand illusions and contraband, lost alone on the thick lower lip of the Zone, William Burroughs is American, he misses the banks of the Mississippi, the well-ordered avenues of New York, the palm trees of Palm Beach, he is elsewhere, that night in October 1955, he isn’t sleeping, he isn’t writing he isn’t reading he’s sitting on a wooden chair his eyes lost in the darkness, outside or inside, he’s smoking a joint of hashish paste, the window is open it’s still nice out despite the fall, William is forty-one, the age of man’s estate, behind him beyond the badly whitewashed wall he hears groaning, someone groans, two seconds, three, stops and starts again, a rather slow, calm rhythm, a man is groaning with his mouth closed Burroughs breathes in his smoke, his hearing so strained that he feels as if he’s a bat flitting around in the next room, his ears so wide open that he hears the groaning man’s clenched teeth grating, Burroughs feels very clearly the base of his scrotum contract, the more he listens the more his sex swells, what happiness, he unbuckles his pants to let his tool loose, in the open air in the grey smoke-rings, he breathes on his penis, he watches the member’s single eye snatch up the marijuana, the tiny lip of that carp-mouth open to smoke in turn and become bigger and bigger, he observes his penis hardening to the rhythm of the man’s moans in the next room, curious, interested then fascinated by the blue veins running through his own flesh, William puts the joint down for a minute to take hold of the plastic bag on the table, he is in darkness, he can concentrate on the groans that continue, faster, stronger, in the neighboring room, beyond the noise of the plastic which is stuck to his mouth, his nostrils, he has trouble breathing, the more he breathes in the less air reaches his lungs, his head completely covered by the bag, his hand contracts over the burning flesh between his legs, he begins to groan too and the more he moans the more air he lacks the more air he lacks the more he jerks his huge organ his ears are buzzing he’s very hot he sees red soft strong bodies pressing against him Burroughs is completely inside himself and outside himself the bat has become a flying beetle he rubs harder breathes violently his saliva slips onto the bag he is with Joan the androgynous he is with Joan the dead androgyne it’s she who takes him she buries two fingers into his throat and two others into his anus he feels sick his glottis contracts he is asphyxiated he crushes his prick like a fish it spurts empties out explodes, Burroughs explodes almost fainting his semen flies into the night the viscosity floats for an instant like the orgasm he cannot cry out he cannot cry out he’s going to die his eardrums are ringing he flails his arms and legs he is drowning the sperm falls onto his thighs the instant he rips the bag off breathes in breathes in breathes in he comes a second time as he opens his eyes the misshapen room sways around him in the sonorous silence of Tangier, completely collapsed in his chair Burroughs gulps in air, gulps in air, gulps in air, far away, his heart flown away, in complete, soft, relaxed wellbeing, smiling he observes a globular drop a white filament hanging from his finger, he looks at it for a long time before licking his finger curiously and lighting up the joint again, the smoke burns his irritated mucus membranes, completely relaxed, the grocery bag on the floor now, Burroughs feels the reed fibers of the chair bruising his ass, he is thirsty, he downs his beer in one draught, does a poem come to him, does a fragment from