The illuminatus! trilogy (97 page)

“Tea leaves or cards?” she asked courteously, sitting across from him at the table.

“Cards,” he said absently, looking down from the window to the Common. “Coffee,” he added to the waitress. “Black as sin.”

“Were you listening to the preachers down there?” Mama Sutra asked shrewdly.

“Yes.” He grinned, engagingly. “‘He that believeth shall never taste death.’ They’re in rare form today.”

“Shuffle,” she said, handing the cards over. “But they awakened some spiritual need in you, my son. That’s why you came up here.”

He met her eye cynically. “I’m willing to try any kind of witchcraft once. I just came from a practitioner of the latest variety, just off the boat from Vienna a few years.”

Bull’s-eye
, she thought.

“Neither his science nor their unenlightened faith can help you,” Mama said somberly, ignoring his cynicism. “Let us hope that the cards will show the way.” She dealt a traditional Tree of Life.

At the crown was Death upside-down, and below it were the King of Swords in Chokmah and the Knight of Wands in Binah. “He that believeth shall never taste death,” he had quoted cynically.

“I see a battlefield,” she began; it was common Boston gossip that Drake first started acting odd after the war. “I see Death come very close to you and then miss you.” She pointed to the reverse Death card with a dramatic finger. “But many
died
, many that you cared for deeply.”

“I liked a few of them,” he said grudgingly. “Mostly I was worried about my own a—my own hide. But go ahead.”

She looked at the Knight of Wands in the Binah position. Should she mention the bisexuality implied? He was going to a shrink, and might be able to take it. Mama tried to hold the Knight of Wands and King of Swords together in her focus, and the way became clear. “There are two men in you. One loves other men, perhaps too much. The other is desperately trying to free himself from all of humanity, even from the world. You’re a Leo,” she added suddenly, taking a leap.

“Yes,” he said, unimpressed. “August 6.” He was thinking that she had probably looked up the birthdates of all
the richer individuals in town in case they ever wandered in.

“It’s very hard for Leos to accept death,” she said sadly. “You are like Buddha after he saw the corpse on the road. No matter what you have or own, no matter what you achieve, it will never be enough, for you saw too many corpses in the war. Ah, my son, would that I could help you! But I only read cards; I am no alchemist who sells the Elixir of Eternal Life.” While he was digesting that one—a sure hit, she felt—Mama rushed on to examine the Five of Wands reversed in Chesed and the Magus upright in Geburah. “So many wands,” she said. “So many fire signs. A true Leo, but so much of it turned inward. See how the energetic Knight of Wands descends to the Five upside-down: All your energies, and Leos are very powerful, are turned against yourself. You are a burning man, trying to consume yourself and be reborn. And the Magus, who shows the way, is below the King of Swords and dominated by him: Your reason won’t allow you to accept the necessity of the fire. You are still rebelling against Death.” The Fool was in Tipareth and, surprisingly, upright. “But you are very close to taking the final step. You are ready to let the fire consume even your intellect and die to this world.” This was going swimmingly, she thought—and then she saw the Devil in Netzach and the Nine of Swords reversed in Yod. The rest of the Tree was even worse: the Tower in Yesod and the Lovers reversed (of course!) in Malkuth. Not a cup or a pentacle anywhere.

“You’re going to emerge as a much stronger man,” she said weakly.

“That isn’t what you see,” Drake said. “And it isn’t what I see. The Devil and the Tower together are a pretty destructive pair, aren’t they?”

“I suppose you know what the Lovers reversed means, too?” she asked.

“‘The Answer of the Oracle Is Always Death,’” he quoted.

“But you won’t accept it.”

“The only way to conquer Death—until science produces an immortality pill—is to make him your servant, your company cop,” Drake said calmly. “That’s the key I’ve been looking for. The bartender never becomes an alcoholic, and the high priest laughs at the gods. Besides,
the Tower is rotten to the core and deserves to be destroyed.” He pointed abruptly to the Fool. “You have some real talents obviously—even if you do cheat like everybody in this racket—and you must know there are two choices after crossing the Abyss. The right-hand path and the left-hand path. I seem to be headed for the left-hand path. I can see that much, and it confirms what I already suspect. Go ahead and tell me the rest of what you see; I’m not afraid to hear it.”

“Very well.” Mama wondered if he was one of the few, the very few, who would eventually come to the attention of the Shining Ones. “You will make Death your servant, as a tactic to master him. Yours is, indeed, the left-hand path. You will cause immense suffering—especially to yourself at first. But after a while you won’t notice that; after a while you won’t even notice the horrors that you inflict on others. Men will say that you are a materialist, a worshipper of money. What do you hate most?” she asked abruptly.

“Sentimental slop and lies. All the Christian lies in Sunday school, all the democratic lies in the newspapers, all the socialist lies our so-called intellectuals are spouting these days. Every rotten, crooked, sneaking, hypocritical deception people use to hide from themselves that we’re all still hunting animals in a jungle.”

“You admire Neitzsche?”

“He was crazy. Let’s just say I have less contempt for him, and for DeSade, than I have for most intellectuals.”

“Yes. So we know what the Tower is that you will destroy. Everything in America that smacks of democracy or Christianity or socialism. The whole façade of humanitarianism from the Constitution onward to the present. You will turn your fire loose and burn all that up with your Leonine energies. You will force your view of America into total reality, and make every citizen afraid of the jungle and of the death that lurks in the jungle. Crime and commerce are moving closer together, due to Prohibition; you will complete their marriage. All, all this, just to make Death your servant instead of your master. The money and power are just incidental to that.”

NO—because even if you think you have it beat even if you think you can work out a reconciliation a separate peace I mean shit the war still goes on No you’re only kidding yourself Even say I love Simon and that’s all Hollywood
bullshit you can’t really tell in only one week no matter how good it is but even if I love Simon the war goes on as long as we’re going around in separate skins White Man Black Man Bronze Man White Woman Black Woman Bronze Woman even if Hagbard claims to have gotten past all that on his submarine it’s only because they’re under the water and away from the world Out here the bastards are using live ammunition like it says in the old joke Maybe that’s the only truth in the world Not the Bibles or poetry or philosophy but just the old jokes Especially the bad jokes and the sad jokes No they’re using live ammunition I mean shit they never see me all of them White Man Black Man Bronze Man White Woman Black Woman Bronze Woman they look at me and I’m in their game I have my role I am Black Woman I am never just me No it goes on and on every step upward is a step into more hypocrisy until the game is stopped completely and nobody has found out how to do that No the more Simon says that he does see me the more he’s lying to himself No he never makes it with White Woman because she’s too much like his mother or some damned Freudian reason like that I mean shit No I can’t go on in their game I am going to scream with rage I am going to scream like an eagle I am going to scream in the ears of the whole world until somebody does see me until I am not Black Woman and not Black and not Woman and nothing No nothing
justme
No they’ll say I’m giving up love and sanity Well fuck them fuck them all No I won’t turn back the acid has changed everything No at the end of it when I really am
me
maybe then I can find a better love and a better sanity No but first I have to find
me

“Go on.” Drake was unsmiling but undisturbed.

“The King of Swords and the Knight of Wands are both very active. You could do all this harmlessly, by becoming an artist and
showing
this vision of the jungle. You don’t have to create it literally and inflict it on your fellow human beings.”

“Stop preaching. Just read the cards. You’re better at it than I am, but I can see enough to know that there is no such alternative for me. The other wand and the other sword are reversed. I can’t be satisfied to do it in symbolic form. I must do it so that everybody is affected by it, not just the few who read books or go to concerts. Tell me what I don’t know. Why is the line from the Fool to the
Tower completed in the Lovers reversed? I know that I can’t love anyone, and I don’t believe that anybody else ever does, either—that’s more sentiment and hypocrisy. People use each other as masturbating machines and crying towels, and they
call
it love. But there’s a deeper meaning. What is it?”

“Start from the top: Death reversed. You reject Death, so the Fool cannot undergo rebirth and enter the right-hand path when he crosses the Abyss. Therefore: the left-hand path, the destruction of the Tower. There is only one end to that chain of karma, my son. The Lovers means Death, just as Death means Life. You are rejecting natural death, and therefore refusing natural life. Your path will be an unnatural life leading to a death that is against nature. You will die as a man before your body dies. The fire is still self-destructive, even if you turn it outward and use the whole world as a stage for your private
Gotterdammerung
. Your primary victim will still be yourself.”

“You have the talent,” Drake said coldly, “but you are still basically a fraud, like everyone in this business.
Your
worst victim, madam, is yourself. You deceive yourself with the lies that you have so often told others. It’s the occupational disease of mystics. The truth is that it doesn’t matter whether I destroy myself alone or destroy this planet—or turn around and try to find my way to the right-hand path in some dreary monastery. The universe will roll blindly along, not caring, not even
knowing
. There’s no Granddaddy in the clouds to pass a last judgment—there’s only a few airplanes up there, learning more and more about how to carry bombs. They court-martialed General Mitchell for saying it, but it’s the truth. The next time around they’ll really bomb the hell out of civilian populations. And the universe won’t know or care about that either. Don’t tell me that my flight from Death leads back to Death; I’m not a child, and I know that all paths lead back to Death eventually. The only question is: Do you cower before him all your life or do you spit in his eye?”

“You can transcend abject fear and rebellious hatred both. You can see that he is only part of the Great Wheel and, like all other parts, necessary to the whole. Then you can accept him.”

“Next you’ll be telling me to love him.”

“That too.”

“Yes, and I can learn to see the great and glorious Whole Picture. I can see all the men defecating and urinating in their trousers before they died at Château-Thierry, watching their own guts fall out into their laps and screaming out of a hole that isn’t even a mouth any more, as manifestations of that sublime harmony and balance which is ineffable and holy and beyond all speech and reason. Sure. I can see that, if I knock half of my brain out of commission and hypnotize myself into thinking that the view from that weird perspective is deeper and wider and more
truly true
than the view from an unclouded mind. Go to the quadruple-amputee ward and try to tell them that. You speak of death as a personified being. Very well: Then I must regard him as any other entity that gets in my way. Love is a myth invented by poets and other people who couldn’t face the world and crept off into corners to create fantasies to console themselves. The fact is that when you meet another entity, either it makes way for you or you make way for it. Either it dominates and you submit, or you dominate and it submits. Take me into any club in Boston and I’ll tell you which millionaire has the most millions, by the way the others treat him. Take me into any workingman’s bar and I’ll tell you who has the best punch in a fistfight, by the way the others treat him. Take me into any house and I’ll tell you in a minute whether the husband or the wife is dominant. Love? Equality? Reconciliation? Acceptance? Those are the excuses of the losers, to persuade themselves that they choose their condition and weren’t beaten down into it. Find a dutiful wife, who truly loves her husband. I’ll have her in my bed in three days, maximum. Because I’m so damned attractive? No, because I understand men and women. I’ll make her understand, without saying it aloud and shocking her, that the adultery will, one way or another, hurt her husband, whether he knows about it or not. Show me the most servile colored waiter in the best restaurant in town, and after he’s through explaining Christianity and humility and all the rest of it, count how many times a day he steps into the kitchen to spit in his handerchief. The other employees will tell you he has a ‘chest condition.’ The condition he has is chronic rage. The mother and the child? An endless power struggle. Listen to the infant’s cry change in pitch when Mother doesn’t come at once. Is that fear you hear? It’s rage—insane fury at not having total
dominance. As for the mother herself, I’d wager that ninety percent of the married women in the psychiatrists’ care are there because they can’t admit to themselves, can’t escape the lie of love long enough to admit to themselves, how often they want to strangle that monster in the nursery. Love of country? Another lie; the truth is fear of cops and prisons. Love of art? Another lie; the truth is fear of the naked truth without ornaments and false faces on it. Love of truth itself? The biggest lie of all: fear of the unknown. People learn acceptance of all this and achieve wisdom? They surrender to superior force and call their cowardice maturity. It still comes down to one question: Are you kneeling at the altar, or are you on the altar watching the others kneel to you?”