Brion Gysin - The Process

Within the hour, Hamid came trotting up with a sealed envelope addressed to me. I must have laid it on her, too, about needing that bread. Quite obviously, the letter contained cash and Hamid, who still cannot read, tried to shove it playfully into my ear; “making it talk.”

“Here is the price of the Hymners,” I told hin. “I have sold you to Her for this. I’m sorry, I know it’s not near enough.”

Hamid knew what I meant and he wept. I embraced him and told him how broken-up I was to be leaving him but there was just enough bread, there on the bed where I threw it, to take care of the Hotel Duende and buy me a solo ticket to Algut where the term at Independent is starting this week. Hamid was so emotional, he could hardly count his cut of the take through his tears.

“The train is standing in the station, Hamid. This may not be the way I came but this is the way I must go. See; no baggage, Hamid. I must return to the World.”

“Here, take all the days of my life!” cried Hamid, much moved. “All I have to give is my brush and I’ll do anything with it for you. I’ll paint this lady from head to toe, if that’s what you want. I’ll give her my life!”

I do hope Hamid’s words are not prophetic, because a very nasty scene took place, just now back in the station, as we pulled out of Tanja under the first autumn downpour. The Hymners did not come down to see me off, naturally, and I have not one dirham left. She even had the nerve to suggest that I sell my UHER and, somehow, between the hotel and the train, the UHER has just gotten lost. Hamid blamed it on her black magic, of course, but he was frantic and made a terrible scene with everyone in the station. My last vision of Hamid was a glimpse from the already moving train. He was practically throwing himself over the barrier, weeping and waving good-by when, all of a sudden, two tall men who were obviously plainclothes police, swooped down on poor Hamid like vultures and bore him aloft, backward over the crowd; astonished and terrified. Hamid was bawling like a calf at the killing until the rumble of the moving train drowned him out and he was drawn away into the mysterious past. What was all that about? What did that mean? Hamid is far too cool a character ever to be busted for keef; what else could he have been up to? Someone’s revenge? Beware the fury of a woman scorned and all that but: Would she have taken it out on Hamid? No. I hope not. No. I sat down somewhat gingerly on the brown plastic seat of the train leaving Tanja station at just the right speed. I sat awkwardly because of the sheep’s bladder of keef Hamid scored for me as usual, at the very last minute and for a very hurry-up price. I had stuffed what I scored into the Y-front of my jockey-shorts, from which the hard-packed poke of keef had slipped down and bulged like a baseball bat between my thighs. I needed something to steady my nerves, so I was prying into my own zipper like a pickpocket to pull out the precious packet, when a uniformed cop on his beat bumped past my compartment blindly, happily without busting in.

Suddenly, as I stood there swaying in and out of my mind on the last few farewell pipes shared with Hamid, it struck me like a blow between the eyes: I had forgotten to tell Hamid one thing. I had forgotten to tell him why the Hymners had no servants, no servants other than us; no hired servants at all in their house. The Hymners feared local servants might inform on them to the police. In theocratic countries, Bahaï has been considered a heresy tantamount to treason and the penalty for treason is death. Oh, well; are we not all condemned? I wouldn’t put it past old Hamid to dodge even Death. However, I do recall what he said:

“Hamid, Consul of Keef, renews this green passport for you in the name of the Old Man of the Mountain, King of Keef. Long live the Assassins! On your Way, you are bound to run into some fellow-Assassins, you know.”

“But I’m not an Assassin, at all!” I laughed. “I’m purely a potted professor. I insist.”

“We are all of us Assassins,” he gravely replied as he gave me the grass.

I find myself sitting back in the train leaving Tanja, gliding around the curve of the beach. I note sourly that they have truncated the beach once again to put in the new port installation and the enlarged railway yard. The necessary new mole has changed the profile of the beach for the worse by deflecting the wind-driven currents to pile up seawrack, refuse and oil slick on the sand. A minute back, we passed a man-made jungle of rusted iron girders, the skeleton of some long-forgotten fun fair, followed by a chain of leprous bathing establishments with: Tea Like Mother Make , scrawled everywhere to attract the vanished British tourist. Jumping up from my seat, I go lurching off down the corridor of my continental coach to the toilet. The cop comes out, still buttoning up. Having satisfied himself that there is nothing contraband lurking in there, he is not likely to come back this way soon.

I stagger into the swaying water-closet, lock myself in and carefully hang my jacket over the doorknob and the keyhole behind me. Above the immovable frosted-glass window, I turn a flanged air-vent to OPEN, before unzipping my fly. I pull out my business and pick out the body-hot bladder of keef to hug it between my knees while I redress. The old train is picking up speed, clickety-clix , as I fish into my passport-pocket to pull out my sebsi in its slim leather case. I fit the two sections together with a handsome brass band at the link. Placing a finger over my tiny flesh-colored clay pipe head, I try the pipe like a trumpet; airtight, good! A masterpiece matchbox the size of a big postage stamp leaps into the overturned bowl of my left hand and I laugh.

I laugh because this whole business is, of course, just a trap well-enough woven of words — or so I must hope — for the meaning, if any, to show through like a lining of silk. What was it the matches used to say before they learned the latest: “ Burn, baby, burn”? When I bend an ear to listen, the train is already rattling it out: “ Kaulakaulakaulakaulakaulakau …” I grasp the match firmly and strike it, exploding its head. Before it burst into flame, its head was a heavenly blue. I apply its red hair to the green bush of keef I have packed in my pipe and I suck it all up in one single toke. Exhaling, I breathe: “That’s the truth!” blowing it all out the air-vent marked OPEN, from which it trails after the train to plane out over Tanja like a plume. Expertly, I spit the red comet of keef-coal into the open thunderbowl beneath whose open trap I can catch a patch of planet Earth spinning between our magnetic rails. Everything spinning must appear symmetrical: is that what it’s all about? I turn back to the frosted window, standing on tiptoe to catch my last glimpse of the blue Leaping Hills through the air-vent; but night has already fallen in cold curtains of rain. I content myself with repeating the saw: “As no two people see the world the same way, all trips from here to there are imaginary; all truth is a tale I am telling myself.”

So: there are no blue Little Hills and none of the rest is true, either. I condemn the whole thing. Then, like the governor before the execution, I want to wash my hands but, on this man’s train, there is no water forthcoming. No matter what plunger I push: HOT or COLD, nothing flows out of the rocking walls at my once-magical touch. Fortified by a few more pipes, I replace my poke in my pants where it hangs like a blackjack. Pushing my face into the mirror over the basin, I say, I breathe to whoever is in there: “Human problems remain insoluble on purely human terms.” Whoever it is I see in there nods in agreement with me. I light up a Player’s to cover the keef before I boldly throw open the door to face a mob of Middle East refugees lined up six-deep, all twisting their legs. Then, when I plunge both through them and the swinging glass door in a panic, I see I am right back on that same old circular subway, suddenly; going nowhere again but fast. A handsome old white-bearded Arab loon, all dressed in white, bursts out of a blazing broom-closet, barring my way with an iron-tipped staff.