Masks of the Illuminati (41 page)

Tiger lily.

My God, Babcock sighed.

My God
, he repeated.

MY GOD, he gasped, both laughing and crying.

What is it with him now, Einstein muttered.

The White Light of the Void from which everything comes, Babcock said. It is not just a metaphor. I have seen it.

Oh, that, Einstein said. It’s just the atomic accelerations that control the electrochemical processes that make up your separate brain functions. The Hidden Variable.

Do you mean, Joyce cried, that we have become so slowed down or speeded up or whatever that we are actually experiencing the physical process by which our brains create form?

Certainly, Einstein said. All this jumpiness, for instance, is just quantum discontinuity.

Well, Joyce said, at least that’s a theory. I suppose it’s better than no theory at all. Do you really believe it?

I do right now, Einstein said. I doubt that I will still believe it in the morning. It may take me thirty more years of mathematical dickering before I can convince myself again that such bridges exist….

You mean, Crowley asked excitedly, that this part of the transformation actually takes us to atomic levels?

To sub-atomic levels, Einstein said. To the bridges across super-space through which the Hidden Variable controls the quantum symphony. Don’t assume I know what I’m talking about. As I said, it will take thirty years or more to get it into the right math. In the meanwhile, Beethoven probably explains it better than physics.

Omnia in Duos, said the King in Yellow. Duo in Unum. Unus in Nihil.

How long have we been in this cave, asked worried Einstein. The fire is getting low.

We were fish a few million years ago, Joyce said.

Return all three forms in triplicate, said Lenin with
Stalin’s face. The Secret Police is the march of God through the world. See your dentist twice a year. No unauthorized orgasms. Overnight overnight overnight. No power to the Soviets.

As they watched down a windy street buildings arose: the Parthenon, Saint Peter’s, the Eiffel Tower, Oriental pagodas, the towers of Babylon, American skyscrapers, a Quatt Wunkery, geodesic Martian hives, all this frantic activity accompanied by insectoid buzzing. Roaches constructed geometric aisles and ambulatories for Gothic cathedrals, the ants came marching million by million to erect flowery arcades and architraves, centipedes and lobsters scurried through rapid design of basilicas, bays and flying buttresses under the grave supervision of wise old hermit crabs, cantilevers and capitals leaped to the skies as termites and tarantulas toiled day and night to place brick upon brick, dozens of caryatids, chancels and colonnades appeared between the stark grandeur of pyramids, mosquitoes and beetles cooperated in the implementation of columns Doric and Byzantine and Ionic and Corinthian, grass huts and teepees and igloos multiplied in myriads, Stonehenge arose, the bustling buzzing blasting building without end, rose windows and naves and posts-and-lintels arising and rising and re-arising. They saw palaces of gold, temples the color of stars, warrens of indescribable inhuman subhuman slums and ghettoes, as one generation passeth away and another generation cometh but landlords never die.

And the ants came marching billion by billion.

I invoke thee, chanted Ludwig, MA BARRAIO IOEL KOTHA ARTHOBELA ABRAOT O mother O truth Thou mass Thou that art Thou hollow one Thou goddess of beauty and love

I’m a goddam female Hippopotamus, Babcock discovered.

Joyce looked at the lovely figure sitting on the rock in
the middle of the Rhine combing Her golden hair and realized that she was in fact a female Hippopotamus.

I thought we had explained all the mysteries, he complained.

I am Isis ineffable Queen of Nature, Babcockotamus announced more excitedly. I am the womb of all things. Sweet Jesus on a bike, I think I’m going to have a child.

The cosmic birth process repeated again and again and again my poppyred cunt on fire the pleasure the pain but I don’t have a cunt what happened to my prick who castrated me where am I but oh God the joy of motherhood again and again and again

Womb contracting. Room contracting. An elevator in outer space between verbal concepts representing Winter.

In the beginning was the Light, said Einstein in an elevator between the stars. Matter is knots in Energy.

Madam I’m Adam, said Tetragrammaton a Judeo-Creek fig merchant. A man, a plan, a canal: Panama. He goddam mad dog eh?

The bawdy hand of the clock, said Gladstone, is on the very prick of noon uh nick of prune

We have heard the chimes at midnight, Joystaff said.

A parted just between twelve and one, Hostess Quickly said wearing a Victorian dress with slit skirt showing blue garter on black mesh stocking. Even at the turning of the tide. His nose was as sharp as a pen and a table of green fields.

She snapped her garter and sang:

Brings the deepdown color back, said Hostess Twinky. Purity of essence. Ours in the original and genuine. Put
out the light and then put out the Light. Demands an emphatic protest from lovers of literature.

Sir John crossed the heavily fogged street, pushed open the door of
M.M.M.: Occult and Mystical Books of All Ages
with the mindless jerkiness and currencies of the world.

Watch Sir John Peel, said Sir Talis coiling oily surly. Cuckoo.

With his hounds and his haunts in the gloaming, said Canon Futter. Dorter of the Garter.

Thee I invoke, Crowley chanted faster and faster. The hornless one thee that didst create the earth and heavens thee that didst create the night and day Thou art myself made perfect Thou art the truth in matter Thou art the truth in motion

Fornication sodomy abomination, ranted Verey. Cuckolds, garterbaters.

I never used my dirty penis Reverend, said Jack the Ripper. Only a nice clean knife. Linked by strange coincidence where the moon doesn’t shine.

The rent bill is due again, said O’Shit. Landlords never die.

If we lived in the middle of a fireworks exhibition, Einstein lectured, everybody would understand my theory of space-time immediately, directly, sensorially. But we
do
live in the middle of a fireworks display: the velocity is not observed because we are moving with it. Why then do I observe it now?

My best friend in college was homosexual, Joyce told Babcock. I didn’t realize that until nearly ten years later. The arts of hypocrisy are even more highly developed in Ireland than in England. My God I will write this Hunter book and show humanity the real truth of its situation.

I never knew just breathing could be so marvelous, Babcock answered.

Now I’m a billionyearold fish and a man who will be
born in 1984 and live a thousand years in a dozen galaxies, Joyce remarked happily. Man, what have you done to us?

Opened the doors of perception, Crowley said.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day, Shakespeare asked lisping effeminately.

Oh why not, said Mr. W. H. camping outrageously. It would be a marvelous ripping rag.

Sodom and Gomorrah, Verey muttered. London and Paris. Illegal entry. It runs on ears of words.

You be a photon I thought.

Joyce knew suddenly that the four of them in Arab headgear had sat around this campfire for seventy thousand years.

There is a cruel streak in you father, said Eduard Einstein. Hiroshima … Nagasaki … New York …

Einstein looked at rising flames in horror.

How long does this go on?

You and your piggy books, Lucia Joyce said. And your garters and garters and garters.

Concepts breaking down into atomic perceptions, Joyce muttered.

It has to end sometime. Or are we in Eternity?

Adam Weishaupt arose through the trapdoor wearing a Wizard’s Cap with the eye-in-triangle design. How the simple Mason plies, he chanted, Tool on Temple, see it rise! Princes of Jerusalem, How we mock and scoff at them!

This is Hell.

We’ll all be crushed.

I remain an eternal mystery, said Mr. W. H. The supreme desire, unknown, refined out of existence. Only my initials remain. Mr. W. H. O?

Philosophia meta pederastia
, Plato intoned from Eternity.
Eleutheria. Tapa kega day
.

Floating, Einstein said, zero gravity. The relativism of the instrument.

It has to end soon. Doesn’t it?

But Crowley Hierophant rapped eleven times on the floor with his Staff, reciting in plainchant:

Split the skull, Weishaupt howled in delirium. On guard the sword! Earth be null and heaven abhorred! All’s a lie, although Divine! Give annihilation’s sign!

I’m dying. We’ll never escape.

The aromas of rose and clover where the moon doesn’t shine.

O’Neill saw Queen Molly’s pants, Joyce laughed.

That wasn’t so bad after all. We’re floating in space and we’ve turned into genitals.

Joyce condensed himself into a blue book, split into atoms, refined himself out of existence, reproduced, and became incarnate in a million libraries.

Fee fie fo fum, said Sir Talis. I smell the blood of an Englishman.

Babcock laughed. Is that what I was afraid of? An illustration from a children’s book?

Go away, Joyce told Sir Talis calmly. You’re only a Freudian symbol.
Eutaenia sirtalis
, the common garter snake. Sir Talis, Garters—do you understand, Babcock? Also called the garden snake. Hence the Eden symbols in the dreams.

Egad Joyce, said Einstein with Dr. Watson’s face. How do you do it?

Elementary, my dear Einstein, replied Joyce with Sherlock Holmes’ face. Garters, garters everywhere.

Dr. Carl Jung climbed through the window.

That kind of Freudian analysis is true enough, he said, but it’s not the whole truth. The snake is the Gnostic symbol of immortality and rebirth. To the primitive racial
unconscious, the snake is reborn every time it sheds its skin.

Bosh, said the voice of Sigmund Freud.

Egad, Joyce cried in ecstasy. I have it at last!

What? Einstein asked absently.

Joyce recited gravely awaiting their applause:

Das Buch ist ein Schwein
, Nora Barnacle said accusingly. Garters he writes about when we don’t have enough food in the house.

Well, Joyce said uneasily, is not fetishism the first religion?

Half the men in England have some such fetish, Crowley said. Usually it’s Miss Birch, mistress of discipline: the psychological correlative of imperialism.

Yes … Joyce said earnestly. I have always wanted Nora to discipline me … to see her eyes flash with anger …

Joyce is mocked, slandered, outcast, condemned, rejected, despised, starved. Rumors circulate like new cases of the clap around Paris London Dublin Zürich Pola Moscow Hong Kong Nagasaki Hiroshima Sydney Honolulu Mendocino Chicago Bad Ass Texas and back to Dublin. They say he has become a hopeless cocaine addict, his mind has been destroyed by paresis, he has died of drink in New York, he suffers from seven vile dieases and delirium tremens, he makes homosexual overtures to head-waiters, he writes anonymous obscene letters to the Queen of England and an assortment of nuns and teenage girls, he is a voyeur, he is an exhibitionist, he defecates in
public parks awaiting applause with an idiot grin, he is going blind from morose delectation and excessive masturbation, he wets the bed and wiggles his toes in it, he haunts finishing schools to smell the seats of girl’s bicycles, he is secretly an English German or a German Agent or a brainwashed bezombified mindless tool of the Illuminati, he has been cuckolded by his brother, his best friend, seven priests, nine rabbis, the Elect of Fifteen, the House of Rothschild, and the band at the Waldorf Astoria. His books, together with those of Sade, Masoch and Wilde are to be buried in a secret vault in the Lost Pyramid in the Hidden City in the Lost Continent of Mu. He himself is stripped, lashed, tickled, tormented, hanged, drawn, quartered and crucified.

Father forgive them, he said, for they know not what they do.

He kicked the bucket. Sparks flew out, astral vibes shook the atmosphere, he gave up the ghost, ball lightning and unidentified flying objects dazzled all the spectators, earthquakes collapsed Dublin into the sea, the heavens shook, and he died like a dog.

Why seek ye Jim here, asked the angel, rolling back the rock. And from Joyce’s grave came flowers and each flower had seven leaves and every leaf had seven secrets and every secret had seven titles and they could read among them such poesies as Poppy Oh Popey Do You Have Cartage on Your Rhine, The Tarot Towery Connection, Left-Handed Monkey Shines, It May Be Bolt Like A Sheephorse But Do You Call It Levin, The Campbells Are Camping with Musks of Goths, God Bless You Please Mr Robinson, They Needed A Songbird In Heaven So They Took Crusoe Away On A Friday, Tinned All Us Do Part, You Kenna Get My Chests With Your St. Tomach’s View, Sit On A Potato Pan Otis, The Oyster Rising and the Clam Dever, The Hannibal Cairo Express with Huck Chum and Effrontery, Nero My Dog Has Fleas, A Grand
Canyon by the Committee of the Hole, The Old Seizers and the New Cut-Ups, A Fold-In Burrow for an Ova Eggspressed, and the especially treasured Ten Spices and Twenty-Two Raisins To Turn Your Brainpan To a Fruitcake. As each goes to seed up spring such unique products of the Groves of Academe as Motive and Method in Joyce’s Voices, Method and Motive in Joyce’s Verses, Myth and Metaphor in His Comic Epic, Metaphor and Myth in His Crucified Eroticism, Night and Day He’s Got Us Under Our Skin, A Skillfully Done Key to His Finicky Work, A Skinfull Down Teeth for a Talulapalooza, The Marx in His Gripes, The Freud in His Feuds, Our Purification and Petrification for Canonization of His Excrementations and Pornographations. Who’s Who and Who Cares When Nobody is Everybody, and the exhaustingly exhaustive Myth, Metaphor, Meaning, Symbolism, Morose Delectation and Sneaky Dirty Jones in A Sample Paragraph (3 vols.)